Tag Archives: TransCanada

Trump to Add ‘Tasteless Insult to Injury’ by Promoting Fossil Fuel Deregulation in Shadow of Fatal Chemical Fire

“It’s no surprise that Trump is once again taking an action championed by climate deniers and fossil fuel companies.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 4-8-2019

A chemical plant fire at 16503 Ramsey Road in Crosby, Texas on Tuesday, April 2. (Photo: Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office)

Just a week after a chemical plant explosion killed one worker and spewed thousands of pounds of dangerous pollutants into the air in Crosby, Texas, President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to visit that city Wednesday to sign executive orders to speed up approval of pipelines and other fossil fuel projects.

“In coming to the location of a deadly fossil fuel-related explosion to sign an order that would gut states’ power to protect residents from the hazards of oil and gas pipelines, Trump is adding tasteless insult to the injury he is inflicting on our planet,” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement. Continue reading →

‘Shameful Day for Canada’: First Nations Encampment Violently Raided, Land Protectors Arrested

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“Is this a normal way to respond to Indigenous people who are peacefully protecting their drinking water from fracking pipelines?”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 1-8-2019

Reacting to footage of the “invasion” by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on Monday, author and activist Naomi Klein said it was “a shameful day for Canada, which has marketed itself as a progressive leader on climate and Indigenous rights.” (Photo: Michael Toledano/@M_Tol)

More than 50 protests have been planned for across the globe on Tuesday in solidarity with a First Nations group fighting against the construction of TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink through unceded Wet’suwet’en territory, with the number of protests rising overnight after Canadian police broke down a checkpoint gate erected by Indigenous land protectors and arrested more than a dozen people.

The moment RCMP came over the gates and started making arrests to enforce the Coastal GasLink injunction. pic.twitter.com/n6Cy1RLUu4

— ChantelleBellrichard (@pieglue) January 8, 2019

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In Another Blow to Keystone XL, Judge Rules TransCanada Can’t Conduct Pre-Construction Work

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Indigenous and environmental groups as well as locals landowners celebrated the court victory, denouncing the proposed tar sands pipeline as “reckless and risky.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 12-8-2018

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline have succeeded in blocking construction on the tar sands project for the past decade. (Photo: Elvert Barnes/Flickr/cc)

Opponents of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline—from indigenous and environmental groups to local farmers and ranchers—celebrated a win in court after a federal judge ruled on Friday that the fossil fuel giant cannot conduct pre-construction work on the pipeline until the full environmental review ordered last month is complete.

“Somehow TransCanada still hasn’t gotten the message that Keystone XL is a lost cause,” observed Sierra Club senior attorney Doug Hayes. “We’ve held off construction of this dirty tar sands pipeline for a decade because it would be a bad deal for the American people, and [Friday’s] ruling is yet another reminder that it will never be built.” Continue reading →

Saying Approval by Trump Ignored Obvious Facts and Threats, Federal Judge Halts Construction of Keystone XL Pipeline

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Native tribes and environmentalists celebrated the ruling as “a decisive moment in our fight against the corporate polluters who have rushed to destroy our planet”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 11-9-2018

Photo by chesapeakeclimate (8/22/11 Uploaded by Ekabhishek) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

In a major victory for the planet and blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up fossil fuel extraction and production in the face of grave climate consequences, a federal judge on Thursday halted all construction of TransCanada’s 1,200-mile long Keystone XL pipeline and tossed out the White House’s fact-free approval of the project.

Issued by Judge Brian Morris of the District of Montana, the ruling ripped President Donald Trump’s State Department for blithely tossing out “prior factual findings related to climate change” to rush through the Keystone pipeline and using “outdated information” on the severe threat the tar sands project poses to endangered species, tribal lands, and the water supply. Continue reading →

‘Historic First’: Nebraska Farmers Return Land to Ponca Tribe in Effort to Block Keystone XL

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“We want to protect this land,” said the tribe’s state chairman. “We don’t want to see a pipeline go through.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 6-15-2018

In a move that could block the path of the Keystone XL pipeline, a couple in Nebraska signed over a portion of farmland to the Ponca Tribe. (Photo: @BoldNebraska/Twitter)

In a move that could challenge the proposed path of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline—and acknowledges the U.S. government’s long history of abusing Native Americans and forcing them off their lands—a Nebraska farm couple has returned a portion of ancestral land to the Ponca Tribe.

At a deed-signing ceremony earlier this week, farmers Art and Helen Tanderup transferred to the tribe a 1.6-acre plot of land that falls on Ponca “Trail of Tears.” Continue reading →

As Predicted—Because ‘Pipelines Are Bound to Spill’—Existing Keystone Gushes 200K Gallons of Oil

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‘With their horrible safety record, today’s spill is just the latest tragedy caused by the irresponsible oil company TransCanada.’

