Dave Heineman, the Republican governor of Nebraska, urged President Obama last week to deny the federal permit for the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline connecting Canada’s oil sands to U.S. refineries on the Texas Gulf coast, arguing its path over the Ogallala Aquifer is too risky. But at a time when the U.S. needs jobs, the Obama administration should say “yes” to the pipeline, argued Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson: “TransCanada, the pipeline’s sponsor, says the project should result in 20,000 construction and manufacturing jobs. Most would be American, because 80 percent of the 1,661-mile pipeline would be in the United States.” Plus, he wrote, the pipeline would strengthen U.S.-Canada ties, and “we already import about half of our oil, and Canada is our largest supplier, with about 25 percent of imports. But its conventional fields are declining. Only oil sands can fill the gap.”
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