Keystone XL would be OK’D ‘on Day One’ under Romney
SWANTON, Ohio – Mitt Romney’s administration would approve a pipeline on Day One that would run from Canada to U.S. refineries in Texas, creating thousands of jobs and pushing the United States on its way to energy independence, Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan said Monday.
Ryan told supporters during his third trip in two weeks to swing state Ohio that there are enough energy resources for North America to become energy independent within eight years. “We need to unlock the energy we have in this country to create jobs,” he said.
Ryan faulted President Barack Obama for blocking the Keystone XL pipeline and pushing environmental regulations that have cost jobs in the coal industry — a thorny issue for the president in southeast Ohio, where coal has a large footprint.
Obama earlier this year objected to the pipeline’s proposed route over environmental concerns, suggesting that Calgary-based TransCanada Corp.’s pipeline should go around a sensitive aquifer in Nebraska.
Obama encouraged the company to pursue a shorter project from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast.
But Ryan said Monday that approving the pipeline in its entirety would get people back to work in construction and factories. The Wisconsin congressman said identifying new energy sources and job-training programs would help Ohio and other industrial states that have lost jobs over the last four years.
Late last year, the U.S. State Department, which has final say over the Keystone XL pipeline because it crosses an international border, demanded TransCanada work out a new route through Nebraska to address the ecological concerns over the Sandhills and the Ogallala aquifer.
In early September, TransCanada filed its new Nebraska route in a supplemental environmental report to Nebraska’s department of environmental quality.