Tar Sands Protestor Disrupts Transcanada Presentation

Feb­ru­ary 28th, 2013, 1:45pm — a pro­tes­tor with Tar Sands Block­ade this after­noon locked his neck to a pro­jec­tor screen in the mid­dle of a Tran­sCana­da pre­sen­ta­tion at the North Amer­i­can Crude Mar­ket­ing Con­fer­ence in Hous­ton.

Feb­ru­ary 28th, 2013, 1:45pm — a pro­tes­tor with Tar Sands Block­ade this after­noon locked his neck to a pro­jec­tor screen in the mid­dle of a Tran­sCana­da pre­sen­ta­tion at the North Amer­i­can Crude Mar­ket­ing Con­fer­ence in Hous­ton. In tak­ing direct action, Ethan Nuss con­front­ed in-per­son Paul Miller, TransCanada’s Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Oil Pipelines, and a ball­room of tar sands indus­try investors, demand­ing a halt to the tox­ic Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline.

Nuss suc­cess­ful­ly dis­rupt­ed the sec­ond annu­al con­fer­ence host­ed by Platts. Among oth­er things, the gath­er­ing is intend­ed for fos­sil fuel indus­try exec­u­tives and their finan­cial back­ers to col­lab­o­rate on schemes to trans­port dirty and dan­ger­ous tar sands from Cana­da to the Gulf Coast so it can be refined and sold on the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket, there­by expand­ing the indus­try.

“TransCanada’s ‘busi­ness as usu­al’ spells death and destruc­tion for our com­mu­ni­ties,” said Ethan Nuss. “My con­science won’t allow me to watch this multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion and their prof­i­teers poi­son impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties from here in Houston’s pol­lut­ed East End to indige­nous peo­ple at the point of tar sands extrac­tion in Alber­ta, Cana­da. This must stop.” Ethan fur­ther shares his rea­sons for tak­ing direct action below:

At last year’s mar­ket­ing con­fer­ence, Paul Miller explained the neces­si­ty of the south­ern leg of Key­stone XL through Okla­homa and Texas to the expan­sion of the exploita­tive tar sands indus­try. TransCanada’s own fourth quar­ter report, released last week, revealed that the con­tro­ver­sial pipeline is less than half com­plet­ed, despite the Cana­di­an pipeline corporation’s pre­vi­ous pro­jec­tions for com­ple­tion of the south­ern seg­ment this April.

This rev­e­la­tion high­lights that Tar Sands Blockade’s sus­tained civ­il dis­obe­di­ence cam­paign since last August has been suc­cess­ful in delay­ing Key­stone XL con­struc­tion. Today’s action is part of grow­ing momen­tum for an upcom­ing nation­al week of action called for by Tar Sands Block­ade and allies from March 16–23, with over 60 actions cur­rent­ly report­ed nation­wide.

“This is just a morsel of what Tran­sCana­da and oth­er tar sands prof­i­teers can expect in the com­ing weeks and months,” said Kim Huynh, a spokesper­son with Tar Sands Block­ade. “All over the coun­try, com­mu­ni­ties are gear­ing up to take to the streets, offices, extrac­tion sites and pub­lic events to show that our move­ment won’t relent until we’ve made this invest­ment as tox­ic for Tran­sCana­da and its finan­cial back­ers as the very tar sands being piped through Key­stone XL. Our tar sands-free future begins now.”

Ear­li­er this week, 20,000 gal­lons of crude oil leaked into Otter Creek in Tyler Coun­ty, TX from a pipeline owned by Suno­co Logis­tics. Otter Creek flows into Rus­sell Creek, which feeds the Nech­es Riv­er. The leak did not trig­ger Sunoco’s detec­tion sys­tems but was dis­cov­ered by local res­i­dents report­ing oil in their water.

Update 1:53pm — All press have been kicked out of the con­fer­ence.

Update 2:05pm — More pro­tes­tors are out­side the con­fer­ence lob­by chant­i­ng “All night, all day, Tar Sands Block­ade!”

Update — In sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ethan and oth­er oil con­fer­ence dis­rup­tors, Tar Sands Block­aders dropped ban­ners in sight of two major Hous­ton high­ways.

Update 2:15pm — Pro­tes­tors con­tin­ue to yell and chant out­side of the hotel where the con­fer­ence is being dis­rupt­ed.

Update 2:30pm — All pro­tes­tors are out­side of the hotel now except for Ethan, who is still locked to the pro­jec­tion screen in the con­fer­ence room.

Update 3pm — Ethan has just been extract­ed, tak­en into police cus­tody, and removed from the build­ing.

Believe it or not, today is actu­al­ly Ethan’s 29th birth­day! Show your

Update 5:15pm — We’ve just heard from Ethan that he’s been charged with crim­i­nal tres­pass.

Update 8pm — Ethan still hasn’t been offi­cial­ly charged yet.

He’s in high spir­its and sends along his deep­est grat­i­tude for all the love and birth­day well-wish­es:

“I turned 29 today, and there is nowhere that I’d rather spend my birth­day than locked to that pro­jec­tor screen, speak­ing truth to pow­er.”

Update Fri­day, March 1st, 1:15am — Ethan is expect­ed to be in jail through the night.

Update 8:30am — Ethan’s just been bailed out!