Keystone Light! Get it? Also, we’d rather drink the oil. (Photo by Quinn.Anya.)
When TransCanada was pitching Nebraska on the stretch of the Keystone pipeline that was completed in 2010, it estimated that the state would rake in $5.5 million in taxes in the first year. (This is the already-operational Keystone 1 pipeline, not to be confused with the controversial proposed Keystone XL pipeline.)
On that estimate: not quite!
State and county records indicate that TransCanada this year will pay $2.2 million in personal property and real estate taxes to eight rural counties in eastern Nebraska crossed by the 30-inch, crude-oil pipeline.
To be fair, TransCanada says the tax bill will go up for 2013 — perhaps four times as much, according to Shawn Howard, a TransCanada spokesman who had just rolled a die that came up “four.”
To actually be fair, the head of the state’s property tax division agrees that revenues will go up, though wasn’t willing to suggest that Howard’s figure was correct. Fool me once, etc.
Anyway, TransCanada assures everyone that if the bigger Keystone XL is built, the state will get a bajillion dollars in taxes every 42 minutes and literally every human being who has ever lived will be employed for life at a salary equivalent to Albert Pujols’. (Not a baseball fan? Imagine we’d said Bill Gates.)
You can take that to the bank! (But I wouldn’t.)
