John Cornyn’s flawed claim about jobs and Keystone XL pipeline

A reader wondered when U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, made a claim about jobs created since the Texas leg of the Keystone XL pipeline began flowing oil last year.

In a Jan. 20, 2015, post on his Senate website, John Cornyn of Texas noted the newly majority-Republican Senate was starting the year by taking up “bipartisan legislation, like the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. But the President has already threatened to veto this economy-boosting bill and prevent it from becoming law,” Cornyn said.

The White House earlier announced Obama’s veto threat, saying congressional intervention would circumvent a required federal review to determine if the project crossing an international border serves the national interest.

Cornyn continued: “It’s unfortunate that the President would shut down this bipartisan legislation. In Texas, we’ve seen the direct positive impact of the pipeline on the local and state economy. The Texas leg of the project, which delivers more than 400,000 barrels of crude oil from Cushing, OK to Southeast Texas each day, has already created 4,800 jobs in just the year it’s been up and running.”

After the reader’s nudge, TransCanada, the pipeline’s owner, told us those jobs no longer exist though they were in place during the 15-month construction of the pipeline through Texas to Nederland, near Beaumont. See our full fact check here.

Also of value: PolitiFact in Washington, D.C., reviewed some Keystone questions in this story.

What else?