The State Department, still with “egg on its face” from its statement that Keystone XL would have little impact on climate change, sunk a little lower today as the most respected elders, and chiefs of 10 sovereign nations turned their backs on State Department representatives and walked out during a meeting. The meeting, which was a failed attempt at a “nation to nation” tribal consultation concerning the Northen leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline neglected to address any legitimate concerns being raised by First Nations Leaders (or leading scientific experts for that matter).
Tribal nations added probably the most critical danger of the pipeline which is to the water. Their statement is below:
On this historic day of May 16, 2013, ten sovereign Indigenous nations maintain that the proposed TransCanada/Keystone XL pipeline does not serve the national interest and in fact would be detrimental not only to the collected sovereigns but all future generations on planet earth. This morning the following sovereigns informed the Department of State Tribal Consultation effort at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rapid City, SD, that the gathering was not recognized as a valid consultation on a “nation to nation” level:
Southern Ponca Pawnee Nation Nez Perce Nation
And the following Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires People):
Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Ihanktonwan Dakota (Yankton Sioux) Rosebud Sioux Tribe Oglala Sioux Tribe Standing Rock Tribe Lower Brule Sioux Tribe Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Crow Creek Sioux Tribe
The Great Plains Tribal Chairmans Association supports this position, which is in solidarity with elected leaders, Treaty Councils and the grassroots community, and is guided by spiritual leaders. On Saturday, May 18, the Sacred Pipe Bundle of the Oceti Sakowin will be brought out to pray with the people to stop the KXL pipeline, and other tribal nation prayer circles will gather to do the same.
Pursuant to Executive Order 13175, the above sovereigns directed the DOS to invite President Obama to engage in “true Nation to Nation” consultation with them at the nearest date, at a designated location to be communicated by each of the above sovereigns. After delivering that message, the large contingent of tribal people walked out of the DOS meeting and asked the other tribal people present to support this effort and to leave the meeting. Eventually all remaining tribal representatives and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers left the meeting at the direct urging of the grassroots organization Owe Aku. Owe Aku, Moccasins on the Ground, and Protect the Sacred are preparing communities to resist the Keystone XL pipeline through Keystone Blockade Training.
Legislators are quick to point out why the Tar Sabds Crude is necessary. It is unfortunate for those who are not making money on this deal as we have all been shafted by these crooks who call themselves Public Servants. They were quick to get this deal approved ASAP, but no one took into consideration that the Oil Company would use any excuse at their disposal to get out of shouldering their responsibility were a tragic accident to occur.
Lo and behold here we are with this terrible spill and Exxon has found a loophole in an existing law on the books that legislators did not bther to close. Doesn’t it just make you all warm and fuzzy to know that they are taking care of us?……NOT!! I say we look for those who were so vehement about the importance of this deal to go through and put them to work cleaning up this spill. Since Exxon has been given a free pass via their incompetence…… Hmmmmm, Tar and Feathers are looking really , really good about now .
Because ‘Bitumen is not Oil,’ Pipelines Carrying Tar Sands Crude Don’t Pay into US Oil Spill Fund
As Think Progress has just reported, a bizarre technicality allowed Exxon Mobil to avoid paying into the federal oil spill fund responsible for cleanup after the company’s Pegasus pipeline released 12,000 barrels of tar sands oil and water into the town of Mayflower, Arkansas.
According to a thirty-year-old law in the US, diluted bitumen coming from the Alberta tar sands is not classified as oil, meaning pipeline operators planning to transport the corrosive substance across the US – with proposed pipelines like the Keystone XL – are exempt from paying into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
News that Exxon was spared from contributing the 8-cents-per-barrel fee to the clean-up fund added insult to injury this week as cleanup crews discovered oil-soaked ducks covered in “low-quality Wabasca Heavy Crude from Alberta.” Yesterday officials said 10 live ducks were found covered in oil, as well as a number of oiled ducks already deceased.
