Tar Sands

Keystone XL Gets Electoral

March 30, 2014 Cole Stangler, inthesetimes.com Organize! Energy, Environment, Pipelines, Tar Sands

'I don't think Nebraskans have any emotional or financial commitment to coal. They want clean, cheap energy.' In the eyes of political consultants and party operatives, environmentalists in the United States are mostly urbanites who sip espresso and oddballs who dabble in other substances. By that logic, America’s heartland—much less a reliably red state like Nebraska—is no place for clean energy advocates. But a slate of candidates running in the Cornhusker State is hoping to prove conventional wisdom wrong. Driven by the impending Keystone XL pipeline—which would cross about 250 miles of the state—clean energy is on Nebraska’s electoral agenda. Several candidates for office in 2014 are running campaigns that focus on not only stopping the pipeline, but also putting renewable energy sources, such as wind, front and center.

South Portland Moves To Block Alberta Bitumen

March 30, 2014 CBC, www.huffingtonpost.ca Resist! Climate Change, Environment, Tar Sands

South Portland, Maine, could be the first U.S. city to pass a law to block Alberta oilsands crude from getting anywhere near its waterfront. The city of 25,000 people is turning into a test case for local communities that don’t want oilsands bitumen shipped from their ports. Tom Blake, the former mayor of South Portland, gave CBC News a tour of his city this week where a temporary moratorium has been imposed on any new structures used by oil companies to help load oil from a pipeline on land, to oil tankers in their port for export. “We have no interest in having the world’s dirtiest oil come through our community," said Blake, who currently sits on city council. South Portland sits across the bay from Portland, Maine. It’s the third-largest oil port on the U.S. East Coast.

Emergency Action At BP’s Chicago Headquarters

March 29, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Tar Sands

Monday afternoon, March 24, an estimated 500 gallons of oil from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, leaked into Lake Michigan, poisoning the source of drinking water for 7 million people in and around Chicago. The BP refinery on the lake’s shore has admitted responsibility, but has yet to take sufficient action to ensure the safety of drinking water and the ecosystem. This serves as further evidence that the reliance on fossil fuels in all its forms has serious and long-term effects on the health of the planet and the people who inhabit it. This is doubly true in the case of the processing of tar sands that goes on at BP’s Whiting facility. This most current spill comes after years of legal challenges to the Whiting plant, which is one of the largest sources of industrial pollution in the nation.

Did Tar Sands Spill Into The Great Lake?

March 29, 2014 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Tar Sands

Is it conventional crude or tar sands? That is the question. And it's one with high stakes, to boot. The BP Whiting refinery in Indiana spilled between 470 and 1228 gallons of oil (or is it tar sands?) into Lake Michigan on March 24 and four days later no one really knows for sure what type of crude it was. Most signs, however, point to tar sands. The low-hanging fruit: the refinery was recently retooled as part of its “modernization project,” which will “provide Whiting with the capability of processing up to about 85% heavy crude, versus about 20% today.” As Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Midwest Program Director Henry Henderson explained in a 2010 article, “heavy crude [is] code for tar sands.”

Northern Gateway Pipeline: Canada Must Listen To First Nations

March 25, 2014 Amnesty International, ht.ly Educate! Canada, Energy, Environment, First Nations, Tar Sands

The Canadian government is expected to make a decision on the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal in the coming months. Despite a lengthy review process, the federal government has still not adequately addressed the rights of First Nations who would be affected by the pipeline. In 2011, 61 First Nations in British Columbia whose traditional territories would be crossed by the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, or who depend on downstream or coastal waters, issued a declaration opposing the oil sands pipeline. They called the pipeline a “grave threat” to their cultures and to future generations.

Wall of Women Opposes Oil Pipeline

March 23, 2014 Linda Solomon Wood, www.vancouverobserver.com Resist! Environment, Pipelines, Tar Sands, Women's Rights

"It breaks your soul," actor Tantoo Cardinal said, deep in a conversation about growing up in Alberta's boreal forest. Cardinal had flown into Vancouver from Toronto to join the "Wall of Women" opposing Kinder Morgan's oil pipeline expansion. The group included Squamish First Nation leader Mandy Nahanee, Lubicon Cree First Nation leader Melina Laboucan-Massimo, and Vancouver City Councillor Andrea Reimer. "It was a pain in my being for many years. I felt hopeless and desolate because nobody believed me," she said, of the environmental destruction she warned was happening in Alberta's tar sands. "Nobody wanted to hear about it. People were making money and living the life. I was a wild-eyed actress who had no sense of reality. Going back, it was all poison, I couldn’t see myself living there. It was filled with all these people from all around the world, their eyes were on fire with all the money they were making."

Calling Lakota Allies To Defend Sacred Ground From KXL

March 20, 2014 Natalie Hand and Kent Lebsock, Owe Aku International Justice Project, www.oweakuinternational.org Resist! Environment, Indigenous Rights, Tar Sands

The grassroots people of the Kul Wicasa Oyate (Lower Brule) immediately put out a call to action when they learned that their Tribal Council (1934 Indian Reorganization Act government) agreed to allow the construction of a power station and power lines on treaty land necessary to move tarsands oil through the KXL pipeline. Despite efforts of the grassroots leaders to obtain documentation from the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, their attempts were unanswered. The Lower Brule Sioux tribal council is comprised of six people including President Michael Jandreau, who has served in tribal government since 1973, with the most recent decades in the office of the President. Inquiries to the Council by several tribal members resulted first in denial, then in confirmation (without documentation) and finally an admission that the ‘carrot’ to the Tribal Council is the construction of wind turbines and free electricity for tribal members.

