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Pipelines

Nuns vs. Pipelines & The Water Protector’s Hub

January 11, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com ,
This week on Act Out! Kiilu Nyasha takes us into the New Year with some words of wisdom from a woman who's seen decades of what works and what doesn't. Next up, how do you approach the work of building and fighting? Are you embroiled in Facebook tiffs or reaching out to neighbors – and how can human psychology guide our fight? Then, we take a look at a couple of good news stories followed by pipeline updates and an incredible resource for water protectors worldwide.

Can Tiny Houses Halt Expansion Of Trans Mountain Pipeline?

January 6, 2018 Ayşe Gürsöz, Colorlines.com , ,
“We thought we’d only spend a few days at Standing Rock. Instead we were there for months,” recalls Kanahus Manuel of the Secwepemc Nation in British Columbia. “That’s the story of thousands of Indigenous peoples who touched down there at Oceti Sakowin camp. I know the same thing is going to happen here.” The “here” Manuel is speaking of is the Tiny House Warriors Resistance camp in what is now known as Victoria, Canada. The 10 homes, which Kanahus says were inspired by the camps at Standing Rock, will be strategically placed to block Kinder Morgan Canada’s proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. (The Canadian company is a unit of the eponymous Houston-based corporation.)

Maine Town Wins Round In Tar Sands Oil Battle With Industry

January 6, 2018 Sabrina Shankman, Insideclimatenews.org , ,
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine—A federal judge has handed a win to South Portland, Maine over a pipeline company that wants to send tar sands oil through the city, a proposal seen as opening a path for Canada's crude to reach the East Coast for export. But the fight is not over. A federal district court judge dismissed on Dec. 29 all but one of the company's claims against the city. The ruling still leaves open a key question: whether the city is violating the U.S. Constitution by blocking the project. At the heart of the lawsuit is the question of local control and what—if anything—a community can do to block an unwanted energy project. The outcome could influence similar lawsuits elsewhere. When the Portland Pipe Line Corporation (PPLC) sued this small coastal city in 2015, it had some powerful allies, including the American Petroleum Institute, whose members include most major oil and gas companies.

Environmental Justice Suffered Setbacks In 2017

January 5, 2018 Phil McKenna, Insideclimatenews.org , , ,
Humvees with heavily armed county, state and federal agents rolled into what remained of the Oceti Sakowin protest camp in North Dakota in early 2017. With a U.S. Department of Homeland Security helicopter circling low overhead and heavy machinery preparing to topple anything in their path, the camp's last few holdouts torched their tipis and fled across the frozen Cannonball River to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The once-thriving camp had united thousands in their shared opposition to construction of a crude oil pipeline and raised hopes for a new era in tribal sovereignty. Its forced clearing on Feb. 23 came just two weeks after the Trump administration granted a final easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross beneath the nearby Missouri River.

Latest 2 Violations In Energy Transfer Partners Reckless Practices

January 4, 2018 David Turnbull, Priceofoil.org ,
Today, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) suspended construction permits for the Mariner East 2 pipeline due to a number of safety and environmental violations.1Mariner East 2 is being built by Sunoco Pipeline, L.P., an affiliate of Energy Transfer Partners, and has been marred by numerous construction mishaps, spills, and violations already. In response, David Turnbull, Strategic Communications Director at Oil Change International, released the following statement: “Just as in Ohio and Michigan in recent months, Energy Transfer Partners and its affiliates now in Pennsylvania continue to show a reckless disregard for the environment and communities as it rabidly builds its pipelines across the country. Communities like those at Camp White Pine along the Mariner East 2 route in Pennsylvania are rising up against Energy Transfer Partners, and rightly so.

TransCanada Faces Indigenous Pipeline Resistance In Mexico

January 4, 2018 By Steve Horn, Desmogblog.com , ,
Under Mexico's new legal approach to energy, pipeline project permits require consultations with Indigenous peoples living along pipeline routes. (In addition, Mexico supported the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which includes the principle of “free, prior and informed consent” from Indigenous peoples on projects affecting them — something Canada currently is grappling with as well.) It was a similar lack of indigenous consultation which the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said was the impetus for lawsuits and the months-long uprising against the Dakota Access pipeline near the tribe's reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, in late 2016. Now, according to Bloomberg and Mexican reporter Gema Villela Valenzuela for the Spanish language publication Cimacnoticias, history is repeating itself in the village of Loma de Bacum in northwest Mexico.

Raccoon Rebellion Strikes Diamond Pipeline On Christmas

January 2, 2018 Jacques Rogiers, Indybay.org , ,
On Christmas, with help and assistance from Santa Claus, his reindeer, and mischievous elves, some raccoons from the Arkansas Chapter of the national "Raccoon Rebellion" conducted a safety lockout tag-out on Diamond Pipeline Main Operating Valve (MOV) #2021 east of Jerusalem, Arkansas in accordance with common industrial safety procedures. The Lockout/Tagout devices were placed to prevent access and operation of this hazardous inter-state tool of the extractive, exploitative fossil fuel industry.  Using an eminent domain provision of the State Constitution - created in the last century, the Diamond Pipeline has been drilled, dug, and blasted across the Natural State.

Issues that Drive the Coming Transformation

December 27, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, clearingthefogradio.org , , ,
The year 2017 has been another active year for people fighting on a wide range of fronts. The Trump administration has brought many issues that have existed for years out into the open where they are more difficult to deny – racism, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy and the crises they create. There will be a backlash against overreach by the power holders on a number of issues, including wealth inequality, health care, Internet freedom, militarization at home and abroad, mass incarceration, climate change and human rights abuses. This backlash provides an opportunity to organize a broader movement of movements and clarify our demands so that we are well-positioned to demand transformative policies.