Photographer Eilish Palmer, known as Lady with a Camera, has been working with HAWK (Helping Arkansas Wild Kritters), a wildlife rehabilitation centre, to locate and help ducks and other animals affected by the spill.
When I connected with Eilish on the phone today, she was outside in the rain searching for more oil-covered wildlife: “I’m actually out in the woods right now looking for animals. We just found two dead ducks and one live one…We actually saw a dead wood duck and we saw its mate, it couldn’t fly away, only walk. It was pretty saturated.”
Eilish said HAWK was the first responder for affected wildlife in the area but has since seen Exxon establish a local mobile unit to treat animals on site. “As the number of animals increased Exxon brought in their own rehabilitation centre because we were taking the animals to a centre about an hour away. HAWK doesn’t have a mobile unit.”
In addition to ducks, the team working with HAWK also found this oil-laden male muskrat, suggesting a number of species may be affected.
The central Arkansas spill caused by Exxon’s aging Pegasus pipeline has reportedly unleashed 10,000 barrels of Canadian heavy crude – but a technicality says it’s not oil, letting the energy giant off the hook from paying into a national cleanup fund.
At least legally speaking, diluted bitumen like the heavy crude that’s overrun Mayflower, Arkansas is not classified as ‘oil.’ While the distinction might normally not mean much, in the case of the disastrous spill in Arkansas it ensures that ExxonMobil will not have to pay into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
According to ThinkProgress, which has brought attention on the strange legal exemption, ExxonMobil has already confirmed that the compromised pipeline was transporting “low-quality Wabasca Heavy crude” from Canada’s Alberta region. That particular form of crude must be diluted with lighter fluids to evenly flow through a pipeline – it also contains large quantities of bitumen (commonly known as asphalt).
The end result is that both the US Congress and the Internal Revenue Service do not consider tar sand oil as oil at all, and thus exempt any company transporting the crude from paying an $0.08-per-barrel tax – which is the primary source of cash for the federal government’s oil spill cleanup fund.
State Department Urged to Declare Keystone Not in National Interest
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration today took the next potential step toward approval of the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, despite the heavy toll the pipeline and its oil will take on the climate crisis, wildlife and the environment. Some 50,000 people protested outside the White House last month in opposition to the pipeline. Today’s announcement came in the form of a supplemental environmental impact statement on Keystone XL.
“If President Obama is serious about confronting the deepening climate crisis, he needs to take Keystone XL off the table,” said Bill Snape of the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s simply no way to be in favor of this dirty, dangerous project and still think we’re going to avert climate catastrophe. The State Department should acknowledge the truth and declare this climate-killing pipeline to be not in the national interest.”
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would, every day, carry up to 35 million gallons of oil strip-mined from Canada’s “tar sands” – some of the dirtiest fuels on the planet. The pipeline would cross the heart of the Midwest and deliver oil to the Gulf of Mexico, where most of it would exported to other countries. Along the way, the pipeline would cut through rivers, streams and prime wildlife habitat, including habitat for at least 20 imperiled species such as the whooping crane and pallid sturgeon.
Strip mining of oil from Alberta’s tar sands is also destroying tens of thousands of acres of boreal forest and polluting hundreds of millions of gallons of water from the Athabasca River, in the process creating toxic ponds so large they can be seen from space.
Extraction and refinement of tar-sands oil produces two times more greenhouse gases per barrel than conventional oil and represents a massive new source of fossil fuels that leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has called “game over” for our ability to avoid a climate catastrophe.
TransCanada’s existing Keystone I tar sands pipeline has reportedly leaked 14 times since it went into operation in June 2010, including one spill of 24,000 gallons. The State Department’s environmental reviews have pointed out that spills from Keystone XL are likely to occur, estimating that there could be as many as about 100 spills over the course of the pipeline’s lifespan.
