(via socialuprooting)
TransCanada Corp. will proceed with building a $2.3 billion segment of its Keystone XL oil pipeline from Oklahoma to the Texas coast so that it isn’t delayed by U.S. approval for the rest of the line.
The company, based in Calgary, expects the segment to begin carrying crude from the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast as soon as mid-year 2013, according to a statement today. TransCanada is separating the Cushing line from its application to President Barack Obama for approval of a Keystone expansion that will bring crude into the U.S. from Canada’s oil sands.
“We remain committed to building this overall project in a timely and efficient manner and to meet demand of shippers,” said TransCanada Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling in an interview today. Shippers are making multi billion dollar commitments spanning decades and “they haven’t wavered from Keystone,” he said.
Texas Landowner Group Forms To Fight Keystone Pipeline
“President Obama’s decision to halt construction of the Keystone tar sands pipeline has not stopped plans for segment passing through East Texas. And KERA’s Shelley Kofler reports a group of landowners has organized to fight back.”
Texas landowners thwarted the ambitious Trans-Texas Corridor, and Texas landowners just might be able to stop the construction of the last leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline project. (It’s enough to give Ron Paul a case of cognitive dissonance.)
(Source: kileyrae, via randomactsofchaos)
(NEWSER) – Now that the White House hasdelayed a decision on the controversial Keystone pipeline from Canada until after the 2012 election, Charles Krauthammer wonders: Isn’t this the same president saying, “We can’t wait” to fix the US economy? Obama made the decision solely to “appease his environmentalists” and get them back on his side in the re-election campaign, writes Krauthammer in the Washington Post. What’s worse, it’s working.
“It’s hard to think of a more clear-cut case of putting politics over nation,” writes Krauthammer, who says the pipeline would have created thousands of jobs immediately and made us more energy independent. The State Department has vetted environmental concerns exhaustively, he adds, and now Canada will probably let China get all that oil. “This from a president whose central campaign theme is that Republicans put party over nation, sacrificing country to crass political ends.”
Charles Krauthammer is full of shit.
- In 2008, TransCanada’s Presidential Permit application for Keystone XL to the State Department indicated “a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” to build the pipeline.
- Jobs estimates above those listed in its application draw from a 2011 report commissioned by TransCanada that estimates 20,000 “person-years” of employment based on a non-public forecast model using undisclosed inputs provided by TransCanada.
- According to TransCanada’s own data, just 11% of the construction jobs on the Keystone I pipeline in South Dakota were filled by South Dakotans–most of them for temporary, low-paying manual labor.
- Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) both oppose the pipeline. Their August 2011 statement: “We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil. There is no shortage of water and sewage pipelines that need to be fixed or replaced, bridges and tunnels that are in need of emergency repair, transportation infrastructure that needs to be renewed and developed. Many jobs could also be created in energy conservation, upgrading the grid, maintaining and expanding public transportation—jobs that can help us reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and improve energy efficiency.”
Safety: A rupture in the Keystone XL pipeline could cause a BP style oil spill in America’s heartland, over the source of fresh drinking water for 2 million people. NASA’s top climate scientist says that fully developing the tar sands in Canada would mean “essentially game over” for the climate.
(via socialuprooting)
he only covered the Tar Sands White House Protest ONCE, early last week, and then all Cable News Coverage of it disappeared. I asked if his boss (Al Gore) told him he couldn’t cover the largest Environmental Protest that has ever occurred in our country.
I asked Keith why he wasn’t reporting…
As I keep saying, non-violent civil disobedience is not enough.
The Keystone XL Pipeline has drawn more 300 arrests in protests near the White House this past week, including Nancy Romer of the Brooklyn Food Coalition.
“I’m worried about climate change,” Romer said in an interview with MarketWatch, after being asked why she took part in demonstrations. By routing fuel from the massive Canadian oil sands projects, the project will ultimately create a “huge amount of carbon and it’s non-sustainable,” she said.
Romer wrote a detailed blog about her 53 hours in jail after her arrest on Aug. 20. She said she endured chilling temperatures in a lock-up with 20 other women with no beds or chairs. They used the wrappers from sandwiches in an attempt to keep warm.
“We all felt it was worth it to step out and declare our opposition to policies that are killing our planet,” she said in her blog.
(Source: socialuprooting)
