REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

SENATOR TED CRUZ GETS CAUGHT IN ANOTHER LIE

 

            …Senator Cruz continues to lie about the Keystone XL Pipeline project

 

The senator once again earned Pinocchio’s for his false pipeline statement

 

We all know that The Post’s Fact Checker has a long history of looking into puffed-up job estimates for the Keystone XL pipeline.  This is an international energy project that stalled throughout the administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and now it appears frozen.

On his first day in office, President Biden revoked a key federal permit President Trump had issued.  At Pete Buttigieg’s Transportation confirmation hearing the next day, Cruz said that “in 2021, the Keystone pipeline was scheduled to have more than 11,000 jobs.”

Here is the total of what Senator Cruz actually said: “I will say it was disconcerting to see yesterday, the first day of the Biden administration, straight out of the gate, President Biden announced that he was canceling the Keystone pipeline. … That is a project that right now, today, has 1,200 good-paying union jobs. And in 2021, the Keystone pipeline was scheduled to have more than 11,000 jobs, including 8,000 union jobs, for contracts worth $1.6 billion.”

This was a false statement from Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.),at the hearing on Buttigieg’s nomination to be the Transportation Secretary.

The Post’s first fact check of Keystone job numbers appeared almost a decade ago, back in 2011, and they published many more checks in recent years. So regular readers may recall that, barring less than 40 permanent positions, these 11,000 estimated positions is for over-blown numbers and they are all for temporary construction work.

Here are the real Facts

As part of an executive order on climate change, Biden revoked a March 2019 permit that Trump had granted to TC Energy, the Canadian energy company behind the Keystone pipeline.

“Leaving the Keystone XL pipeline permit in place would not be consistent with my administration’s economic and climate imperatives,” Biden’s order says. On the campaign trail, “the Democratic President had said investments in renewable energy and infrastructure could generate 10 million part time and full-time jobs.”

But in a news release, TC Energy said Biden’s action “would directly lead to the layoff of thousands of union workers.” (and In the TC Energy follow-up news reports, the company said “more than 1,000.”  But then a manager on the pipeline project said that “hundreds” of workers had been laid off since Biden’s executive action.)

The Keystone XL pipeline is a construction project, and so the most direct jobs are related to the actual construction. These are basically short-term jobs, lasting on average 19½ weeks, to assemble the pipeline that would help carry heavy crude oil from Canada’s Alberta province to the Gulf Coast.

The most comprehensive estimate of Keystone jobs was calculated by the State Department in a 2014 report.

Over two construction seasons, the main beneficiaries of the pipeline project would be Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, and each would need to hire temporary construction workers, though Kansas would also need to hire less than 200 workers.

Here are the state's job numbers:

• Montana: construction workers for an average of 19 weeks = 1,462 workers
• South Dakota: construction workers for an average of 20 weeks = 1,346 workers
• Nebraska: construction workers for an average of 19½ weeks = 1,013 workers
• Kansas: construction workers for an average of 33½ weeks = 129 workers

All told, the construction workers, engaged for four- or eight-month periods, are expressed in the State Department report as 3,900 jobs, only one position that is filled one full year, and none of the other jobs actually last a full year.

The figure that really should be used is 3,900 construction workers would get jobs, as long as a politician made clear that this was mostly part-time employment. (but Cruz didn’t express this.)

The Post asked Cruz’s office for a citation to back up his 11,000 jobs estimate and they didn’t get any in response, so the State Department report remains the most authoritative guide. A spokesperson for Cruz said, “Unfortunately in the first few days of his presidency, Joe Biden has abandoned these blue-collar workers to advance a radical, out-of-touch energy policy that will decimate entire industries while doing little to change the environment.”

But as stated, the new President is stating that the his new, green programs will produce millions of permanent good paying union jobs, and none would be in support of fossil fuels.

How many of these pipeline jobs would be permanent, lasting more than a year?

The State Department report says it would only be 35 of 50 jobs. “Once the proposed Project enters service, operations would require approximately 50 total employees in the United States: 35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors,” the report says. “This small number would result in negligible impacts on population, housing, and public services in the proposed Project area.”

The Pinocchio Test

Cruz cited a real estimate of approximately 11,000 jobs, but he left out that they were all mostly temporary. In the same report, the State Department said the Keystone XL pipeline, if built, would require only 35 permanent positions.

The missing context is key here, obscuring half the story.  Cruz has therefore earned Two Pinocchio’s for misleading the public on the actual number of temporary construction worker jobs.

Copyright G. Ater 2021