“Oil spills, environmental damage, wildlife put in harm’s way, a doubling-down on the climate crisis: It’s hard to understand why the Obama government is even considering this project,” said Snape.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 450,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
AP | By By MATTHEW DALY Posted: 03/02/2013 3:23 am EST
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new State Department report is the latest evidence that the long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada should be approved, supporters say.
The draft report, issued Friday, finds there would be no significant environmental impact to most resources along the proposed route from western Canada to refineries in Texas. The report also said other options to get the oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries are worse for climate change.
The new report “again makes clear there is no reason for this critical pipeline to be blocked one more day,” said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. After four years of what he called “needless delays,” Boehner said it is time for President Barack Obama “to stand up for middle-class jobs and energy security and approve the Keystone pipeline.”
Environmentalists see the State Department report in a vastly different light.
They say it was inadequate and failed to account for climate risks posed by the pipeline. The report also is based on a false premise, opponents say — namely, that tar sands in western Canada will be developed for oil production regardless of whether the Keystone XL pipeline is approved.
“Americans are already suffering from the consequences of global warming, from more powerful storms like Hurricane Sandy to drought conditions currently devastating the Midwest and Southwest,” said Daniel Gatti of the group Environment America. Production of oil from Canadian tar sands could add as much as 240 billion metric tons of global warming pollution to the atmosphere, Gatti said, a potential catastrophe that would hasten the arrival of the worst effects of global warming.
Gatti and other opponents said development of the vast tar sands is far from certain, despite assurances by the project’s supporters.
[94] Jail Torturers Not Whistleblowers, Oceans: Humanity’s Landfill, War on Terror Killed Liberty
Published on Jan 31, 2013
Abby Martin Breaks the Set on Whistleblower John Kiriakou’s Fight for Truth, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and Post 9/11 Culture of Fear.
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EPISODE BREAKDOWN: On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks to former CIA official, and torture whistleblower, John Kiriakou, about his prison sentence and Obama’s war on whistleblowers. Abby then takes a look at America’s #1 product, trash, and US’ contribution the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. BTS wraps up the show with a discussion with Media Roots journalist, Robbie Martin, about the gradual deterioration of civil liberties in the US and its relevance to past times of war.
New audio from the President shameless supports the unregulated and unelected body of the Environmental Protection Agency. Apparently, the outlandish regulations create jobs…?
democracynow.org — Last week, President Obama’s called the United States “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas” in a speech about boosting domestic energy production. That concerns Wyoming farmer John Fenton, who already has more than two dozen gas wells on his property. The Environmental Protection Agency ruled in December that water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming, was a result natural gas extraction and the controversial technique known as fracking. “Things changed pretty rapidly,” Fenton says, after fracking took place on his land near Pavillion, and now has to ship in water for drinking. “It didn’t take long to notice a significant impacts to the water, the change to smell like diesel fuel, methane was bubbling in the water. We had neighbors that actually had livestock die from drinking the water and we also saw really huge impacts to our way of life. The farm fields are full of wellheads now that we have to work around. We have people coming and going off our property 24 hours a day, and we’ve seen over a 50 percent devaluation in the value of our land.” We also speak with filmmaker Josh Fox, who was arrested for attempting to recording a Congressional hearing over the EPA report on Pavillion. Fox is producing a sequel to his award-winning film, “Gaslands,” about the impact of fracking across the United States.
Clean water is it ? Seems like the usual duplicitous ” DO as I say and Not as I do” BS to me. So much for Change we can believe in , huh ?
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Steve Horn On Obama’s EPA Censoring A Damning Fracking Report
Steve Horn from DeSmogBlog discusses how President Obama’s EPA censored a damning scientific study on hydro-fracking.
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Seems to me like a whole lot of wishful thinking and mud slinging going on to cover up the fact that both sides stand for the same damn agenda! Can anyone say Psy Ops ???
