HOUSTON — President Joe Biden wasted no time signing an executive order revoking the Keystone Pipeline permit. It immediately canceled construction of the 875 mile pipeline stretching from Canada ultimately connecting to Gulf refineries.
As soon as Biden killed the project, posts like this started spreading across social media platforms with claims Biden's order killed 11,000 jobs. Republican lawmakers started repeating the claims too.
"On Joe Biden's first day in office he killed thousands of American jobs," said Wisconsin Congressman Bryan Steil.
"With a stroke of a pen President Biden has told the 11,000 union workers their jobs are gone," Sen. Ted Cruz said.
But are these claims true?
The 11,000 figure is a jobs estimate that does match up with an October press release put out by TC Energy, the company that owns the pipeline.
Days ago, TC Energy said Biden's order "would directly lead to the layoff of thousands of union workers".
But it's missing key context.
Only about 1,000 of these jobs are currently filled. Also most of these jobs were temporary positions slated to last 4 to 8 months while a pipeline would have been constructed. Those jobs would have been primarily in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.
Finally, a State Department report on the Keystone Pipeline found the project would only create 50 permanent long lasting jobs some of which would be in Canada, not the United States.
So we can VERIFY, the claim is true, but without critical context is very misleading about the real number of jobs lost by Biden's executive order.