Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline is receiving widespread criticism for reflecting a far-left policy agenda and favoring U.S. adversaries such as Russia, China, and Venezuela over America and its citizens.
“How bad is Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline? Energy workers are being laid off. Russia wasted no time in restarting construction of its own pipeline. Iran, Venezuela, & Saudi Arabia are next. Biden should put America’s interests first not his leftist interest groups,” Nikki Haley tweeted Thursday.
The Keystone XL pipeline was designed to efficiently transport up to 800,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil into the U.S. every day, according to the Global Energy Institute of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, supporting “over 13,000 Canadian and American workers in the building trades.”
TransCanada, the business responsible for the Keystone XL Pipeline, viewed the U.S. deal as “an innovative, cost-competitive way to meet the need for pipeline expansions to accommodate anticipated growth in Canadian crude oil production during the next decade.”
Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, according to Worldometers and relies heavily on the U.S. for refineries. The Keystone XL pipeline would allow Canada to remain competitive in the global market by keeping oil export costs low.
With the pipeline’s cancellation, Canada may need to look to other sources to support their anticipated increase in crude oil production, and with China being the number one oil importer in the world, according to a 2017 U.S. Energy Information Administration report, they are a possible beneficiary of the pipeline’s cancellation.
Venezuela may also benefit from Biden’s executive order, as Canada will lose the needed infrastructure to support the export of crude oil at a low cost, opening up opportunity for Venezuela in the global market.
Russia already appears to be capitalizing on the opportunity to expand its international oil exports.
In December 2019, Trump applied economic sanctions to companies involved in Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline; however, on January 25, five days after Biden signed the executive order cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, news circulated that Russia picked up construction on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline once again.
While ending the Keystone XL pipeline is expected by many to bolster U.S. adversaries within the oil market, it will also kill thousands of American jobs.
Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry responded to this criticism by suggesting that those workers “can be the people to go to work to make the solar panels.”
“At the stroke of a pen, [Biden] literally put thousands upon thousands of hardworking, blue-collar union members out of work…These folks now have to go back to their families in the middle of a pandemic and tell them, ‘We just lost our job, and I don’t know where I’m going to go work next.’ That’s a far-left agenda there,” Senator Rubio said in a video on Twitter last week.
