Oil Uber Alles? Pipeline Mania & The Deep North

"Kayaktavists" surround a Shell Oil rig in Seattle's
Elliot Bay, May 15, 2015

With his 100th day in office approaching, and precious little to show for it save for his nomination of yet another conservative justice to the Supreme Court who believes the Constitution should protect corporations, El Presidente Loco took aim at the environment once again and fired off another fossil fuel-friendly executive order.

But ordering his toothless EPA to gut environmental protections apparently wasn't enough - not by a long shot.


Trump's executive order on Wednesday calls for a "review" of federal oversight of all state lands over 100,000 acres designated as national monuments by previous presidents since 1996.

He didn't stop there.

As Alessandra Potenza reported in an article posted on TheVerge.com, earlier today Trump signed yet another executive order that "instructs the Department of Interior to review locations for offshore oil and gas exploration and leasing that were put off limits by the Obama administration. That includes millions of acres in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans that Obama withdrew permanently from drilling in December 2016." 

As an alarming essay on Arctic drilling by Earth Justice notes, global warming is already impacting the Arctic at a rate twice that of other regions of the Earth, allowing offshore drilling there would be disastrous for the environment.

An analysis released by the Department of Interior in December, 2015 concluded that there is a 75% chance of multiple oil spills in the Chukchi Sea should drilling be permitted - in a pristine marine environment where weather conditions are so harsh that oil spill cleanup would be impossible.

Remarkably, as Potenza's article notes, today's executive order also "asks for a review of marine monuments and sanctuaries created in the past ten years, and prohibits the creation of new ones"

The idea that a politician can block the creation of new marine sanctuaries is simply absurd.

Environmental activist Winona LaDuke

So essentially, in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to be a total lackey to the fossil fuel industry, 45 is now attempting to open up millions of acres of pristine federal lands to drilling for oil, natural gas and other minerals to private corporations.

Who as we all know, care soooo much about the environment.

But why this perplexing rush to to extract more oil?

On Wednesday morning's Brian Lehrer Show, the noted Native American environmental rights activist Winona LaDuke called into question the need for this unprecedented expansion of drilling and pipeline capacity in the U.S., as well as the Trump administration and Republican Congress' obsession with elevating the fossil fuel industry's insatiable thirst for profit over environmental safety and the health of the American people.

Take a few minutes to click over to the WNYC.org Website and listen to the interview if you're
interested in some perspective on the aftermath of the Dakota Access Pipeline out in the remote stretch of North Dakota where the Standing Rock Sioux galvanized global support for their efforts to block a controversial stretch of oil pipeline from passing beneath land they consider scared.

She spent a year of her life living in the Oceti-Sakowin protest camp in North Dakota alongside hundreds of other Native American water protectors, and serves as the executive director of the Native American activist group Honor the Earth.

LaDuke, who graduated from Harvard and Antioch universities and is a globally recognized environmental justice advocate, is also the author of six books and a former board member of Greenpeace, USA.

The old elementary school in Fort Yates on the
Standing Rock Sioux reservation

During her interview on Wednesday, she noted the irony of the fact that Energy Transfer Partners spent about $1.3 billion dollars on the section of the Dakota Access Pipeline that runs through North Dakota to improve what Republicans are fond of calling "energy infrastructure and energy independence".

But all that money did little to improve life on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.

Even though the DAPL threatens their water and environment.

For example, as a 2015 Al-Jazeera article by Chelsey Luger reported, meth and opiate addiction have surpassed alcohol as the source of substance abuse that represents one of the most significant dangers to the Standing Rock Sioux community.

Driven in no small part by the lack of job opportunities and federal and state funding as well as inadequate heath facilities and social services.

As LaDuke told Brian Lehrer on Wednesday, the clinic on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation is over 50 years old.

She noted that the main road that goes through there, Highway1806, doesn't even have a shoulder.

