A CROCK OF OBAMA

President Barack Hussein Obama has blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries in Texas and Louisiana.

TransCanada estimated it would have hired 13,000 Americans to build the 1,661 mile pipeline.  An additional 7,000 U.S. jobs would have been created in industries which supplied parts.  Keystone XL would have created up to 550,000 jobs by 2035, estimated the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The pipeline might endanger the Ogallala aquifier, and the fragile Sandhills area of western Nebraska, the president said.

This, said the Wall Street Journal, ‘is a crock.’   There is no safer way to transport oil.  Some 25,000 miles of pipeline already cross the Ogallala aquifier.  TransCanada is willing to tweak the route to stay away from sensitive areas.

By blocking Keystone XL, Mr. Obama has increased risk to the environment. Canada now will sell its oil to China.  It’ll be shipped by pipeline to Vancouver; loaded onto tankers; offloaded at Chinese ports, then shipped to Chinese refineries, where there are fewer emissions controls than in U.S. refineries.

When oil is shipped by tanker, spills are six times more likely.  And because we won’t be getting 700,000 barrels of oil a day from Keystone XL, we’ll have to import more from the Middle East, where it will be shipped to us by tanker.

Blocking the pipeline is ‘an act of national insanity,’ said Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson, because from the standpoints of economics, national security and environmental protection, it makes no sense.

It may not make political sense, either.

A ‘rushed and arbitrary deadline’ imposed upon him by Congress prevented ‘a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact,’ Mr. Obama said.

This, too, is a crock.  TransCanada made its application in 2008.  An environmental review by the State Department finalized last August concluded that Keystone XL ‘poses few environmental risks.’

When Congress learned the president planned to postpone a decision on the pipeline until after the election, it passed legislation in December requiring him to fish or cut bait.  So Mr. Obama was forced to choose between environmentalists who oppose the pipeline, and labor unions who want badly for their members to get those 13,000 well-paid construction jobs.

He chose poorly.  The president has increased his popularity with gentry liberals who were unlikely to vote Republican in any event, and who live mostly in coastal states that usually go Democrat.  

‘In purely political terms, it’s hard to imagine Obama’s play for green voters driving malfunctioning Volts outnumbering those blue-collar workers all across the distressed battleground Midwest,’ said Andrew Malcolm of Investors’ Business Daily.

Three years into this presidency, about 300,000 fewer Americans have jobs than when Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office.  He’ll go before the voters with the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression.  It makes such little sense to reject 13,000 ‘shovel-ready’ jobs which would go mostly to members of his own party that some wonder if he has a hidden motive.

"Is there some financial interest that would benefit from this decision which has promised massive funding to the Obama campaign and super Pacs?” asked Thomas Lifson of the American Thinker.  "Or are there extreme environmentalists who’ve promised tens of millions of dollars?”

Mr. Obama has showered tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on ‘renewable’ energy firms, most owned by major contributors.  The energy they produce is very expensive, and they produce very little of it — Keystone would have provided 50 percent more than all wind and solar firms combined.  They’ve created only a handful of jobs.  Despite the subsidies most are in financial trouble.

There is enough oil and natural gas in North America to meet all our energy needs, thanks to new methods of extracting it from tar sands and shale.  If development of these resources weren’t restricted by government edict, it would be obvious to all but the most dim-witted there is no justification for continuing subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy.

That’s why environmentalists, crony capitalists, and President Obama are willing to cripple the economy to block the Keystone pipeline.  What a crock of a presidency.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.