TransCanada/TC Energy announces the commencement of its latest contribution to the Trumpist destruction of Earth with the beginning of route preparation for the Keystone XL pipeline:
TC Energy spokeswoman Sara Rabern said the Calgary-based company was moving equipment this week and will begin mowing and felling trees in areas along the pipeline’s 1,200-mile route within the next week or so.
The work is planned in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, according to Rabern. She did not provide further location details.
In April, the company plans to begin construction at the line’s border crossing in northern Montana. That would be a huge milestone for a project first proposed in 2008 and that has since attracted bitter opposition from climate activists, who say fossil fuel usage must be curbed to combat global warming [Matthew Brown, “RC Energy to Begin Felling Trees Along Keystone XL Route,” AP via Lincoln Journal Star, 2020.03.12].
I exhort everyone who enjoys a functional ecosystem to do all in their legal power to resist this unnecessary destruction of trees, property rights, state sovereignty, and economic sense. Just don’t riot. Please, don’t riot. That’s illegal, and Kristi Noem is about to make it illegaler.
Every day we can delay work on Keystone XL is another day for TransCanada/TC Energy and its shippers to look at declining oil demand and realize Keystone XL has no business case:
Weak oil demand and cheap alternative sources mean pipeline developer TC Energy should consider putting construction plans on pause — perhaps forever, said Charles Mason, chair in petroleum and natural gas economics at the University of Wyoming.
“I don’t know if it’s dead,” Mason said of the pipeline. “It’s absolutely on life support.”
…Spending more than $60 to extract a barrel of oil that’s worth less than $50 is a tough way to make money, after all.
The uncertain future of oil sands development was illustrated when Teck Resources recently announced that it is abandoning a major project.
“The Canadian oil sands aren’t the only game in town, and I think their time has sort of come and gone,” Mason said. “It’s a remote deposit that’s hard to get to market in a world in which there are increasingly more attractive and more accessible sources of supply. The economics just don’t really stack up for the oil sands right now” [Joseph Morton, “Will Simple Economics Deal Fatal Blow to Long-Delayed Keystone XL Pipeline?” Omaha World Herald, 2020.03.02].
Besides, all you drivers and choppers will want to take extra time to sterilize your bulldozers and chain saws… and maybe wait until coronavirus has subsided in all the states along the route, right? No pipeline is worth dying for, right?
They’d like to destroy some of the environment before they quit.
No worries about anti-pipeline people rioting. It’s the company’s “security” thugs who do the rioting.
HB 1199 defines a riot inciter as “any person who, with the intent to cause a riot, commits an act or engages in conduct that urges three or more people, acting together and without authority of law, to use force or violence to cause any injury to any person or any damage to property, under circumstances in which the force or violence is imminent and the urging is likely to incite or produce the use of force or violence, incites riot. Urging includes instigating, inciting, or directing, but does not include the oral or written advocacy of ideas or expression of belief that does not urge the commission of an act or conduct of imminent force or violence;”
I’d like to think we could characterize TC Energy giving people money to do violence to our land, trees, and water as incitement to riot against the good earth.
Given the collapse in oil prices I thought maybe investors would reconsider this pipe to the most expensive “oil” (actually tar sand bitumen).
Nick is right, of course. Oil is going the way of coal and coal is at the door marked Exit.
This from Numlock News by Walt Hickey:
A new report casts serious doubt on the future of Australia’s $26 billion coal export industry, namely that solar and wind power is cheaper than electricity from 60 percent of global coal stations, including half of Australian coal plants and 70 percent of China’s stations. Wind power is already cheaper than new coal plants in Japan — where half of Australian coal exports go — and will be cheaper than existing coal by 2028. Solar power in Japan will be a better option than new coal by 2023 and existing plants by 2026. China and South Korea both get about 15 percent of Australian coal, and South Korea is two years away from renewables beating existing coal. China’s going to get there this year.
Adam Morton The Guardian
This pipeline could well be a diversion for the water that will be needed right quick like in our southern states. The Colorado River is going dry from lack of drainage, this will be a huge problem for population areas that are building very rapidly.
“( Cronkite News) – GREELEY, Colo. – A warming climate already is reducing stream flows in the Southwest’s largest watershed, according to a new study from scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey. And as the planet continues to heat up, it said, the shortages are likely to get worse.
Using hydrologic models, researchers found that the Colorado River Basin is extremely sensitive to slight variations in temperature. In their new paper in the journal Science, they show that for each degree average Celsius temperatures rise, flows in the Colorado are likely to decline more than 9%.”
So then, Bill Janlow’s ghost is back with https://books.google.com/books?id=slZecw2oB1sC&pg=PA789&lpg=PA789&dq=etsi+water&source=bl&ots=S8ZtTyUjTn&sig=ACfU3U3YDOhDKw2EuQaygx5aON2NjhFf6Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi47bj05ZroAhXhYN8KHRqfDh8Q6AEwA3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=etsi%20water&f=false