High gas prices falsely attributed to Keystone XL cancellation

 https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-895299166310

THE FACTS: Social media users are pointing to President Joe Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline in January 2021 as a major reason for high gas prices in the U.S. in recent weeks. Gas prices have reached record highs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A meme posted on Facebook last week, which now has over 20,000 shares, reads: “Facts: If they didn’t shut down our pipelines we wouldn’t be paying $7 for gas.”

“So the guy who closed the Keystone pipeline on Day one, wants us to believe it’s Russia’s fault for the gas crisis,” says another Facebook post.

Even if the Keystone XL pipeline had been completed, the amount of oil it was designed to transport would have been a drop in the bucket for U.S. demand, experts noted. The U.S. used nearly 20 million barrels of oil a day last year, while global consumption of oil was near 100 million barrels. The pipeline would have contributed less than 1% to the world supply of oil, according to AP reporting.

“The total volume of additional supply is negligible in a market that uses 100 million barrels of oil every day,” Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia, said in an email statement to the AP.