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Stop Obama’s War on Fracking — WRAG PAC for Mahoning Valley Energy
The Obama Administration and the EPA have waged war on domestic energy for too long. Obama has already destroyed the coal industry, and he is out to prevent fracking at every turn. Do not support the anti-energy president this fall, vote for the pro-energy candidates who will support energy jobs in the Valley and abroad.
The decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline will be the first major climate change decision Obama will make during his second term. And given Obama’s strong comments on climate change during both his inaugural address and the State of the Union, Whitehouse said it’ll be hard for him to approve the project.
“It would create a huge credibility gap with the administration if they go that way,” he said.
The southern portion of the pipeline — from Oklahoma to Texas — is already under construction, and the 1,179-mile portion from Alberta to Nebraska is awaiting approval of a presidential permit from Obama. Last month, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman approved a revised route for the pipeline after the state’s Department of Environmental Quality said the route avoided sensitive areas of the Sandhills region.
The State Department will incorporate the Nebraska evaluation into the supplemental environmental review that will help inform the recommendation Secretary of State John Kerry will make to the president. Kerry thus far hasn’t shown his hand on whether he supports the project or not, but has said that he is committed to studying the pipeline and finishing the process begun by his predecessor, Hillary Clinton.
Kerry’s first foreign guest in his new job was Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, and the two stressed that the economies of the two countries were inextricably linked and important to the other.
But to California billionaire investor Tom Steyer, the idea that investment in Canada should be the basis for economic growth in America is folly, and he said the investment will keep the U.S. economy dependent on oil for decades.
DemocracyNow.org – Forty-eight people, including civil rights leader Julian Bond and NASA climate scientist James Hansen, were arrested Wednesday in front of the White House as part of an ongoing protest calling on the Obama administration to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The action came before a rally planned for Sunday on Washington’s National Mall, which organizers have dubbed “the largest climate rally in history.” We speak to Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, who was arrested in the first act of civil disobedience in the organization’s 120-year history.
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has delayed a decision on TransCanada Corp’s rerouted Keystone XL oil pipeline until after March, even though Nebraska’s governor on Tuesday approved a plan for part of the line running through his state.
“We don’t anticipate being able to conclude our own review before the end of the first quarter of this year,” said Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman at the State Department, which had previously said it would make a decision by that deadline.
She said the department would take into consideration approval of the line by Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman.
Interest in the fate of the $5.3 billion pipeline that would link Canada’s oil sands to refineries in Texas has been heightened after President Barack Obama promised to fight climate change.
Obama said in his inaugural address on Monday the United States will respond to the threat of climate change and that failure to do so would “betray our children and future generations.
The Keystone pipeline is staunchly opposed by environmentalists, who say it will lock the United States for 50 years into dependence on fuel that has higher emissions than average crude oil refined in the United States.
They want the State Department to re-examine the climate impact of the line after it previously said the project would not result in additional emissions because the oil would find its way to market even if Keystone were not built.
After an incredible 46 days, Bob Lindsey Jr. and Diane Wilson have announced the end of their hunger strike targeting Valero and its role in promoting projects like Keystone XL.
After 45 days of fasting on nothing but water and occasional fruit juice, longtime Gulf Coast activists Diane Wilson and Bob Lindsey, Jr. called an end to their hunger strike. The duo undertook the potentially life-threatening, longest lasting hunger strikes they had ever attempted in solidarity with immigrant communities facing environmental injustice in the Houston neighborhood of Manchester and Canadian First Nations communities fighting for indigenous rights and dignity.
“In Houston’s toxic East End, home to the largest petrochemical complexes in North America, marginalized communities of color are forced to breathe poisoned air,” Wilson and Lindsey, Jr. declared in a joint statement released on Tar Sands Blockade‘s website yesterday. “Children here are exposed to eight different cancer causing toxins at all times and homes are encapsulated by huge industrial storage tanks. The Valero refinery billows poison on top of the community’s only park. What is happening in Manchester is a living case of environmental racism and classism.”