Perhaps all that fiery Republican passion for "energy infrastructure" doesn't include the roads and highways around the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.

In fact, it was the Backwater Bridge on ND 1806 where DAPL protesters famously set up barricades and engaged in conflicts with members of North Dakota law enforcement - sections of ND 1806 were closed for long stretches by the Morton County Sheriff's Department during the protests.

Oh and speaking of which...

Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier

LaDuke had a few interesting things to say about Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier.

She accused him of being the principle architect behind the heavy-handed violent response to the peaceful DAPL demonstrations by members of the Morton County Sheriff's Department as well as other members of ND law enforcement who were called in to help quell peaceful protests.


LaDuke claims that Kirchmeier's overt bias and prejudice against Native Americans is so extreme that many have taken to calling him a "modern day Bull Connor".

In reference to the notorious white supremacist commissioner of public safety in Birmingham who, among other things, ordered Birmingham PD to stay away from the Trailways bus station so that members of the KKK could violently attack Freedom Riders riding through the south to protest segregation in 1961.

LaDuke noted that the treatment of Native Americans by some members of law enforcement in North Dakota, and the willingness of local and federal government to permit oil companies to run roughshod over Native American land have spurred some to refer to the region as "The Deep North."

One of the most interesting observations LaDuke made was that after the billions of dollars that Energy Transfer Partners spent to construct the DAPL, which is designed to transport crude oil from the Bakken Oil Fields, in some ways it's a pipeline to nowhere.

The oil boom that drew thousands of workers to the Bakken Oil Fields has long since turned to a bust, resulting in the loss of thousands of oil industry jobs and the closing of hundreds of oil rigs due to years of massive overproduction and the steep drop in global oil prices that prompted OPEC to announce cuts in oil production last year.

The global markets for the Bakken crude oil that the DAPL is supposed to transport to terminal port facilities in the Gulf for export to other countries, are drying up.

Trans Mountain Pipeline cuts through vast sections
of Canadian wilderness

Even as Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau have OK'd controversial pipeline expansion to transport Canadian Tar Sands oil across the border into the U.S.

Pipeline construction, like Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Pipeline slated to transport crude from Alberta to terminals in British Columbia on Canada's west coast, is also taking place in other sections of the U.S., including in LaDuke's home state of Minnesota.



She lives on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota where the aging Enbridge Pipeline system has been a source of dangerous oil spills that threaten the Great Lakes ecosystem.

Canada's National Energy Board just gave Enbridge the go ahead to spend $7.5 billion to replace it's Line 3 Pipeline which stretches 1,660 kilometers from Hardisty, Alberta southeast to Lake Superior in Wisconsin - cutting across parts of LaDuke's White Earth reservation in Minnesota in the process.

With the global demand for oil flat and China starting to lead unprecedented expansion into the use of alternative energy sources like solar, it begs the question - does all this pipeline construction in Canada and the U.S. make practical sense for anyone but the oil companies?

On the eve of Donald Trump's 100th day in office, it seems that, like so many other White House initiatives launched since January 20th, this pipeline mania only makes sense from the isolated perspective of Trump himself - and the oil industry he seems so determined to please.

Dishonorable Dealings In the Dakotas?

The massive Crazy Horse Monument, Black Hills, SD

Even before the Sacred Black Hills territory was stripped away from the Great Sioux Reservation by an Act of Congress passed on February 28, 1877, an act which violated Article 2 of the Treaty of Fort Laramie signed nine years before on April 29, 1868, lawmakers and the federal courts (in conjunction with private interests) have consistently conspired to systematically violate the rights of the Sioux.


In what would become an unfortunate portent of the future, it was the discovery of gold in the Black Hills by European prospectors in 1874 that sparked the decision by the U.S. government to move the Sioux from the same very territory which had been promised to them by said government in perpetuity just over a decade before.

In fact, a 1980 Supreme Court Case decision in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians ruled that the Sioux had been unfairly stripped of their ownership of the Black Hills territory in 1877.

