Keystone XL Jobs Bewilder Media : CJR
God help the poor news consumers of America, especially the would-be voters.
President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline last week incited a new wave of coverage and speculation about how many jobs the line would create. Unfortunately, many outlets are still citing inflated and unreliable industry figures in the tens to hundreds of thousands while ignoring more modest and trustworthy approximations from academia and government, which place the total anywhere from 2,500 to 6,000.
The media were obsessed with the jobs number in 2011 and developed a preference for 20,000. A wide variety of conservative politicians and industry groups, from House Speaker John Boehner to the American Petroleum institute, have cited that figure, and some reporters have mistakenly attributed it to a variety of research firms that have issued reports on Keystone XL. But make no mistake, the number comes directly from TransCanada, the company that wants to build the 1,700-mile pipeline, which would transport crude oil from Canadian tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries in the United States. TransCanada first mentioned it, with no explanation, in a February 2 press release, but didn’t explain its math for another eight months.
Here’s how the company arrived at the figure:
Construction of the 1,600 mile pipeline is broken down into 17 U.S. pipeline spreads or segments, with 500 workers per spread—that’s 8,500 jobs Keystone XL also needs 30 pump stations worth tens of millions of dollars. Each station requires 100 workers—that’s 3,000 jobs. Add another 600 jobs that would be needed for the six construction camps and tank construction at Cushing, Oklahoma. A project of such magnitude needs construction, management and inspection oversight—that would create 1,000 jobs, bringing the overall Keystone XL total to 13,000 direct, on-site jobs.
Now, compare the math in the company’s press release to the information that it provided to the US State Department for its final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), delivered in August. With regard to the seventeen “spreads,” it read:
Approximately 500 to 600 construction and inspection personnel would work on each spread, except for the proposed Houston Lateral which would require approximately 250 workers. Each spread would require 6 to 9 months to complete. Construction of new pump stations would require 20 to 30 additional workers at each site. Construction of all pump stations would be completed in 18 to 24 months. Tank farm construction would require approximately 30 to 40 construction personnel over a period of 15 to 18 months.
Notice that in its press release, TransCanada omitted the durations of employment and inflated the number of pump-station and tank-farm jobs in order to arrive at 13,000 construction jobs. To that, it arbitrarily added 7,000 manufacturing supply jobs in order to get to 20,000 jobs. Most reporters published only that number despite the fact that, based on the information provided by TransCanada, the State Department’s EIS said Keystone XL “would result in hiring approximately 5,000 to 6,000 workers over the three-year construction period.”