Above: Demonstrators with the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands protest Friday morning in front of Citibank about two tar-sands pipelines being built through the northeast part of Michigan. They say Citibank is an investor in Enbridge, the Canadian company building the pipelines, which carry heavy crude oil. Jeffrey Langlois/Daily News
About a dozen people participated in a protest against an oil pipeline on Friday morning.
The protest took place in front of the Citibank Building, 400 Royal Palm Way. A leader of the protest, Toby Fraser, recently moved from Michigan to Lake Worth. Fraser said Citibank is an investor in Enbridge, a Canadian company that is running two tar-sands pipelines, which carry heavy crude oil through Michigan.
Enbridge is publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, according to the company’s website. Protesters say they fear a spill into the Great Lakes would be devastating. The group also protested the treatment of activists in Michigan.
“Four people took a nonviolent direct action, where they locked themselves to bulldozers on Enbridge’s pipeline construction, and they are getting charged with what amounts to violent resisting of a police officer/assault on a police officer for not leaving when asked to,” said Fraser, referring to a July 2013 incident.
Tar sands are “never sustainable,” he said.
The protest lasted less than an hour. A Palm Beach Citibank manager declined to comment.
The two Michigan pipelines would facilitate the transport of crude oil from Canada to the East Coast.
In July 2010, an Enbridge pipeline ruptured. Operators ignored the signal for 17 hours. By then, more than 1 million gallons of tar sands had been spilled. The tar sands polluted a 35-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River, near Marshall, Mich.
In November 2012, four people protesting the Keystone XL pipeline were arrested on various charges at a demonstration on Royal Palm Way.
Two of those protesters entered the Deutsche Bank building, 350 Royal Palm Way, with bandanas covering their faces, then locked the door using a bicycle lock. Two other protesters, also masked, entered the fifth-floor offices of Deutsche Bank.