Jobs? What jobs?

Instructed by Congress last month to approve or reject the Keystone XL pipeline, which would send Canadian oil to refineries in Texas, President Obama on Wednesday rejected the private-sector project and the thousands of jobs that come with it. The president’s own Council on Jobs and Competitiveness issued a “Road Map to Renewal” the day before, recommending the United States build more fuel pipelines as a key component of our economic recovery.

“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” Mr. Obama said, hinting that he still might approve the pipeline at the end of this year.

But how long are the Canadians supposed to hang in limbo? The project has been under review for three years and had cleared every environmental hurdle.

The president has made a cynical political calculation that — at least until November — he would rather curry favor with shiver-in-the-dark environmental extremists than with the union interests the project would put to work.

American workers and consumers “should be outraged,” responded Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “This political decision offers hard evidence that creating jobs is not a high priority for this administration. The president’s decision sends a strong message to the business community and to investors: Keep your money on the sidelines. America is not open for business.”

As for environmental concerns that extraction methods to be used by the Canadians — underground shale fracturing — would generate more greenhouse gases, the decision not to allow the oil to flow to Texas simply encourages the Canadians to pipe it to the Pacific and ship it directly to China. Extraction will still proceed. Who is that supposed to help?