A man who worked on the Keystone XL Pipeline who lost his job after President Joe Biden shut it down said the decision has ended his career.
“I spent my whole life learning this craft and this skill and it’s not as easy as somebody might think or people might think to just start all over at 45 years old,” Jason Jernigan said in an interview with Fox News. “I guess I could possibly get a job as a greeter at Walmart, I don’t know.”
“I’ve been pipelining for 21 years,” said Jernigan, who a third-generation oil and gas industry worker. “The recent administration has taken my livelihood from me and expecting me to get a job somewhere else,” Jernigan said. “I’ve got my whole life invested in this.”
“This is all I know how to do,” Jernigan said.
As Breitbart News reported, Biden’s executive order to shut down the pipeline led to thousands of workers losing their jobs and an even higher number when counting jobs directly or indirectly impacted by the pipeline project.
The Biden administration has said that he shut the pipeline down as a way to fight climate change, even though it has been operating safely for three years and the crude oil bound for the Gulf coast from Canada will continue to be moved in ways that are higher risk for the environment, including by rail and truck.
It’s not the first time a Democrat president has put Jernigan’s livelihood on the line. He also lost his job when Barack Obama shuttered the pipeline and only got a new job under the Trump administration. But because that Keystone job wasn’t slated to start until the spring, he is again out of luck.
Fox News reported on how Biden’s climate czar John Kerry blamed the workers for choosing the wrong career path:
In a White House press conference in late January, Biden climate czar and former Secretary of State John Kerry claimed industrial and energy sector workers are victims of a “false narrative” based in Trump-era economic policy.
Kerry said workers at risk of losing their jobs should have considered more appropriate work in areas that are more likely to be helpful in a future green economy.
“First of all, I haven’t been offered a job in the solar panels industry and I haven’t been sent an application or a phone number or anything,” Jernigan said in response to hearing Kerry’s remarks. “I don’t know if I have to do to do the work, the groundwork and everything it takes to get there.”
“And secondly, I’ve done the research, if I went to work for the solar panel right now, I would be taking a $35-an-hour pay cut and lose my benefits and retirement,” he said.
“It’s a pretty good gut punch,” Jernigan said. “It’s pretty much a slap in the face.”
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