Introducing the Keystone Pipeline's Bigger, Uglier Older Brother

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

20 March 16

t's been a while since we checked in on our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the now mercifully dormant continent-spanning death funnel and conservative fetish object designed to bring the world's dirtiest fossil fuel from the environmental hellspout of northern Alberta down the spine of the continent, through much of the world's most arable farmland, to the refineries of the Texas coast, and thence to the world. Much of the opposition arose from the fact that TransCanada, the multinational corporation proposing to build the pipeline, showed itself to be utterly incapable of acting in good faith. Well, the project's dead—for now—but the bad faith goes on and on.

The edits, recommended in a nine-page fax from TransCanadaCorp in late September 2015, were incorporated into a final report released by the NEB one month later. Some of those changes removed key words like "rupture" and "blowdown" to soften the language in the final report and other inconvenient details about TransCanada's safety performance. Critics say the edits suggest that the watchdog is either weak or showing bias—problems that could jeopardize public safety. TransCanada sees it differently. "Our suggested edits to the NEB report were offered to achieve clarity and accuracy in the report," said TransCanada spokesman Mark Cooper. In total, 23 of the 34 changes watered down or deleted statements that would have made the company look bad. "It reveals an unnecessary and inappropriate coziness between the NEB and a company that it is regulating," said Mark Calzavara, a regional Toronto organizer with the Council of Canadians, after reviewing the changes. "It's outrageous."

This company buys influence. It has a visceral aversion to telling the truth about anything, ever. It fools the people it can't bully, and it bullies the people it can't fool. Given the historical record of TransCanada's shenanigans regarding this project, is there any doubt that, in the occasion of a catastrophic event, the company at first would lie about the severity of the event, and then use every trick in the law books and every euphemism in a thesaurus to duck responsibility and stick the suckers with the oily alfalfa with the bill? You'd have to be crazy (or pretty thoroughly bribed) to believe it wouldn't.

(Canadian energy behemoths also are joining in the fight against the president's climate-change plan. Keep this up, hosers, and we're never giving Neil Young back.)

In other pipeline news, Enbridge, the company that gave us the largest inland oil spill in history, is planning to expand its pipelines in the Great Lakes area to the point where the Enbridge pipelines would carry more of the poisonous glop even than the Keystone XL would have carried. This expansion puts at risk a big chunk of northern Wisconsin, as well as the headwaters of the Mississippi in Minnesota. The folks living in and around the proposed expansion route naturally are alarmed.

Enbridge Energy Co., which wants to expand pipeline capacity in northern Wisconsin, is drawing concerns because of the company's operating history of spills and other problems. A new state report says the company has had 85 oil spills over the past decade, although most were considered small. The Department of Natural Resources has released an environmental-impact statement on the project in Douglas County. It concluded that a spill of 500 gallons or more would have a "substantial" impact on water resources and endangered species and habitat, meaning leaking oil could remain in the environment for up to a year. The report, more than 600 pages long, analyzes potential impacts of a 14-mile-long project that environmentalists say has statewide implications.

Pipelines leak. The companies that own them lie. That is all ye know and all ye need to know.