The Obama administration postpones XL pipeline decision – probably until after the 2012 election

Keystone XL pipeline delayed: Does that help Obama?

excerpts from The Christian Science Monitor

• The Obama administration announced Thursday that it is delaying the Keystone XL pipeline, a Canadian-backed project that promised to create thousands of American jobs, generate billions in annual state tax revenues, and increase Canadian crude oil imports to America by as much as a quarter billion barrels per year.
• While the project’s promised benefits seem to make its eventual go-ahead virtually certain, delaying it would rescue President Obama from having to make a politically difficult decision a year before he stands for reelection.
• According to the pipeline operator, TransCanada, the pipeline extension is designed to bring an additional 700,000 barrels per day of crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, the largest crude reserves in North America, across America’s heartland to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas.

Radical Environmentalism trumps jobs.  This was a project that would cost no taxpayer funds- in fact it would help economic growth and create new revenues.  This was a concession to the environmentalist lobby.  The Republicans should remind voters every day until election day of what Obama has just done.  That makes his jobs rhetoric just a lot of empty meaningless words.