Come on Donny

[silverscreenselect]

Yes, pipelines are actually fairly simple to maintain, especially with the electronic sensing devices we now have in place. Any repair work that would need to be done generally would be spot work by local contractors. Will the pipeline create jobs? Yes. It's hard to say how many, and it will also displace some existing jobs as the current methods of transport are cut back and phased out.

I've been in that industry for over 13 years, both at a company that owns and operates pipelines and at one that builds and maintains them. I can say this with a fair amount of certainty; you don't know what you are talking about.

Well, I'm just going off every source I've found.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/st ... y-creates/

There’s no doubting that most of the economic activity comes during construction. [CNN's Van] Jones honed in on jobs after construction, which aren’t really a source of sharp debate.

"There’s very few jobs operating pipelines," said Ian Goodman, president of the Goodman Group Ltd., an energy and economic consulting firm in Berkeley, Calif. "That’s one of the reasons why pipelines are attractive to the oil industry. They’re relatively inexpensive to build and operate."

The report says the project would provide jobs for about 35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors.

The full-timers would be "required for annual operations, including routine inspections, maintenance and repair." Some would work in Canada. The U.S. employees would work at pump stations along the pipeline route as well as a Nebraska office.

I would think that if these figures are as much off base as you claim, there would be plenty of sources to back that up.

[BackInTex]

Well, I'm just going off every source I've found.

Politifcact and Van Jones? What did your mailman say? How about the kid that bagged your groceries last week?

I would think that if these figures are as much off base as you claim, there would be plenty of sources to back that up.

The numbers you get are:
1) Politically motivated
2) Myopic in calculation

The numbers you quoted can best be equated to walking into a new grocery store and counting the number of cashiers and saying this store employs 10 people (or if it is a Walmart 6 people, they never have enough lanes open). What is not counted are the folks who clean the store, stock the shelves, drive the trucks to deliver the merchandise, folks at the factories making the goods sold there, etc. And I know some of those jobs would still be there if the store would not be open because shoppers would have to go to an older store and still buy, but they wouldn't buy as much. The economy grows with a new store.

Also, there are folks at HQ that do the marketing, the accounting, payroll for those workers, etc. The store, as is the pipeline, is an net increase in economic activity. For the pipeline, it is along the right of way, but also at the terminus. There will be a large impact on jobs at the terminus. Right now, those jobs are in Canada or wherever that crude is delivered, but with the pipeline, more crude will be delivered increasing he net jobs, but moves that terminus to the U.S. increasing the U.S. jobs more than the net global increase.

Also there are the metrics from pipeline companies. Below are a few showing miles of pipelines, number of employees, and employees per mile of pipeline operated. ETC themselves employ one person for every 7 miles of pipelines they operate. You wouldn't get a pro-rata increase but you would get more than 54 miles per employee.

ETC operates 71,000 miles of pipelines with 9,466 employees, that's 7.5 per mile and would equate to 253 employees for Keystone.
Kinder Morgan operates 84,000 miles of pipelines with 12,000 employees for 7.0 per mile or 274 for Keystone.
Buckeye operates 6,000 miles with 1,800 employees for 3.33 employees per mile or 570 for Keystone.
Boardwalk (where I worked when they were Gulf South only) operates 14,525 miles with 1,260 employees and would equate to 164 employees for Keystone.

With a $5.2 billion asset you have accountants, schedulers, public relations people, IT people to support the SCADA systems, HR folks, regulatory specialists, managers to manage those people, and yes lawyers, etc. I would imagine that pipeline alone will keep to lawyers busy full time filing regulatory stuff. And that's just at the owning company. You have the same at all the companies that support the people supporting the pipeline. 35 jobs is laughable.

[silverscreenselect]

ETC operates 71,000 miles of pipelines with 9,466 employees, that's 7.5 per mile and would equate to 253 employees for Keystone.
Kinder Morgan operates 84,000 miles of pipelines with 12,000 employees for 7.0 per mile or 274 for Keystone.
Buckeye operates 6,000 miles with 1,800 employees for 3.33 employees per mile or 570 for Keystone.
Boardwalk (where I worked when they were Gulf South only) operates 14,525 miles with 1,260 employees and would equate to 164 employees for Keystone.

With a $5.2 billion asset you have accountants, schedulers, public relations people, IT people to support the SCADA systems, HR folks, regulatory specialists, managers to manage those people, and yes lawyers, etc. I would imagine that pipeline alone will keep to lawyers busy full time filing regulatory stuff. And that's just at the owning company. You have the same at all the companies that support the people supporting the pipeline. 35 jobs is laughable.

Your numbers might be right if a brand new company built and operated Keystone from scratch. But it doesn't. Instead, it's owned by TransCanada, a very large existing Canadian energy company with over 6,000 employees, some of them presumably accountants, schedulers, PR people, IT people, etc. And, by the way, many of those jobs are located in Canada and any increases in manpower would presumably lead to more Canadian jobs.

As with any large company, adding a new asset, whether a pipeline or a new Walmart store, doesn't require as significant the same incremental additions in staff as it would for a new company.

Here's some more sources, try Forbes Magazine last month (Forbes pegs short term jobs at 10,000, noting most last little time at any one location):

The long-term operation and maintenance of the pipeline would not create a meaningful number of jobs, because pipelines are simple to maintain once built.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald ... 19e06b66a1

Here's CNN:

Once the pipeline opens it would require only 35 full-time permanent jobs to run it, and 15 full-time temporary jobs, according to the state department report. TransCanada, the company seeking to build the pipeline, does not dispute those numbers.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/27/news/ec ... tone-jobs/

I could post about a half dozen others easily to the same effect. What's interesting is what I didn't find. I didn't find Fox News or the other reliable right wing sources coming up with anything along the lines you're mentioning, primarily because Transcanada is not going to be adding hundreds or thousands of new jobs in the United States based on this pipeline.