Oil Pipelines

6 Years After Exxon’s Oil Pipeline Burst In An Arkansas Town, A Final Accounting

October 25, 2019 David Hasemyer, Insideclimatenews.org Educate! Arkansas, Exxon, Oil Pipelines

In sealed depositions, Mayflower residents describe illnesses, property damage and a smell that still haunts them. Some say they felt pressured to sign settlements. Melissa Hays never would have remembered the day of her humdrum outing at Harp's, a neighborhood grocery store in her hometown of Mayflower, Arkansas, had she not suddenly been overwhelmed by the noxious, chemical smell of oil. It was March 29, 2013. Few in Mayflower will ever forget it. As Hays ran her errands, ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline, which ran beneath this small town, burst without warning along a defective 22-foot seam...

Hundreds Gather To Protest Enbridge Line 5 In Michigan

September 3, 2018 Staff, Native News Online Resist! Blockades, Indigenous Resistance, Oil Pipelines

Several groups of American Indians and environmental advocates spent their Saturday of this Labor Day weekend protesting Enbridge Line 5, an outdated oil pipeline that needs to be retired according to Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians Chairperson Aaron Payment, who also is the vice president of the National Congress of American Indians. They sought to decommission Line 5, this is the fourth year protesters have taken to the water in support of shutting down the 65-year-old pipeline.

A Victory For Standing Rock Sioux Tribe

October 22, 2017 Staff, www.theindigenousamericans.com Resist! #NoDAPL, Oil Pipelines, Standing Rock, Water

By The Indigenous Americans. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe won a significant victory today in its fight to protect the Tribe’s drinking water and ancestral lands from the Dakota Access pipeline. A federal judge ruled that the federal permits authorizing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation, which were hastily issued by the Trump administration just days after the inauguration, violated the law in certain critical respects. In a 91-page decision, Judge James Boasberg wrote, “the Court agrees that [the Corps] did not adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline’s effects are likely to be highly controversial.”

Victory: Heavily Protested Seneca Lake Gas Project Abandoned

May 12, 2017 Sandra Steingraber, www.ecowatch.com Resist! Oil Pipelines, Protests, Seneca Lake

By Sandra Steingraber for Eco Watch - The news broke Wednesday in the most banal of venues: the biweekly environmental compliance report submitted by Arlington Storage Company to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Deep in the third paragraph of section B, this wholly owned subsidiary of the Houston-based gas storage and transportation giant, Crestwood Midstream, announced that it was walking away from its FERC-approved plan to increase its storage of methane (natural gas) in unlined, abandoned salt caverns along the shoreline of Seneca Lake. In its own words, "Arlington has discontinued efforts to complete the Gallery 2 Expansion Project." It was a blandly expressed ending to a dramatic conflict that has roiled New York's Finger Lakes region for more than six years. Together with a separate—and still unresolved—plan for lakeside storage of propane (LPG) in adjacent salt caverns, Crestwood's Arlington operation has been the focus of massive, unrelenting citizen opposition that has taken many forms.

Wisconsin Tribe Votes To Evict Oil Pipeline From Its Reservation

January 17, 2017 Phil McKenna, www.insideclimatenews.org Resist! Indigenous Peoples, Oil, Oil Pipelines, Reservations, Wisconsin

By Phil McKenna for Inside Climate News - The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians in northern Wisconsin voted not to renew an easement for a major oil and gas pipeline that passes through its reservation. In the wake of the successful protest against the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota, this decision is the latest example of Native American tribes using sovereignty rights to oppose fossil fuel projects. The Bad River tribal council voted unanimously in early January to revoke rights-of-way that pass through the roughly 200-square-mile reservation and the decision could prove difficult to overturn. Pipeline companies often take ownership of private land through the use of eminent domain.

Tribal Activists Defy Lawsuit, Vow Continued Resistance Against Dakota Pipeline

August 17, 2016 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Resist! Indigenous Activist, North Dakota, Oil Pipelines, South Dakota

By Lauren McCauley for Common Dreams - An epic battle over land rights is being waged in the Dakotas, as a local Indigenous community, facing arrests and litigation, is standing firm in its resistance to a massive Bakken crude pipeline project. Developers of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access (also known as the Bakken) Pipeline filed suit in federal court on Monday against members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose days-long civil disobedience campaign last week stalled construction of the 1,200-mile pipeline.

Sioux Nation Brings Oil Pipeline Fight To Washington, DC

August 10, 2016 Maria Rachal, www.thehill.com Resist! D.C., Indigenous Peoples, Oil Pipelines, Washington, Washington D.C.

