Category: Oil

Ear­li­er this morn­ing, Ste­fan Warn­er, a youth pas­tor who was born and raised in Har­rah, OK, locked him­self to machin­ery being used to build the tox­ic Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline through Creek land near Schoolton, OK.

Warn­er is tak­ing action to pro­tect the health of the North Cana­di­an Riv­er, com­mu­ni­ties and land that this pipeline would run through from being irre­versibly dam­aged by dilut­ed bitu­men (tar sands) leaks and spills. He is send­ing a clear mes­sage that the cur­rent day colo­nial­ism and dis­re­gard for the health and sov­er­eign­ty of indige­nous peo­ples in Alber­ta, Cana­da, and along the pipeline is unacceptable—from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, as well as a human per­spec­tive.

Tar sands pipelines have a hor­ren­dous track record: the exist­ing Key­stone 1 pipeline leaked 12 times in its first year, and at least thir­ty times to date. In 2010, the added dan­gers of tar sands pipelines were demon­strat­ed by Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline spill of more than a mil­lion gal­lons of dilut­ed bitu­men into the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er in Michi­gan. The Kala­ma­zoo tar sands spill is the costli­est inland spill in U.S. his­to­ry, drain­ing the oil spill cof­fers and plac­ing the $800 mil­lion and ris­ing price tag onto the backs of local and fed­er­al tax­pay­ers. But it is not the mon­e­tary bur­den that weighs heav­i­est. It is the toll on human life and the health of local ecosys­tems that is immea­sur­able, espe­cial­ly the tox­i­c­i­ty of the dilut­ed bitu­men and undis­closed pro­pri­etary chem­i­cals has proven dev­as­tat­ing.

In addi­tion to the immense dan­gers posed by the Key­stone XL, Tran­sCana­da has been mis­rep­re­sent­ing the eco­nom­ic effects of the pipeline. The major­i­ty of con­struc­tion jobs are tem­po­rary and have been filled by Wis­con­sin-based con­trac­tor Michel’s, not Okla­homans and Tex­ans. Despite Tran­sCana­da and the State Department’s rhetoric of ener­gy inde­pen­dence, the dilut­ed bitu­men trans­port­ed by the Key­stone XL is des­tined for export to for­eign mar­kets after being refined in Gulf Coast refiner­ies, and the Nation­al Resources Defense Coun­cil asserts that the KXL will increase domes­tic gas prices.

“I grew up in a town where the North Cana­di­an Riv­er runs right through, and we can’t let the North Cana­di­an become anoth­er Kala­ma­zoo,” said Okla­homan youth pas­tor Ste­fan Warn­er. “I fig­ure folks have to take action to stop our beau­ti­ful Okla­homa from being marred by a for­eign cor­po­ra­tion, and stand up to fight big cor­po­ra­tions who think that poi­son­ing peo­ple and steal­ing land is accept­able so long as they make a prof­it.”

Warn­er is act­ing with Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance, a coali­tion of Okla­homans and allies fight­ing to pre­vent con­struc­tion of the Key­stone XL which will bring dan­ger­ous and tox­ic dilut­ed bitu­men from the bio­me-con­sum­ing tar sands gigapro­ject to refin­ery com­mu­ni­ties in the Gulf. This action comes in the wake of dozens of sim­i­lar actions which have active­ly fought con­struc­tion of the Key­stone XL in Okla­homa and Texas. In light of reports of shod­dy weld­ing by Tran­sCana­da whistle­blow­er Evan Vokes and the recent release of pho­tographs depict­ing holes in the weld of a pipe buried in Texas, the strug­gle to keep the Key­stone XL from being com­plet­ed is even more urgent.

Updates

At 8 a.m., direct sup­port for Ste­fan was arrest­ed with­out warn­ing and placed in police car. Six oth­er peo­ple on site are being detained.

At 9 a.m., six peo­ple detained now arrest­ed. Sev­en police vehi­cles are on scene. Work­ers have low­ered side-boom in dis­re­gard of Stefan’s safe­ty and OSHA reg­u­la­tions. Ste­fan is still locked to machin­ery but lying painful­ly face-down on the low­ered arm. Police are obscur­ing Ste­fan from view and not allow­ing any­one with­in pho­tograph­ing dis­tance.

At 9:15 a.m., anoth­er indi­vid­ual arrest­ed. This per­son was not ini­tial­ly detained but was pre­vent­ed from access­ing her vehi­cle since 8 a.m. Ste­fan
is still hold­ing strong. It also appears that this action is also blockad­ing an active frack site.