The high court awarded the Sioux the value of that land in 1877 plus interest, $106 million, but in a testament to their resolve, the Sioux refused to take it; preferring to wait to gain back their rightful ownership of the Black Hills.

That award has been held in trust in the U.S. Treasury and is reportedly worth over a $1 billion today.

In their majority opinion the Supreme Court wrote in part, "A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history."

Construction continues near a DAPL protest camp  

Could the justices who handed down that decision 37 years ago have predicted the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the 21st century?

Probably not - but history often repeats itself.

And construction on that controversial stretch of pipeline slated to carry another valuable natural resource, oil, under yet another stretch of land sacred to the Sioux, began again last Thursday.

Aided by another court decision.

As Nika Knight reported in an article for CommonDreams.org, on Monday U.S. District Judge James Boasberg denied an emergency request by lawyers representing the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux to halt contruction of the pipeline.

With that ruling, contractors hired by Energy Transfer Partners (the company building the DAPL), can continue to prepare to run a stretch of pipeline directly beneath Lake Oahe - a resevoir near Cannon Ball, North Dakota near the Missouri River.

Once completed, hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day will flow through that pipeline underneath a source of fresh water for some 20 million people.

Aside from the obvious environmental danger, lawyers for the Sioux also tried to make the case that the presence of the pipeline is an infringement on their religious rights because the oil will flow next to sacred lands.

But Judge Boasberg played down their concerns, saying in part, "as long as oil isn't flowing through the pipeline, there is no imminent harm to the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes."

But it's not Judge Boasberg's fresh water supply that will be threatened by an oil pipeline spill.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg 

Judge Boasberg was appointed by President Obama.

But as CounterPunch.org reports, he is, by virtue of his upbringing, a child of privilege and means.

He prepped at St. Albans, one of the most prestigious private schools in the D.C. area, and attended Yale and Oxford.

Clearly he's a learned man with extensive legal experience and a keen intellect.

But it's still fair and reasonable to ask the question: will he follow the law in this case?

Should the disturbing pattern of infringements upon Sioux tribal lands and sovereignty by the U.S. government and private interests motivated by profit in the 19th century be taken into account in the legal challenges to the DAPL?

Or will this scion of the establishment be more swayed by the collective legal muscle of the corporate lawyers working on behalf of Energy Transfer Partners and the group of banks (including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, HSBC and Goldman Sachs) that backed construction of the project with a $3.75 billion line of credit?

In all fairness to Judge Boasberg, he is scheduled to hear arguments at a hearing on February 27th to rule on the Sioux's request for an injunction against the U.S. Army Corps for their having granted the final easement that allowed ETP's contractors to begin drilling under Lake Oahe.

He also ordered ETP to provide updates to the court on a weekly basis so that all concerned will know exactly when oil will actually being to flow through the pipeline.

But those are all big "if's" considering how the federal government stripped the Sioux of the Black Hills 140 years ago.

And in the meantime, the forces of American of corporatocracy are quietly stirring in the vast open stretches around Cannonball, North Dakota near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation - and beyond.

Polarization In the Pipeline

Opposition to DAPL in Oklahoma on Tuesday

Critics of America's divisive new POTUS have pointed to his unpredictability as one of the numerous flaws in his shaky leadership style.

But on the first Tuesday of this fledgling administration Trump was anything but unpredictable as he signed a slew of executive orders that read like the start of an all-out assault on the environmental protections that keep our air, water and soil safe.



It's probably safe to say that those executive orders were, in part, a reaction to the fact his fragile ego is likely still bruised from all the Women's Marches that took place across America (and the world) on Saturday.

Trump's latest political boasting includes pledges to kickstart the stalled Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, but if he had even a remote interest in reuniting a country left divided by his toxic presidential campaign, this was clearly not the move. But he did it anyway.

