Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has approved his state’s portion of the
Keystone XL pipeline, explaining that its revised route avoids areas
that critics had earlier claimed were environmentally sensitive. The Alberta-to-Texas pipeline would create more than 5,500 Nebraska jobs
during its construction period and support 1,000 permanent jobs through
2030. During the project’s lifetime, KXL would generate $950 million in
labor income, $130 million in property, sales and other state and local
taxes, and $679 million for the state’s gross domestic product, by
bringing Canadian oil sands petroleum to Texas refineries. President Obama’s second term agenda, continued viability of Medicare
and Social Security programs, and America’s economy and environment
need the pipeline and oil even more than Nebraska does. The pipeline and Alberta petroleum
could mean $45 billion per year by 2035 in increased goods and
services, up to 465,000 more jobs in the 2,000 American companies that
already support oil sands operations or utilize the hydrocarbons in
motor fuel and petrochemical manufacturing – and billions in annual
state and federal tax revenues. While all fifty states would realize
employment and economic gains, California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas,
Ohio, New York, Montana and Michigan would benefit most (in that order)
from this job and economic activity, the Canadian Energy Research Institute calculates. Canada has an estimated 169 billion barrels of oil sands fuel that can be recovered economically with today’s technology – 20% by mining and 80% via in situ
drilling and steam injection. Much of this oil is destined for the
United States via the KXL pipeline, to replace similar heavy crude that
we now import from Mexico and Venezuela, and oil from other nations that
have much lower environmental standards and far worse human rights
records than Canada, including Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Russia, Iraq and
Algeria...more
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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