By Maria Rachal for The Hill - Members of the Sioux nation journeyed to Washington, D.C. this weekend to protest a proposed $3.8 billion oil pipeline they say would contaminate their drinking water and violate sacred lands. The Dakota Access Pipeline is set to pass beneath the Missouri River less than a mile from North Dakota’s Standing Rock Reservation, where tribal members rely on the river as the sole water supply. Every day, the planned pipeline will transport 450,000 barrels of North Dakota oil 1,172 miles across North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois, according to Energy Transfer Partners, the Dallas-based company behind the project

Ticking Time Bombs Of Defective Parts In Oil Pipelines

July 8, 2016 Mike De Souza, www.nationalobserver.com Educate! Oil Pipelines

By Mike De Souza for National Observer - Canada’s pipeline watchdog has given two of North America’s largest energy companies up to six months to fix what industry insiders have described as a series of “ticking time bombs.” The National Energy Board waited eight years after U.S. regulators raised the alarm about substandard materials, finally issuing an emergency safety order in February. At least one Canadian pipeline with defective materials blew up during that period.

Beyond Keystone: Why Climate Movement Must Keep Heat On

November 16, 2015 Bill Mckibben, www.e360.yale.edu Resist! Climate Change, Keystone, Oil Pipelines

By Bill Mckibben for Environment 360 - The key passage — the forward-looking passage — of President Obama’s speech last week rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline came right at the end, after he rehashed all the arguments about jobs and gas prices that had been litigated endlessly over the last few years. “Ultimately,” he said, “if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.” This is a remarkable evolution for the president. He came into office with “Drill Baby Drill” ringing in his ears from the 2008 Republican convention, and baby did he drill.

Opposition Grows Against Appalachian Pipeline

October 18, 2015 Jim Magill, www.platts.com Resist! FERC, Fracking, Oil and Gas, Oil Pipelines

By Jim Magill for Platts - Pipeline developers looking to build infrastructure to move natural gas out of the Appalachian Basin face numerous challenges, from strengthening opposition from environmental groups to shifting market patterns and increased regulatory scrutiny, speakers at the Platts Appalachian Oil and Gas Conference in Pittsburgh said Friday. "It's something that we have to face right now. I think that all the projects are seeing that," he said on the conference sidelines. "It's bringing out issues that we have to deal with, that we have to look at in our environmental analysis of these projects." He added that some of the larger environmental organizations in the country are beginning to get more involved in the pipeline approval process. "You have to deal with that and you have to take a different approach to it than what we've done in the past," he said.

Unist’ot’en Call For Support And Solidarity

July 30, 2015 Unis'to'ten Camp, www.unistotencamp.com Resist! Environment, Indigenous People, Land Rights, Oil & Gas, Oil Pipelines

By Unis'to'ten Camp - It is becoming clear that the situation here is moving toward an escalation point. Chevron has set up a base in Houston in order to do work on the secton of Pacific Trails Pipeline that crosses our traditional territory. In recent days a low-flying helicopter has flown over the camp several times following a route that corresponds to the path of the proposed PTP pipeline. We were also visited by the head of the RCMP detachment who clearly stated to Freda that they intend to “ensure the work crews can do their work safely.” Our supporters maintaining an Unist’ot’en check point on Chisolm Rd were also visited and threatened by the police. In both cases, the officers asserted that we could be arrested for blocking a “public road”. It is clear by the timing of these recent police actions that they are working in tandem with the pipeline companies.

Kentucky’s Anti-Fracking Movement Deals Setback to Pipelines

July 10, 2015 Kelley Davidson, www.occupy.com Resist! Fracking, Kentucky, Oil & Gas, Oil Pipelines

By Kelley Davidson in Occupy - Some recent victories against powerful energy companies have given environmental activists in Kentucky a reason to celebrate. In late May, Bluegrass Pipeline LLC was denied eminent domain by the Kentucky Court of Appeals following a legal battle against environmental lawyer and renowned activist Tom FitzGerald, whose efforts succeeded in blocking a natural gas transport line across 13 Kentucky counties. FitzGerald, representing a group of concerned citizens called Kentuckians United to Restrict Eminent Domain, or KURED, managed to stave off a deal that would have transported gas fracked from Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virgina through hundreds of miles of state farmland, and heading all the way down to the Gulf Coast.

History’s Teachable Moments On Pipelines

July 6, 2015 H. Patricia Hynes, www.recorder.com Educate! Oil & Gas, Oil Pipelines, Public Health

By H. Patricia Hynes in The Recorder - The dominant industry argument for the Tennessee Gas Co.’s proposed pipeline through western Massachusetts is that it will provide gas for Boston on peak demand winter days and smaller-scale gas needs in western Massachusetts. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that this is its true intent, then past history offers some lessons for the contested pipeline proposal. In the mid 1960s, Massachusetts set out to solve metropolitan Boston’s projected drinking water shortage with a plan to divert water from the Connecticut River, channeling it through an aqueduct to Quabbin Reservoir (site of an earlier water diversion project for Boston that sacrificed the life of four towns). The Massachusetts Legislature approved the diversion plan in the late ’60s, with little focused opposition.

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