Tag Archives: keystone

While protestors surrounded the White House, Obama was golfing with oil executives

by graptorm Posted on February 20, 2013

While protestors surrounded the White House, Obama was golfing with oil executives

By Philip Bump

Obama playing golf closer to home.

When some 35,000 protestors descended on Washington, D.C., on Sunday, they hoped to send a message to President Obama: Kill the Keystone XL pipeline. Show real leadership on the climate. From the Mall up to the White House they marched, hoping that Obama would see the crowd and read the signs and be moved.

But Obama wasn’t there to see the crowd. He wasn’t in the White House. He was in Florida, playing a round of golf with two directors of Western Gas Holdings, a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum focused on natural gas fracking. From the Huffington Post, which broke the story:

Obama has not shied away from supporting domestic drilling, especially for relatively clean natural gas, but in his most recent State of the Union speech he stressed the urgency of addressing climate change by weaning the country and the world from dependence on carbon-based fuels. …

But on his first “guys weekend” away since he was reelected, the president chose to spend his free time with Jim Crane and Milton Carroll, leading figures in the Texas oil and gas industry, along with other men who run companies that deal in the same kinds of carbon-based services that Keystone would enlarge. They hit the links at the Floridian Yacht and Golf Club, which is owned by Crane and located on the Treasure Coast in Palm City, Fla.

Not only are Crane and Carroll with Wester Gas Holdings, Carroll is also the chair of CenterPoint Energy, which provides residential and commercial electricity and natural gas — and which just today announced it is accepting bids for proposals to transport its oil out of the North Dakota Bakken region.

When news of Obama’s golf partners broke, environmental organizations responded as you might expect. Public Citizen’s Tyson Slocum: “It’s clear that folks in the oil industry have access to the president.” The Sierra Club’s resident law-breaker Michael Brune: “There’s an old adage that you’re only as good as the company you keep” — though Brune remains optimistic.

A bit of good news for those activists whose rallying cries probably didn’t carry the 950 miles from D.C. to Palm City: If I know anything about golf, the president and his oil industry executive friends weren’t talking during their entire round. Even if they pled their case for expanded drilling, Obama didn’t hear them, either. If I know anything about golf, that is. Which I don’t.

Source

Obama Golfed With Oil Men As Climate Protesters Descended On White House, Huffington Post

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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While protestors surrounded the White House, Obama was golfing with oil executives

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TransCanada is getting everyone it knows to hustle Obama on Keystone

by NielPostma231 Posted on February 7, 2013

TransCanada is getting everyone it knows to hustle Obama on Keystone

By Philip Bump

TransCanada and its allies have reached the “begging” stage of their lobbying for the Keystone XL pipeline. (The preceding stage was “obfuscation”; the final stage is “giving up and moving to space.”)

This morning, the CEO of the company met with a key State Department official. From The Hill:

CEO Russ Girling is scheduled to meet in the afternoon with Kerri-Ann Jones, who is the department’s assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. …

Secretary of State John Kerry, at his recent Senate confirmation hearing, kept his cards close to the vest when asked about his views on the pipeline.

Girling told Bloomberg Wednesday that he expects the project will be approved “very soon” and that he suspects “we’re looking at anything from a few weeks to a couple of months.”

The mention of Kerry there is important. It’s a reminder that Jones isn’t the decision-maker. And that Kerry’s not either. Ultimately, approval comes down to the president, who I suspect won’t spend a lot of time reviewing Jones’ notes from this meeting. And what’s Girling going to say in this confab anyway? “Hey, come on. Pleeeeeease? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease?” It’s not a great argument, but at this point it’s probably the best he’s got.

qodio

The president talks pipes.

Meanwhile, some of Girling’s friends are blustering about the pipeline over on Capitol Hill. Again from The Hill, which is going wall-to-wall on the issue:

All 25 Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee urged approval of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline in a Thursday letter to President Obama.

“Our economy can no longer be put on hold while the bureaucratic process you set in motion jeopardizes this critical project. You can guarantee Americans the jobs they deserve, and prevent our national security from being undermined, with a simple stroke of the pen. We urge you to do so now,” the lawmakers wrote.

Yes, Mr. President! Take our economy off hold! You know how every time you go to the grocery store or try to buy something online, you get that message that says, “I’m sorry, your transaction cannot be completed because the President has halted all economic activity”? That’s because of the pipeline.

What’s interesting about this situation — and what’s probably fun for the president — is that the tables have turned. This time, it’s Congress that’s ineffectually calling for something to happen while Obama holds all the cards.

