Joe Biden ending the Keystone XL pipeline didn't ‘fire’ 14,000 people on Day 1

As President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk take steps to drastically cut the federal workforce, some social media users supporting their efforts have deflected criticism by drawing a parallel to President Joe Biden revoking the Keystone XL pipeline permit. 

"Did we see 14,000 fired keystone pipeline workers fired on day one of the Biden admin paraded on 60 minutes?" read an image shared by several people on Facebook. "Nope, so spare me your tears for the bureaucrats losing their jobs in DC right now."

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(Screenshot from Facebook)

On Jan. 20, 2021, Biden revoked a permit for the Keystone XL oil and gas pipeline. The project would have extended the existing Keystone pipeline to run crude oil from Canada to Nebraska. 

Construction was underway, with Reuters reporting that the pipeline was about 8% built, when Biden’s order halted its progress. 

Some people lost their jobs.

One day after Biden revoked the permit, TC Energy — the company behind the project — "let go 1,000 workers in both the U.S. and Canada," WorldOil reported. Reuters reported that TC Energy told employees by email that it would "eliminate more than 1,000 construction jobs in coming weeks."

That’s the clearest number of job cuts we could find immediately following Biden’s decision — 13,000 fewer than the Facebook posts’ claims. 

We didn’t find a CBS News "60 Minutes" segment specifically about the jobs cut after Biden revoked the Keystone XL pipeline permit (the Facebook post alludes to the show). But another CBS News show and other outlets, including Reuters, Verify and PolitiFact reported on the decision. 

A 2014 State Department report found that spending on the Keystone XL pipeline project construction "would support approximately 42,100 jobs throughout the United States for the up to 2-year construction period."

That doesn’t mean the pipeline construction would have created more than 42,000 new jobs, however. The report specified that the term "support" encompassed newly created jobs and maintaining "existing jobs in current or new locations." 

Pipeline spending would have supported 3,900 total "direct, temporary construction" jobs in states the pipeline ran through, the report said. And approximately 16,100 jobs would be "direct jobs at firms that are awarded contracts for goods and services," including construction. 

The report said that 29% — or about 12,000 of the 42,100 jobs over two years — would have been in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. It didn’t specify where other jobs would have been located. 

The larger 42,100 total also included jobs supported by "indirect" and "induced" economic activity. Indirect economic activity refers to construction contractors’ purchases of goods and services, the report said. Induced economic activity occurs when construction workers and the people who provide goods and services to those workers spend what they’ve earned. The report listed money going to "ranchers providing beef" for construction workers as an example of induced economic activity. 

The economic analysis firm The Perryman Group’s 2010 pipeline economic impact analysis for TransCanada (now TC Energy) estimated that the Keystone XL pipeline project would have created about 59,500 jobs each year of construction.

Two subsequent analyses — one in 2011 by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute and another in 2012 by Regional Economic Models, Inc. — criticized the Perryman report. 

Those analyses said the report overestimated the Keystone XL pipeline’s U.S. financial impact by including money spent outside the U.S. and reporting higher-than-average job wages. 

The Regional Economic Models, Inc., report estimated about 16,000 to 36,000 Keystone XL pipeline construction jobs in the U.S. each year for two years.

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The State Department’s 2014 report predicted that when the pipeline extension was completed and operational, it would require about 50 employees in the U.S., including 35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors. 

"This small number would result in negligible impacts on population, housing, and public services in the proposed Project area," it said. 

The 2011 Global Labor Institute report said that "based on the figures provided by TransCanada for the Canadian section of the pipeline," new permanent "pipeline jobs in the US number as few as 50."

Facebook posts said Biden "fired" 14,000 Keystone XL pipeline workers "​​on day one" of his administration. 

On his first day in office, Biden revoked a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline’s construction. The next day, the company behind the project said it would eliminate about 1,000 jobs. 

Various estimates said the project would create or support thousands of temporary jobs, and once completed, require about 50 U.S. employees. 

There’s an element of truth — about 1,000 people lost their jobs — but we found no evidence that as many as 14,000 did.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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