The Keystone Pipeline XL: A Mass Addition to a Pre-Existing Problem

Author: Summer Lake

The Dakota Access Pipeline was on the frontlines of news around the country in 2016. It was a very controversial topic, because that pipeline would greatly impact the environment, destroy many natural resources, and destroy many cultural sites. At the same time the DAPL was approved, another pipeline called the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline was also re-signed into approval by President Trump on January 22^nd, 2017, just two days after he took office (Barbash 2018).

In late 2011 TransCanada, a major energy company based in Canada, proposed an extension to an already existing 485 mile pipeline between Steele City, Nebraska and Port Arthur, Texas (Eilperin 2014). The 1,204 mile extension would run from Alberta, CA to Steele City, creating a massive pipeline that would cross Canada in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, as well as the United States in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. President Obama rejected the construction permit once in 2012, and halted all construction on the extension in 2015 at the international climate talk in Paris (Barbash 2018). He rejected it after an 11 volume analysis of the environmental impact was finally released in 2014 (Barbash 2018). Then, when President Trump took office in 2017, Trump immediately signed an executive order reversing Obama’s rejection of the project (Barbash 2018) as well as signing into effect the permit for the NDAPL.   

In November 2018, federal judge Brian Morris of the U.S. District Court in Montana temporarily blocked the construction of the pipeline. The Fort Belknap Indian Community of Montana and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota sued the Trump administration on the basis of breeched “historical treaty boundaries and circumvented environmental impact analysis (Romo 2018).”  Among Morris’ findings in his 54-page opinion, he found that the Trump Administration “failed to ‘analyze the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions,’” “’acted on incomplete information regarding’ the potential damage to cultural resources in Indian territory along the route,” wrote that “an agency cannot simply disregard contrary or inconvenient factual determinations that it made in the past, any more than it can ignore inconvenient facts (Indigenous 2018),” and that the TransCanada company did not provide a “reasoned explanation (Indigenous 2018)” as to why the previous ruling could be changed (Eilperin 2014).

“Tar sands (also called oil sands) are a mixture of sand, clay, water, and bitumen, [a type of oil]. (Little 2009)” This kind of extraction would be the process TransCanada uses for their oil production. The Environmental Protection Agency states that this type of extraction produces much more greenhouse gas emissions (Brady 2017). Supporters of the pipeline claim the economic boost and revenue for the U.S. would be worth the small proportion of environmental impact, but based on the State Department’s findings, it would only provide about 42,100 jobs for the two years of construction, and then only 40 permanent jobs (Brady 2017). It would only provide a projected revenue to cover 0.02 of the gross domestic revenue of the U.S (Romo 2018).

It was proven that this project would destroy important cultural lands and sites, the most prominent being the Ogallala aquifer. It is such a huge body of groundwater, and an ecological foundation that “if spread across the U.S. the aquifer would cover all 50 states with 1.5 feet of water; if drained, it would take more than 6,000 years to refill naturally; more than 90 percent of the water pumped is used to irrigate crops, and $20 billion a year in food and fiber depend on the aquifer (Little 2009).” This aquifer is already in danger of depletion, and with the construction of a pipeline that could contaminate it forever, it is even more jeopardized. Alongside that, it has been the basis of life for the Plains tribes. It is their life source. This project would also further endanger the whooping crane, greater sage-grouse, swift fox, and American burying beetle (Brady 2017).

Throughout all of my research, it was intriguing that only two or three sites mentioned the impact on Native tribes at all, even though the project being halted was the effect of two tribes suing the government. Their “lawsuit [even] cites three such instances [of oil leaks and water contamination] stemming from the existing Keystone Pipeline in North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska (Romo 2018).” The Keystone XL Pipeline website does not mention the tribes even once. President Trump’s retort was the creation of jobs and the expanse of America’s energy power globally. All of these sources fighting for the pipeline to be built seem to want to completely ignore anything related to the negative effects on the people living in the areas it would run through, which shows a complete desensitization to the sacredness of these lands and waters for the tribesmen. TransCanada is still pushing for the pipeline to be completed, and in December 2018 the company appealed it to the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals. As of now, it has been held back by the government shutdown, but TransCanada is pushing for an answer by March 15^th so that it could continue pre-construction and have the pipeline finished by 2021 (Federal 2019). Advocates against the pipeline are still working hard, but it seems like the publicity on the topic is extremely low now.

 

 

Author Bio: Summer Lake is a student at IUPUI.

 

 

Sources:

Barbash, Fred, Allyson Chiu, Juliet Eilperin. “Federal judge blocks Keystone XL pipeline, saying Trump administration review ignored ‘inconvenient’ climate change facts.” The Washington Post, Nov 9 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/09/keystone-xl-pipeline-blocked-by-federal-judge-major-blow-trump-administration/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.09b86ffb7c33

Brady, Heather. “4 Key Impacts of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.” National Geographic, Jan 25 2017. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/01/impact-keystone-dakota-access-pipeline-environment-global-warming-oil-health/

Eilperin, Juliet. “The Keystone XL Pipeline and its politics, explained.” The Washington Post, Feb 4 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/04/03/the-keystone-xl-pipeline-and-its-politics-explained/?utm_term=.7c7cc3befeb3

“Federal attorneys may miss Keystone XL hearing.” Kallanish Energy, Jan 11 2019. http://www.kallanishenergy.com/2019/01/11/federal-attorneys-may-miss-keystone-xl-hearing/

Indigenous Environmental Network, et al vs. United States Department of State et al. Case 4:17-cv-00029-BMM. (District Court 2018). http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/keystone-xl-pipeline-order-issued-by-us-district-judge-brian-morris-in-montana/3301/

“Keystone XL Pipeline.” TransCanada, 2019. https://www.keystone-xl.com/

Little, Jane Braxton. “The Ogallala Aquifer: Saving a Vital U.S. Water Source.” Scientific American, March 1 2009. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ogallala-aquifer/

Romo, Vanessa. “Native American Tribes File Lawsuit Seeking To Invalidate Keystone XL Pipeline Permit.” National Public Radio, Inc., Sep 10 2018. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/10/646523140/native-american-tribes-file-lawsuit-seeking-to-invalidate-keystone-xl-pipeline-p

"What Are Tar Sands?" American Geosciences Institute. April 12, 2018. Accessed February 24, 2019. https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/what-are-tar-sands.