Maybe that’s why we shouldn’t expect a decision before June: Obama’s savoring it.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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TransCanada is getting everyone it knows to hustle Obama on Keystone

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Keystone XL decision unlikely before June — and that’s good news

by donseoo Posted on February 1, 2013

Keystone XL decision unlikely before June — and that’s good news

By Philip Bump

MCLA

Well, Keystone XL protestors, kiss your springs goodbye. Looks like you’ll be fighting TransCanada’s proposal to run a mega-pipe from the Alberta oil sands to Oklahoma until June.

From Reuters:

The Obama administration’s decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline will not be made until at least June, a U.S. official said, which would delay the project for months and frustrate backers of Canada’s oil sands.

“We’re talking the beginning of summer at the earliest,” said the source, who did not want to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the TransCanada Corp project, which has been pending for more than four and a half years. “It’s not weeks until the final decision. It’s months.”

This can actually be considered good news. As we’ve noted multiple times, insufficient distribution outlets for tar-sands oil means that its sale price is plummeting — meaning that developing the oil sands makes less and less economic sense.

The Reuters article says as much:

The delay is painful in Canada which is suffering persistent, discounted prices for its oil because of tight pipeline capacity. The premier of the Western Canadian province of Alberta warned last week that it faced a $6 billion revenue shortfall due to current pipeline constraints.

Canada had another door slammed in its face today by the European Union. From another Reuters article:

Canada’s urgent hunt for buyers for its oil is being thwarted as the European Commission sticks to a plan to label fuel from tar sands deposits as highly polluting, deterring refiners bound by environmental rules. …

Intense pressure from Canada, seeking new markets to compensate for dwindling U.S. buying and discounted sales, has not convinced the EU executive to abandon its proposal to brand tar sands oil as more carbon-intensive than conventional crude. …

EU member states approved legislation in 2009, called the Fuel Quality Directive, with the aim of cutting greenhouse gases from transport fuel sold in Europe by 6 percent by 2020.

That leaves one big market for the oil: Asia. And with the Northern Gateway pipeline — perhaps the only viable route from Alberta to the Pacific — in jeopardy, Asia appears to be hard to reach as well.

It’s not clear why it will take the State Department until June to make up its mind. But with every day that passes, the Keystone XL pipeline makes less and less economic sense.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Keystone XL decision unlikely before June — and that’s good news

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TransCanada accidentally starts building Keystone XL on land it doesn’t own

by anjunonstennyao Posted on January 29, 2013

TransCanada accidentally starts building Keystone XL on land it doesn’t own

By Philip Bump

Job opening at TransCanada: Director of Making Sure That We Actually Have the Right to Build Our Pipeline on This Plot of Land. New position, competitive salary and benefits.

From FuelFix:

TransCanada contractors building the Keystone XL pipeline mistakenly planned their route and cleared several hundred feet of land through public property they had no right to work on, an Angelina County [Texas] official told FuelFix.

Officials noticed the mistake after protesters set up in trees in Angelina County to oppose work on the pipeline, which is intended to link the Texas coast with Canadian oil sands fields.

TransCanada cleared trees, soil and other foliage from a 50-foot wide strip of land owned by the county without any prior agreement for work there, Angelina County Attorney Ed Jones said.

“I would say it was a surprise to the county,” Jones said.

I would say so! “Hey, Jim, know why those backhoes are ripping up vegetation on that right-of-way?” “No, Tony, I sure don’t. Seems like something we would have heard about, being county employees and all.”

ctcaldwell

I told TransCanada I owned this and they could build a pipe on it; I am waiting for my check.

To be fair (since we like to be fair), the owner of the property seems to have made a mistake or two himself. Or, rather, the former owner.

The company had negotiated an agreement with a landowner and had paid him for use of the property for Keystone XL, TransCanada spokesman David Dodson said.

But the landowner, Nacogdoches resident Kevin Bradford, had sold a 6-acre parcel of his land to the county in 2009, six months before TransCanada approached him to negotiate payment for work on the property, Jones said. …

“It’s up to us to check things like that and inadvertently we staked out that area,” Dodson said.

It is! It is up to you. That is correct. Were it not, I would happily sell you lots and lots of land on which to build your pipeline, including this bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Rest assured: TransCanada insists this is “an isolated incident.” So was the Titanic.

Source

Keystone XL work veers onto wrong land, FuelFix

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Sierra Club OKs law-breaking in battle against Keystone

by MayeskiLatouf679 Posted on January 23, 2013

Sierra Club OKs law-breaking in battle against Keystone

By Susie Cagle

The Sierra Club seems like the kind of folks who button the top button, not the ones who hang out on the barricades. Until now.

