Few permanent pipeline jobs

TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL oil pipeline, heralded by supporters as a major job creator, may add few permanent positions once the $7 billion project is built.

The number of people needed to operate and maintain the 1,661-mile pipeline may be as few as 20, according to the State Department, or as many as a few hundred, according to TransCanada.

"I don't see a big jobs impact," said Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. "It gets the oil into refineries that already exist. It's like replacing a bridge on the highway."

The debate in Washington has focused on short-term construction and manufacturing jobs, rather than on permanent ones. Estimates for construction and manufacturing employment range from 2,500 to 20,000, depending on assumptions of how much of the project's budget will be spent in the United States. The company says some of the steel will be made in Canada and India.

Calgary-based TransCanada says construction will create 20,000 "new, real U.S. jobs." But TransCanada Vice President Robert Jones told CNN in November that permanent jobs would be "in the hundreds, certainly not in the thousands."

The State Department, which has jurisdiction over the project because it crosses an international border, estimates that the construction workforce will be between 5,000 and 6,000. A report from the Cornell Global Labor Institute School of Industrial and Labor Relations in New York says construction jobs may be in the 2,500 to 4,650 range.

Job forecasts are based on the number of positions created for every dollar spent, according to Lara Skinner, associate director of research at Cornell and author of the Keystone jobs report. TransCanada is overstating construction jobs by assuming that the entire project budget will be spent in the U.S., when about half will be spent on the Canadian segment and on design and permitting in the U.S. and Canada, Skinner said.

The pipeline will support 127 permanent jobs, she said.

Skinner's analysis doesn't take into account the fact that the project has already created jobs, TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said.

"Pump stations are being manufactured," he said. "Those are jobs that weren't there. You don't build a project like this with ghosts."

TransCanada applied for a permit in 2008. The State Department announced in November that it would delay a decision until 2013 to evaluate a new route that would avoid the Sandhills and the richest portions of the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska.

That pushed until after the 2012 presidential election a decision on a project that's supported by some labor organizations and opposed by environmental groups. Congressional Republicans sought to accelerate a decision, prompting President Barack Obama to reject the pipeline in January. Legislation that would transfer power over the project from Obama to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission advanced last week in the House.

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