Obama plays energy politics while China and Cuba drill wells

By: Examiner Editorial

[Getty Images file photo]

A protester rallies in San Francisco against the Keystone Pipeline project.

How odd that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton couldn't make a final decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline by the Feb. 21 deadline set by congressional Republicans. TransCanada, which would use private investment to build the $7 billion project, filed its application for environmental approval in 2008. The State Department conducted exhaustive studies and approved the application in 2010 and again last year, apparently clearing the way for a pipeline to move oil from Canada's rich tar sand region of Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. So now Obama decides against issuing a permit for the project because of "the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people." He previewed this disingenuous ruling last November when he cited environmental concerns in delaying final approval until after the 2012 election. That came shortly after environmentalists encircled the White House with a human chain to protest the pipeline. Obama clearly has his eye on the big prize: millions of campaign dollars and thousands of campaign volunteers from the environmental movement for the coming campaign. Obama is angering another key part of his electoral supporters, the labor unions that desperately want the estimated 20,000 jobs the pipeline would create. But Big Labor is not as monolithic as most people think. For every construction worker, pipefitter and welder who would benefit from Keystone XL, there are many more unionists who are siding with Big Green so they can stay in the good graces of the White House and get the goodies that will be dispensed in a second Obama term. Never mind the benefits to the country that would accrue from the ancillary jobs created by the project and from the oil that would come from our steadfast friends to the north.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2012/01/obama-plays-energy-politics-while-china-and-cuba-drill-wells/2119211#ixzz1kCppMu8h