Barnini Chakraborty writes for the Washington Examiner about responses to the Biden administration’s recent pronouncements on pipelines.

Laurie Cox couldn’t believe her ears when she heard Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently admit that a pipeline was the best way to transport oil across the country.

Of course, Cox knew it was true. She, like so many other South Dakotans whom the Washington Examiner spoke to, is acutely aware of the benefits of a pipeline. Not only is it more cost-effective and safer, but pipelines also pump money into local communities along its route and provide hundreds of jobs for skilled laborers.

Cox, the owner of Stroppel Hotel in Midland, South Dakota, saw her business take a major hit earlier this year when the Biden administration pulled key permits for the Keystone XL Pipeline, an $8 billion cross-border venture that would have connected two points of an existing pipeline, also called Keystone, that carries oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.

Cox’s hotel had been home to welders, carpenters, and union laborers who were tied to the pipeline project. On Jan. 20, they were all out of a job.

“The current administration is doing nothing but proving they want to destroy America,” Cox said.

Similar scenes played out across the country as newly unemployed workers and communities felt the real-life consequences of Biden’s Day One decision. The administration cited climate change as a reason for canceling the extension, and Biden said the “Keystone XL pipeline disserves the U.S. national interest.”

So, it was particularly painful when Cox heard the same administration that threatened her business touting the use of a pipeline.

“It solidifies that this administration does not have a platform for anything except hate,” she told the Washington Examiner.

The recent shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline due to a ransomware attack put the Biden administration’s energy policy on blast. What emerged was a garbled message filled with contradictions.