Keystone pipeline sparks labor civil war

You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time. Obama's having trouble greasing all the palms of all his special interest groups... and it's falling apart...

Some of President Barack Obama’s biggest labor supporters are fuming over his Keystone XL pipeline verdict, but they may be angrier at their labor brethren than at the president himself.

Unions representing construction workers that would directly benefit from building the pipeline feel stabbed in the back by unions that joined environmental groups to congratulate Obama for killing the project.

“People are pissed,” said one U.S. labor official who supports the proposed TransCanada pipeline. “The emotions are really, really raw right now. This is a big deal."

“It’s repulsive, it’s disgusting and we’re not going to stand idly by,” Laborers’ International Union of North America General President Terry O’Sullivan told POLITICO. “The rules have changed. So we’ll react accordingly.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/01 ... z1k7M2DdnL

And how many job will shutting down the Keystone Pipeline project effect... let's ask the experts...

Construction union presidents were particularly upset as four unions signed a project labor agreement with TransCanada several years ago to use unionized labor to build Keystone. At that time, the unions calculated the pipeline’s construction would employ 20,000 workers directly and many more thousands of people indirectly.[/i]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_5110

The pipeline would create 20,000 jobs and thousand more in related activities? No... the unions must be lying.

Any wonder?

Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.

“Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), said in an interview. If Keystone XL “doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-2 ... eline.html

Of course... this probably is just a coincidence.

I know a Whole lot of construction people who aren't voting for the O this year.

Martin Ent Inc wrote: I know a Whole lot of construction people who aren't voting for the O this year.

It's no wonder... Obama is not interested in the white working class in this election cycle... from the New York Times...

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... coalition/

Hey... is the New York Times being racist?

Can you imagine how many jobs this must have cost the state. rofllol
........."Billions of dollars of infrastructure improvements have been made in recent years to allow North Dakota's oil shipping capacity to keep pace with the skyrocketing production. North Dakota is the nation's fourth-biggest oil producer and is expected to trail only Texas in crude output within the next year.

Alison Ritter, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Mineral Resources, said the state's so-called takeaway capacity is adequate, though producers and the state were counting on the on the Keystone XL to move North Dakota crude.

Shipping crude by pipeline in North Dakota adds up to $1.50 to its cost, compared to $2 or more a barrel for rail shipments, producers say.

"Oil that would have moved by the Keystone XL is now going to shift to rail transportation," Ritter said."....................

Follow the money.

............."The railroad is a unit of billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and Buffett is a longtime Obama adviser.

Neither BNSF officials nor Buffett at his Berkshire Hathaway office in Omaha, Neb., returned telephone calls from The Associated Press."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162- ... -pipeline/

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/buffett-r ... 00516.html


"Warren Buffett's Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad and Union Pacific Corp. (UNP) are combating a drop in coal cargoes by catering to the industry responsible: the hydraulic fracturing of shale formations.

BNSF, Union Pacific and their peers are hauling in energy producers' gear to extract crude oil and gas from shale, then shipping out petroleum products. BNSF's petroleum carloads rose 75 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier while Union Pacific saw a 12 percent gain in the unit where it groups fracking-related freight."