Keystone pipeline still necessary

April 13, 2015

Panama City News Herald.

The below excerpt is from letter by Maj. Gen. William F. Hodgkins, USAF (Ret.), volunteer co-chair of Florida Vets4Energy and is a former Wing Commander at Tyndall Air Force Base. 

With a recent veto by President Obama of Keystone XL Pipeline bipartisan legislation, we are left without direction on what will happen with this project. The Senate failed in an attempt to rally a veto override vote, and it is not likely that they will attempt further standalone Keystone legislation when facing a guaranteed veto from the President.

It is possible legislators could try to fold Keystone language into other legislation with enough added concessions on ancillary issues to satisfy those who have opposed the project. Since it appears Congress won’t support another standalone bill, and the President is unwilling to approve a passed bill, I would encourage supporters to urge their Congressional Reps to keep the Keystone Pipeline’s future alive through compromise in other legislative initiatives.

The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline consists of a 1,700-mile pipeline that would transport more than 830,000 barrels of oil daily from Canada, the Dakotas, Montana and Oklahoma to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement last year stated that “proposed Project spending would support approximately 42,100 jobs (direct, indirect, and induced) and approximately $2 billion in earnings throughout the United States.” Opponents of the pipeline, including President Obama, have fabricated much lower job numbers, arguing that the jobs will be temporary, and falsely asserting that the oil coming through the pipeline will be exported on behalf of Canada and not used to the benefit of Americans.

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