For the first time in the hallowed green group’s 120-year history, it will be engaging in civil disobedience at the Feb. 17 Washington, D.C., rally against the Keystone XL pipeline. Is the Sierra Club really getting wild? Well, probably not. The group won’t say what the civil disobedience will be exactly, but it will be invite-only (!), it’s been approved by the board of directors, and it’s a one-time-only event.

A 2011 Keystone XL protest at the White House.

From the Club’s Executive Director Michael Brune:

Next month, the Sierra Club will officially participate in an act of peaceful civil resistance. We’ll be following in the hallowed footsteps of Thoreau, who first articulated the principles of civil disobedience 44 years before John Muir founded the Sierra Club.

Some of you might wonder what took us so long. Others might wonder whether John Muir is sitting up in his grave. In fact, John Muir had both a deep appreciation for Thoreau and a powerful sense of right and wrong. And it’s the issue of right versus wrong that has brought the Sierra Club to this unprecedented decision. …

The Sierra Club has refused to stand by. We’ve worked hard and brought all of our traditional tactics of lobbying, electoral work, litigation, grassroots organizing and public education to bear on this crisis. And we have had great success — stopping more than 170 coal plants from being built, securing the retirement of another 129 existing plants and helping grow a clean energy economy. But time is running out, and there is so much more to do. The stakes are enormous. At this point, we can’t afford to lose a single major battle. That’s why the Sierra Club’s board of directors has for the first time endorsed an act of peaceful civil disobedience.

The Keystone XL pipeline fight has seen all manner of extralegal resistance over the last year from far scrappier characters than the Sierra Club. But for some people, engaging in civil disobedience can be a transformative, radicalizing experience. They say it’s one-time-only now, but what happens after they get their first taste of pepper spray?

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Sierra Club OKs law-breaking in battle against Keystone

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TransCanada outmaneuvers Keystone XL pipeline blockaders

by Myrna Posted on December 18, 2012

TransCanada outmaneuvers Keystone XL pipeline blockaders

By Susie Cagle

A bit of bummer news from East Texas, and this time there’s no pepper spray involved. Protesters are still tweeting and blogging per usual, but it appears the Keystone XL pipeline blockade may actually be over. TransCanada apparently realized back in October that while it might not be able to go through the tree-sitters, it could easily go around them.

Tar Sands Blockade

Inside Climate News reports:

TransCanada, the pipeline’s builder, acquired an easement in October to build the pipeline slightly west of the tree blockade and the original route. Construction is now nearly finished on the property, and the protesters will soon call it quits.

“It’s a sad time at the tree blockade,” said Ron Seifert, a spokesperson for the Tar Sands Blockade, the activist group behind the campaign. Seifert said it’s probably days before the tree village decamps, though no official decision has been made. …

“As we speak, the pipeline is being trenched around the western end of the blockaded area,” he added with disappointment. The “blockade will essentially become symbolic and come to an end.”

[David] Dodson of TransCanada confirmed that construction is “substantially complete” on the property, which is owned by David Daniel, a longtime opponent of the Keystone XL. Daniel reached an easement agreement with TransCanada in 2010, but later told the company it could no longer come on his property. TransCanada responded with a lawsuit; the two parties have since settled litigation.

It’s unclear what might be next for the protesters. They’ve planned to take on the Texas Railroad Commission tomorrow and train more potential blockaders in early January at a “mass action camp.”

I think David Daniel is the most tragic character in this story, though. He fought TransCanada for years, as The Guardian reported last March:

If the State Department signs off the pipeline, Daniel says, he will build a platform in an elm on his land and live on it. “If I am in it, they can’t cut the tree down.”

This October, The New York Times described him as “a soft-spoken carpenter.” And that tree house?

[Daniel] gazed up at a tree house he built — now being used by the protesters — turned around and walked quietly back toward his home.

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TransCanada outmaneuvers Keystone XL pipeline blockaders

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Judge reverses course, lets Keystone XL construction continue

by Myrna Posted on December 14, 2012

Judge reverses course, lets Keystone XL construction continue

By Susie Cagle

Keystone XL pipeline injunction, we hardly knew ye.

MCLA

Yesterday, the Texas judge who ordered TransCanada to stop work on Keystone XL pipeline construction in East Texas lifted the injunction. The Los Angeles Times reports:

[Texas County Court Judge Jack] Sinz had signed the temporary restraining order, which took effect Tuesday, after finding sufficient cause to stop work on the pipeline for two weeks. But he changed his mind after hearing from TransCanada’s attorneys, who argued that [plaintiff Michael] Bishop understood what he was doing when he signed off on an easement agreement [permitting pipeline construction on his land] with the company three weeks ago.