The small, predominantly Latino community of Manchester is the most polluted neighborhood in Texas, with Valero responsible for most of the pollution. Instead of working to reduce emissions, Valero plans to bring tar sands to Texas through the toxic Keystone XL pipeline, further denigrating the air, water, and environmental quality of local communities.
A liberal group launched an online petition Friday demanding that potential secretary of State nominee Susan Rice divest herself of “every dollar of stock” in the Canadian company seeking approval for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline to the Gulf Coast.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations owns between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada Corp. stock, according to her financial disclosure forms. The pipeline needs approval from the State Department before it can go forward.
The revelation has opened Rice up to criticism from environmentalists at a time when several Senate Republicans have vowed to oppose her because of her early statements about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
Green groups are pressing the White House to require that any nominee for the position divest themselves of any stock in TransCanada or other oil sands companies.
Susan Rice, the candidate believed to be favored by President Obama to become the next Secretary of State, holds significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would stand to benefit from expansion of the North American tar sands industry and construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline. If confirmed by the Senate, one of Rice’s first duties likely would be consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial mega-project.
Rice’s financial holdings could raise questions about her status as a neutral decision maker. The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Rice owns stock valued between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada, the company seeking a federal permit to transport tar sands crude 1,700 miles to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, crossing fragile Midwest ecosystems and the largest freshwater aquifer in North America.
Beyond that, according to financial disclosure reports, about a third of Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th parallel — including companies with poor environmental and safety records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine. That includes Enbridge, which spilled more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 – the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history.
Rice also has smaller stakes in several other big Canadian energy firms, as well as the country’s transportation companies and coal-fired utilities. Another 20 percent or so of her personal wealth is derived from investments in five Canadian banks. These are some of the institutions that provide loans and financial backing to TransCanada and its competitors for tar sands extraction and major infrastructure projects, such as Keystone XL and Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would stretch 700 miles from Alberta to the Canadian coast.
“It’s really amazing that they’re considering someone for Secretary of State who has millions invested in these companies,” said Bill McKibben, a writer and founder of the activist groups 350.org and Tar Sands Action, which have organized protests against the Keystone XL project. “The State Department has been rife with collusion with the Canadian pipeline builders, and it’s really distressing to have any sense that that might continue to go on.” Emails obtained by an environmental group last year show what critics call a “cozy and complicitous relationship” between State Department officials and a lobbyist for TransCanada, who was also a former deputy campaign director for current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential bid. The agency also assigned an environmental impact review of the Keystone project to a company with financial ties to TransCanada.
As ambassador to the United Nations, Rice has not been directly involved in the State Department’s Keystone XL review, which came to a head at the end of 2011. After initially indicating it would likely approve TransCanada’s application, the State Department ordered a review of alternate routes to avoid putting critical water sources in Nebraska at risk. The move, which officials said would likely push the approval process back to the first three months of 2013, was an attempt to spare the Obama administration a politically risky decision just before an election year.
Greenlighting the pipeline would have hurt the president with environmental advocates – more than 1,200 people were arrested in anti-Keystone protests led by McKibben at the White House in Summer 2011. But denying it outright would have given Republicans an election year attack line, saying Obama had cost the nation much-needed jobs (although independent studies have shown that TransCanada’s job creation claims for the pipeline are greatly exaggerated). As it was, the president still received significant heat, and Mitt Romney pledged to approve the pipeline on Day 1 if he had won the election.
Were she to become Secretary of State, Rice would be in charge of the new environmental review process and would be in a position to decide whether to issue TransCanada a permit for sections of Keystone XL stretching from Oklahoma to the Canadian border. (The pipeline’s southernmost leg has already been approved and is under construction in Texas — with protesters perching in trees and chaining themselves to construction equipment in an attempt to stop it.)
