API: White House decision on Keystone XL puts politics above jobs

WASHINGTON, November 10, 2011 – The American Petroleum Institute blasted the White House for delaying the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, putting an indefinite hold on the creation of 20,000 new jobs next year:

"This decision is deeply disappointing and troubling. Whether it will help the president retain his job is unclear, but it will cost thousands of shovel-ready opportunities for American workers," said API President and CEO Jack Gerard. "There is no real issue about the environment that requires further investigation, as the president's own State Department has recently concluded after extensive project reviews that go back more than three years. This is about politics and keeping a radical constituency opposed to any and all oil and gas development in the president's camp in November 2012.

"Besides creating thousands of jobs almost immediately for Americans, this project would also have helped strengthen our energy partnership with Canada and helped reduce America's reliance on oil from less stable sources," he said.

A recent poll found that nearly 80 percent of Americans favor more oil from Canada, already our number one supplier of foreign oil, according to API.

The Keystone XL pipeline has the support of organized labor, business, mayors and veterans groups from across the country as well as many members of Congress from both sides of the aisle.

API represents more than 480 oil and natural gas companies, leaders of a technology-driven industry that supplies most of America's energy, supports 9.2 million U.S. jobs and 7.7 percent of the U.S. economy, delivers more than $86 million a day in revenue to our government, and, since 2000, has invested more than $2 trillion in U.S. capital projects to advance all forms of energy, including alternatives.