Under orders from President Donald Trump, the Army Corps of Engineers on February 7 approved a final easement allowing Energy Transfer Partners to drill under the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Construction has restarted, and lawyers for the company say it could take as little as 30 days for oil to flow through the Dakota Access pipeline.
While the Standing Rock Sioux and neighboring tribes attempt to halt the project in court, other opponents of the pipeline have launched what they’re calling a “last stand,” holding protests and disruptive actions across the U.S. In North Dakota, where it all began, a few hundred people continue to live at camps on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, using them as bases for prayer and for direct actions to block construction. Last week, camps were served eviction notices from Gov. Doug Burgum and from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, demanding that they clear the biggest camp, Oceti Sakowin, by Wednesday and a smaller camp, Sacred Stone, within 10 days.
The fight against DAPL didn’t come from nowhere. It’s a direct descendant of the Keystone XL fight — both pass through the territory of the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, which includes bands of the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota people. And when Standing Rock tribal members saw that it was time to mobilize, they turned to relatives that had fought the Keystone XL.
In 2014, Joye Braun was living at an anti-Keystone XL camp called Pte Ospaye, on the Cheyenne River reservation, when she first heard about a new pipeline that would pass just outside the border of the Standing Rock reservation, on land leaders say would be tribally controlled if the U.S. government obeyed its treaties. “I went holy crap, here comes another one,” she said. Two years later, she would find herself helping set up Sacred Stone camp, the first anti-Dakota Access pipeline camp.
Now, most of the thousands of people that visited Standing Rock last fall have returned home, and some have taken up long-shot local fights against the oil and gas industry. In Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee it’s the Diamond pipeline; in Louisiana, the Bayou Bridge. In Wisconsin, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa actually voted to decommission and remove the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline from their reservation.
Many communities have turned to direct action as a last resort. The city of Lafayette, Colorado, which has long attempted to block fracking in the area, has even proposed a climate bill of rights, enforceable via nonviolent direct action if the legal system fails.
In at least four states, encampments built as bases for pipeline resistance have emerged. They face corporations emboldened by Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, which have used their first weeks in power to grant fossil fuel industry wishes, overturning environmental protections, appointing Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, and reviving the halted Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipeline projects.
“Forces arrayed against us are quite wide in my opinion,” said Owl, a member of the Ramapough-Lunaape tribe who helped set up a camp in New Jersey to oppose the Pilgrim pipeline. “They are hell-bent on this infrastructure.”
Nearly all of Texas is webbed with oil and gas pipelines, except for the virtually industry-free Big Bend region, known for its night skies devoid of light pollution. There, another pipeline last stand is underway.
Former President Barack Obama’s administration quietly approved the Trans-Pecos pipeline’s border crossing last May. It is now 96 percent in the ground, set to be complete in March. The 42-inch pipeline would transport 1.4 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing from the state’s Permian shale basin. It would travel along 148 miles before continuing into Mexico. Although it was commissioned by the Mexican government’s Comisión Federal de Electricidad, the line will have a few taps between the U.S. and Mexico, and has been permitted as a domestic project that benefits the public. This means it gets common carrier status, allowing the company to acquire access to private property via eminent domain, despite landowners’ objections.
With guidance from local indigenous leaders, Frankie Orona and Lori Glover have been helping run a camp called Two Rivers on Glover’s land near the route since January, regularly carrying out direct actions to stop construction. The camp hosts around 10 people during the week, ballooning at times to between 50 or 100 on weekends. Still, the resistance operates on a much smaller scale than Standing Rock. “We don’t have the numbers to do the same kind of direct action, because [police] can wipe us out in one day, and we’re pretty much done,” Orona said.
A second camp called Camp Toyahvale opened soon after Two Rivers in objection to plans by Apache Corporation to use hydraulic fracturing to access newly discovered oil and gas. For now, it is dedicated to education rather than direct action.
Energy Transfer Partners’ 148-mile Trans-Pecos pipeline will carry 1.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day south from the Waha pipeline hub near Fort Stockton, Texas, south to Mexico, crossing the border near Presidio.
Graphic: The Intercept. Source: Trans-Pecos Pipeline Project web site, February 17, 2017
But then Orona, head of a group called Society of Native Nations, was called to North Dakota last August by fellow members of the American Indian Movement to fight the Dakota Access pipeline. When he returned, he began protesting at the headquarters of Energy Transfer Partners, which is also in charge of the Trans-Pecos pipeline. He met Glover there.
“I thought, that doesn’t look good for us,” Orona said, “if we’re working on this pipeline in North Dakota, but we’re not working in our own backyard.
Less than a week before the Army Corps announced it would approve an easement for the Dakota Access pipeline, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which permits interstate natural gas pipelines, gave the okay for the pipeline operator Williams to begin constructing the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline in Pennsylvania. It awaits an Army Corps permit. The 42-inch pipeline is an extension of largest volume natural gas pipeline in the U.S., the Transco line. Part of the point of the Atlantic Sunrise project is to allow the Transco to switch directions, carrying gas from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale region, a center of the U.S. fracking boom, to markets in the south, rather than from south to north as it has run historically. The 183 miles of new Atlantic Sunrise pipeline will increase the system’s capacity by 1.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, some of it destined for export.