By Jon Queally, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 11-16-2017

Those who had warned against the pipeline’s approval for precisely these reasons and continue to worked tirelessly to prevent the construction of the Keystone XL (KXL) project, were among the first to respond to Thursday’s spill. (Photo: Tar Sands Blockade)

Some of the worst fears and dire predictions of opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline came true on Thursday when pipeline owner TransCanada announced that more than 200,000 gallons of oil had spilled from the existing portion of the Keystone system in Marshall County, South Dakota.

While the company reported the spill in a public statement, Buzzfeed notes there was an approximately four-and-a-half hour gap between when the company said the breach was discovered at 6:00 am and when local officials say they were notified at 10:30 am. As a South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources told the news outlet, “We’re not quite sure why there was a time gap in there.” Continue reading →

‘This Is My Act of Love’: Climate Activists Shut Down All US-Canada Tar Sands Pipelines

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Coordinated show of resistance executed in solidarity with those fighting against Dakota Access pipeline

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-11-2016

Michael Foster, 52, pictured here, said, “All of our climate victories are meaningless if we don’t stop extracting oil, coal and gas now.” (Photo: Shutitdown.today)

Five activists shut down all the tar sands pipelines crossing the Canada-U.S. border Tuesday morning, in a bold, coordinated show of climate resistance amid the ongoing fight against the Dakota Access pipeline.

The activists employed manual safety valves to shut down Enbridge’s line 4 and 67 in Leonard, Minnesota; TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline in Walhalla, North Dakota; Spectra Energy’s Express pipeline in Coal Banks Landing, Montana; and Kinder-Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline in Anacortes, Washington. Continue reading →

‘They’re Trying to Poison Our Future,’ Resistance Heats Up to Stop ‘Black Snake’ From Slithering Through Midwest

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Native tribes, landowners, environmental activists trying to stop pipeline that rivals Keystone XL in length

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-12-2016

Sioux youth from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota rallied with supporters in Union Square [in New York] after running 2,000 miles across the United States to protest the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline. (Photo and caption: Joe Catron/flickr/cc))

Resistance against a new Bakken crude pipeline stepped up this week with the arrest of 12 people on Thursday near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota.

“They’re trying to lay a pipe across our water. They’re trying to poison our future,” said one of the people taking part in the action.

YouTube user UrbanNativeEra posted this video of the event: Continue reading →

Worse Than Keystone XL? TransCanada’s Terrifying “Plan B”

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“TransCanada’s Energy East proposal is truly Keystone XL on steroids,” says Natural Resources Defense Council

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 7-26-2016

Over the course of a single year, the NRDC states, tankers could carry 328 million barrels of tar sands oil down the East Coast—enough oil to fill more than 20,000 Olympic pools. (Photo: Andrew Priest/flickr/cc)

The pipeline giant TransCanada, stymied in its attempt to drive Keystone XL through America’s heartland, is facing renewed opposition to its “new and equally misguided proposal” to build the Energy East pipeline across Canada and ship tar sands oil via tankers along the U.S. East Coast to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

In partnership with a number of Canadian and U.S. environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)—a major player in the fight to defeat Keystone XL—on Tuesday released a new report outlining how Energy East would “effectively create a waterborne tar sands pipeline with hundreds of new oil tankers traversing the Atlantic coastline, making vast areas of the Eastern Seaboard vulnerable to a dangerous tar sands spill.” Continue reading →

The Pipeline Strikes Back: the audacity of TransCanada’s $15b suit against the U.S.

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The political saga of the Keystone XL pipeline is like a real-life version of The Force Awakens. So why are we giving the Dark Side even more power?

By Jim Shultz. Published 2-5-16 by openDemocracy

The Empire Strikes Back. Credit: starwars.wikia.com.

In case you didn’t notice, the new blockbuster Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, ends pretty much the same way the first one did when it came out in the summer of 1977. The bad guys build a Death Star machine that can kill whole planets, the good guys fight back with pluck and grit, and, just in the nick of time, destroy the machine.

The political saga of the Keystone XL pipeline has followed essentially the same plot. TransCanada (playing the role of the Empire) sought to build a metal tunnel from Alberta to the Gulf Coast to transport oil from the Canadian tar sands. The pipeline, not unlike a Death Star, threatened the planet because it would have amped up carbon emissions and quickened the pace of global climate change. In the Keystone saga, pluck and grit came in the form of protests, lawsuits, arrests, and the encirclement of the White House—the equivalent of a Jedi counter-attack. Continue reading →

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The Movement Continues – Globally

Tag Archives: TransCanada

‘They’re Trying to Poison Our Future,’ Resistance Heats Up to Stop ‘Black Snake’ From Slithering Through Midwest

Native tribes, landowners, environmental activists trying to stop pipeline that rivals Keystone XL in length

Worse Than Keystone XL? TransCanada’s Terrifying “Plan B”

“TransCanada’s Energy East proposal is truly Keystone XL on steroids,” says Natural Resources Defense Council