On his first day in office, President Biden signed an executive order revoking the license for the Keystone XL pipeline, pleasing climate activists and indigenous groups. If completed, Keystone will span nearly 1,200 miles, transporting heavy carbon oil to southern Canada to the Gulf coast.
The pipeline was an obstacle to Biden’s campaign promise to create 10 million clean energy jobs. The annulment order stated that the pipeline “would not serve the national interests of the United States” and said that the United States “should prioritize the development of a clean energy economy, which in turn will create good jobs”.
Pipelines are built seasonally for 19 and a half weeks at a time, on average, so the jobs created to build them are considered short-term. In 2014, the State Department estimated that Keystone would employ 10,400 workers in various construction seasons, thus adding 3,900 jobs.
Now, without a pipeline to build, hundreds of workers are unemployed. According to TC Energy, the Canadian company that is building Keystone, “almost 1,000” workers have been laid off as a result of the executive order.
Photo courtesy of Ron Berringer
Ron Berringer is one of them.
Berringer, 60, is a union representative from Clarinda, Iowa, who has worked on pipelines for decades in seven states – as has his father before him and his three brothers today.
“[I was told], ‘Well, your father was a butler for us and if you do half the job he did, you will be doing a great job for us.’ And I knew in that moment that it was what I wanted to do, continue and follow in his footsteps, “Berringer told CBS News, recalling the beginning of his career in pipeline construction thirty years ago.
The sense of community, in addition to good benefits and salaries, is what makes the pipeline’s work so attractive. Berringer said he is scheduled to work six days a week, ten hours a day, which means that there is a constant promise of twenty extra hours.
He calls it the best job he 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 recorded 450,000 miles building pipelines. And he will have to reduce the financial aid that used to send his two adult daughters.
Before construction of the pipeline was halted, Berringer said that friends inside and outside his union, the International Workers’ Union of North America (LiUNA) Local 1140 in Omaha, approached him “daily” to ask about work in Keystone. He said people often get confused about the pipeline’s fate because construction stopped and started as a result of executive orders from Obama and Trump.
For these workers, pipelining is more than a way of life. As a member of LiUNA Local 620, Tyler Noel, 33, said that the titles he has forged working on pipelines for thirteen years is “the only thing I have now”.
Photo courtesy of Tyler Noel
Noel lives in Aberdeen, South Dakota, but has spent the last five and a half months of 2020 working in Keystone, about 215 miles away in Murdo, South Dakota. Pipeline workers move for long periods during construction, often living in local motels or transporting their own campers.
“It’s not just a job, it’s like a lifestyle,” said Noel. “The only people I speak to are relatives and plumbers.”
Without Keystone’s promise, Noel finds himself at a “crossroads”. The work in Murdo ended in December. He did not receive a stimulus check. As a result, Noel was forced to refinance his truck and knows others who have refinanced their homes.
“You cannot hold [Employment Services]. You can’t, “he said.” And, you know, I paid the beaucoup money to the states working on them. I am entitled to unemployment. ”
Noel is concerned that the Biden government could revoke other pipeline opportunities, especially as he will need to accumulate more hours of work to be eligible for a pension.
“Anything that would happen in the next few months should be Keystone,” he said. “If I hadn’t saved my money over the years, I would be really in trouble. But I would say that I have at least three months, so I will have to do something.”
And now?
In signing a trio of executive climate-related decrees last month, Biden said: “Today is ‘White House Climate Day’, which means today is the White House ‘Labor Day’.”
Climate envoy John Kerry told reporters that oil and gas industry workers “may be the people who go to work to make the solar panels”.
But Berringer and Noel are not convinced.
Both said their greatest hope is to find work to maintain the existing pipelines. Berringer, who is now working at a power plant in Omaha, says he has worked on installing a wind turbine in the past and found the work “negligible” and less satisfying because it does not offer the same overtime benefits as pipe work. .
“Every time I do jobs like this, I keep thinking, ‘Why am I here? I should be in a pipeline, ‘”he said.
The Biden executive order emphasizes the transfer of workers to new jobs, but is vague about the details.
“These jobs will create opportunities for young people and older workers who are moving into new professions,” says the order. And it will “maximize the creation of affordable training opportunities and good jobs.”
Any movement on this front is likely to stem from Congressional legislation.
For Noel, the idea of making the transition from his craft long practiced to a new one is “just crazy”.
“It’s easy for welders,” he said. “I’m a foreman. My job is work. Money is much better running a team. I wouldn’t be anywhere near that making a wind turbine, which I never did.”
President Biden’s nominee for energy secretary, former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, said at her recent confirmation hearing that she thought the president’s economic plan would create more clean energy jobs “than jobs that could be sacrificed” .
Noel says he would like to believe that Granholm and the Biden government will keep their word, but he already feels he is starting from scratch.
“If you do a task, do a job, for thirteen years, I would like to think that in thirteen years you would be somewhat comfortable and not have to worry about a job,” said Noel. “What were the last thirteen years for? The last thirteen years of being on the road, away from the family and for what? For me to be sitting here now talking to you about it?”