Stop Treating TransCanada with Kid Gloves

South Dakota Republicans appear to be approaching the whole TransCanada Keystone pipeline with the wrong mindset. They're operating from their typical and flawed "elephant hunt" or "Toyota lottery" (see #2) mindset: we're just poor little South Dakota, so that big company probably don't really want to come here, so we'd better not impose any taxes or regulations or demands or even send any signals that might scare them away.

Why else would our governor have done absolutely nothing to help landowners threatened with eminent domain (and claimed he hadn't been aware he was supposed to do anything)? Why else would the Republicans on the State Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources kill SB 138, which would have required TransCanada and other pipeline companies to put up some guarantee of financial responsibility for any damage caused by a pipeline accident? (Note: Democratic Senator Tim Johnson and Representative Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin think such a requirement is perfectly reasonable.)

A quick glance north will demonstrate that we don't have to bend over backwards to accommodate TransCanada. North Dakota has been asking for some concessions from TransCanada and getting them. ND's Public Service Commission has gotten TransCanada to agree to lay thicker pipe near the Fordville aquifer and Lake Ashtabula. The City of Fargo played hardball with TransCanada and got them to add some safety features to protect the city's water sources. The ND Forest Service got TransCanada to agree to use horizontal drilling, a method that costs five times as much as regular trenching, and adjust the pipeline route to minimize its span across the Pembina Gorge area.

A few environmental regulations and resistance to eminent domain aren't going to stop TransCanada. They've got oil that's worth $90 a barrel now, twice its value five years ago, and will only increase in value as demand increases and supplies dwindle. Like any business, they want to maximize their profit, and their accountants could probably show us that it's worth the gamble for TransCanada to pay lawyers to try getting the land for cheap through eminent domain and to pay lobbyists to tell our legislators that bond requirements are an excessive financial burden. We all do that when we negotiate: we argue for the best deal we can imagine, then settle for a deal that works.

Almost nothing South Dakota can do regulatorily will make TransCanada say, "Ah, forget it, we don't really want to build this pipeline. We'll just leave this oil in the tar sands." We could bring back SB 138 and double the requirements. We can pass SB 190, which would put a two-cent-per-barrel tax on the pipeline to create an oil-spill cleanup fund, and even amend it to slap on another quarter per barrel to replace the food tax. The attorney general could step in to help the landowners fighting eminent domain. We could impose the South Dakota Resource Council's three-part proposal for regulations on TransCanada -- proper bonding, adequate annual compensation for landowners, and significant taxes on pipeline profits (as communicated to me in an e-mail from SDRC board member Charlie Johnson).

We could do all that and probably even require TransCanada VP Robert Edward Jones to walk the length of the pipeline route wearing a chicken suit, and you know what TransCanada would say? "Cluck cluck -- so can we dig now?"

We're not trying to convince a factory to bring a couple hundred jobs here instead of South Carolina or someplace warmer. We're talking about a pipeline that's going to make big money for Big Oil. They're going to make billions. TransCanada's dealings with North Dakota prove they're not on a shoestring budget, and their project isn't just one regulation or one tax away from collapse.

Quit being chicken, Republicans. Let's hold TransCanada's feet to the fire... and say, does someone have a chicken suit?