TransCanada plans to lay its unnecessary Keystone XL pipeline across 315 miles of West River land owned by 314 private landowners, not all of who are surrendering their property rights willingly. But a little note in TransCanada’s September 30 quarterly report to the Public Utilities Commission reminds me that this foreign corporation is taking property away from all of us South Dakotans:
In December 2015, Keystone released 9 easements affecting 19 landowners in Meade and Harding Counties. These easements contained language requiring Keystone to commence construction within 5 years of the easement execution date; otherwise Keystone must provide a release of the easement rights. Keystone commenced work with landowners to re-acquire the necessary easement rights and that process is ongoing. Acquisition of easements on property owned by the State of South Dakota is in process [TransCanada, “Keystone XL Pipeline Project: South Dakota Public Utilities Commission Quarterly Report,” 2018.09.30, p. 4].
If as a state we wanted to stop Keystone XL, we could do it. Our state government could say, “Nope, sorry. Your foreign pipeline and foreign oil don’t serve South Dakota’s interest. Go around, through Wyoming.”
But the Noem/McCaulley regime will never say no to quick money from Big Oil. They will quietly surrender our land to a foreign corporation. Canada First!
Looks like the same game plan that the pipeline boys pulled on the Natives up in North Dakota, just keep building and then threaten to sue if it does not pan out. Vote them out in 2020…NO, not here. Support candidates in other states that will fight for us.
When the pipeline is complete, look for a ETSI detour to the river for our water. Janklow lives!
So what is great need for this pipeline? “Oil prices were a driving factor in Friday’s premarket trading, with West Texas Intermediate swooning 7% to below $51 a barrel. The cause of the declines appeared to be general worries about weak demand, particularly from China, and rising output from shale oil producers in the U.S. JPMorgan this week slashed its price outlook for oil, now saying that Europe’s Brent crude benchmark will average $73 in 2019, down from its prior price forecast of $83.50. Brent crude traded down 4% early Friday, at just above $6o per barrel.” https://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/oil-prices-stocks-stock-futures-dow-jones/
Smells like a scam as it always was. Canada will get rich while we clean up their crap.
Like Jetrry said- https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/418009-oil-prices-hit-new-low-for-the-year
Oil down 7 % today and over 20% for the year.
Kristi won’t be making any decisions. She will do as she is told by the oil lobby and her handlers, just like her time as Rep.
Here’s a few questions: Could Transcanada claim eminent domain over state-owned lands? Who has authority over these state-owned lands? Is it GF&P or School and Public Lands or the Regents or some other agency? Isn’t there some public notice requirements for establishing easements on state land? Is there some requirement for legislative action?
Mike, natural gas has jumped 60% since mid-September, so the need for fossil fuel isn’t going away.
But the pressure to drop prices for oil is largely due to flat economic activity and the more efficient vehicles that are available now. But at some point you cannot make things more efficient due to physics, and then you start using more of the resource as economic growth and/or population growth occur.
If you are really concerned about oil from pipelines, then you must power your transportation sector by electricity or biofuel instead of gasoline….and then generate the electricity or the biofuel with enough clean energy.
Donald: GFP no longer has land in Harding County that I know of. The Antelope Experiment Station west and south of Buffalo was once under GFP management and the title remains under the GFP name but it is now a range experiment station managed by SDSU if memory serves.. How, all this came about, I don’t know but I do know that the deed for the land still lists GFP as the primary state owner. Just a different operator and purpose which I find absurd but…..The land involved in the Keystone, which lies primarily near Camp Crook east and south is School and Public land administered by the Commissioner of School and Public lands. Nearly all of those lands were created during the days of Peter Norbeck when Custer State Park was created. There were exchanges with USFS as well as trades and consolidations involving the multiple school sections involved in every township in both Custer and Harding Counties that left large blocks in both places. It was some really inventive and tricky land deals that created CSP. Most people don’t know that. I think the State finally liquidated most all remnants of those land exchanges in the Black Hills not directly involved in CSP not all that long ago. I remember doing some research on the matter while looking to develop Mt. Goat habitat in and around Mt. Rushmore and found two small parcels owned by the State of SD close to Mt. Rushmore. They may still be under state ownership, but I don’t know. Anyway, these easements on public land allow the state to essentially derive 3 sources of income from the properties. The state gets a lease fee, they get the revenue from continued ag leases that have all but ruined the vitality of the property due to over grazing for decades, and they get revenue from the mineral rights if there are extraction activities. We need to remember that there is already public land under O&G development in Harding County and it is likely that that production will be funneled into the KXL line. Don’t be surprised if spur pipeline development isn’t part of the next agreement with the state. The State already get’s a huge chunk of the limited royalties from O&G production in Harding because most private landowners don’t own the mineral rights. The state does. We shouldn’t think for a minute that the political types in Pierre don’t have a greedy gaze on this and it’s potential expansion to increase state revenue. The ulterior motives are abundant in this stuff.