Clinton has said repeatedly that she plans to step down shortly after Obama’s second inauguration in January. In addition to Rice, reportedly the president’s lead candidate for the job, U.S. Senator John Kerry had also reportedly made it onto the president’s short list. Kerry, whose net worth of at least $232 million makes him far wealthier than Rice, does not own shares of TransCanada or Enbridge, the major tar sands pipeline companies, although he does have stock in some other Canadian energy interests.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Rice’s net worth sat somewhere between $23.5 million and $43.5 million in 2009, the latest year for which the center has done a full analysis of her finances. That makes her either the wealthiest person currently serving in the executive branch or a close second to Clinton. (The uncertainty surrounding these figures is due to the way officials are required to disclose their investments; instead of declaring the specific amount of stock they own, they are required by law only to declare a range.)
Other public officials have been criticized for pushing for the Keystone XL project while standing to benefit financially. The nonprofit Sunlight Foundation watchdog group reported in December 2011 that four members of Congress who own shares in TransCanada had pressed for the pipeline’s approval — either by supporting bills that would have forced the State Department to issue a permit or by writing to Clinton or Obama, urging them to give the go-ahead. Rice’s ownership of TransCanada stock was noted by the Sunlight Foundation but not considered a conflict of interest at the time, because she had no direct role in the approval process.
Neither Rice’s office nor the White House returned OnEarth’s calls for comment about her financial holdings.
A portion of the tar sands in Alberta as viewed from the air in 2006. Some have dubbed this the ‘largest energy project in the world.’
Monday, climate activists marched around the White House in opposition against the Keystone XL pipeline, which if built will carry tar sands from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and an international market. The protest, which included over 3,000 people according to organizing groups, is an opening salvo in activists’ battle to convince the Obama Administration to turn down the pipeline for good.
“It’s time to start holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for the wholesale damage they’re doing to our planet,” said Bill McKibben head of 350.org in a press statement. “If [Hurricane] Sandy showed us anything, it’s that the hour is late and the need is urgent–but the fossil fuel industry has terrified our politicians and the result has been two decades of inaction. We need that to change.”
Organized by 350.org, the Sierra Club, and other groups, the march hoped to capture the attention of newly re-elected President Obama. In late 2011, the Obama administration delayed a decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline after green groups raised considerable pressure through civil disobedience and large-scale protests. But with the election behind them, it’s expected the Obama Administration will look again at the pipeline and many experts anticipate the massive project will be rubber-stamped.
The pipeline has become a symbol for a lack of action on climate change in the U.S. Although estimates vary, tar sands emit significantly more carbon than conventional oil sources. Oil taken from tar sands—which is a mix of bitumen, clay, sand, and water—must go through a high energy process and be mixed with a lot of freshwater. The controversial industrial process has also caused significant deforestation in Canada’s boreal forest and polluted nearby rivers. If built, the pipeline would carry around 800,000 barrels of oil every day 1,700 miles from the tar sands Alberta. Protestors fear that opening up the tar sands to an international market will spur large-scale expansion in Canada, and resulting greenhouse gas emissions.
NASA climatologist, James Hansen, has stated that if the full-extent of the tar sands was exploited along with the world’s coal reserves “it is essentially game over” for the climate.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently warned that the world could only consume one third of known fossil fuel deposits before 2050 if we are to have a fifty percent chance of keeping the 2 degree Celsius goal. Meanwhile a new report by the World Bank warned that the world was headed toward a rise in temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius, which scientists agree would lead to catastrophic warming.
“In 2012 we’ve seen epic droughts and the Sandy superstorm—extreme weather delivering a loud and clear message that solutions to climate disruption can’t wait. Keeping tar sands out of America is a critical step to turn this problem around,” Sierra Club President, Allison Chin, said.
In his victory speech, President Obama mentioned the need to tackle climate change. He also talked at some length about the issue at a press conference last week. There he stated that climate change action would not come before jobs and economic growth.
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