FERC Reviewing Approval Policy For Pipelines

December 27, 2017 By Steve Horn, desmogblog.com , , ,
The new chairman for the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Kevin McIntyre, says the agency plans to review its permitting process and procedures for natural gas pipelines.FERC has come under fire for serving as a “rubber stamp” for these pipelines, which these days mostly carry gas obtained via the horizontal drilling and injection technique known as hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). The agency has rejected only two out of the approximately 400 pipeline applications received since 1999, when it last updated its gas pipeline review process.

US Bank Declares End To Oil And Gas Pipeline Loans

December 26, 2017 By Sharon Kelly, Desmogblog.com , , , ,
For months, the bank had been under fire for financing the Dakota Access pipeline by providing over a quarter billion dollars worth of funding to its builder, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). Environmentalists famously dropped a banner calling on U.S. Bank to divest from DAPL at the New Years 2017 Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears football game. The language of the bank's new policy seemed blunt. “The company does not provide project financing for the construction of oil or natural gas pipelines,” U.S. Bancorp, parent company of U.S. Bank, wrote in its April 2017 Environmental Responsibility Policy. Divestment advocates cheered. “We applaud this progressive decision from U.S. Bank,” an Honor the Earth representative said in a statement, as the bank's new policy made headlines.

BXE’s Response To FERC’s Upcoming Review Of Pipeline Permitting Process

December 26, 2017 Staff, Beyondextremeenergy.org ,
If FERC were an agency which truly put the public interest first, the announced plan to review their process for approving pipelines would be a welcome development. But facts don’t lie: over the past 30 years FERC has granted permits for all but two proposed interstate gas pipelines. It is a rubber stamp agency, and it has been this through both Democratic and Republican administrations.m This announced plan comes on the heels of FERC’s efforts in New York to override the rights of states to make decisions on air and water permits for proposed pipelines. It comes as FERC considers Rick Perry’s order that they change regulatory rules and increase costs to consumers so that coal and nuclear power are given special privileges in the supposedly fuel source neutral, FERC-regulated market.

How The Oil & Gas Industry Sees Pipeline Protesters

December 25, 2017 Heather Saucier, American Association of Petroleum Geologists , ,
It is  interesting to see how corporations view protesters. This article describes how pipeline protesters undermine the infrastructure of the oil and gas industry, giving us a glimpse into their mindset. We found the sentence: “There is little question that professional activists and the mainstream media, which have been echoing their voices, have beat the industry to the punch when it comes to communicating with the public and mobilizing citizens to take a stance.” The reality is, it is not “professional protesters,” it is common people who are angry at the destruction caused by carbon polluters, pipelines and other infrastructure. It is not the corporate media that gets the story out. Mass media follows independent media (sites like this one) and social media where masses of people spread the word -- if they cover protests at all.

Yaqui Tribe Defends Land By Digging Up Gas Pipeline

December 24, 2017 Adam Williams, bloomberg.com , , ,
A chunk of Sempra Energy’s natural gas pipeline sits in the dirt behind a community center in the village of Loma de Bacum in northwest Mexico. Guadalupe Flores thinks it would make a great barbecue pit. “Cut it here, lift the top,’’ he says, pointing to the 30-inch diameter steel tube. “Perfect for a cook-out.’’ It would be an expensive meal. The pipeline cost $400 million, part of a network that’s supposed to carry gas from Arizona more than 500 miles to Mexico’s Pacific coast. It hasn’t done that since August, when members of the indigenous Yaqui tribe – enraged by what they viewed as an unauthorized trespass their land – used a backhoe truck to puncture and extract a 25-foot segment. They left the main chunk about a mile from the community center, perpendicular to the rest of the pipeline, like a lower-case t.

Resisting Energy Transfer Partners’ Louisiana Bayou Bridge Pipeline

December 23, 2017 By Emma Fiala, mintpressnews.com , ,
L’EAU EST LA VIE CAMP, LOUISIANA — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has just granted a permit to a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) for the Bayou Bridge Pipeline (BBP) in Louisiana. The Corps neglected to perform an environmental impact review of the pipeline project that opponents say will put local communities, indigenous peoples, and the environment at risk. ETP is the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, made famous last year by water protectors defending the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s right to clean water just outside of Bismarck, North Dakota. If completed according to plan, the BBP will connect with the Dakota Access, bringing fracked oil from North Dakota south, where it will eventually be exported overseas.

Potomac Pipeline: Hundreds Turn Out For Water Permit Hearing

December 21, 2017 Anne Meador, dcmediagroup.us , , ,
A Maryland state agency will continue hearing testimony on the permitting of a TransCanada pipeline at a later date to allow dozens of people to speak who weren’t able to on December 19 because of time constraints. The Maryland Department of the Environment is weighing whether to grant oil and gas giant TransCanada Corp. a wetlands and waterways permit for the Eastern Panhandle Expansion, also known as the Potomac Pipeline. Time and place have not yet been confirmed for the continuation of the hearing, but dates in January have been considered, according to Paul Busam, MDE project manager for the permit application. The location will probably be at the MDE offices in Baltimore. Busam did not comment on whether the continuation would delay the agency’s decision on the permit, now March 15.
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