Obama Should Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline

Update: After this blog item was posted, the Obama Administration announced that it was going to disapprove going ahead with the pipeline, blaming the Republicans in Congress for forcing a premature decision.

If there was any doubt that President Obama’s decision-making is driven almost entirely by self-regard for his political survival, all you need to do is take a look at two of his most recent decisions.

The President announced three “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board although members of the Senate warned him not to do so and made sure that the Senate was not in recess during that period. Obama’s move is widely seen as unconstitutional on its face. In its defense, an administration attorney said that on three occasions when the members said they were in session were just shams. During one of those “sham” sessions the Senate approved the payroll tax cut extension.

No one except Obama’s most die-hard supporters expects the administration win a case in which their defense is that the President has the authority under the Constitution to determine when the co-equal branch of Congress is in session or not.

So why would Obama do something so bold and almost certain not to withstand judicial scrutiny? His defenders say he needed to act because a do-nothing Congress was refusing to do so. Critics say he was throwing a bone to his big labor union allies who have been unhappy about not getting all they wanted from an administration they helped elect with their money and organizational muscle.

But his defenders have a hard time making their case in the face of another decision he made (or rather didn’t make) late last year when he announced he would hold off until after the 2012 election to decide whether to approve going ahead with the Keystone Pipeline XL project, which would bring oil from Canada’s oil sands into the U.S. Following Obama’s refusal to approve the project, Canada announced that it would explore building the pipeline within its borders – to export the oil overseas to countries other than the U.S.

While there was no good reason for Obama to stall this decision – and plenty of reasons why it shouldn’t have been stalled – there was one excellent political reason: Two of his biggest groups of supporters are at loggerheads over the pipeline: The major environmental groups oppose and organized labor supports it.

When it came to the Keystone XL Pipeline, the same President who felt no compunction in taking bold action by overstepping his constitutional bounds with the NLRB appointments suddenly became timid and chose to vote “present” – his all too common practice when he served as an Illinois state legislator and faced politically uncomfortable votes.

But not approving the Keystone Pipeline at this time will cause significant damage the President has chosen to ignore, not the least of which is that it is a slap in the face to Canada, which is the United States’ largest trading partner and a staunch ally. Even if Canadians can’t vote in U.S. presidential elections, their positive contribution to the U.S. economy is indisputable. For every dollar we spend on Canadian products, including oil, Canadians return up to 90 cents through purchases of U.S. goods and services.

The pipeline is needed to strengthen America’s energy security. Canada is already our largest supplier of imported oil – almost 2.4 million barrels per day, or one fourth of our imports. With this proposed pipeline, our crude imports from Canada could reach 4 million barrels a day by 2020, twice what we currently import from the Persian Gulf.

The Keystone XL Pipeline is a $7 billion privately-funded project that it is estimated will carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil daily from western Canada to American refineries. It has been projected that it will create 20,000 construction jobs and about 118,000 related jobs, resulting in more than $20 billion in additional private sector spending and as much as $5 billion in new local, state, and federal tax revenues.

Studies show that fully utilizing Canada’s oil sands crude, including the necessary pipeline infrastructure, can generate more than 500,000 new U.S. jobs and $775 billion in GDP by 2035. Today there are already at least 2,400 American companies in 49 states supporting the development of oil sands by either providing supplies and services in Canada or for pipeline and refinery projects here in the U.S.

As for the environmental concerns, it has been reviewed thoroughly by a host of state and federal agencies for more than three years, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. An August 2011 environmental impact statement found that the project will have limited adverse environmental impacts during construction and operation, and would enjoy a degree of safety greater than any typically constructed domestic oil pipeline system under current regulations

President Obama needs to take bold, decisive action and prove his commitment to creating jobs, bolstering U.S. energy security and improving commerce with our staunch ally, Canada. He must realize that the American people elected him to exercise real leadership by making these kinds of decisions for the good of the country, not to avoid them for his own comfort and convenience.