Propaganda Debunking
In reply to the discussion: There's a hell of a lot of propaganda needing to be debunked. [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)The Republicans and the oil industry are claiming that building the pipeline for Canada's shale oil will produce 85,000 U.S. jobs and that exploiting that oil will produce about 200,000 more by 2035.
Such predictions are always questionable, but in this case the claims about new jobs appear to be drastically exaggerated.
1. The API claims assume a $7 billion KXL budget, whereas the actual figure bearing on U.S. jobs is $3 billion to $4 billion;
2. TransCanada supplied data to the U.S. State Department showing no more than 2,500 to 4,650 temporary direct construction jobs over two years, and there is no substantiation for its related claim that KXL will create 20,000 direct U.S. construction and manufacturing jobs;
3. Much of the lines steel pipe has already been contracted for or manufactured. The steel came largely not from the U.S. but from India, and much of the steel for the rest the line will come from India or Russia;
4. The API claim there will be 119,000 total (direct, indirect, and induced) jobs is based on a flawed and poorly documented Perryman Group study commissioned by TransCanada that wrongly includes more than $1 billion in spending and 10,000+ person-years of employment for a part of the project in Kansas and Oklahoma that is not part of KXL and has already been built;
. . . .
There is more here:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/jobs-and-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-controversy/