The line will cross 388 water bodies and 263 acres of forest. Last week, in comments submitted to FERC, the Environmental Protection Agency questioned the rushed permitting process. One of FERC’s commissioners resigned as Trump took office, leaving the agency unable to approve any new projects. The Atlantic Sunrise was okayed on his very last day.
Landowners have argued that the extension is being constructed for the benefit of a private corporation and is not a public good that merits the taking of private property via eminent domain. The Clean Air Council has pointed to energy analyst predictions that say the area is being overbuilt with pipelines and that markets ultimately will not support the extraction of enough gas to fill the expanding network that includes the Atlantic Sunrise.
With FERC’s announcement, the fight for communities opposed to the project enters a new phase. Lancaster Against Pipelines announced the opening of an encampment that will serve as a base for nonviolent direct actions. Until the final permits are decided, the camp organizers are focused on preparing the site for campers, and are active mostly on weekends.
Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise pipeline will carry 1.7 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas 199 miles from the Marcellus shale region, where gas is extracted using hydraulic fracturing, south to connect with the massive Transco pipeline, which carries gas to southern states.
Graphic: The Intercept. Source: Atlantic Sunrise web site, February 17, 2017
The Clatterbuck family and some of their neighbors had been fighting the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline since 2014. Standing Rock provided a jolt for the group. They had been considering building tree stands along the planned route, “Then North Dakota happened,” Mark’s wife Malinda Harnish Clatterbuck said, and the group began drawing up plans to camp.
Last August, on the same day that Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman Dave Archambault was arrested in one of the first direct actions to block construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, the Army Corps of Engineers granted the final federal permits needed to construct another pipeline, the Sabal Trail. The 36-inch pipeline, owned by Spectra Energy Partners, NextEra Energy, and Duke Energy, would carry more than a billion cubic feet per day of natural gas along 515 miles from Alabama, through Georgia, to Central Florida. It’s set to begin operating at the end of June, and according to the company would fuel natural gas plants. Export terminals have been proposed near the pipeline’s endpoint.
Back in 2014 Ted Turner was already petitioning for an alternative route, worried that his Georgia plantation, where he hunts quail, sat too close to a compressor station that would worsen air quality. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the economic spectrum, most of the project passes through places whose low income and racial or ethnic composition qualify them as environmental justice communities.
The Environmental Protection Agency has raised issues as well, sending a letter to the permitting agency FERC in 2015, noting, “The EPA has consistently expressed concerns over the preferred route.” It added, “The EPA is requesting that the FERC develop an alternative route to avoid impacts to the Floridan Aquifer and its sensitive and vulnerable karst terrain.” Karst is a geological formation made up of limestone or other soluble materials, marked by sinkholes and caverns.
A month later, the EPA abruptly changed its position, filing another letter stating that the agency had received new information and now believed that “the Applicants fully considered avoidance and minimization of impacts during the development of the preferred route.”
Spectra Energy Partners, NextEra Energy, and Duke Energy are in the midst of building the 515-mile Sabal Trail pipeline, which will carry more than a billion cubic feet per day of natural gas south from a connection to the massive Transco pipeline in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, through Georgia, to a pipeline hub in Florida’s Osceola County.
Graphic: The Intercept. Source: Sabal Trail web site, February 17, 2017
A network of encampments and planning hubs have sprung up since last fall, run by a range of organizers with various missions. The two biggest camps held 40 to 50 people total the week prior to Trump’s inauguration, but since then they’ve both stopped inviting overnight campers and transformed into an educational center and a meeting house for planning actions. Visitors to the Crystal Water camp are trained to recognize construction violations.
Four small camps in the Goethe State Forest, called the Heartland camps, are jumping off points for direct action. Visitors are advised to reach out to organizers before coming. “This is not the Standing Rock experience most think they are coming to see. Many people have come and not been prepared for the realities of primitive camping.” said Christine DeVore Santilo, adding that a few days is the most anyone has stayed.
According to Panagioti Tsolkas, who’s been involved in fighting the project for years, Standing Rock shaped the last six months. “It’s a different context in many ways, but the inspiration that’s come from organizing in indigenous communities is a lot of what’s sparked what’s happening now.”
Along one of the busiest traffic corridors in the northeast, New York’s thruway, the Pilgrim Pipeline Holdings is considering building a parallel duo of pipelines that would move 178 miles between New York and New Jersey. In one pipe, 200,000 barrels of crude per day, obtained from North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation via hydraulic fracturing, would run south to refineries and marine terminals in Linden, New Jersey, and from there its sister pipe would send 200,000 barrels per day of petroleum products north toward Albany, New York.
