How many jobs would the Keystone pipe line create?

Not NEARLY as many as some would like you to believe. And they would not be created as soon as some would like you to believe. I'd go for the lower number.

That really depends on who you ask, what their motivation is in answering, and what formula they are using to calculate it. The larger estimates are 20,000 construction jobs and up to 100,000 "spin off" jobs - i.e., jobs in industries that expand in support of the construction jobs - food services, motels, transportation, bars, etc. The lower estimates are closer to 5,000 or 6,000 jobs. I think that when a project like this becomes a political football, you'll never get the right answer. The point is, though, that the project is not about politics - it is about energy and progress. It is not "make work" - like a "jobs bill" of federally funded jobs just to create employment - it is a necessary development in our energy policy. It is about keeping the flow of oil coming to this country so that we aren't crippled while we try to develop cleaner technology, and so that we don't have to continue to be beholden to the Chinese and the Saudis. So whether it creates 1,000 or 100,000 jobs, it doesn't matter. The number of jobs is probably less than what the Republicans say, but the greenhouse gas emission is probably less than what the Democrats say. Those guys will say anything to get their way. @sparks - I don't know why Canada doesn't use the oil - maybe they don't have the market for it, maybe they don't have the refining capacity. Maybe it's worth more to them as an export, or maybe there's some other parts of our agreement with them that make this worth their while.

Even if the Republican estimates are correct, and you'd have to be counting dog walkers that pipeline workers might hire, you'd still have the problem of them moving on once the pipeline section is built, it takes far fewer workers to maintain than to build and you'd have ghost towns once they moved on. All those support jobs, the lunch counters, work clothes stores and things of that nature would be without customers when the line was finished being built in that area, and then the people there would be worse off. I think some of this is that Texas is a Republican state as is much of the middle of the country and the Republicans are looking to use this as a job creating idea in their election. What they didn't count on is the fact that the farmers don't want it, and they don't want their land taken by eminent domain to build it either, which is what will happen if they don't sell out. You don't hear much about that, but really, this isn't federal land like it was in Alaska or the ocean like in the Gulf of Mexico, people own and live and work on those lands, and they have a right to be nervous. They don't want more studies, they might have wanted forty more years of study on health care, but this one they want to push through, after the election of course, lest Obama get any credit for any cut in unemployment, no matter how temporary.