Economy, environment stand to gain from Keystone XL Pipeline

According to an economist for the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and national gas industry, jobs may not be the only reason why President Barack Obama should approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

For every dollar the U.S. would spend buying Canadian oil, Rayola Dougher, senior economic advisor at the American Petroleum Institute (API), says Canada would spend 90 cents buying U.S. goods and services.

"Crude is going for about $100 a barrel or so. So just imagine 700,000 barrels a day, initially, at $100 a barrel, and then 90 percent of that money coming back to the United States," she poses. "You very rapidly can get to about 500,000 jobs within the next 20 years or so."

Merely building the pipeline would create upwards of 20,000 jobs. And as Dougher goes on to point out, the Keystone XL pipeline would give America half of what it currently imports from the Persian Gulf.               More