The company has not submitted a full application to New York or New Jersey, and this preferred route is not yet the chosen route. According to a draft environmental impact statement from September 2016, the potential route would pass through the Ramapo river basin aquifer system, and over two aqueducts that supply New York City, the Catskill Aqueduct and the Delaware Aqueduct. The company argues that the pipeline is a safer alternative to crude traveling via barges on the Hudson River or by trains.
The line would also pass through the Ramapo Mountains. “All the major infrastructure comes through Ramapo Pass – these mountains we took refuge in when we had the genocide against native people,” said Owl, a member of the Ramapough-Lunaape tribe. Owl’s people are descendants of the Munsee band of the Lenape tribe, whose members were largely forced by white settlers to migrate in the 1700s to Canada and other places.
After a visit to Standing Rock last fall, Owl helped his tribe found a camp, called Split Rock Sweetwater, in protest of the Pilgrim pipeline. No one is living at the camp permanently, but there’s always someone on site available to explain its purpose to visitors.
If the Pilgrim pipeline is approved, two parallel 178-milelong pipelines would travel along the New York thruway between Linden, New Jersey, and Albany, New York, sending 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day south, and 200,000 barrels of refined petroleum products like gasoline north.
Graphic: The Intercept. Source: Pilgrim Pipeline Statement on Issuance of New York State Positive Declaration, September 14, 2016
The Ramapough-Lunaapes are perhaps most famous for the paint sludge that Ford Motor company dumped near their territory, linked to contamination of food and water sources with lead and benzene, and nosebleeds, leukemia, and other ailments among tribal members.
Although New Jersey and New York recognize the Ramapough-Lenaape as a tribe, the federal government does not. When leaders applied for recognition in the 1990s, Donald Trump campaigned to stop them, concerned they would open gambling businesses to compete with his Atlantic City casinos. “I look more like an Indian than they do,” Trump said in 1995, after tribal members demonstrated outside Trump Tower. The federal government declined to grant status.
“In a sense we have seen the future under a Trump administration with the path he’s going toward, with rolling back regulation,” Owl said. “We’ve seen that future because that’s our past.”
With all of these pipelines, NOBODY HAS EVER answered this question. If there’s a spill, who’s liable? I’ve heard so many oil industry pr people put out the same lines:
What do you want? A perfect system? There is no perfect system.
That you for stating the obvious.
This will create jobs.
These projects also destroy the environment and the lives and families of people who work on them. Astronomically high drug abuse rates. Domestic abuse. Child abuse. Suicides. But, the oil companies can’t be bothered to talk about actual facts or destroyed lives.
All native protestors do is complain.
No. They’re aware and continually put their butts on their line for what they know is right.
The ONLY time corporate media covers protests like this is when somebody gets hurt. Blood, guts, explosions. If it bleeds, it leads.
A large fire of unknown origin broke out at a Wells Fargo complex in Des Moines, Iowa. The company has suffered repeated attacks over it’s financing of the DAPL. If it’s intentional sabotage we’ll probably never know. Just as no one has been caught for firebombing pipelaying equipment on the project.
I’d like to add 3 pipelines to this list:
1) South Jersey Gas – 22 mile, 24 inch, 700 psig through the Pinelands National Reserve, a UN Biopshere to re power the BL England coal power plant;
2) NJ Natural Gas – another pipeline through the Pinelands National Reserve
3) Penn East – from Pennsylvania frack fields to NJ/NY metro markets
Most of these pipelines go through red states. So when they leak oil, it will be their water that gets polluted. Sad but it’s what they voted for. I no longer care what happens to red staters. They vote for republicans that do this stuff, they get what they deserve.
Way to distinguish yourself from the callous right with your empathy and compassion. Incidentally, hardly anyone votes – for the GOP or anyone else. By far the biggest group in the USA is the non-voters who think correctly that all politicians are bastards.
That’s why we have what we have – no one votes for the better choices we do have on the ballot …
This is a continuation of white people invading the Americas and destroying the land for their profit and convenience while killing and displacing the native people. If you drive, every drop of gasoline that you use is a vote for crap like this. Organize your life so you don’t have to drive regularly or at all, and support traditional Native Americans in their fights against this destructive shit.
Driving isn’t the problem. Animal agriculture is. Just look at how many resources that takes, how much pollution it creates, how dependent on an ancient energy system the whole ugly calamity is. Go vegan!
that’s why companies like Tesla are so important to renewable energy. Elon Musk is on the cutting edge alternative energy for the automotive industry and home with Tesla Energy….
Until then, its important to fight big energy at every turn.
Well…. my comment got deleted? Why? I know why…. certain low IQ moderators cannot associate cause and effect.
These Wacko Protestors don’t realize that we have two choices: 1) Kill Muslims (arabs) or 2) Build pipelines.
The ALASKA PIPELINE isn’t even listed in this Article. That’s a crucial piece of pipe that links a USA State (Alaska) Oil to the 48 Contiguous States.
CAUSE AND EFFECT: The wacko protestors against pipelines think we can just “buy” oil from Mid East OPEC.
As long as we are sucking oil from the Middle East Tit… we will have no choice: Kill Muslims.
