For America’s skilled craft construction professionals, any discussion of the Keystone XL project begins and ends with one word: JOBS. Today, roughly 14% of America’s construction workforce is unemployed. For these skilled professionals, today’s job market is worse than anything they’ve seen in the last 50 years. The Keystone XL pipeline would certainly be one key step towards addressing the American employment situation.
Equally important, this project would go a long ways towards helping to alleviate America’s unstable reliance on the Middle East for sources of energy, as well as the escalating costs for petroleum-based products.
By constructing a safe, reliable method for transporting crude oil through the American Midwest, this initiative not only fulfills sound U.S. energy policy goals, but will spur employment opportunities for American workers in the construction industry, as well as many other industries.
The Keystone XL pipeline has now been awaiting regulatory approval for more than two and one half years since the initial application in September 2008. The U.S. Department of State has held more than twenty public comment meetings along the proposed route of the pipeline, and TransCanada has held more than ninety open houses and public meetings. These efforts have been designed to ensure that any environmental impact along the route is minimized as much as practically possible. Having done its due diligence, the State Department has concluded that the Keystone XL project represents the best course of action.
America’s Building Trades Unions and the Oil & Gas Industry Labor-Management Committee urge President Obama to approve this project without any further delay.