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Keystone pipe dream, or pipeline?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sun Jul 12, 2020 7:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Supreme Court rejected a Trump administration request to restart construction on the U.S.-Canada Keystone XL pipeline owned by TC Energy Corp., a project that a lower court judge in Montana suspended in April by invalidating the program permitting oil and gas pipelines to cross waterways with minimal regulatory scrutiny. While construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has been blocked for the time being, the court stayed the rest of Judge Brian Morris' ruling on the permit program, which will allow construction of other pipelines while appeals move forward.


The most incompetent POTUS ever.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There was, of course, a long thread on the Keystone. In it, I opined that denying the permits would not stop the extraction--but economics might. I also suggested that the best approach would be to approve it with conditions that addressed the impacts.

Trump has tried to shortcut the process for approval--thus leaving the project susceptible to successful litigation. Taken out of context--which should include whether developing coal sand in Canada will lead to an increase in the pace of global warming (not American energy independence, as bizarrely argued by NW), it is better to ship oil by pipeline than by either ship or train. But context is everything, And in this case, the context includes the pipeline as a symbol for global warming, and respect for the rule of law.

I'll append here a piece in the New Yorker; you can find the rest of the article at your local library.
Quote:
In his first hours in office, Joe Biden has settled—almost certainly, once and for all—one of the greatest environmental battles this country has seen. He has cancelled the permit allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to cross the border from Canada into the United States, and the story behind that victory illustrates a lot about where we stand in the push for a fair and working planet.

To review: Keystone XL, a project of the TransCanada Corporation (now TC Energy), was slated to carry oil from Alberta’s tar sands across the country to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. President George W. Bush approved the original Keystone pipeline, and it went into service, early in the Obama years, without any real fuss. A new XL version, announced in 2008, was larger and took a different course across the heartland. And, this time, there was opposition. It came first from indigenous people in Canada, who had watched tar-sand mines lay waste to a vast landscape. First Nations leaders, such as Melina Laboucan-Massimo and Clayton Thomas-Muller, along with Native-American leaders on this side of the border—including Tom and Dallas Goldtooth, of the Indigenous Environmental Network—put up strong resistance and joined forces with ranchers whose lands would be bisected by the pipeline. Organizers such as Jane Kleeb, in Nebraska, found small pockets of support within some of the “big green” environmental groups, much of it coördinated by the veteran campaigner Kenny Bruno. In the spring of 2011, the nasa climate scientist James Hansen helped orient the pipeline as a climate-related fight, pointing to the massive amounts of carbon contained in the Canadian tar-sand deposits and making the case that, if they were fully exploited, it would be “game over” for the climate. That brought the climate movement into the picture; a letter (full disclosure: I drafted it) went out in the summer of 2011, asking people to engage in civil disobedience outside the White House.

At first, it wasn’t clear how many would do so, in part because President Barack Obama was popular with environmentalists. But people—many of them wearing Obama buttons—began arriving in serious numbers. Before two weeks of protest, starting in late August, were over, 1,254 people had been arrested, in one of the largest nonviolent direct actions in recent years. A few months later, many times that number circled the White House perimeter, standing shoulder to shoulder, five deep. The big environmental groups quickly joined the fight. Even so, the experts said that there was no chance to stop the pipeline. (The National Journal polled its “energy insiders,” and ninety-one per cent said that TransCanada would soon have its permit.) But, in fact, the battle was over by mid-November, when Obama announced a delay, in order to consider the question more closely. As he consolidated support for his reëlection bid, he had apparently concluded that “Keystone” and “climate” were too closely linked, though it took him several years to officially reject the permits. Ever since that initial pause, it’s been a matter of holding on to that victory—in close votes in Congress, during the Obama years, in endless wrangling with financiers, and with brilliant maneuvering in the courts, after Donald Trump revived the pipeline during his first days in office. I’m very grateful for Biden’s action, but I had no doubt he would take it—even today, Keystone is far too closely identified with climate carelessness for a Democratic President to be able to waver.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Oct 06, 2021 11:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

We were once convinced that pipelines were superior. Of course, that requires proper construction and maintenance.



Quote:
Energy Transfer LP, the parent company of Sunoco Pipeline LP, faces 48 criminal charges in Pennsylvania in light of a grand jury's decision that the latter broke environmental laws by releasing industrial waste and fouling water supplies during the construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline. The pipeline operator also has been charged with a felony count for allegedly willingly failing to report spills to state regulators. (The Associated Press)
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