Doc, I am more concerned about my pocketbook since my paltry SS check won’t get any fatter over the next several years (according to SS and oil prices). Any drop at the pump helps me maintain my monthly budget, even if I still don’t hardly drive anywhere.
I hope and plan to be long gone from this vale of tears before we run out of fossil fuels or the need for them. Some next generations can deal with it since the ones we have now are diametrically opposed to any agreements about anything.
John W,
Thanks. This is good history to know. School and Public Lands Commissioner is in a tough bind trying to maximize revenue for schools, keep land in public hands, satisfy grazers, satisfy hunters and other public uses, etc. It’s impossible, really, to do the job and keep everyone happy. I think the health of the public’s land and resources end up suffering.
Just wondering if School and Public Lands has to satisfy any public notice/hearing requirements. You could ask for state Environmental Impact Statement. If it’s turned down, it provides one way to get into state court. A state EIS wouldn’t be subject to the federal loopholes for this project. It’s just a thought.
Unfortunately Mike, we use petrochemicals to lubricate the wind turbines and make the engineered materials for a stronger wind turbine blade. So you still have to refine and deliver the petroleum, and then refine and/or deliver the petrochemicals.
I would agree that one does not have to do that by pipeline from Canada, but if you want more wind power you will have to do that from somewhere.
And those composite materials are a primary reason why we are having such a difficult time recycling wind turbine blades.
Materials that are more recyclable…if not derived from biobased resources…would definitely be of interest for the back end of the wind energy life cycle. If you could control when they become biodegradable, all the better. Otherwise, we are left with either finding a secondary use, or burning them for energy (i.e. release CO2) to reduce the physical volume of the waste.
It can’t happen here, some would say? Sure, and you believe in Santa Claus too.
“A massive oil spill that’s feared to become the largest marine disaster of its kind in the nation’s history is receiving attention from the U.S. Coast Guard after steadily leaking off Louisiana’s coast for more than 14 years.
The military branch has ordered Taylor Energy Company to “capture, contain or remove oil” from the toxic site located 13 miles from the mouth of Mississippi River or face a $40,000 per day fine, The Washington Post reported.
Since the company’s oil platform was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the Justice Department estimates that it leaks up to 29,400 gallons, or 700 barrels, of oil per day, which would equate to roughly 150 million gallons total.”
Don’t forget the Governor’s Public Safety law from 2017. The final version doesn’t do a whole lot compared to the initial alarmingly overreaching bill, but what it *does* do is give the Commission of School & Public Lands broad authority to call in the authorities to break up gatherings of 20+ people on those lands.
If you’re wondering how much School & Public Lands there are in the NW corner of the state, grab a public hunting atlas (those tracts are all WIA’s, so are mapped therein).
Hint: it’s a LOT.
Jerry,
Given that the transport of petroleum always has a risk of a leak by transport via pipeline, rail, or truck, are you going to withdraw your support for more wind energy until they are free of petroleum-based products?
Me withdrawing from anything related to renewable would be like asking you to keep quiet about nukes, ain’t happening for either of us. You can have petroleum based products without the drama. We did it in the past and that is how this place got settled. Those old Canistoga Wagon needed petroleum based products on their axles and we got them from not supporting a friggin hatchet man in Saudi Arabia.
Ahh….so there is a level of risk that you are willing to live with. Or the ends justify the means ;^).
I would much rather we build the new reactors that will displace heat with natural conduction and convection instead of relying upon any external power, let alone diesel fuel as they do today.
