TEXAS JUDGE HALTS TRANSCANADA OIL PIPELINE WORK

A Texas judge has ordered Tran­sCana­da to tem­porar­i­ly halt work on a pri­vate prop­er­ty where it is build­ing part of an oil pipeline designed to car­ry tar sands oil from Cana­da to the Gulf Coast, the lat­est legal bat­tle to plague a project that has encoun­tered numer­ous obsta­cles nation­wide.

Texas landown­er Michael Bish­op, who is defend­ing him­self in his legal bat­tle against the oil giant, filed his law­suit in the Nacog­doches Coun­ty cour­t­house, argu­ing that Tran­sCana­da lied to Tex­ans when it said it would be using the Key­stone XL pipeline to trans­port crude oil.

Tar sands oil — or dilut­ed bitu­men — does not meet the def­i­n­i­tion as out­lined in Texas and fed­er­al statu­to­ry codes which define crude oil as “liq­uid hydro­car­bons extract­ed from the earth at atmos­pher­ic tem­per­a­tures,” Bish­op said. When tar sands are extract­ed in Alber­ta, Cana­da, the mate­r­i­al is almost a sol­id and “has to be heat­ed and dilut­ed in order to even be trans­mit­ted,” he told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press exclu­sive­ly.

“They lied to the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” Bish­op said.

Texas Coun­ty Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz signed a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order and injunc­tion Fri­day, say­ing there was suf­fi­cient cause to halt work until a hear­ing Dec. 19. The two-week injunc­tion went into effect Tues­day after Bish­op post­ed bond.

Tran­sCana­da spokesman Shawn Howard said lat­er in a state­ment that the judge had agreed to push the hear­ing up to Thurs­day, Dec. 13.

David Dod­son, a spokesman for Tran­sCana­da, has said courts have already ruled that tar sands are a form of crude oil. The com­pa­ny said in a state­ment emailed Tues­day that work on Bishop’s prop­er­ty is under­way and that the injunc­tion will not have an effect on con­struc­tion.

“We are on track to bring this pipeline into oper­a­tion in late 2013,” the state­ment said.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists are con­cerned that if the pipeline leaks or a spill occurs, the heavy tar sands will con­t­a­m­i­nate water and land. The tar sands, they argue, are more dif­fi­cult to clean than reg­u­lar crude, and U.S. pipeline reg­u­la­tions are not suit­ed to trans­port the prod­uct. They also say refin­ing the prod­uct will fur­ther pol­lute the air in the Texas Gulf Coast. The state already leads the nation in green­house gas emis­sions and indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion.

In Feb­ru­ary, anoth­er judge briefly halt­ed work on the pipeline in north­east Texas due to archae­o­log­i­cal arti­facts on the prop­er­ty. The judge lat­er ruled the work could resume. The pipeline is being built, although the landown­er is fight­ing the con­dem­na­tion of her land.

Tran­sCana­da wants to build the pipeline to trans­port tar sands from Alber­ta to the Gulf Coast, but has encoun­tered road­blocks along the way. To cross the U.S.-Canadian bor­der, the com­pa­ny needs a pres­i­den­tial per­mit, which was reject­ed ear­li­er this year by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, who sug­gest­ed the com­pa­ny reroute to avoid a sen­si­tive envi­ron­men­tal area in Nebras­ka. The com­pa­ny plans to reroute that por­tion.

In the mean­time, Oba­ma encour­aged the com­pa­ny to pur­sue a short­er por­tion of the pipeline from Okla­homa to Texas, which would help relieve a bot­tle­neck in Cush­ing. Tran­sCana­da received the nec­es­sary per­mits for that south­ern por­tion ear­li­er this year and began con­struc­tion.

But many Texas landown­ers have tak­en to the courts to fight the company’s land con­dem­na­tions in a state that has long wed its for­tunes to oil.

Bish­op owns 20 acres in Dou­glass, a town about 160 miles north of Hous­ton. He used to raise poul­try and goats on the land where he lives with his wife and 16-year-old daugh­ter, he said, but sold the ani­mals about two years ago because of the planned pipeline. Ini­tial­ly, the Viet­nam War vet­er­an said, he fought the company’s attempt to con­demn his land, but set­tled because he could not afford the lawyer’s fees of $10,000.

Bish­op said he set­tled under “duress,” so he bought a law book and decid­ed to defend him­self. Since then, he has filed a law­suit in Austin against the Texas Rail­road Com­mis­sion, the state agency that over­sees pipelines, argu­ing it failed to prop­er­ly inves­ti­gate the pipeline and pro­tect ground­wa­ter, pub­lic health and safe­ty.

Aware that the oil giant could have a bat­tery of lawyers and experts at the hear­ing lat­er this month, Bish­op, a 64-year-old retired chemist cur­rent­ly in med­ical school, said he is deter­mined to fight.

“Bring ‘em on. I’m a Unit­ed States Marine. I’m not afraid of any­one. I’m not afraid of them,” he said. “When I’m done with them, they will know that they’ve been in a fight. I may not win, but I’m going to hurt them.”