On his first day in office, President Biden signed an executive order to revoke the license for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, pleasing climate activists and indigenous groups. If completed, Keystone would span nearly 1,200 miles, carrying carbon-heavy oil south of Canada to the Gulf Coast.
The pipeline was an obstacle to Mr Biden’s campaign promise to create 10 million clean energy jobs. The order stated that the pipeline “would not serve the US national interest” and said the US should “prioritize the development of a clean energy economy, which in turn will create good jobs.”
Pipelines are constructed on average 19 ½ weeks per season, so the jobs created for this are considered short term. In 2014, the State Department estimated that Keystone would employ 10,400 workers over multiple construction seasons, creating 3,900 jobs.
Now, without laying a pipeline, hundreds of workers are unemployed. According to TC Energy, the Canadian company that builds Keystone, “nearly 1,000” workers were laid off as a result of the executive order.
Photo provided by Ron Berringer
Ron Berringer is one of them.
Berringer, 60, is a Clarinda, Iowa, union administrator who has worked on pipelines in seven states for decades – just like his father before him and his three brothers today.
“[I was told]”Well, your father was a steward to us and if you do half the work he did, you are doing our great job.” And I knew right away that that was what I wanted to do: go ahead and follow in his footsteps, ” Berringer told CBS News, recalling the beginning of his pipeline construction career 30 years ago.
The sense of community, plus good fringe benefits and wages, are what makes working in pipelines so attractive. Berringer said he has to work six days a week, ten hours a day, which means there is always a promise of twenty hours of overtime.
He calls it the best job he’s ever had – his “bread and butter.”
Without that financial boost, Berringer says his future looks “bleak.” He can no longer plan to replace his pickup truck, which has laid 450,000 miles of pipeline. And he will have to cut down on the financial aid he is used to sending his two grown daughters.
Before the pipeline’s construction was halted, Berringer said friends inside and outside his union, the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) Local 1140 in Omaha, approached him “daily” to ask if he would be working on Keystone. He said people were often confused about the fate of the pipeline because construction stopped and began due to executive orders from Obama and Trump.
For these workers, pipeline management is more than a livelihood. As a member of LiUNA Local 620, Tyler Noel, 33, said that the ties he forged by working on pipelines for 13 years is “all I have now.”
Photo provided by Tyler Noel
Noel is based in Aberdeen, South Dakota, but spent the last five and a half months of 2020 working at Keystone, about 215 miles away in Murdo, South Dakota. Pipeline workers move for long periods of time during construction, often in local motels or with their own campers.
“It’s not just a job, it’s like a lifestyle,” said Noel. “The only people I speak to are family members and pipeliners.”
Without the promise of Keystone, Noel is at a “crossroads”. The work in Murdo ended in December. He has not received a stimulus check. As a result, Noel is forced to refinance his truck and knows others who have refinanced their homes.
‘You can’t get a grip on it [Employment Services]. You can’t, “he said.” And you know, I paid beaucoup money to states by working in those states. I am entitled to unemployment. ”
Noel is concerned about the possibility that Biden’s administration could withdraw other pipeline opportunities, especially as he will have to accrue more hours on his job to qualify for his retirement.
“All that was to come in the next few months would be Keystone,” he said. ‘If I hadn’t saved my money over the years, I would be really in a mess. But I would say that I have at least three months, then I have to do something. ‘
What now?
When he signed three climate-related executive orders last month, Mr. Biden said, “Today is ‘Climate Day’ at the White House, which means today is ‘Job Day’ at the White House.”
Climate envoy John Kerry told reporters that workers in the oil and gas industry “could be the people who go to work making the solar panels.”
But Berringer and Noel are not convinced.
Both said their best hope is to find work to service existing pipelines. Berringer, who now works at a power plant in Omaha, says he has worked on wind turbine installation in the past and found the work “piddly” and less satisfying because it does not provide the same overtime benefits as pipelines.
“Every time I do jobs like that I think, ‘Why am I here? I should be on a pipeline,’” he said.
Biden’s executive decision emphasizes moving workers to new jobs, but is vague on the details.
“These jobs will create opportunities for young people and older workers moving into new professions,” the order states. And it will “maximize the creation of accessible training opportunities and good jobs.”
Any movement on this front will likely have to stem from Congressional legislation.
For Noel, the idea is to switch from his long-practiced profession to a new “just crazy”.
“It’s easy for welders,” he said. ‘I am a foreman. My profession is in labor. The money is so much better to run a team. I wouldn’t be anywhere near a wind turbine, which I’ve never done before. ‘
President Biden’s nominee to become energy secretary, former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm said in her recent hearing that she thought the president’s economic plan would create more clean energy jobs than the ones that could be sacrificed. . “
Noel says he would like to believe that Granholm and the Biden administration will keep their word, but it already feels like he’s starting from the beginning.
“If you are doing a task, doing a job, you would want for 13 years to think that 13 years from now you would be somewhat comfortable and then you would not have to worry about a job,” said Noel. What were the past thirteen years for? The last thirteen years of being on the road, being away from family and for what? That I’m talking to you about this now? ‘