Read this story from the Los Angeles Times on Canaddian company TransCanada Pipelines’ preliminary construction on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline in Texas, amid strong opposition from local citizens and landowners. (Aug. 16, 2012)
The Canadian pipeline company TransCanada has quietly begun construction of the southern leg of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, installing segments near Livingston, Texas, company officials confirmed Thursday.
“Construction started on Aug. 9. So we’ve now started construction in Texas,” TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard told the Los Angeles Times.
The southern section of the pipeline received government approval in July.
The first in a series of protests also was launched Thursday as opponents of the pipeline, designed to eventually carry diluted bitumen from the tar sands of northern Canada to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, unfurled protest banners at two equipment staging yards in Texas and Oklahoma.
“We just wanted to demonstrate that although they might be ready to begin, we would be ready to meet them,” Ron Seifert, spokesman for Tar Sands Blockade, said in an interview.
He said citizens are prepared to stage sit-ins and other civil disobedience actions to halt the effort of “an international bully” to begin building a pipeline that has spurred widespread protests across the U.S.
TransCanada hopes to construct a pipeline from the Canadian border to Texas. But President Obama in January rejected the company’s application for an international permit to build the entire structure, saying it needed further study — particularly of any route through the sensitive Sandhills of Nebraska, which lie atop a massive agricultural aquifer.
TransCanada has agreed to reroute the northern portion of the pipeline in Nebraska and has launched a new application. In the meantime, the company, with Obama’s endorsement, has moved to begin construction of the southern half, from Oklahoma to Texas. This portion does not require an international permit.
That construction was imminent became clear in late July, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the last of three key permits needed to build the southern section.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-keystone-xl-pipeline-20120816,0,6693892.story