The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.
Rick Perry is the Governor of Texas.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Beijing recently signing an agreement and touting his country’s growing energy partnership with China. It’s good news for Canada, which is rightfully looking to grow markets for its sizeable oil reserves. And it’s particularly good news for China, which needs to keep tapping into fresh supplies to feed its growing economy and mounting demand for oil.
Unfortunately, it’s bad news for Americans, particularly when you consider that one of the main reasons China has become such an attractive market to Canada was President Barack Obama’s recent rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline. This crossborder connection would have provided a golden opportunity to partner with our neighbours to the north in producing massive amounts of energy, both for our country and the globe.
It seems unimaginable, yet President Obama refused TransCanada’s request to run its pipeline across the border from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. This extensive pipeline holds the potential of moving up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day – including oil produced in North Dakota and Montana – to refineries here in Texas.
Translated into job numbers, that’s up to 20,000 direct jobs and estimates of up to hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs created by this US$7-billion project.
Keystone would have provided a shot in the arm for our nation’s uncertain economy, and it could have provided economic opportunity for tens of thousands of families, stretching from here in Texas all the way to the Canadian border.
Hoping to appease environmental radicals, President Obama said no, claiming he didn’t have time to adequately consider the pipeline.
This is despite the fact the original request was made in September 2008, and Keystone was the subject of dozens of meetings on multiple levels of his own administration, as well as exhaustive environmental impact reviews. Certainly, 3½ years is more than enough time to make a decision.
His reasoning becomes even more laughable when you put it up against his massive, ill-conceived so-called stimulus bill, which he muscled through Congress and signed within the first month of his presidency.
For the rest of this column, please go to the National Post website: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/loses+Canada+precious/6148303/story.html