Domestic Pipeline Construction means we don’t need to Kill Muslims who threaten our oil supply.
These wacko protestors are dumbasses.
what about non fossil fuel travel? I feel like it’s been invented already. What about the govt buying into that instead like you put it; kill muslims or make pipelines.
We have a problem, today.
“non-fossil” fuel systems require completely retooling factories.
Sorry, but, you forgot that those factories have been exported to former 3rd world countries in exchange for slave labor.
So,… we CAN’T retool our own factories… UNLESS the US subsidizes RETOOLING THE ENTIRE WORLD.
So…. your point… well taken… is impossible.
As of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, there are no more “Indians” within the original meaning of the Constitution…only U.S./State citizens with “Indian ancestry/race” entitled to no more and no less than every other non-Indian U.S./State citizen.
The Constitution makes for no provisions for:
1. Indian sovereign nations. None of the asserted tribes possess any of the attributes of being a ‘sovereign nation:’ a. No Constitution recognition b. No international recognition c. No fixed borders d. No military e. No currency f. No postal system g. No passports
2. Treaties with its own constituency
3. Indian reservations whereby a select group of U.S./State citizens with “Indian ancestry/race” reside exclusively and to the exclusion of all others, on land-with rare exception-that is owned by the People of the United States according to federal documents readily available on-line that notes rights of ‘occupancy and use’ by these distinguished U.S./State citizens with “Indian ancestry/race” only with the land owned by the People of the United States.
4. Recognition of ‘Indian citizenship’ asserted by various tribes. There is no international recognition of “Indian citizenship” as there is no ‘nation’ from which citizenship is derived.
A simple question for politicians and MSM to answer…a question so simple, it is hard:
“Where is the proclamation ratified by 1/3rd of the voters of the United States that amends the Constitution to make the health, welfare, safety and benefits of a select group of U.S./State citizens distinguishable because of their “Indian ancestry/race?”
You seem to have forgotten the part about “Treaties” in the Constitution …
Your definition of “sovereignty” is quite a select one – using terms imposed by Western ideas of “government” – ironic, as we continue to cede our own “sovereignty” through our trade deals –
hydrogen fuel is the only viable alternative to oil, because hydrogen is a manufactured product that the energy companies can transition to
it’s high-energy like oil and fits the current transportation system, and it’s much better from a carbon standpoint
unfortunately, by the time it becomes a viable economic alternative most of the developed world will have destroyed the atmosphere by burning up all of the available oil
this is what’s actually going to happen .. sorry about that. humans have no demonstrated ability to manage their long-term environment independent of near-term economic issues
Hydrogen can’t be viewed as a fuel and is better describes as a battery system. The problem with the present method of separation of hydrogen from water is that it takes more energy to do the separation than the hydrogen produced can generate when burned. This is a self defeating paradox using electricity produced from CO2 sources to make a lesser amount of energy from hydrogen.
This article fails to clearly state that the Keystone XL is
also back on track.
These pipelines are one of the reasons the democrats HAD to
nominate Hillary Clinton. Under her supervision, the State
department issued the Final Supplemental Environmental
Impact Statement (FSEIS) which promoted the Keystone XL
as a safe job-maker. Obama did not issue a permit for its
completion because the illusion of opposition was a necessary
bait for all of the suckers who identify as democrats
and because he knew that the next
inevitable right-wing administration
would promote it as necessary.
This is why Clinton and Trump were both such LOUSY
candidates. They both represent the same agenda in their
lies and devotion to corporate militarism.
No one did more to help elect Trump than did Hillary Clinton’s
corrupt corporate camp and no one tried to elect Clinton as much
as did the corrupt corporate Trump camp.
The election of 2016 was a win-win for global corporatism and
those who supported the Clinton or Trump candidacies were
and are the people who helped make this happen.
There must be some kind of disconnect or short circuit in the minds of these demonstrators who drive their gasoline guzzling vehicles to these gatherings to demand that the supply of gasoline they demand be curtailed.
There is only one reason these pipelines are profitable to build and it’s because there is new and growing need and demand for these products from consumers. If you want to stop the need for these new pipelines to be built you have to stop using so much of the product and few people seem willing to make that sacrifice. Many people seem more than willing to burn more gasoline to get to where they can yell at or harass construction workers who are building these pipelines to meet their energy demands.
To: wayoutwest
Your comment reminds me of MLK’s speech, “The Three Evils of Society”
MLK framed the problem that “has been lurking within our body politic from its very beginning.” Identifying “the sickness of racism, excessive materialism, and militarism” and considering the three problems as the “plague of western civilization.”
what you have to do is keep it in the ground. how are the demonstrators supposed to get there, on a bike? supply a different form of energy so people can get to their jobs, and shut down these fossil fuel companies that are killing us.
social activism will only be effective when it attacks demand, not those who supply the product
this is the lesson of the insane war on drugs
the demand is created demand. the demand is for energy, not fossil fuels. the fossil fuels cause global warming. if you want to delay till we do get catastrophic warming, keep concentrating on individuals making individual choices in an environment that supports fossil fuels. if you want to mitigate global warming, keep it in the ground.
