A labor union leader called President Obama a “hypocrite” for refusing to green-light the Keystone XL pipeline project.
Sean McGarvey, president of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, said the president joined “radical environmentalists” and turned his back on labor groups, which largely back Democrats, when his administration rejected the 1,187-mile pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast.
The company looking to build the pipeline, TransCanada, had applied for a permit with the State Department seven years ago and was denied by the administration on Nov. 6. It was expected to be able to carry up to 830,000 barrels of oil a day.
In an interview with the Financial Post, McGarvey said the decision to reject the pipeline defies the findings of a study by the Obama administration that showed Keystone would not have generated significant greenhouse gas emissions.
During a speech at Georgetown University in 2013, Obama said that the pipeline’s impact on climate would be “absolutely critical” in his decision on the project’s future. The pipeline would serve the national interest only if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution,” he said.
Such concerns seemed to be alleviated when the State Department concluded in a study released in January of 2014 that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would only have minimal impact on greenhouse gases, though it warned that the report was not a “decisional document.”
However, the State Department concluded in its decision to reject the pipeline on Nov. 6 that the pipeline’s potential impact on the climate was still too risky.
Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that the “critical factor” in his decision was that “moving forward with this project would significantly undermine our ability to continue leading the world in combating climate change.”
Despite the setback, McGarvey said he is confident the pipeline will be built eventually.
“People will demand it and will build it, regardless of who the next Congress is and who the next president of the U.S. is,” he said. “And we are going to build others.”
North America’s Building Trades Unions is a coalition group representing over 3 million skilled craft professionals in the U.S. and Canada.
