Keystone Pipeline leaks 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota
"A total of 210,000 gallons of oil leaked Thursday (Nov 16, 2017) from the Keystone Pipeline in South Dakota, the pipeline's operator, TransCanada, said.
Crews shut down the pipeline Thursday morning, and officials are investigating the cause of the leak, which occurred about three miles southeast of the town of Amherst, said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the state's Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
This is the largest Keystone oil spill to date in South Dakota, Walsh said. The leak comes just days before Nebraska officials announce a decision on whether the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, a sister project, can move forward."
Elsewhere there are notes of smaller spills in the same pipeline--this AC submitter is wondering about the long term use of a pipeline that is leaking when it's nearly brand new. Doesn't sound good for the long term.
PBS has a followup article from today (Saturday), 'We need to know' more about Keystone oil pipeline leak, tribal chairman says
The leak comes as the debate over the proposed path of the Keystone XL pipeline rages on. Nebraska's Public Service Commission is scheduled to announce its decision Monday on whether to permit TransCanada to build Keystone XL along its proposed route in the state, the Omaha World-Herald reported. A spokeswoman for the commission told the AP that the board's members will only use information provided during public hearings and official public comments in order to make their decision.
Related:
US District Court: Approval of Dakota Access Pipeline Violated the Law
Dakota Access Pipeline Suffers Oil Leak Even Before Becoming Operational
Company Behind Dakota Access Oil Pipeline Sues Greenpeace
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Sunday November 19 2017, @11:29AM (6 children)
(It was September 21, 2007 to be precise, in case you care about facts.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 19 2017, @02:12PM (5 children)
Clue: Presidents don't control issues like these. If a President spent enough political capital to do anything other than tie-break an issue like this, they would be giving up far more power in decisions that matter more for their future. There may be days that gas prices have just surged up and the President comes out in favor of a pipeline to gain a point or two in the polls, but that's not actual influencing, that's political profiteering on an existing situation.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 20 2017, @02:24AM (4 children)
Obama controlled the issue well enough that he delayed approval (from the US Army Corps of Engineers) for the final sections of the Dakota Access pipeline for the better part of a year. With another term, he probably could have delayed approval of the project long enough that it wouldn't be economically viable.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 20 2017, @04:14AM (3 children)
Of course, Obama already had all the terms allowed by law - so, even if this was a personal goal of his - blocking it didn't cost him re-election. But, was this a presidential action, or just a delay by the bureaucracy? If the Army Corps of Engineers didn't think it was ready to approve, is that a presidential responsibility to override, or is it just the system functioning as designed?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @06:29AM
Of course, but the plan was for Hillary to demand a huge bri... I mean donation or she would keep delaying it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 20 2017, @03:29PM (1 child)
Yes. There was even a point where the bureaucracy called [justice.gov] for a "voluntary pause" to construction outside the critical area. In other words, no legal basis for interference and yet they were still interfering. The company naturally ignored the call and continued construction.
The problem here is that the Army Corps of Engineers didn't have a reason for the delay that they couldn't use over and over again. There was no corrective action that would make sense in the situation because the problem can't be resolved without permanently halting the project. They even pulled delaying actions [federalregister.gov] (link is to a call for input into yet another environmental impact statement, with 30 day waiting time) up to the last week of the Obama administration.
As to Obama's involvement. He's the one in charge. It is trivial for him to pretend that he had nothing to do with the mess, but as we see when Trump became president, it was simple for a president to straighten out the mess.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 20 2017, @11:11PM
I'd rather say it was simple for a president's staff to carry out general policy direction. That's what's really going on - just as Ronald Reagan didn't decide much, if anything, for himself - he was a figurehead for a large apparatus of policy execution. Trump does indeed have his own ideas and make statements about direct action on them, things like a border wall, but he's not really working within the system and as such his specific ideas aren't moving very fast, if at all.
So, bring in the party of "favors for oil" and the pipeline construction is no longer blocked - I wouldn't expect anything else.
As for federal agencies asking for extra-legal control of things in their purview, that happens quite a lot - I worked with a company that had a medical device approved by the FDA, they had no reason to block it, but tried anyway. The company pushed really hard and they eventually signed off, because they had no legal reason not to, but... by raising all this fuss, the insurance companies then refused to reimburse the device and its associated surgical costs - so the FDA's foot dragging effectively sank the devices' marketability and profitability by raising flags to the insurance industry. 10 years before that, the FDA simply flat-out ignored the law and was taking 3+ years to review new devices for 510(k) clearance when they were (and still are) required by law to expeditiously review and respond to applications within 90 days or less. That dragged on for 3+ years until the political back-pressure finally resulted in a top-to-bottom personnel rotation at the agency. Everybody from the head down to our reviewers were replaced in a very short time span, and, miraculously, less than 90 days later our application was approved (along with hundreds, probably thousands of applications from other companies as well.)
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