As a brief snapshot-reminder of just how divisive these pipeline projects are, my good friend and former high school classmate James sent me the above photo his wife took yesterday afternoon.

Now some of you may recall that James is a resident of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, a state where rampant natural gas fracking has already caused an exponential increase in earthquake activity - and yes, the state where Scott Pruitt, Trump's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency served as attorney general.

James and his wife were just outside of Ada, Oklahoma on Tuesday when they saw the car pictured above with hand-drawn letters covering the back windshield spelling out the widely-shared Twitter hashtag,  #NoDAPL and the words "Water Is Life."

Major Canadian & U.S. pipelines 

It was encouraging to see that kind of grass roots resistance popping up so quickly after Trump's announcement about moving forward on both controversial pipeline projects.

The White House announcements also sparked quick reactions from environmental groups and politicians in Washington as well.

Including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The feisty former Democratic candidate, who made opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline a plank of his presidential campaign, defiantly Tweeted that "I will do everything I can to stop Keystone XL and DAPL."

Native American activists who spent months protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline quickly announced plans to oppose it in court if necessary, but the larger trend is troubling for America's natural, political and ethical environments.

Remember, Trump stands to reap massive personal windfalls as a direct result of his using his executive powers to push to approve these pipelines.

Most reasonable-minded folks would call that conflict of interest...on steroids.

Not only has the unpopular POTUS disclosed large personal investments in some of the major oil companies that have partnered to invest in building the DAPL, as Greenpeace.org reported he's accepted large campaign contributions from the CEO of the largest fracking company in America Harold Hamm.

Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners

Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the DAPL, donated $100,300 in campaign contributions to Trump's presidential campaign.

Trump is already facing a potential lawsuit filed on Monday by a team of legal and Constitutional scholars and experts who argue that his tangled secretive web of foreign investments represents a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

We should all familiarize ourselves with the Emoluments Clause by the way, the way Trump's transition is going, odds are good that we'll be hearing about it again soon.

The massive grassroots opposition to the DAPL and Keystone XL isn't just about those two specific projects, it's also about the larger threat to America's environmental protections that are now in the hands of a Republican president who thinks climate change is a "hoax" cooked up by the Chinese, and a Republican Congress largely bought and paid for the nations largest oil and gas companies.

There are other large-scale pipeline projects in the works that have received far less national media attention which also pose grave potential threats to the natural environment.

Like the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana.

As New Orleans reporter Aviva Shen reported in an article posted on ThinkProgress.org back on January 14th, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline would form the final leg of the Dakota Access Route, forming a "bridge" pipeline that would link to an existing pipeline that stretches from Nederaland, Texas to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Section of swamp in the Atchafalaya Basin

As Shen notes:

"The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would carry 480,000 barrels of oil a day a final 162 miles across the state to refineries and ports, through eight watersheds and long stretches of fragile wetlands."

That includes parts of the Atchafalaya Basin, a fragile system of rivers, swamps, bayous and wetlands covering 1.4 million acres that stretches 140 miles across central Louisiana.

Not only is it a National Heritage site, it's the largest area of wetlands and swamp in the United States teeming with wildlife where the Atchafalaya River meets the Gulf of Mexico.

The idea of a pipeline that carries 480,000 barrels of crude oil a day rupturing in a remote section of the Atchafalaya Basin is like imagining an environmental crime of incalculable proportions.

And remember that's oil we (Americans) don't actually need - the bulk of the tar sands crude extracted from North Dakota will be transported south to refineries and ports along the Gulf of Mexico where it will be loaded on to tankers and exported to other countries.

In the long term that has little to do with America's "energy independence", it only makes sense to the profit margins of the web of companies that will extract the oil, build the pipelines, refine the oil and ship it overseas to make a profit.

Trans-Pecos Pipeline cuts through Texas 

Profit (for a relative few) that comes at a cost to the environment that will be passed on to human, wildlife and plant life in the form of increased toxins in the soil, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and contaminated fresh water from pipeline leaks.

