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Here’s the anti-Keystone ad one NBC station doesn’t want you to see

by Anatoleia3 Posted on August 7, 2013

Here’s the anti-Keystone ad one NBC station doesn’t want you to see

By Claire Thompson

NextGen Climate Action, the group founded by billionaire climate-action booster Tom Steyer, had submitted the ad to run on D.C.-area NBC affiliate WRC-TV during Obama’s Tuesday appearance on The Tonight Show, with the aim of reaching the influential inside-the-Beltway crowd. But at the last minute Tuesday evening, the station informed NextGen that the ad wouldn’t run after all, because it violated guidelines as “an attack of a personal nature.”

The ad does feature an actor playing TransCanada CEO Russ Girling as a disingenuous, over-the-top oil baron at his, well, oiliest. But rather than defaming him as a serial sexter or making another such “personal” attack, it skewers farfetched claims Girling and his company have put forward about the Keystone XL pipeline’s economic benefits.

The Hill published a story about the ad Tuesday afternoon, before it was scrapped, that included criticism from Oil Sands Fact Check, a group that supports the pipeline. Now, according to Politico’s Morning Energy , NextGen wants NBC to sign an affidavit swearing it didn’t drop the ad as a result of industry pressure.

This doesn’t mean NBC is staying out of the pipeline fight altogether. The network ran a pro-Keystone ad this past Sunday during Meet the Press. And it’s not like TransCanada’s voice is being drowned out by anti-pipeline advertising; the company launched a multi-platform ad campaign in the capital and around the country a couple weeks ago, and is even sponsoring Politico Playbook this week. And don’t forget that the Canadian government itself is shelling out millions for its own pro-pipeline campaign aimed at the D.C. bubble.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Here’s the anti-Keystone ad one NBC station doesn’t want you to see

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, Dolphin, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, LAI, ONA, Oster, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s the anti-Keystone ad one NBC station doesn’t want you to see

The Keystone XL pipeline could create as many as 20 long-term jobs

by donkorleone842 Posted on February 20, 2013

The Keystone XL pipeline could create as many as 20 long-term jobs

By Philip Bump

MCLA

There are more people in this picture than may have long-term jobs with the pipeline.

Last week year, Bloomberg did a little digging into the oft-mentioned “thousands of jobs” that would result if the Keystone XL pipeline were built. What they found, as they say, might surprise you, if you are surprised when fatuous political arguments turn out to be erroneous.

From the article:

The debate in Washington has focused on short-term construction and manufacturing jobs, rather than on permanent ones. Estimates for construction and manufacturing employment range from 2,500 to 20,000, depending on assumptions of how much of the project’s budget will be spent in the U.S. The company says some of the steel will be made in Canada and India.

TransCanada Vice President Robert Jones said permanent jobs would be “in the hundreds, certainly not in the thousands,” in a Nov. 11 interview on CNN.

Calgary-based TransCanada says construction will create 20,000 “new, real U.S. jobs.”

TransCanada left out one adjective: temporary. Over the long term, though, that number drops a little bit. Once construction is complete, there won’t be 20,000 jobs — there will be more like 20.

The number of people needed to operate and maintain the 1,661-mile (2,673-kilometer) pipeline may be as few as 20, according to the U.S. State Department, or as many as a few hundred, according to TransCanada.

There are all sorts of caveats that can and should be made: Construction employment is necessarily temporary, for example, and a project of this scope will likely have some ancillary job creation benefits (at refineries on the Gulf Coast, for example). But the fact remains that pipeline advocates have been harping on the project’s job creation potential, yet in a decade the pipeline may have added fewer than two dozen people to the workforce. That’s as many jobs as are created when a new restaurant opens.

That said, the low number makes sense. After all, the pipes in your house don’t need someone to constantly sit and watch them. On the rare occasion that something goes wrong, that’s the point at which you become a TransCanada-style job creator, calling in a plumber.

Which raises another point: It’s very possible that the pipeline will create more jobs down the road. One little rupture, and we’re talking about hundreds more short-term jobs in the lucrative oil-sopping and valve-turning industries.

Update: In my enthusiasm to share this number, I failed to notice that the February 13th on which the article came out was in 2012, not 2013. In the intervening year, it’s possible that the number of projected long-term employees could have reached 22. Maybe even 23.

Source

Keystone’s Thousands of Jobs Fall to 20 When Pipeline Opens, Bloomberg

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

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The Keystone XL pipeline could create as many as 20 long-term jobs

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

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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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Potential secretary of state candidate Susan Rice faces questions over TransCanada investments

by Myrna Posted on November 29, 2012

Potential secretary of state candidate Susan Rice faces questions over TransCanada investments

By Philip Bump

Yesterday, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s OnEarth magazine dropped a bombshell. United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, widely rumored to be the leading contender to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, has large investments in both TransCanada, the company seeking to build the Keystone XL pipeline, and other businesses with a stake in seeing it built. The secretary of state, you may remember, is responsible for granting any permit to build the border-crossing pipeline.

In addition to TransCanada stock valued between $300,000 and $600,000, OnEarth outlines the breadth of her investments.

[A]ccording to financial disclosure reports, about a third of Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th parallel — including companies with poor environmental and safety records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine. That includes Enbridge, which spilled more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 — the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history.

Rice also has smaller stakes in several other big Canadian energy firms, as well as the country’s transportation companies and coal-fired utilities. Another 20 percent or so of her personal wealth is derived from investments in five Canadian banks. These are some of the institutions that provide loans and financial backing to TransCanada and its competitors for tar sands extraction and major infrastructure projects, such as Keystone XL and Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would stretch 700 miles from Alberta to the Canadian coast.

USDA

Susan Rice and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

OnEarth then describes the possible conflict:

Were she to become Secretary of State, Rice would be in charge of the new environmental review process and would be in a position to decide whether to issue TransCanada a permit for sections of Keystone XL stretching from Oklahoma to the Canadian border.

The revelation prompts a lot of questions, to be sure. For one: Why does the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. hold so much stock in Canadian companies? Perhaps in part because her husband, Ian Cameron, is Canadian.

But more importantly: Should this be considered a disqualifying revelation?

It’s important to remember that we’ve already had a secretary of state who faced questions about improper relationships to TransCanada: Hillary Clinton.

In 2011, environmentalists began asking questions about TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliott, who had served as Clinton’s deputy national campaign manager during her 2008 run for the presidency. Friends of the Earth, which uncovered emails between Elliott and staffers at the State Department after making a Freedom of Information Act request, suggested that the emails “indicate bias and complicity” and that State Department employees were “cozy with the oil industry.” Even Clinton’s husband spoke in favor of the project earlier this year, suggesting that America “embrace” the pipeline.

Ultimately, of course, the Keystone XL permit was denied in January of this year. The final authority at the State Department isn’t the secretary of state — it’s the president. And the president making the call was Barack Obama, same president who will be running State until 2016. With the Keystone permit due for reconsideration next year, the buck stops with him.

Rice’s investments are disconcerting and, for many, disappointing. But it’s hard to see how they would disqualify her from the post, a role that encompasses far more than this one decision. They are almost certainly, however, grounds for recusal from discussions about the Keystone XL permit — and they are certain to raise any number of questions during that process that may be uncomfortable to answer.

Source

Secretary of State Candidate Has a Major Financial Stake in Canadian Tar Sands, OnEarth

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

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Potential secretary of state candidate Susan Rice faces questions over TransCanada investments

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