The nuclear fuel in those will fail at temperatures much higher than what the reactor can achieve in a worst-case scenario. Thus the emergency procedure is to wait until things cool down before you go in and fix anything….essentially they can go on vacation for a couple of days because there is nothing to do in the meantime!
Back in the 70’s, we studied and discussed two topics in high school debate class. Fossil fuels v. renewable energy sources and the Electoral College v. the Popular Vote. Forty years ago we were worried about the impact and supply of fossil fuels and the need for clean energy. Forty years ago we were discussing abolishing the Electoral College. Forty years later, we have learned next to nothing.
One of the issues for Fukushima is that they did not protect their backup generator systems that ran on diesel fuel. Both the fuel and the generators were compromised by the tsunami. The reactors actually performed as intended and shut down in the earthquake, but needed external power to maintain the cooling. They didn’t put the money in to secure their backup systems from the 1-2 punch.
The reactor designs that are “walk-away safe” would avoid that issue altogether, if not remove the use of a fossil fuel. As a bonus, the resulting process heat could displace the consumption of natural gas in industry (as is needed in the production of biofuels or biobased products).
Give i time, Doc, for recycling. We have had nukular waste around and it lasts much longer as waste than composite materials and we still have no safe way to recycle/re-use the stuff.
I see no reason why soy oils cannot be made into petro-replaceable lubes in the near future. Stop wasting 6 trillion bucks on unwinnable wars, trillions on undependable next generation fighters that are not dependable and taxcuts for the koch bros. Let’s spend billions on R and D and solve some of today’s problems before there are no more days.
And no matter the level of fail safe, Drumpf and wingnuts will devise a way to mess it up just because Obama may have thought about it once upon a time. Can’t be too careful with the Black guy’s legacy. People might believe he was much better than what we have at present.
But then, there is this, so there is that.
“Inflation dictates that the cost of living will continue to rise — except, it seems, when it comes to renewable energy. The cost of building a new utility-scale solar or wind farm has now dropped below the cost of operating an existing coal plant, according to an analysis by the investment bank Lazard. Accounting for government tax credits and other energy incentives would bring the cost even lower.
“There are some scenarios, in some parts of the U.S., where it is cheaper to build and operate wind and solar than keep a coal plant running,” said a Lazard banker who was involved in the report. “You have seen coal plants shutting down because of this. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/its-now-cheaper-to-build-a-new-wind-farm-than-to-keep-a-coal-plant-running/
Federal Government reports say this: WASHINGTON — A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.” New York Times today 11/23/2018
More renewable energy boys and girls, more of this South Dakota PUC!
My bad, from above link, oil is down 30% in 7 weeks, not 20% this year.
Jerry,
I would agree with you that we should be using more renewables and selling renewable technologies to the rest of the world.
But I would disagree with you about the costs of renewables.
You have neglected the costs of inefficiencies and multiple replacements, mining critical elements, dealing with the intermittency without energy storage, and dealing with the end-of-life costs of burial in a dump or actual recycling. Or worse yet, combustion of the final end products in a furnace to reduce the waste volume.
So I would focus on the lower up-front costs of construction too. That is the ace card of renewables, so you might as well lead with it.
Mike,
We have a safe way to recycle and dispose of our nuclear waste. We have just decided not to use those methods due to a combination of cost and politics.
We should be recycling it so that we have less to dispose of, but the best that can be done at the moment is dispose of it in a way that it is retrievable for recycling later.
If you are worried about radioactivity, there is a path to getting the isolation time down to a couple of centuries. Then it would be below natural background levels.
Then it would share the same problem that wastes from solar energy and wind energy suffer from: There is no half-life for the chemical effects of the metals that remain in the wastes. Arsenic stays Arsenic, and Mercury stays Mercury.
Maybe you could consume some of those bad metals in solar or wind wastes in a nuclear reactor (i.e. feed them neutrons so that they decay into something else), but that would take some work, if not acceptance that wind, solar, and nuclear could actually work together.
One thing about renewable’s, we are not trespassing on current landowners rights. This post is about that and the push to make private lands anything but private. We have the meandering waters, we have the outright theft of land use by the pipeline companies, even when the court rules against them. If you have big enough huevos, you do as you please and steal with ease. Thankfully we have no nukes or the money boys would be shoving those even further up our arse’s.
