Jobs? Who cares?

President Barack Obama has been on a seemingly non-stop, jobs-themed re-election tour for months. Yet he just postponed for at least an additional two years the creation of thousands of high-paying, private-sector jobs building a pipeline to bring $15-a-barrel Canadian oil to American refineries. The political cynicism here is stupefying.

The $7 billion, 1,700-mile Keystone XL project, proposed by Calgary-based TransCanada, would carry oil derived from Alberta tar sands to refineries in Texas.

It’s a private project. Unlike solar and wind farm boondoggles, no federal subsidy would have been sought. Much of the pipe is already sitting in warehouses. It would be hard to envision a more “shovel-ready” project — nor one better suited to reduce America’s dependence on far more expensive oil imported from hostile foreign lands.

But the Obama administration announced Thursday that it’s delaying what should have been a routine approval in order to assess a shift in the pipeline’s route, effectively putting off the project until after next year’s election. By which Mr. Obama really means forever, if he can help it.

State Department officials said Thursday they had to extend their review of the project to address Nebraskans’ objections to construction across the state’s sensitive Sandhills region, an area that provides habitat for imperiled wildlife and sits above the Ogallala Aquifer.

Oh, please. This isn’t about the environment. Modern pipelines leak sparingly, and when they do they can be easily shut down until repairs are made. The Environmental Impact Statement gave this project a “Go.”

If it hadn’t been an “important aquifer,” those who are against all development, who would like to see Americans’ energy use and standard of living rolled back to 19th-century levels, would have turned up some weed or bug to focus on.

“Terrible decision for the energy future of the country; brilliant decision for the president’s re-election campaign,” Stephen Brown, a vice president for the Tesoro oil refinery, writes in an email to The Washington Post.

Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, noted: “The administration chose to support environmentalists over jobs — job-killers win, American workers lose.”

All too true.