Who killed the electric car? Who killed public transportation infrastructure? Of course it is hypocritical to drive a Gas or diesel powered vehicle to a pipeline protest, but it is not our choice to do so. For most, it is the only option that “the market” allows. This is a fight for our future, with two competing realities. One reality is fully loaded with hypocracy and denial of science, the other is battling the corporate power structure against all odds for a future wherein the earth is respected as a living planet, not as an innate source of plunder and extraction. Choose a side, way out. This is the fight for our survival as a species.
Almost all of the oil in those pipelines is exported to China and Japan. Same with the environmentally suicidal animal agriculture industries: most “meat” is sold overseas while Americans suffer the consequences. Unregulated Capitalism at work!
I wonder where this type of confusion or misinformation about the oil industry comes from. The US net oil imports are about 4,000,000 barrels a day 365 days a year and that net number takes into account the export of mostly oil products from solvents to tars. The oil going through the pipeline in ND is headed to refineries in Illinois and the dilbit coming down from Canada is headed to refineries in Louisiana with the products sold on the local and world markets, that’s business.
much better story than the previous
IVE BEEN LOOKIN AT MAPS AND FROM,, SKYVIEW I CAN SEE LARGE PITS OF SLUDGE PITS IN PROCESS,, ITS OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOW WHERE ,,, LIKE OFF BISHOP RD. GILLETTE,WYOMING,, 82718827 —-
One disturbing part of this? Every time a pipeline or fracking comes close to rich white people (ex. Ted Turner), the response is always the same? Fuck that! I don’t want that shit fucking up my land! Now if Turner really cares about protecting the environment, he should use some of his billions to help these protestors.
There are other areas in which people are fighting gas pipelines. Near me a county just voted to ask the government to deny a permit for the pipeline. The county in question is strongly Republican.
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/2017/02/02/upstate-pipeline-fight-faces-authorization/97276126/
You lost this fight! Why is the Intercept beating a dead horse?
There are many other fights that need to be made, but this IS NOT one.
if we don’t start keeping the fossil fuels in the ground, stranding the assets of the fossil fuel companies, we’ve all “lost this fight”.
Good article, we need more natural gas pipelines – good clean energy for the people to heat their homes and keep the children warm.
All of these pipeline projects need to be stopped. I own transportation industry stocks and these pipelines aren’t good for my portfolio. Besides, we all know that transporting natural gas and oil via rail and truck is far safer, more efficient, and environmentally responsible than doing so via pipelines.
And another thing if all else fails: Peter Barnes has an idea for the Sky Trust, which is regarding The Commons, He further suggests trusts for extraction (land trusts) and water: “A more recent innovation is the Sky Trust, a trust proposed by Peter Barnes and inspired by the Alaska Permanent Fund. Barnes proposes auctioning rights to emit carbon. Large corporate polluters will pay significant sums into a trust fund in which all citizens own equal shares. The expense of buying pollution rights will encourage companies to find more cost-efficient technologies to reduce their pollution. The trust fund, in turn, yields dividends that helps citizens offset the higher prices they must pay for using resources (like oil) requiring pollution abatement. The principle behind the Sky Trust – also known as “cap and dividend” – is that polluters should not have a presumptive right to treat the atmosphere as a private dumping ground.”
I’ve had a thought for a while, once children were giving standing to sue the Feds re: climate inaction.https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/.
I strongly believe all climate activists and attorneys should amass the largest children’s (or anybody’s) class-action suit. I contacted Steyer and never heard a response – he is soliciting suggestions on his FB page.
Good heavens – this is a travesty and a disaster. We must help all the indigenous peoples in any way that we can. I have a home business, which I cannot afford to leave, but people who can, must fight.
Great story, Alleen Brown, about the overabundance of intricate pipelines throughout the country.
Too many pipelines, too little time, and too few people to mobilize with force (bodies) against all of them. We need more Water Protectors.
Do people remember this story:http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/exxon-ceo-rex-tillerson-is-suing-to-stop-a-fracking-development-outside-dallas-7104980
Previously there was a right wing talk radio blitz for about two weeks setting up support for what was to protect senators that signed on to a type of endorsement to a bill supporting the Keystone Pipeline.
One talk show host claimed he knew someone that told him the pipeline is safe. He had nothing to back it up. Within a week of when the two-week radio blitz ended, there was a major pipeline spill. The talk show host had no answer for me when I asked “Why did you not cover this week’s pipeline spill that was the second biggest in North America?
When I asked him a follow-up question “Why did you not cover in your recent two week pro-pipeline blitz that all the senators, including 17 democrats, which voted on an amendment to a bill recently showing their approval for the Keystone XL Pipeline had received an average of $489,000 each in transparent oil campaign contributions”, he ignored the question and went to commercial break.
The GOP and their ilk use crazy-talk radio, a.k.a. “conservative” talk radio, for the same reasons and goals that Trump uses Twitter and Congressmen use town halls: not to talk with people, but at them.
