Carly Fiorina highlighted her support for the Keystone XL pipeline Tuesday, using a speech to the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association to attack Hillary Clinton’s opposition to the project.
“How long did it take Hillary to take a position on this? Two years,” Fiorina said in Oklahoma City. “She said she wouldn’t sign it because she thought it would complicate our effort.”
She continued, “The facts are these — what we’re doing now to transport oil is far worse than if we built the pipeline. So she had to use the word complicate.”
And Fiorina showed no hesitance on where she herself stood: “Of course I’ll sign it. Clinton has never created a job, saved a job and her policies destroy jobs. Thank you very much, Mrs. Clinton.”
Fiorina claimed that not signing the pipeline agreement would cost 1.2 million jobs.
The former Hewlett-Packard CEO has previously declared her support for the project. In June, shortly after she announced her candidacy, she told The Fuse, an energy website, that she backed the project. Her comments Tuesday come one week after Clinton said she opposed the pipeline, taking sides with progressives who are fighting the 1,179-mile project over environmental concerns.
But “what we’re doing now to transport that oil is far worse for global warming,” Fiorina said, citing the greenhouse gases emitted to move oil across the country.
Fiorina has at times cast herself as the anti-Clinton, often attacking the Democratic front-runner shortly after she launched her campaign last spring. Recently, however, she has quieted her attacks against Clinton to focus on telling her own story as she’s surged to the top of the GOP pack on the heels of two strong debate performances.
Fiorina also dismissed calls for the U.S. to do more to regulate industry in the fight against climate change, saying it would take 30 years and trillions of dollars for the U.S. to make a difference. In the meantime, the Environmental Protection Agency is needlessly destroying jobs by over-regulating the coal and gas industries, she said.
“Those livelihoods, those communities are being sacrificed not at the altar of science, but at the altar of ideology,” she said.