President Obama downplayed the benefits of building the Keystone XL pipeline, a major Republican priority, although he stopped short of saying he would veto a bill creating it in the new year.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has pledged to pass a bill that would mandate the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline as his first action in the new Republican Senate majority.
The Democratic-controlled Senate recently held a vote on a similar bill in a failed effort to boost the run-off chances of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., a strong proponent for Louisiana’s oil and energy industry.
Asked if he would veto the legislation, which is likely to pass the GOP-controlled House as well, Obama punted on making a decision.
“I’ll see what they do — we’ll take that up in the new year,” he said.
Before the lukewarm comment, Obama spent several minutes during his final press conference of the year trying to dispel what he labeled “myths” about the pipeline project, which will connect the tar sands of Canada to the Gulf Coast.
First, he pointed out that the pipeline would benefit Canadian companies and their oil industry much more than it would help U.S. businesses and the economy. Canadian oil companies currently have to ship the oil out of the tar sands areas on rail and a pipeline would streamline that process.
It also would have little to no impact on U.S. oil and gasoline prices because it would amount to facilitating the release of a small fraction of the world’s oil.
“There’s very little impact — I would say nominal impact on U.S. gas prices,” he said. “Sometimes there’s an implication that it’s going to lower gas prices in the United States. It’s not.”
When it comes to job creation, he said the project would create a couple of thousand temporary jobs and possibly a few thousand more permanent positions in states like Louisiana that border the Gulf of Mexico.
Those numbers can’t compare with the millions of jobs that Congress could create by making a new commitment to rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure — crumbling bridges and roads — across the country, he said.
Obama also restated the same position he has maintained on Keystone XL for more than two years – that he is waiting to see if the project would add to climate change.
“If we’ve got more flooding, more wildfires, more drought, there’s more economic consequences from that,” he said.
Ultimately, he said, he is waiting for a decision by a Nebraska judge to determine whether the pipeline’s path is “appropriate” and then the State Department’s determination on its impact on climate change.
“There’s a tendency to hype this thing as a magic formula for what ails the U.S. economy,” he said. “It’s hard to see on paper where they’re getting that information from.”
