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Pipelines

What We Learned From Standing Rock: Chase Iron Eyes’ In-Depth Analysis

Chase Iron Eyes, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and an attorney with the Lakota People’s Law Project, describes the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline and his almost two-year fight against felony charges. His work to develop a necessity defense led to the uncovering of corruption and collusion between industry, law enforcement and government. Chase also  gives his analysis of what the mobilization at Standing Rock means in the greater context of colonialism, capitalism and the absence of democracy.

Activists Have A New Strategy To Block Gas Pipelines: State’s Rights

Environmental activists are using a new strategy to block construction of oil and gas pipelines. It already has worked in New York where construction on the Constitution Pipeline has stalled. Now activists are trying the strategy in Oregon. The proposed Jordan Cove project includes a pipeline that would transport natural gas across the Cascades mountain range to the Oregon coast. There it would be turned into liquefied natural gas (LNG) for export. At a recent protest rally supporters of the No LNG Exports campaign submitted more than 25,000 comments to encourage Gov. Kate Brown and her Department of Environmental Quality to reject the project.

Another Set Back For TransCanada: Keystone XL Pipeline In Nebraska To Go Through ‘Robust Environmental Review’

After regulators in Nebraska ordered the pipeline follow a new route, or alternative route, the Trump administration argued that there was no need to “produce an extensive new environmental impact statement for the pipeline,” Inside Climate News reported. But U.S. District Judge Brian Morris of Montana disagreed with the Trump administration on Wednesday. Since the pipeline will now follow an alternative route and not its original route, Morris wrote the government “cannot escape their responsibility.” While the “Nebraska’s Public Service Commission approved the pipeline project, it rejected TransCanada’s preferred route and ordered it to use an alternative route instead,” Inside Climate News reported. The pipeline will now cross through five different counties in the state including several bodies of water therefore, under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the government is required to conduct an environmental review before pipeline construction can start.

Federal Court Overrules Trump And Calls For Full Environmental Review Of Keystone XL In Nebraska

Lower Brule, SD — Today, a federal court ruled the State Department must conduct an environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline route in Nebraska. Last November, the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) approved a “Mainline Alternative” route for the pipeline through the state. Tribes and landowners have since challenged the PSC decision. The federal court ruling is a strong affirmation of their claims and an impediment to the TransCanada corporation pipeline. In one of his first acts in office, President Trump revived the Keystone XL pipeline, previously scrapped by President Obama due to serious environmental, climate and legal concerns. Communities across the country have taken to the streets to protest the decision, and more than 17,000 people have signed the “Promise to Protect,” committing to action along the proposed route for Keystone XL if called upon by Indigenous leaders.

Examined: Indigenous Resistance To Major Oil Pipelines

Two years ago, major media outlets started to pay attention to a group of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe members demonstrating along the Cannonball River located in North Dakota. They were demonstrating against the Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) construction of the 1,880 km Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) on their territory. The tribe said they were never consulted on the pipeline's re-route from Bismarck into their sovereign and sacred lands. The Standing Rock feared the line would leak crude into their main aquifer, Lake Oahe, part of the Missouri River. From March 2016 the Sioux, who would be joined by over 300 other Indigenous 'water protectors' and international allies, set up camp on the North Dakota prairie to resist the pipeline despite government food blockades, massive arrests, police dog and water cannon attacks well into the frigid Midwest winter of that year.

When A Pipeline Runs Afoul Of Government Rules, Authorities Change Rules

A week ago, the federal government halted work on a massive pipeline project that runs from Northern West Virginia through Southern Virginia. The government said it had no choice but to order work on the multibillion-dollar Mountain Valley Pipeline stopped after a federal appeals court ruled that two federal agencies had neglected to follow important environmental protections when they approved the project. The court had found that the U.S. Forest Service had suddenly dropped — without any explanation — its longstanding concerns that soil erosion from the pipeline would harm rivers, streams and aquatic life.

The U.S. And Canada Are Preparing For A New Standing Rock Over The Trans Mountain Tar Sands Pipeline

IN BRITISH COLUMBIA’S southern interior, on unceded land of the Secwepemc Nation, Kanahus Manuel stands alongside a 7-by-12-foot “tiny house” mounted on a trailer. Her uncle screws a two-by-four into a floor panel while her brother-in-law paints a mural on the exterior walls depicting a moose, birds, forests, and rivers — images of the terrain through which the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will pass, if it can get through the Tiny House Warriors’ roving blockade. The project would place a new pipeline alongside the existing Trans Mountain line, tripling the system’s capacity to 890,000 barrels of tar sands bitumen flowing daily from Alberta through British Columbia to an endpoint outside Vancouver.

Trump Administration Delays Dakota Access Pipeline Decision Again

The Trump administration is once again delaying a revised decision on the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. In a status report filed in federal court on Tuesday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it needed until August 31 to complete its work on the final portion of the $3.8 billion project. The agency is reviewing information submitted by tribal opponents and Energy Transfer Partners, the firm behind the pipeline, government attorneys said."The Corps is currently evaluating that information as part of the remand process and therefore requires additional time—to and including August 31, 2018—to complete the remand process," the filing stated. The agency originally had promised a decision by the end of this week.