Surprised they’d turn tail and run when pressed by the sane for a basic response? Don’t be. They demand us to Join The Conversation*, so long as they’re the ones doing the talking.
*A phrase almost as gag-worthy as “consume media”.
Thanks for the great article. Makes me want to get out a wrench and shut all of the damn things down. Or, in my case, chain myself and my wheelchair to the nearest pipeline. Fuck the law if all it’s good for is enriching corporate gangsters . If laws can’t keep us and our communities safe they don’t deserve our obedience. We’re in a fight for our lives and we’d best start acting like it.
On the bright side, with a republican presidency the progressive democratic base has awoken from its eight-year hibernation
The one and only reason that I voted for this creep. Wake up, America.
To some degree this is a positive – even though it obviously stinks of hypocrisy, and this fact can be used understandably by critics to discredit the moral depth of the movement. Of great concern, however, is that resisting a Republican administration is going against a persona that feels no need to exhibit shame, so it simply falls back on unapologetic authoritarianism. If the titular left had protested Obama’s Big Energy corporatism (and other corporatism, militarism and imperialism) with the rabid intensity it reserves for the GOP, the establishment Democrats’ theatrical need to at least show a pretense of empathy, social duty and responsibility (even if insincere) would have been something protesters could manipulate – not so with conservatives, who have no use for the façade of caring since they are distinguished in political-establishment theater by their belief that such is being a sissy.
And with the police as always defending the system, and the media being funded by corporate interests, actual rebellion against corruption will be either ignored or translated simply as clickbait-gaining Trump-hating.
fantastic report and thanks, Alleen.
i was alerted to pipelines bc of the KXL and almost nodded off when the DAPL hit. Now i see the US is into pipeline madness. Probably business as usual for the energy cos but this whole thing needs a serious rethink, it’s getting crazy. Energy dependence was killing US. Now energy independence is eating us alive.
The freeways are so crowded with trucks it makes driving scary – traffic jams, delivery deadlines, making up for lost time, frustrations and people taking chances, it’s nuts. Then the railroads, the cars are heavy and trains are so long that the wave action is causing track jumps and huge disasters. Pipelines leaking, spoiling neighborhoods and poisoning the land and water. It’s all bad.
The only real solution is to REVERSE THE POPULATION. One child per couple (birth and snip) for the next 50 to 100 years. The idea that one dies and does not get recycled is lunacy. I can prove it.
A much better solution is for the existing population to go vegan and drastically reduce consumption. We will run out of natural resources within several decades unless the tide turns soon.
Your idea is ridiculously stupid. Much easier to go vegan, since the planet can sustain such a diet and lifestyle for many more billions of people, as well as drastically reduce consumption.
If you’re talking about the USA, the birth rate is already below replacement levels. If you really want to reverse population growth, you’ve got to stop immigration. Build the wall, deport the illegals, deploy the military along the border and put a moratorium on immigration. The population will stabilize, then start a slow decline.
It has long amazed me that environmentalists refuse to advocate for policies to restrict immigration. Sort of makes you doubt their sincerity.
Um.. in the graphic for the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline the state south of PA ought to be Maryland… Also Delaware appears to have been absorbed by New Jersey.
Yes I would like for you to know before the Heartland camp and all them the other camps here in Florida even started the first 24 hours 7 days a week camp was end is Sacred Water camp we’ve had to change the name to say water informational Center let me as landowner always provide my land to fight against this pipeline if they come to drill back under the Swanee River because it is not complete like they’re telling people then people welcome to comfort direct action I’m sorry that the Crystal River Camp got shut down cuz it isn’t informational Center just likes a water Camp is to and yes we are showing people how to recognize leaps and violations. Everyone needs to know that Donald Trump is infringing on our first amendment right because he does not want no one protesting his pipeline the reason I say this is because he has invested in it just like governor Rick Scott so as far as a state of Florida goes Sacred Water Camp was the first 24/7 camp and the weekend of Martin Luther King birthday we had some of the best peaceful most prayerful protest that Saturday and Sunday yes on Monday we had some people that went off on their own and did whatever and got their selves arrested but you know every now and then it take some kind of direct action like that to stop it. There’s over 300 leaks up in the Dakotas just in the last few months and I don’t think they reported more than maybe three or four that makes me sick because Donald Trump Rick Scott the gentleman that is invested in pipeline part of Phillips 66 who owns billions into the pipeline can’t think of his name but he’s a big up there in Washington I want people to know that people like that don’t care about us because we are not rich. All they see is the Color of Money. I’ve got news for them you can not drink water. Sacred Water camp upon the Suwannee River in Swanee County Live Oak Florida right on the river I want Ladonna Brave Bull Allard and Chase Iron Eyes to know that Edna and Steve Quillen of Sacred Water camp is standing with you in spirit we are fighting the Sabal Trail pipeline here in Florida we used to have quite a few people all the time now we’re down to just a few during the week and a little bit more on the weekends but everyone of us at Sacred Water camp and that has been at camp stand with you all the camps in Florida stand with you I am proud to be a part of this movement this fight against Sabal Trail pipeline Dakota access pipeline any other pipeline because all it is is a black snake that was for toad over a hundred years ago that is coming through United States north south and Central America. And I want everyone to know that this black snake is killing all of us they told this prophecy over a hundred years ago and now it is coming true I want to see one time Donald Trump take a glass of water after that I will gets going through pick one glass of water from the Swanee River even now because it’s already pulling up nothing up the water and other nasty stuff just drink one glass of I can tell you right now you can not drink oil but you must have water to live a thing start with water. All women know this because every baby that has grown and our bellies started with water grass under your feet stuff for the water the food you eat starts with water rather it be vegetable or meat so I hope more people wise up enjoying this fight because the EPA and ferc is a joke they’re not going to help us they are being paid off by big politicians they will help us about as much as the FDA helps of food and Medicine they don’t we’ve not had one cure hit the United States since 1951 and not with her polio only sad and Ladonna Allard when you said in your interview that Americans I want to be lowest educated people you were right and they our government have been doing this two Americans for over 50 years now it is what you called dumbing us down our food and our educational system because like you said people that are dumb are like sheep. I am not a sheep I know how look up information more than just what they tell you on the TV or in the New York Times I know how to go and get information for myself and I also listen to Independent Media that’s not bought off not like Fox News thank you bless you know that all of us here in Florida are with you we are all fighting the same fite your friend and sister in life Edna Quillen
What a “shit storm”!