There are real consequences to this fury of pipeline expansion, for example an Aljazeera.com article in 2015 reported an 87% increase in pipeline accidents between 2009 and 2014.

Not just oil pipelines either.

With America's untested Twitter-happy POTUS intentionally releasing outlandish headline-grabbing statements via his social media account on a daily basis to distract the media and public from all the real crazy shit Republicans are doing, it's pretty unlikely the words Trans-Pecos Pipeline will splash across the headlines of mainstream media anytime soon.

Since 2014 when it was first announced, local residents who live in the Big Bend region of Texas have been standing in opposition to this project that will transport fracked natural gas 143 miles from Texas to Mexico through a 42-inch diameter pipeline that will transport up to 1.4 million cubic-feet of natural gas per day under 1,400 pounds of pressure per square-inch.

Raise your hand if you'd want to live within a mile of that.

Who won the contract to build this $770 million project designed as a way to export some of the massive glut of natural gas in America (a result of rampant over-production) to a country with the 6th largest natural gas reserves in the world?

As MotherJones.com reported, two multi-billionaires, Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the 2nd richest man in the world and (drum roll please....) Kelcy Warren, CEO of the aforementioned Energy Transfer Partners.

Same company building the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Same guy who's in business with Trump as you read these words and gave $100,300 to his campaign.

With the profiteering POTUS announcing that his own administration officials will now censor the science presented on the Web pages of the EPA, it's a clear signal that his goal is to allow fossil fuel companies unlimited leeway to encroach on the environment to increase their profits.

It's also clear that this slew of new pipeline construction is going to contribute far more to global warming and political polarization than it will to the long-term prosperity and best interests of the American people.

We're not in Kansas anymore, and we're way beyond "drill baby drill."

In Defiance of the Black Snake

Police using pepper spray on Standing Rock
protesters in North Dakota on Nov 2nd [Reuters]

Throughout modern history images like Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a young Kim Phuc fleeing a South Vietnamese village in 1972, after having her clothes burned off her body by Napalm dropped by South Vietnamese planes, have demonstrated the power of visual media to alter public perception and government policy and law on major social issues like the Vietnam War and civil rights.




But it remains to be seen whether images like the one seen above of heavily-armed members of local law enforcement using pepper spray against unarmed protesters trying to cross a stream near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation back in early November will move the Dakota Access Pipeline's principal owner, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, to seek an alternate route for the stretch of the pipeline that could potentially threaten the Missouri River - and the fresh water source for the Standing Rock Sioux.

Throughout Sunday night some truly disturbing images of local and state police using high-powered water cannons on unarmed demonstrators trying to cross a bridge were distributed across social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram until mainstream media finally began devoting coverage of the incident.

I watched a short video posted on Twitter of a medic who was treating injured protesters at a make-shift first-aid station at the Standing Rock camp; he said the use of water cannons had caused a number of minor injuries created when people fell trying to get away.

Standing Rock protesters being hosed by
water cannons Sunday night

He also said people were being treated after being shot by rubber bullets.

Drone footage showed some limited ariel shots of the incident, including efforts by police to used the water cannons to take out the drone to prevent footage of the confrontation from being leaked to the media.





Accounts from other medics on the scene reported that up to 200 people were injured from shrapnel from concussion grenades, bean bags fired at point blank range and symptoms of hypothermia from some protesters who were intentionally doused with water while temperatures were in the 20's - causing their clothes to freeze.

Proponents of the DAPL claim that the 1,127 mile pipeline is a safer option than rail cars to transport highly volatile crude oil from the Bakken Shelf in North Dakota down through South Dakota and Iowa to a terminal storage facility in Illinois.

