Category: Climate Chaos

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.”

WINONA, TX – MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2012 7:30 AM – Sev­er­al pro­tes­tors with Tar Sands Block­ade sealed them­selves inside a sec­tion of pipe des­tined for the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline to stop con­struc­tion of the dan­ger­ous project. Using a blockad­ing tech­nique nev­er imple­ment­ed before, Matt Almonte and Glen Collins locked them­selves between two bar­rels of con­crete weigh­ing over six hun­dred pounds each. Locat­ed twen­ty-five feet into a pipe seg­ment wait­ing to be laid in the ground, the out­er bar­rel is bar­ri­cad­ing the pipe’s open­ing and nei­ther bar­rel can be moved with­out risk­ing seri­ous injury to the block­aders.

The bar­ri­cad­ed sec­tion of the pipeline pass­es through a res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood in Winona, TX. If Tran­sCana­da moves ahead with the trench­ing and bury­ing of this par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of pipe, it would run less than a hun­dred feet from neigh­bor­ing homes. Tar sands pipelines threat­en East Texas com­mu­ni­ties with their high­ly tox­ic con­tents, which pose a greater risk to human health than con­ven­tion­al crude oil. TransCanada’s exist­ing tar sands pipeline, Key­stone XL’s pre­de­ces­sor, has an atro­cious safe­ty record, leak­ing twelve times in its first year of oper­a­tion.

“Tran­sCana­da didn’t both­er to ask the peo­ple of this neigh­bor­hood if they want­ed to have mil­lions of gal­lons of poi­so­nous tar sands pumped through their back­yards,” said Almonte, one of the pro­test­ers now inside the pipeline. “This multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion has bul­lied landown­ers and expro­pri­at­ed homes to fat­ten its bot­tom line.”

Recent­ly, over 40 com­mu­ni­ties world­wide planned actions with Tar Sands Block­ade dur­ing a week of resis­tance against extreme ener­gy extrac­tion and its direct con­nec­tion to the cli­mate cri­sis. A grow­ing glob­al move­ment is ris­ing up against the abus­es of the fos­sil fuel indus­try and its increas­ing­ly des­per­ate pur­suit of dan­ger­ous extrac­tion meth­ods.

“I’m bar­ri­cad­ing this pipe with Tar Sands Block­ade today to say loud and clear to the extrac­tion indus­try that our com­mu­ni­ties and the resources we depend on for sur­vival are not col­lat­er­al dam­age,” said Collins, anoth­er block­ad­er inside the pipe and an orga­niz­er with Rad­i­cal Action for Moun­tain Peo­ples Sur­vival (RAMPS) and Moun­tain Jus­tice, grass­roots cam­paigns in Appalachia work­ing to stop moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing.

“This fight in East Texas against tar sands exploita­tion is one and the same as our fight in the hollers of West Vir­ginia. Dirty ener­gy extrac­tion doesn’t just threat­en my home; it threat­ens the col­lec­tive future of the plan­et.”

“At this late stage, doing noth­ing is a greater dan­ger than the risks of tak­ing direct action to stop destruc­tive projects like Key­stone XL,” said Ron Seifert, a spokesper­son for Tar Sands Block­ade. “That’s why folks work­ing with groups like RAMPS, the Unist’ot’en Camp fight­ing a nat­ur­al gas pipeline in British Colum­bia and Tar Sands Block­ade are will­ing to use every­thing includ­ing their own hands and feet to ensure we all have a safe cli­mate and healthy, thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ties.”

Today also marks day 5 of the Hous­ton Hunger Strike in which Gulf Coast activists with Tar Sands Block­ade are going with­out food to demand that Valero divest entire­ly from the Key­stone XL pipeline and invest in the health and well­be­ing of the com­mu­ni­ties it’s poi­son­ing.

UPDATE: 7:30 am – Work­ers arrive. Con­struc­tion is effec­tive­ly halt­ed.

Twen­ty-two trucks and over thir­ty work­ers are on the scene with noth­ing to do.

UPDATE: 8:45 a/m – Sher­iffs arrive on site and are con­sult­ing with work­ers and talk­ing into the pipe.

UPDATE: 9:00 am – Police warn block­aders to leave the pipe or face arrest.

Police are demand­ing that the block­aders leave the pipe or be arrest­ed. The block­aders refuse to com­ply.

UPDATE: 9:20 am – Police threat­en to use tear gas on peace­ful pro­test­ers

Sev­er­al sher­iffs are shin­ing flash­lights into the pipe and threat­en­ing to use tear gas on the peo­ple inside. The block­aders are stand­ing strong and remain bar­ri­cad­ed inside the pipe. Hold­ing fast to their prin­ci­ples of non­vi­o­lent resis­tance, Matt and Glen respond: “we will not be deterred by threats of vio­lence.”

UPDATE: 9:50 am – Offi­cers are threat­en­ing to send a police dog into the pipe

Police are say­ing that they will send a canine unit into the pipe after the pro­test­ers. There are no dogs on scene but the police claim that they are hav­ing them brought to the scene.

UPDATE: 10:40 am – Police threat­en to lift pipe and dump out Glen and Matt

Police are con­tin­u­ing to threat­en tear gas and canine units. They are also say­ing that they could raise the pipe and dump out the block­aders. Doing so would cause seri­ous harm or even death; Matt and Glen are locked between two bar­rels of con­crete which weigh over six hun­dred pounds each.

UPDATE: 10:55 am – Crowd gath­ers to sup­port block­aders inside Key­stone XL pipeline

Peo­ple dri­ving by the scene are show­ing their sup­port by honk­ing and stop­ping to talk to pro­test­ers about the dan­gers of tox­ic tar sands. Despite threats of vio­lence, spir­its are high; the crowd and Glen and Matt are singing togeth­er.

UPDATE: 11:20 am – Police attempt­ing to block view of pipe and move sup­port­ers fur­ther from scene

Police have moved sev­er­al trucks and vans in order to obstruct the view of the pipe in which Glen and Matt are locked. They have threat­ened arrest and forced sup­port­ers off the prop­er­ty imme­di­ate­ly adja­cent to the pipeline ease­ment, despite the fact that the home­own­er gave pro­test­ers explic­it per­mis­sion to be in her yard. Police are also forc­ing pro­test­ers to move fur­ther along the pub­lic road along which they were stand­ing.