No#DAPL Actions: http://everydayofaction.org/
National Work Stoppages & protests against Oval Office occupiers today: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/02/18/thousands-streets-nationwide-weekend-action-kicks
Unfortunately, the Intercept article neglects to mention key legal activity underway in the courts. While the Trans-Pecos Pipeline will almost certainly commence operations in March, the legal effort to halt operation of the system, and prevent or at least mitigate the threats and impacts of future systems will continue until all due process has been exhausted.
The Big Bend Conservation Alliance (BBCA) is presently pursuing an appeal of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) decision to deny requests for rehearing and recision of its decision authorizing the Presidential Permit Package for CP15-500, the Presidio Crossing Project, associated with Energy Transfer Partner’s Trans-Pecos Pipeline project. The appeal was filed January 3, 2017 with the District of Columbia Appellate Court, on docket DCA17-1002.
In addition, there are two other federal court challenges, involving a Presidio County landowner, in progress in the Western District courts, 5th Circuit, one an appellate proceeding, and a related civil proceeding. The appellate challenge addresses constitutional violations of the 14th Amendment right to due process, related to the process known as “quick taking,” enabled by Texas statutes within TUC 181 and TPC 21 (utilities, and properties codes, respectively).
At the State of Texas level, there is a challenge in the 394th District Court, on the constitutionality of certain aspects of Texas statutes that support the taking of private property through eminent domain condemnation, and the standard-less delegation of sovereign authority to private, for-profit corporations of the power to condemn. This suit involves eight individual landowners, spanning Brewster, and Presidio counties.
There are 38 pending, individual civil phase proceedings related to the condemnation of private property, in Pecos, Brewster, and Presidio counties, in which Energy Transfer Partners, via Trans-Pecos Pipeline, LLC has challenged damage awards, in many cases exceeding 30X the company’s offer, for easements on private properties impacted by the Trans-Pecos Pipeline. In all 38 cases, court-appointed special commissioners evaluated Trans-Pecos’ damages offer for the easement, finding it significantly below market value, and awarded the landowners higher damages amounts. Trans-Pecos is challenging these valuations in state District court, in which these cases could pend for two or more years, without the impacted landowners collecting any fees for damages to their property – construction and completion of the pipeline will be allowed to continue, despite the matter not having been adjudicated in the courts.
The BBCA is underway with its efforts in the 85th Texas Legislature, supporting landowner testimony to our elected officials, including testimony on numerous property rights bills, including those sponsored by Texans for Private Property Rights legislation, Senate Bills 740, 741, and 742.
More information can be found here:
http://www.bigbendconservationalliance.org
http://www.texansforpropertyrights.com
If the Indians would swear to never use fossil fuels again, and would promise to rely on alternative energies, like wind & solar, they could make a deal, smoke the peace pipe and go home.
Traditional Native Americans don’t even use electricity. But unfortunately, racist assholes like you wiped the vast majority of them out.
Don’t forget the Atlantic Coast Pipeline! The compressor is being built in a neighborhood of descendants of ex-slaves, despite their resistance: http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/article_91d6d3a8-a2af-5ae4-9b07-8aa983859ae4.html
Excellent information on the pipeline push. One really has to wonder what the overall agenda is here, since Obama and the Republican Congress lifted the oil export ban (in place since 1970 or so) in 2015.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-enterprise-products-exports-idUSKBN0U61Q920151223
This is probably the most idiotic energy policy (one supported by both corporate Democrats like Clinton and Obama as well as by Team Trump) the U.S. could pursue: increase fossil fuel production at a time when the world is transitioning to efficient technology and renewable energy – a recipe for both environmental and economic decline.
thanks for that critical insight and analysis
the governance of the US by the dumb&dumbers, who are also disloyal to the American aspiration to healthy comfort, is patently un-american. Like our founding fathers did, the people on the ground in mainstreet could do the same thing – draw up some new documents and fire the usurpers.