Federal Court Throws Out Another Key ACP Permit

Richmond, VA — The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals today threw out the National Park Service’s permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in a case argued by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Virginia Wilderness Committee. The Court also issued its opinion regarding a Fish and Wildlife permit that it vacated earlier. “This is an example of what happens when dangerous projects are pushed through based on politics rather than science,” said Southern Environmental Law Center attorney DJ Gerken. “This pipeline project was flawed from the start and Dominion and Duke’s pressure tactics to avoid laws that protect our public lands, water and wildlife are now coming to light.” The ruling entered by a panel of three judges means that if ACP developers continue construction on the 600-mile route from West Virginia, through Virginia and in North Carolina, they will be operating without two crucial federal permits.

Activist Arrested, Placed in Solitary For Monitoring Pipeline Construction On Her Property

On Tuesday, July 26, Sunoco Pipeline L.P. filed paperwork with a Pennsylvania court claiming that retired special education teacher Ellen Gerhart, 63, had violated an injunction. Three days later, Gerhart was arrested and jailed. After being held on $25,000 bail for a week, Ellen Gerhart was on Friday, August 3 sentenced to two to six months by Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas Judge George Zanic. Sunoco Pipeline obtained a right of way through the Gerharts’ land using the controversial legal doctrine of eminent domain, which allows private companies to seize land people refuse to sell that’s in the planned path of a pipeline project.

Despite Jail Time For Protester, Pipeline Protests And Arrests Continue In Burnaby

VANCOUVER—Following the sentencing of a 70-year-old woman to a seven-day jail term, protesters continued to show their opposition to a plan to expand the existing Trans Mountain pipeline. On Wednesday, two people defied a court injunction and were arrested near Kinder Morgan’s property near Burnaby Mountain. The protest group Protect the Inlet plans to start camping near the site starting Aug. 20. Two other high-profile protesters will be sentenced on Aug. 15: Jean Swanson, an anti-poverty activist and Vancouver city council; and Susan Lambert, a former president of the BC Teachers’ Federation. Laurie Embree, a grandmother from 108 Mile Ranch in B.C., was the first protester to be sentenced to jail time; she is serving her sentence at Alouette Correctional Sentence in Maple Ridge and will likely be released Aug. 6, said Sarah Beuhler, a spokesperson for Protect the Inlet. Beuhler said other protesters were prepared to follow Embree’s “path.”

Mexico’s New Populist President Considers Foreign Pipeline Plans Despite Indigenous Protests

Andrés Manuel López Obrador looked out at the crowd of reporters at a Mexico City Hilton Hotel the night of July 1. It was a moment that he had waited years for: his victory speech for the Mexican presidency. To win in his third presidential campaign, López Obrador, a left-wing populist whose roots are in the oil-producing state of Tabasco, had to calm business leaders, who warned that foreign investment would flee the country if he took office. However, the candidate who once said he would overturn Mexico's 2013 reforms privatizing its energy sector — which opened the oil and gas industry to foreign investment and created a subsequent pipeline boom — struck a different tone on election night.

[Act Out! 170] – #RiseTogether Against Dirty Energy + How To Hack Apathy

This week on Act Out! The #RiseTogether weeks of action against dirty energy projects and their financiers continue, and I share what I witnessed in the swamps of Louisiana as the fight against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline escalates. Next, Dr. Kristin Laurin joins us to talk rationalization and the power of human psychology in addressing – and indeed, not addressing the greatest socio-political problems of our time.

First Nations Take On Canadian Government To Stop Trans Mountain Pipeline

An expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline that would transport tar sands oil from Alberta is one of the largest proposed fossil fuel infrastructure projects in Canada. For thousands of years, Whey-Ah-Whichen has been a site of importance to the Tsleil-Waututh people. This hospitable flat peninsula in the Pacific Northwest was home to one of their major villages, standing in the shadow of surrounding hills and mountains covered in towering Douglas-fir and other ancient trees. Today, Whey-Ah-Whichen is the site of Cates Park, so-named by the descendants of English colonists in what is now British Columbia. It overlooks Burrard Inlet, a finger-like extension of the Salish Sea separating the cities of Vancouver and North Vancouver. The Tsleil-Waututh still live nearby, many of them on a reserve just down the highway.

Indigenous And Environmental Water Protectors Fight To Block Louisiana Pipeline

Half an hour outside of Lafayette, Louisiana — almost three hours west of New Orleans — the proposed route of the Bayou Bridge pipeline crosses the road. It’s a seemingly minor bend in the crooked path of a 162.5-mile pipeline that, if completed, would snake underground from Lake Charles near the Texas border to St. James in “Cancer Alley” — the dense stretch of refineries and other petrochemical facilities lining the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. But this bend matters to Cherri Foytlin, a Diné (Navajo) and Cherokee activist, journalist and mother, whose organization owns the small plot of land around which the pipeline’s route skirts. Here, a few small structures and a long line of tents make up the L’Eau Est La Vie (“Water Is Life”) resistance camp.

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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