Salon.com > TransCanada

TransCanada minister preaches the gospel of crude oil

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:56:00 +0000

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.—Matthew 5:13

“I pastored the First Baptist Church out here in Polk for three and a half years,” Myron Stafford said. His distinct Southern drawl marked him as an outsider, but everything about him -- from his salt-and-pepper temples to his jeans and Western shirt -- made Stafford seem familiar to Terry Van Housen, a cattle feed yard operator in Stromsburg, Nebraska. Stromsburg isn’t far from Polk, where Stafford said he had filled in for the local minister, delivering Sunday sermons. Still, Van Housen couldn’t place him, so Stafford reminded Terry of a wedding he had performed recently, for Robbie Glasser’s son. Then he ticked off recent funerals he had presided over.

“I did three last year,” Stafford began. “I did Don’s funeral.”

“Don Hanquist?” Van Housen jumped in.

“Yeah. I did Mr. Recknor’s funeral.”

New spill reveals how horrible Keystone could be

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 19:12:00 +0000

The Keystone XL pipeline was already a bad idea three days ago. It is a terrible idea today.

This weekend, the Orwellian-named Exxon Pegasus pipeline spilled thousands of barrels of oil into a residential neighborhood in Mayflower, Ark. Twenty-two families were evacuated from their homes, and cleanup, days later, continues. Check out this appalling video of crude oil leaking into the streets of this everyday American community:

The oil is the same heavy crude from tar sands that oil companies behind the Keystone XL pipeline want to extract. In fact, the only difference between the Pegasus pipeline that leaked and the proposed Keystone XL? The proposed Keystone XL is longer --- over 300 miles longer than the pipeline that leaked in Arkansas on Friday. That means the Keystone XL pipeline is even more likely to leak. Not exactly a comforting prospect.

Keystone XL protesters blockade themselves inside pipeline

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:29:00 +0000

On Monday two activists protesting the expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline blockaded themselves inside the pipeline itself in an unprecedented protest move. The Tar Sands Blockade group has staged a number of high-profile blockades in East Texas, where the southern leg of the pipeline is being constructed, but this was the very first blockade to enter the pipeline and involved extreme risk to the participants. As a Tar Sands Blockade release explained:

Using a blockading technique never implemented before, Matt Almonte and Glen Collins locked themselves between two barrels of concrete weighing over six hundred pounds each. Located twenty-five feet into a pipe segment waiting to be laid in the ground, the outer barrel is barricading the pipe’s opening and neither barrel can be moved without risking serious injury to the blockaders.

A neo-Nazi spotted among Keystone XL pipeline workers

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 21:22:00 +0000

It is not uncommon for environmental activists to refer to their big business opponents as "fascists." It is, however, less common for an environmentalist's bête noire to actively own the term.

Yet according to photo and video evidence captured during a protest against Keystone XL pipeline construction in Texas last week, there appears to be an actual neo-Nazi among the ranks of construction workers (see image above).

"[A] Keystone XL construction supervisor was on scene directing workers and police while wearing a helmet covered questionable symbols: a Swastika and confederate flag," noted the Tar Sands Blockade group, which is spearheading resistance to the TransCanada-owned pipeline -- a project that threatens water supplies and ecosystems, expands U.S. reliance on oil and promises to further line Koch brother pockets.

Ron Seifert, an activist and spokesperson for the Tar Sands Blockade, confirmed the veracity of the racist symbol image. "It's very real, not tampered with at all. I was there," he told Salon. Footage from the protest (see below) -- during which Green Party nominee for president Jill Stein was arrested -- also captures the Nazi-helmeted man.

Texas landowners take a rare stand against Big Oil

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:06:00 +0000

SUMNER, Texas (AP) — Oil has long lived in harmony with farmland and cattle across the Texas landscape, a symbiosis nurtured by generations and built on an unspoken honor code that allowed agriculture to thrive while oil was extracted.

Proud Texans have long welcomed the industry because of the cash it brings to sustain agriculture, but also see its presence as part of their patriotic duty to help wean the United States off "foreign" oil. So the answer to companies that wanted to build pipelines has usually been simple: Yes.

Enter TransCanada.

As the company pursues construction of a controversial 1,179-mile-long cross-country pipeline meant to bring Canadian tar sands oil to South Texas refineries, it's finding opposition in the unlikeliest of places: oil-friendly Texas, a state that has more pipelines snaking through the ground than any other.

In the minds of some landowners approached by TransCanada for land, the company has broken an unspoken code.

Nearly half the steel TransCanada is using is not American-made and the company won't promise to use local workers exclusively; it can't guarantee the oil will remain in the United States. It has snatched land. Possibly most egregious: They've behaved like arrogant foreigners, unworthy of operating in Texas.