The Great Lakes: ‘Liquid Pipeline’ for World’s Dirtiest Fuels?

March 19, 2014 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Educate! Energy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Tar Sands

The report, Liquid Pipeline: Extreme Energy’s Threat to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway (pdf), details how the extraction of "extreme" new forms of energy and plans to transport those fuels—as well as waste from more traditional sources—under and across the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River threaten these vital resources. “We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg and only just beginning to understand the grave impacts these extreme energy projects are going to have on the Great Lakes,” said Barlow. “We often see these projects approved piecemeal but we have to step back and think about how all these projects are going to affect the Lakes.” "Extreme energy" is defined as the extraction of fossil fuels by methods that grow more intensive over time and that strongly correlate with damage to both the environment and society—such as tar sands open pit mining and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for shale oil and gas—according to...

Lakota Warriors Vow ‘Dead or in Prison Before We Allow’ Pipeline

March 15, 2014 Camila Ibanez, www.alternet.org Resist! First Nations, Keystone, Tar Sands, TransCanada

The Oglala Lakota Nation is actively fighting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. This 1,700-mile pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels of crude oil each day from western Canada through South Dakota en route to Texas. At two points it would even intersect with a pipeline that serves as a main water source for the Sioux Nation, affecting all of the Pine Ridge reservation as well as the nearby Rosebud reservation. “Dead or in prison before we allow the Keystone XL pipeline to pass,” the Lakota warriors, many mounted atop horses, repeated during the Liberation Day celebration. Their words carried the weight of 521 years, and counting, of lived resistance.

FBI Held Strategy Meeting with TransCanada in 2012

March 14, 2014 Adam Federman, www.earthisland.org Educate! Energy, Keystone XL, Tar Sands, TransCanada

The FBI meeting with TransCanada suggests that concerns over opposition to the pipeline had reached the highest levels of the law enforcement community. Terry Brannon, Cushing Police Chief at the time, says it was an information-sharing meeting. “I think it was important that law enforcement and the oil companies worked hand in hand together to make sure that if something did happen, that law enforcement wasn't playing behind the eight ball,” he told me. He said the biggest concerns raised at the meeting were opposition to the pipeline as well as terrorism and environmental activism.

Over 20 Arrested Protesting Keystone XL in Philadelphia

March 10, 2014 Earth Quaker Action Team, www.ecowatch.com Resist! Energy, Keystone XL, Stop KXL, Tar Sands

Protesters in Philadelphia, PA, targeted the corrupt process that produced the U.S. State Department’s final analysis claiming the Keystone XL pipeline would not cause any “significant” climate damage. The formal public comment period on the pipeline decision came to a close Friday, so today Keystone XL opponents turned from words to actions, saying “No” to the pipeline by putting their bodies on the line. In front of the Federal Building activists brought brooms, to “sweep out” the corruption of the State Department’s Final Environmental Impact Statement, underwritten by a firm with close ties to TransCanada and the oil industry.

While U.S. Waits On KXL Decision, A New Tar Sands Pipeline Just Got Approved

March 9, 2014 Emily Atkin, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Canada, Enbridge, Energy, Tar Sands

While all eyes in America were turned to President Obama’s looming decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian regulators on Thursday approved their own, smaller version — a pipeline that would for the first time directly connect Alberta’s tar sands to Montreal. Canada’s National Energy Board have approved a proposal by Enbridge Inc. to allow the reversal and expansion of their Line 9 pipeline. The “reversal” means that the pipeline can now carry crude oil east rather than west. The “expansion” means it can now also carry tar sands oil from Alberta — the same type of oil that would be transported by the Keystone XL pipeline if approved.

Michicagn Tar Sands Protestors Sentenced to 13 Months Probation

March 6, 2014 MI-CATS, www.michigancats.org Resist! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

This afternoon, Leggio, and her fellow MICATS members Barbara Carter and Vicci Hamlin were sentenced to 13 months probation and $47,656.50 in restitution to the police. Over 100 supporters packed the tension filled courtroom where Judge William Collette of Ingham County presides. Though the defendants were surrounded by the love of their families and friends throughout the trial and sentencing, we recognize that this is not the case for most people who are forced by circumstance to interact with the justice system.

Deadline: Take Action Now To Oppose The KXL Pipeline

March 6, 2014 Occupy Network Team, occupynetwork.com Resist! Government, Keystone XL, Occupy, Tar Sands

The evidence is in: if the Keystone XL pipeline proceeds it will be “game over for the climate” as NASA scientist James Hansen says. If we want a livable climate, an ‘all of the above’ strategy is not an option. The notion of Occupy The Pipeline has never been more important. The Occupy Network is standing in solidarity with our friends at 350.org and all those who are now engaged in the middle of the last official public comment period for the State Department’s Final Environmental Impact Statement on the Keystone XL. This is one of the very last steps before President Obama makes his decision on the pipeline, and the final opportunity to give your input in an official way.

Can a Tipi Stop a Pipeline?

March 5, 2014 Staff, indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com Resist! Environment, Indigenous Rights, Tar Sands

Nearly 400 people, many of them students, were arrested last weekend when they chained themselves to the White House fence in protest of the pipeline, the Washington Post reported. The Native group Moccasins on the Ground has been conducting training sessions and recently hosted a conference in Rapid City, Help Save Mother Earth from the Keystone Pipeline, to teach civil disobedience tactics. “As the process of public comment, hearings, and other aspects of an international application continue, each door is closing to protecting sacred water and our Human Right to Water,” said Debra White Plume, a Lakota activist who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation and has been very vocal in opposing the pipeline, in a statement from Moccasins on the Ground. “Soon the only door left open will be the door to direct action.”

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