Big Green blocks an oil pipeline, sacrificing thousands of jobs
What if there was a way President Obama could create more than 100,000 jobs, reduce the price of gasoline at the pump, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil -- all at zero cost to taxpayers? Any sane president would jump at the chance, right? Not Obama. It has been 33 months since TransCanada filed for a permit from the State Department to begin construction on the Keystone XL oil pipeline. They are still awaiting final agency decision.

Normally energy companies do not need to win State Department approval for pipeline construction, but the 1,700-mile Keystone XL project would carry about 700,000 barrels of oil a day -- or 255.5 million barrels a year -- from Alberta, Canada, across the U.S. border, and then south all the way to the Gulf Coast. To put that in perspective, Obama recently released 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over a period of 30 days. The Keystone project would also create 7,000 manufacturing jobs, 13,000 construction jobs, and 118,000 spinoff jobs related to the design and management of the pipeline, all in the United States. With unemployment at 9.2 percent, why isn't Obama putting this project on a fast track? ...