Death to Keystone XL & DHS helicopter crowd control

The company behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline said Wednesday it's officially terminating the project. TC Energy already had suspended construction in January when President Biden revoked a key cross-border presidential permit. The announcement ends a more than decade-long battle that came to signify the debate over whether fossil fuels should be left in the ground to address climate change.

Environmentalists opposed the pipeline in part because of the oil it would carry— oil sands crude from Alberta. It requires more processing than most oil, so producing it emits more greenhouse gases.

TC Energy had begun construction on the pipeline last year and said about 300 miles of the $8 billion project had been built. It would have carried oil from landlocked Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

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The oil industry and its allies have claimed that Keystone XL would have created hundreds or even thousands of jobs. Most of those positions would have been temporary construction jobs. The State Department estimated full-time permanent jobs to be closer to 50.

Climate activists cheered the decision.

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Pipeline opponents are invigorated by the Keystone X-L decision, and hope for more wins. While the Dakota Access pipeline is moving oil out of North Dakota now, it's future is uncertain because of court challenges that still haven't been resolved.

And right now in Minnesota there are protests around Enbridge's Line 3 project that's under construction. Hundreds of opponents rallied there this week, calling on President Biden to stop that project, too.

  NPR

THE LARGEST CIVIL disobedience yet against new pipeline construction in Minnesota was met by a furious response — and a cloud of debris. A Department of Homeland Security Border Patrol helicopter descended on the protest against the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline, kicking up dust and showering demonstrators with sand.

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The low-flying federal helicopter is an early signal of how law enforcement in Minnesota will deploy more than a year’s worth of training and preparations against what pipeline opponents have promised will be a summer of resistance. The tactic — which was criticized because of the extremely low flyover — suggests that the multiagency law enforcement coalition overseeing the police response is willing to bend safety standards in order to break up demonstrations.

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Authorities later claimed that the helicopter was being used to make an announcement for demonstrators to disperse, but the announcement was inaudible to many demonstration participants.

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The anti-pipeline protests are in response to plans from the Canadian energy firm Enbridge to ramp up construction as a springtime hiatus lifts. Enbridge is preparing to drill under northern Minnesota rivers that are central to the lifeways of local Ojibwe people — and are protected by treaties between tribes and the federal government. Pipeline opponents have for weeks asserted that this weekend’s Treaty People Gathering would draw more than 1,000 people to northern Minnesota to fight the tar sands pipeline.

On Monday morning, according to a press release, more than 500 people occupied a pipeline pump station, north of Park Rapids, Minnesota, blocking the entrance to the site and locking down equipment. At another site, more than 1,000 people held a ceremony where the new pipeline will cross the Mississippi River, near its headwaters.

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The Northern Lights Task Force provided a justification for the low flight on its Facebook page. “A helicopter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection was brought in today to issue a dispersal order to a large group of people in the area of Two Inlets Pump Station by Park Rapids, MN. The idea was to provide the order in a manner that everyone would be able to hear.”

The approach did not work. According to video captured by reporters and water protectors on the ground, the messages the helicopter sent were unintelligible, drowned out by the sound of the aircraft’s blades.

  The Intercept

DHS knew it would be. They know what happens when you fly a helicopter so low to the ground. The intent was to disperse the crowd by noise, wind, and debris. 

In recent years, the apparently proliferating tactic of buzzing protesters with dangerously low-flying helicopters has garnered criticism in the U.S. — especially following an incident in Washington, D.C., almost exactly a year ago.

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News reports and widespread concern over the aggressive tactic prompted reviews by the Pentagon, which later concluded it was a misuse of military aircraft. The soldiers involved in the incident were disciplined.

They didn't just decide to do it on their own.

The Code of Federal Regulations mandates that “except when necessary for takeoff or landing” aircraft must fly high enough so that if a power unit failed, the aircraft could perform an emergency landing “without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.” In this case, the helicopter was not only flying above a group of people locked to equipment, but also the property and equipment itself, which are considered “critical infrastructure” by the Department of Homeland Security.

Footage shows the Homeland Security helicopter was flying around 20 feet above the ground.

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The helicopter hovering above the Line 3 demonstration has also previously been used against Black Lives Matter activists. The same aircraft, which frequently operates under the call sign Omaha49, was documented circling the site where Floyd was killed after the area was nonviolently occupied by activists and dubbed George Floyd Square.

When protests erupted in April following the police killing of Daunte Wright in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center, the same helicopter was among a group of Homeland Security aircraft that circled on a near daily basis over protests and unrest across the Twin Cities.

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In George Floyd Square and other Twin Cities unrest, the Homeland Security helicopter was flying at many thousands of feet higher than the height it was observed at and filmed over the protest Monday afternoon.

I'm sure they (mis)calculated the risk of backlash between Native Americans and BLM. Expect lawsuits.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.