“TransCanada has been open, honest and transparent with Mr. Bishop at all times. We recognize that not everyone will support the construction of a pipeline or other facilities, but we work hard to reach voluntary agreements and maintain good relationships with landowners,” Shawn Howard, a TransCanada spokesman, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “If we didn’t have a good relationship with more than 60,000 landowners across our energy infrastructure network, we wouldn’t be in business.”

Howard added: “Since Mr. Bishop signed his agreement with TransCanada, nothing about the pipeline or the product it will carry has changed. While professional activists and others have made the same claims Mr. Bishop did today, oil is oil.”

Oil is oil: This was precisely the logic Judge Sinz had initially rejected. And on the heels of the initial injunction, the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial to the effect of: Uh no it’s not.

At the heart of Bishop’s case is the fact that although TransCanada considers bitumen and crude oil to be essentially the same, the IRS disagrees. In fact, it exempts companies that transport bitumen derived from tar sands from an 8-cents-a-barrel tax levied on transporters of crude. TransCanada can’t reasonably claim this tax exemption while pretending it’s moving crude oil. More important, we’d like to see the State Department, which is conducting an environmental study of the northern portion of the Keystone XL route, include some analysis of any heightened risks posed by transporting dilbit.

Bishop was undeterred but perhaps sobered — there were no righteous gonna-make-’em-hurt quotes this time out of the former Marine.

“I’m disappointed, but by the same token a lot of ground was gained today,” Bishop told The Times, adding that the lawsuit drew public attention to the pipeline project.

Bishop is right, though — not all is lost in his case just yet. Next Wednesday, Bishop and TransCanada will have their day in court again before Judge Sinz, who could decide to issue another injunction.

Next Wednesday both sides are scheduled to return to the Nacogdoches courthouse for a hearing before Judge Sinz. TransCanada will argue that Bishop should abide by the easement agreement, Howard said. Bishop will argue once more for an injunction to halt construction.

“If I stop them on my property, other landowners are going to sit up and take notice. I look for landowners to start rebelling,” Bishop said.

Bishop may be looking, but will he find them? Some Texas landowners have stood up against the pipeline, while others have also thrown up their hands in defeat.

But while the fight muddles along in the courts, it’s still raging in the trees. Blockading activists show no sign of abandoning their posts, and will only grow their numbers following a training camp in early January.

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Judge reverses course, lets Keystone XL construction continue

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Judge orders two-week halt to Keystone XL pipeline construction

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 11, 2012

Judge orders two-week halt to Keystone XL pipeline construction

By Susie Cagle

We’ve reported before about the Keystone XL blockade activists, but the East Texans who own the land on which the pipeline is being constructed have been some of the project’s most vocal, if less-often-pepper-sprayed, detractors. And today they actually kind of won for a change.

A Texas judge has ordered TransCanada to halt work for two weeks on the pipeline, following a lawsuit from landowner Michael Bishop claiming that TransCanada lied about transporting crude oil when it’s really hauling tar-sands oil.

TransCanada’s all, “Oil is oil, what’s the big deal?” But the judge didn’t see it that way. From the Associated Press:

Tar sands oil — or diluted bitumen — does not meet the definition as outlined in Texas and federal statutory codes which define crude oil as “liquid hydrocarbons extracted from the earth at atmospheric temperatures,” Bishop said. When tar sands are extracted in Alberta, Canada, the material is almost a solid and “has to be heated and diluted in order to even be transmitted,” he told The Associated Press exclusively.

“They lied to the American people,” Bishop said.

Texas County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz signed a temporary restraining order and injunction Friday, saying there was sufficient cause to halt work until a hearing Dec. 19. The two-week injunction went into effect Tuesday after Michael Bishop, the landowner, posted bond.

David Dodson, a spokesman for TransCanada, said courts have already ruled that tar sands are a form of crude oil. He said the injunction will not delay the project.

Bishop filed suit against the Texas Railroad Commission last week, claiming the agency hadn’t protected the public’s environmental interest when it approved TransCanada’s permits for construction. Many previous attempts by landowners to legally challenge TransCanada’s eminent domain claim to their property have all failed.

Aware that the oil giant will have a battery of lawyers and experts at the hearing later this month, Bishop, a 64-year-old retired chemist currently in medical school, said he is determined to fight.

“Bring ‘em on. I’m a United States Marine. I’m not afraid of anyone. I’m not afraid of them,” he said. “When I’m done with them, they will know that they’ve been in a fight. I may not win, but I’m going to hurt them.”

Meanwhile, activists are planning a direct-action training for Jan. 3-8 and a national demo outside the White House for President’s Day, Feb. 18.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Judge orders two-week halt to Keystone XL pipeline construction

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