A State Department official misspoke Wednesday about the number of potential indirect jobs that could be created by the Keystone XL pipeline.

In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones meant to say that a rough estimate of the pipeline's indirect job potential was 3,500 annual jobs, not 35,000 jobs, a State Department spokeswoman said yesterday.

Jones said at the hearing that the department had been in the middle of an analysis about the pipeline's indirect job impacts but was unable to complete that analysis because of the 60-day deadline set by Congress to make a decision about a permit for the TransCanada project (ClimateWire, Jan. 26). The rough estimates that were not completed referred to jobs related to the construction period of the pipeline, the spokeswoman added yesterday.

The Obama administration denied a permit for the 1,700-mile pipeline, which would have ferried oil-sands crude from Canada to Texas refineries, on Jan. 18.

Jones referred to the 35,000 annual figure for indirect jobs when asked a question at the hearing by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who said a company in his state was interested in building pumps for the $7 billion pipeline. Previously, the State Department had released "direct" job figures, stating that the pipeline would have created approximately 5,000 to 6,000 direct construction jobs for two years.

Job creation has been a central part of the Keystone XL debate, with supporters saying the pipeline would create more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Environmentalists, on other hand, have argued that the pipeline would create few permanent jobs. A study released by Cornell University in September said that pipeline proponents were inflating the job numbers associated with the pipeline by more than half (ClimateWire, Sept. 29, 2011).

In a report released last month, the State Department said that some "inflated" estimates were confusing permanent jobs with "person-years" of employment, or one full-time job for one year.