Obama: Keystone oil ‘extraordinarily dirty’

by Jesse Byrnes - 03/06/15 3:41 PM ET

President Obama on Friday ratcheted up his criticism of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, days after the Senate failed to override his veto of legislation approving the project.

{mosads}”The truth is it’s Canadian oil that’s then going to go to the world market. It will probably create about a couple thousand construction jobs for a year or two, but only create about 300 permanent jobs,” Obama said at a town hall in South Carolina when asked by an attendee about his decision.

“The reason that a lot of environmentalists are concerned about it is the way that you get the oil out in Canada is an extraordinarily dirty way of extracting oil. And, obviously, there are always risks in piping a lot of oil through Nebraska farmland and other parts of the country,” Obama added.

On Wednesday, the Senate fell five votes short of a the 67 needed to override Obama’s veto of the controversial bill. Eight Democrats maintained their support for the pipeline and voted with Republicans to override the veto.

Obama said he vetoed the bill because Congress was trying to “short-circuit” the administration’s approval process.

“I haven’t made a final determination on it, but what I’ve said is that not going to authorize a pipeline that goes to benefit largely a foreign company, if it can’t be shown that it is safe and if it can’t be shown overall that it would not contribute to climate change.”

Obama invoked the decision when explaining the need to combat climate change and emphasized that young people should care about the future of the climate.

“The pattern overall is that the climate is getting warmer. That’s undeniable,” Obama said. “This will affect you more than old people like me.”

Tags Barack Obama Environment Keystone Pipeline