KXL delays and proposed cuts to training programs come under fire at jobs hearing

E&E News
By Joshua Learn
April 30, 2014

A union leader took aim at both sides of the aisle yesterday, slamming the Obama administration for failing to approve the Keystone XL pipeline while the economy struggles but also criticizing Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) proposed budget that would cut job training programs.

Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trades Unions, made the comments at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on opportunities for skilled trade workers in the energy sector.

"Personally, it is unbelievable to me why [the Keystone XL] project is allowed to linger while our nation's economy struggles to get back on track," he said.

McGarvey said that if President Obama were to reject the pipeline, his trade union alone would fail to benefit from a potential 11,000 jobs. He said that 80 percent of workers that contributed to the completion of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline -- "the most advanced, safest pipeline ever built by man in this world" -- were from the United States.

He also pointed to steps Canada is taking to approve an east-to-west pipeline that could ship crude oil abroad to countries like China or Russia. "That product is going to get to markets where we can't control it," he said. "We have the opportunity through projects like Keystone to create energy independence here in America that would free us from unfriendly countries who use energy as an economic weapon here in the world. North America could easily flex its muscle to put these tyrants in check."

Private equity partners told him during a recent trip to the oil sands in Alberta that they'd ordered 6,000 rail car tankers at $100,000 a car due to uncertainty over Keystone approval, McGarvey said. "They're going to get that oil out one way or another," he said, adding that "even rail has a tremendous safety record, but it's not as safe as pipe."

McGarvey also said he visited some of the reclaimed land from former oil sands mining sites, which he described as looking like "one of our national parks."

The Pembina Institute -- a Canadian environmental and energy think tank -- has found that 0.15 percent of land disturbed by the oil sands, or 0.4 square miles, has been officially certified by the Alberta government as reclaimed. While oil sands operators say another 25 square miles has been reclaimed unofficially, Pembina said the statement is self-reported and unverified.

McGarvey also took aim at Obama administration policies affecting the coal and natural gas industries.

"My members want to work," McGarvey said. "But instead they find themselves hat in hand as coal-fired power plants are shut down, technologies like [carbon capture and storage] are not supported on the same playing field as alternative energy, and the natural gas boom that is occurring across our country has to continually look over its shoulder for the threat of federal regulation."

But the union leader also criticized Ryan's proposed budget that would cut programs like Job Corps, which McGarvey called a "wrong-headed" plan to kill a "tremendous program" that helps to put young people through high school and gain job training.

"I hope it's just a political polemic, and we really aren't going to eliminate all federal investment in both transportation infrastructure and skilled jobs training because people need skills to get these jobs," Natural Resources Committee ranking member Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said of the Ryan budget.

DeFazio said Ryan's budget looks to cut $52 billion in federal investment to transportation infrastructure such as roads and bridges, among other things. "You want to talk about a job killer, that's a job killer," he said.

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) agreed that the government needs more money for highways and transportation infrastructure but said the answer lies in the vast wealth of resources like oil and gas residing in federal lands.

Mike Rowe, the former host of the Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" and CEO of mikeroweWORKS Foundation, testified that while programs like Job Corps are great, they suffered from an exposure problem.

"Ninety-eight percent of the country has never heard of it," he said.

He said the real problem stemmed from promoting certain types of university education that don't offer many job prospects over trade colleges that produce skilled workers. "It's not just a skill gap; it's a will gap fueled by public perception."

He added that one major problem is making trade skills more appealing to young people. "You have to make skill cool," he said.

Monica Martinez, president and secretary of Hispanics in Energy, said that energy jobs aren't something students want to talk about but that she would like to see companies expand their outreach programs to Hispanic American communities.

The hearing was the committee's third in a series examining jobs in the U.S. energy industry. A hearing at the beginning of April looked at job opportunities in the sector for women and minorities. The chairman of that hearing, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), said U.S. domestic energy production could solve larger social issues and was "literally pulling our nation out of recession" (E&E Daily, April 9).

An American Petroleum Institute survey released in March found that 32 percent of the 1.3 million projected new jobs in oil, natural gas and petrochemical industries by 2030 could be taken by African-Americans and Hispanics. Fourteen percent of the new jobs were expected to be taken by women, who currently constitute 19 percent of the workforce in the petrochemical industry (EnergyWire, March 12).

Martinez also mentioned the possibility of setting goals for the hiring of Hispanics or other groups. "If you're not creating that as a benchmark, you're not going to achieve it," she said.

A subcommittee hearing in February, also led by Lamborn, examined the job opportunities for U.S. war veterans in the energy industry. "American energy jobs are good, high-paying jobs with benefits that require many of the same skills and discipline that our veterans come prepared to offer an employer," Lamborn said in a statement at the time (E&E Daily, Feb. 24).

Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Calif.) pointed to the bipartisan "Worker Mobility Act" that he is pushing with Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) as a possible solution to boost employment. "We have 4 million chronically unemployed on any given day yet 3.5 million want ads that go unfilled," Cardenas said. The legislation aims at helping match workers with jobs in different parts of the country by offering relocation subsidies.

But while Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) said he thought Rowe's idea of starting a public relations campaign to increase awareness of job opportunities as well as the overall appeal of skilled trades was good, he didn't like Cardenas' proposal of putting more government money into relocating people. "I'm frustrated. How did we get to a point in America where you have to have the government help you to get a high-paying job?"

For his part, Cramer said North Dakota companies love to bring more people to North Dakota, which he described full of opportunity. "It is not only what America used to be but what America could be again."