But Energy Transfer Partners have offered little in the way of guarantees that the company would be financially equipped or prepared to deal with the major environmental consequences of a serious pipeline break - as a Wikipedia article reports the state of Iowa only requires pipeline owners to keep a $250,000 surety bond on hold in the event of a major spill.

Think about that.

Ruptured section of the Kalamazoo pipeline 

How far is $250,000 going to go to cover a major underground pipeline break that spills hundreds of thousands of gallons of thick, viscous Bakken crude that could threaten wildlife, farm land and fresh water supplies?

Environmental organizations estimate that at least $1 billion needs to be held in reserve to deal with a major accident.

Remember the pipeline rupture in Kalamazoo, Michigan back in 2010?

The Canadian oil company Enbridge ignored three separate reports about the six-foot section of ruptured section of pipeline that eventually spilled over a million gallons of heavy Tar Sands oil into a section of the Kalamazoo River that spilled 40 miles downstream, drenching animals and 4,435 acres of land along the river bank.

That man-made disaster cost Enbridge $1.2 billion to clean up, a $177 million settlement, it displaced over 150 families and closed sections of the Kalamazoo River for two years.

Oh and Enbridge is one of the partners in the Dakota Access Pipeline.

It's pretty clear that Energy Transport Partners is basically expecting the American taxpayers to pick up the bill while they reap the profits of this $3.7 billion project; and they'll basically lawyer their way around responsibility if and when there's an accident on the 1,172 miles of the DAPL.

A consortium of 17 different global banks including Citibank, TD Securities, and BNP Paribas provided $2.5 billion in loans to finance the project; the remaining $1.2 billion was raised by ETP selling stakes in the pipeline to Phillips 66, Enbridge and Marathon Oil.

Energy Transfer Partners CEO
Kelcy Warren

The prospects of a Trump presidency aren't good for opponents of the pipeline either.

In addition to the untold number of personal business conflicts of interest presented by the president-elect's global business interests (many of which the public doesn't even know about because of his refusal to release his tax returns), the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners Kelcy Warren personally donated $103,000 to organizations that supported Trump's campaign.

According to an article posted on Democracy Now, Warren has also given thousands of dollars in political contributions to House Speaker Paul Ryan, House Energy Chair Fred Upton and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Lisa Murkowski.

Oh and ETP also has it's own PAC. Really.





So in addition to the over 71,000 miles of oil pipelines around that nation that ETP owns, thanks to the Supreme Court it also has a direct and anonymous unlimited pipeline of cash it can inject directly into a web of other conservative petroleum-friendly PACs that support Republicans who deny the existence of climate change and can't say no to Big Oil.

Trump also has investment ties with Phillips 66, and may have additional financial interests to some of the 17 banks that financed the DAPL.

It's an ethical mess of epic proportions that's going to roll right through four states.

With billions at stake for the pipeline, hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to Congressional Republicans in Washington who control the environmental laws and regulations that allowed it to be built with superficial environmental impact studies, the hundreds of indigenous peoples camped out near the Standing Rock reservation have a steep hill to climb.

As Native American activist Iysukin American Horse eloquently wrote in The Guardian back in August, many of the hundreds of members of different tribes who've gathered near the Standing Rock reservation see this not as a political fight.

But as a spiritual battle to protect their source of water, their land and their way of life.


Increasingly many see this pipeline designed to transport over 400,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil per day as the manifestation of the apocalyptic Native American prophecy of The Black Snake - which their elders foretold would destroy their way of life if not defeated.

Considering the forces behind the pipeline and the growing power of the corporatocracy it represents, The Black Snake is a truly dangerous creature.

And as the brutal attacks by local and state police against hundreds of protesters demonstrated last night, that Snake is already trying to destroy the way of life of the Original Americans.  

Let's hope those horrific images of violent police overreach on behalf of this consortium of pipeline producers, oil companies, banks and politicians continues to turn the powerful tide of public opinion in favor of environmental and human rights, and the basic principle of Democracy on which this nation was founded.