This oil export ban repeal isn’t a big deal just a way to improve the flow of oil through the system. The US is and will remain a net importer of oil and these new exports will end up filling outside market demands while it’s replaced with more imports.
I’d like to know more about this available efficient technology and renewable energy the world is replacing oil with and if the technocrats have finally figured how to make solar work at night.
So you’re saying it’s not a big deal that the US is ramping up dirty domestic fossil fuel production, causing pipeline spills every other week somewhere in the country, contributing more to climate change, at a time of historically low oil prices, so that we can sell it for a pittance and barely profit off of it? Seems like a lose/lose/lose for us. Why invest in oil when it’s already so cheap to buy and increasingly less cheap to extract/process? It makes no sense economically or environmentally.
How to have energy at night: batteries (See Tesla’s Powerwall 2), other forms of energy storage like pumped-storage hydroelectricity and biofuels/hydrogen, and supplements from other renewable sources like wind, tidal, hydropower, geothermal, etc. Lots of options to choose from based on what best suits your regional ecosystem.
Tidal is about to take off, the new CETO 6 tidal generator from Carnegie generates 1 MW per EACH underwater buoy pump, enough to power about 80 homes 24/7. There’s already plans being implemented to install a 15 MW tidal power farm underwater off shore from Cornwall in the UK. Also Carnegie Clean Energy’s stock price is suuper cheap but rising fast recently with the results of their 20 years of R&D starting to come to fruition, with design efficiency likely to keep improving as more investors realize the potential. And at 6 cents a stock, anyone can all afford to be investors on the ground floor of this emerging market. That’s an investment that makes sense, not more outdated, dirty, nonrenewable fossil fuels. That’s real, sustainable energy independence.
http://www.ecoinvestor.com.au/Stories/Speculative-Shares/Carnegie-Now-A-Different-Company.htm
I’ve been reading about this tidal power source for four decades but it never seems to materialize and doesn’t it only work when the tides are flowing? There is no viable affordable 500 mile battery for electric cars available now or in the foreseeable future so that dream is stalled. The bigger home sized batteries like the Tesla will require that the Atacama desert be destroyed to supply the needed lithium if they become too popular with the greenies. Most of the other storage you mention lose too much energy in the process to be very practical although some could be useful.
The U.S. desperately needs a theory about the role of Indian tribes and governance. As a nation we have a lot of radical proclamations and antiquated regulations. We have people still making judgments about what rights people should have based on what they look or what percentage of what ancestry they have. We have weird laws like the Major Crimes Act that split sovereignty in unpredictable ways and special exemptions from laws. We have incredibly crooked mineral exploitation and corruption in both the Indian governance and the federal oversight of it. This is truly one of those situations when a person wants to get up and yell “is there a philosopher in the house?” But of course there isn’t, because the purpose of a university is to train future workers and philosophy majors can’t get jobs, so… we need an amateur savant.
There is a history of applied practice of such theory. The linguistics of Wikipedia can sometimes be our friend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker
Paraphrased perhaps in another tone. Babylon. Original track from Brendan Perry’s album “Ark” (2010) .
we have them.
they are even here on this board in large numbers.
again, please call for the new convention and continental congress.
we certainly dont need the existing abortion that lives in wdc.
As of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, there are no more “Indians” within the original meaning of the Constitution…only U.S./State citizens with “Indian ancestry/race” entitled to no more and no less than every other non-Indian U.S./
State citizen.
The Constitution makes for no provisions for:
1. Indian sovereign nations. None of the asserted tribes possess any of the attributes of being a ‘sovereign nation:’ a. No Constitution recognition b. No international recognition c. No fixed borders d. No military e. No currency f. No postal system g. No passports
2. Treaties with its own constituency
3. Indian reservations whereby a select group of U.S./State citizens with “Indian ancestry/race” reside exclusively and to the exclusion of all others, on land-with rare exception-that is owned by the People of the United States according to federal documents readily available on-line that notes rights of ‘occupancy and use’ by these distinguished U.S./State citizens with “Indian ancestry/race” only with the land owned by the People of the United States.
4. Recognition of ‘Indian citizenship’ asserted by various tribes. There is no international recognition of “Indian citizenship” as there is no ‘nation’ from which citizenship is derived.
A simple question for politicians and MSM to answer…a question so simple, it is hard:
“Where is the proclamation ratified by 1/3rd of the voters of the United States that amends the Constitution to make the health, welfare, safety and benefits of a select group of U.S./State citizens distinguishable because of their “Indian ancestry/race?”
Hey, great article. Just wanted to point out though that the map on the atlantic sunrise pipeline has the state of Maryland labeled as virginia.