TransCanada Claimed $5 Million in Damages

On Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 25^th, a group of activists agreed to a set­tle­ment in TransCanada’s law­suit against Tar Sands Block­ade, Ris­ing Tide North Texas, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca, and nine­teen indi­vid­u­als. The SLAPP suit (Strate­gic Law­suit Against Pub­lic Par­tic­i­pa­tion) alleged that direct action against Key­stone XL has cost Tran­sCana­da $5 mil­lion. This con­tra­dicts fre­quent pub­lic state­ments by TransCanada’s spokes­peo­ple that block­aders were not imped­ing con­struc­tion in any mean­ing­ful way.

The eight Tex­ans who came to court to defend them­selves on Fri­day, some of whom had not been active­ly involved with Tar Sands Block­ade since protests in August, were threat­ened with los­ing their homes and life’s sav­ings if the law­suit went for­ward. In order to pro­tect the liveli­hoods and depen­dents of brave activists like Tam­mie Car­son, who locked her­self to a truck car­ry­ing Key­stone XL pipe, the activists agreed to set­tle the law­suit. The cor­po­ra­tion will not seek the $5 mil­lion in finan­cial dam­ages, and the named defen­dants and orga­ni­za­tions agreed to not tres­pass on Key­stone XL prop­er­ty in Texas and Okla­homa or face addi­tion­al charges.

Despite this legal set­back, mem­bers of Tar Sands Block­ade are as deter­mined as ever to stop Key­stone XL. The sus­tained direct action cam­paign will con­tin­ue. Here’s a chronol­o­gy of all the direct actions tak­en since August 2012.

Defen­dants made the fol­low­ing state­ments in response to the set­tle­ment:

Tam­mie Car­son, a life­long Tex­an, grand­moth­er, and defen­dant from Arling­ton, TX, said:

“I took action for my grand­kids’ future. I couldn’t sit idly by and watch as a multi­na­tion­al cor­po­rate bul­ly abused emi­nent domain to build a dirty and dan­ger­ous tar sands pipeline right through Tex­ans’ back­yards. I had no choice but to set­tle or lose my home and every­thing I’ve worked for my entire life.”

Ram­sey Sprague, Tar Sands Block­ade spokesper­son, and defen­dant from Fort Worth, TX, said:

“Tran­sCana­da is dead wrong if they think a civ­il law­suit against a hand­ful of Tex­ans is going to stop a grass­roots civ­il dis­obe­di­ence move­ment. This is noth­ing more than anoth­er exam­ple of Tran­sCana­da repress­ing dis­sent and bul­ly­ing Tex­ans who are defend­ing their homes and futures from tox­ic tar sands.”

Lau­ren Regan, an attor­ney with the Civ­il Lib­er­ties Defense Cen­ter and one of the legal coor­di­na­tors for the Tar Sands Block­ade made the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“The SLAPP suit (Strate­gic Law­suit Against Pub­lic Par­tic­i­pa­tion) filed against the peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions that are fight­ing against TransCanada’s uneth­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive pipeline will nev­er stop the people’s resis­tance to the XL Pipeline. Tran­sCana­da has repeat­ed­ly attempt­ed to vio­late the law and bul­ly the peo­ple of Texas: through cor­po­rate cor­rup­tion and lies, they obtained “com­mon car­ri­er” sta­tus in Texas in order to steal pri­vate prop­er­ty from low income and hard work­ing Tex­ans; they have attempt­ed to bring the full weight of the police state upon non­vi­o­lent activists in an attempt to crush their peace­ful resistance–using mace, tasers, and phys­i­cal bru­tal­i­ty.

Despite phys­i­cal harm, lengthy incar­cer­a­tions, felony charges, and now civ­il law­suits to restrict their right to protest, the peo­ple have not been deterred and have only been embold­ened in the face of Transcanada’s attempt at repres­sion and bul­ly­ing. At each attempt by Tran­sCana­da to chill the cit­i­zens’ rights to protest the XL Pipeline, the people’s lawyers will stand up to defend them in the Court’s. For every pro­tes­tor that is jailed or beat­en, ten more arrive to take that person’s place. For every home­own­er who has had their land stolen, and dan­ger­ous tar sands oil now threat­ens their health and envi­ron­ment, peo­ple from around the coun­try will band togeth­er to pro­tect the next threat­ened com­mu­ni­ty through a vari­ety of non­vi­o­lent tools. Resis­tance is Fer­tile. The sur­vival of the plan­et in the face of glob­al cli­mate change deserves noth­ing less.”