THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE.

The Republican Party is using the Keystone XL pipeline as its trump card in the 2012 presidential election campaign; and whether that will work will be for voters to decide.

That the pipeline that will start from Canada and end up on the gulf coast of Texas is the greatest idea of the century; they are telling the country; and if President Barack Obama refuses to have it built, then he is starving the American public of thousands of jobs, which the project will create, and also a much needed commodity, as crude oil is, at a time when gas prices are shooting through the roof.

However, the Republicans are thinking that people will not know that oil is traded on the international market, and that its price going up will not be any one person's fault, even if that person is the president of the United States.

Besides, oil and therefore gas prices are going up, because production has been cut by Iran as a reprisal to stern sanctions by the U.S. and its allies at the United Nations to get that country to eschew its nuclear bomb making ambition.

What the Obama administration requires to do is to make sure that there is enough oil in the country, and that is being done by allowing private drilling and production within the U.S. to go up, to counter the dependence on foreign oil supplies.

An Organization like OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) can reduce production to cause the price of crude oil to increase. Member countries fix the price, and speculators on Wall Street come in to add their pernicious profits, plus surtaxes that have to be paid by motorists and manufacturing plant managers; the result is that they all (production, surtaxes and profits) build up to high crude oil prices; and particularly, gas prices at the pump.

If the U.S. is ever going to be free from paying enormous amounts of money for foreign oil, it has to cut consumption; however, weaning it (U.S.) from that (consumption) is the problem. People will drive a few miles to buy milk and/or bread, instead of walking to the grocery store; or for them to use public transportation from time to time, rather than using the family car to go to and fro.

Now, the Republicans are using the project as a political tool to undermine the Obama administration's effort to get people to switch to other renewable energy sources, such as natural gas, solar and wind power, to replace the use of oil as the main energy source.

They are saying that the Canadian pipeline is a job creator; and they have even been able to convince some trade unions to agree with them; yet, the government will not cave in, as there are serious environmental issues to address before the construction of the Keystone project will be possible.

Just yesterday, the U.S. Senate has to throw out a Republican sponsored measure aimed to bypass the Obama administration officials objection to the Keystone XL pipeline's construction.

The purpose of the bill is basically to beguile the public to think that high gas prices are being caused by Obama's refusal to get the project started. When in fact, if construction is allowed to commence today, it will not have the slightest effect on gas prices. It will take at least five years before a drop of oil comes out of the pipeline.

The contrast here is that the construction of the pipeline is only a straw that the Republicans are clinging to, to prove their point that Obama is responsible for high gas prices; meaning that in an election year, they will extract some amount of political gain from a controversy that is so close to the hearts of the American people.

However, the real truth is that the president is interested in encouraging people to use less oil products, such as petroleum gas, to curtail the nation's dependence on a commodity, whose source is sometimes not friendly at all; the Middle East, where Iran is on the verge of producing a nuclear weapon, and it (Iran) must be stopped by all means.

It is for that reason that Obama has clamped that nation under severe sanctions to restrain it (Iran) from achieving its desired goal. In his State of the Union address recently the idea of making America less dependent on foreign oil happened to be paramount on his mind.

He has since opened areas that can be drilled for home based oil production; yet, the superlative idea that oil must be the only source of energy in America, as the Republicans are using as propaganda, is wrong.

He has all along impressed upon the minds of Americans that energy sources must be versatile. That natural gas, which is plentiful in the land, can also be used to run automobiles and industries of all kinds; and in addition to that, wind power can also be tapped. Electric cars that use electricity derived from charging a device in those cars, can keep them going for miles. All that must be available.

All that is done to save money for Americans, and to reduce the importation of oil from overseas, and especially from volatile regions.

The opponents to the Republican sponsored bill say that, "the pipeline may leak, and that it will lock the United States into a particularly dirty form of crude that might ultimately end up being exported anyway." (CNN, 03/09/12).

That will even make matters more disastrous; with the environment permanently damaged, and the health of citizens being placed in danger. The expense of that will be far too high; and therefore the pipeline must be scrapped for now, until further research is done to make it safe.

Furthermore, the Republicans must stop using the Keystone XL pipeline for political gains. It will fail them, and the country at large.