Pipeline Movement

TransCanada has begun pumping oil into the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, a company spokesman announced on Tuesday.

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The southern leg of the pipeline does not cross an international border, meaning TransCanada is not required to obtain presidential approval.

  RT

And where is this oil they are pumping through the pipe coming from?

Marketlink [aka Gulf Coast Project] is the southern leg of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline project that would transport crude oil from Canadian and northern U.S. oil fields to the Gulf Coast. Marketlink's start will help move the glut of oil that has accumulated in Cushing [Oklahoma] and forced down U.S. oil prices.

  WSJ

Well, we certainly don’t want the price of oil going down, now do we?   (And we won’t mention the suggestion that most of the oil going through the pipeline is intended for sale to China.)

About 40 million barrels of oil have been stored at Cushing in January after being pumped out of wells in south Texas, North Dakota and other shale-rock formations where energy production has skyrocketed because of advanced drilling methods.

So, there’s really no need for tar sands oil? Is that what we’re saying? Are we saying there’s really no “avoidance of dependency on ‘foreign’ oil” argument to be made? (And isn’t that precious anyway? Is Canada not foreign?)

TransCanada will now focus on getting permits for the northern section of the 1,179-mile Keystone XL project, which would run from Hardisty, Alberta, southeast to Steele City, Neb.

An alliance of Native American communities has promised to block construction of the northern leg of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

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In a joint statement entitled ‘No Keystone XL pipeline will cross Lakota lands,’ Honor the Earth, the Oglala Sioux Nation, Owe Aku, and Protect the Sacred declared their support for resistance action against energy corporation TransCanada’s building of the parts of the pipeline planned to cut through Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska before meeting with a constructed line in Kansas.

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Members of seven Lakota Nation tribes - as well as indigenous communities in Idaho, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebraska, and Oregon - have been preparing nonviolent direct actions for the last two years in hopes of stopping the pipeline’s construction.

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[O]ne “example of this nonviolent direct action” occurred in March 2012, when communities from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota successfully employed a blockade to stop the delivery of pipeline parts through the reservation.

Last August, Nez Perce members blocked megaloads going through Idaho on their way to the Alberta tar sands.

  RT

Musician Neil Young kicked off his Honor the Treaties tour Sunday in Canada to raise money for a First Nations' legal battle against a tar sands project activists say would violate treaty and constitutional rights of indigenous communities.

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The week-long tour will visit Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary. Proceeds from the shows will be donated to the legal-defense fund of the northern Alberta-based Athabasca tribal government challenging new tar sands projects.

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David Schindler, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, testified at the Jackpine Mine hearings. He said the area had already seen severe environmental impacts by previous mines in the area.

“They’re talking about destroying 20 kilometers of the Athabasca River — that’s a fairly big body of water,” Schindler told Al Jazeera. “There are about 10,000 or more fish that go up and down that river, and it’s being treated as if it was a sewer.”

Deranger said the project would impact species like wood bison, caribou and other at-risk species as well as fisheries and waterways — with no proven method of reclamation afterward.

  alJazeera