Doc, I am personally not the least concerned with radioactivity. What I am worried about is paying my bills. Since the SS cola is contingent on higher oil prices and since SS has already said Medicare and prescription drugs will continue to climb for the foreseeable future, I would rather see gas prices at the pump plummet and let me smile about something once in a while.
Mike,
We tend to choose the lower cost option for our power instead of weighing long-term benefits and total life cycle costs. Natural gas is winning because it is cheaper than coal or nuclear, and it is not as bad as coal in terms of carbon and other emissions. It is worse than nuclear in terms of emissions, but not cost at the moment.
ND high school grads earning $80k/year, after 3 years over $100k. How does opposing the pipeline have a chance? https://www.npr.org/2018/11/23/669198912/after-struggles-north-dakota-grows-into-its-ongoing-oil-boom
I looked up all the landowner info along the route in SD and learned several thousands of those acres along the route are leased lands by ranchers. The state of SD and the federal government would have had to have signed easements with Trans Canada. How come that was not made known to the public? Leaseholder probably had no say so. And the public who are stakeholders of that land in their state were left in the dark.
I looked up all the landowner info along the route in SD and learned several thousands of those acres along the route are leased lands by ranchers. The state of SD and the federal government would have had to have signed easements with Trans Canada. How come that was not made known to the public? Leaseholder probably had no say so. And the public who are stakeholders of that land in their state were left in the dark.
Great link John…All is good with a boom until it goes bust.
Following the great link John posted, there is this https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/660299276/beyond-plastic-bans-creating-products-to-replace-it
More stuff on that with sealable paper containers. As a kid, I worked in a local grocery store and used the shorty bags for customers and other paper bags. Strong stuff and more earth friendly! Who knew how smart we were 50 some years ago!
Did the South Dakota PUC pull a fast one? Great work Fischer. Anyone know how this all came about and who signed for it?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/23/health/climate-change-report-bn/index.html
Drumpf’s own gubmint says climate change will kill 1000s and cost beau coup bucks. And it was released on a slow news Friday so maybe people wouldn’t notice how little regard Drumpf has for government agencies, not named intel services.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1049384/yellowstone-volcano-news-climate-change-global-warming
Yellowstone is under siege, as well. Maybe we could build a pipeline and ship Yellowstone, sans grizzlies, to a safer place like maybe the moon.
For yer Saturday morning reading pleasure- https://www.thedailybeast.com/speed-read-the-government-climate-change-report-trump-will-hate
In the Gulf of Mexico, there are more than 600 natural oil seeps that leak between one and five million barrels of oil per year. I will let you convert that to gallons Jerry.
Troll,are you bragging or complaining about oil seeps?
John W, I’m curious why the state the Commissioner of School and Public Lands administers land near Camp Crook? I thought the school for big city troubled youth out there in the middle of nowhere was owned by a national beer company. Did it close and revert to the state?
“South Dakota to Surrender Public Land for Keystone XL” I’ll bet you even money South Dakota is not “surrendering” the land but rather selling it for the appraised value.
Well duh, Jason. An oil seep is what made Jed Clampett a millionaire. Did you really think that pea shooter of his caused the bubblin’ crude? You’re too gullible buddy.
Four days shy of the Keystone oil pipeline leak last year in northeast SD, the federal government has yet to release its final official investigative report.
https://www.keloland.com/news/local-news/no-final-report-1-year-after-keystone-oil-leak/1615928774
but rather selling it for the appraised value.
Whose appraised value- the forced unhappy sellers or the totally foreign land thieve’s appraisal?
Master, early today there was a page that popped up 2 or 3 times when I dropped in. It was one of yours and showed statewide offices and the people who filled them from 2012. Nick Nemec’s name was on PUC and there was another regular poster here listed for a county office, I believe.
I haven’t seen it lately. Was that a really old article or something you are working on now?
https://madvilletimes.com/2012/11/transcanada-taking-colome-ranchers-land-jury-to-decide-easement-value/
Here is what OldSaltybrinysodiumslush thinks is good for landowners.
Note the judge gives a well defined definition of a common carrier and I don’t think this new pipeline fits it.
The NY Times say coal isn’t going anywhere.
http://strib.mn/2TGb6LI