Dakota Rural Action Tees Off on TransCanada, Sues Over Keystone Pipeline Permit

Perusing my SiteMeter stats, I find a couple readers coming to me from the Golf Channel discussion board. Funny—I never golf...

From: LibLoather [a guy from Florida] 8/9/2008 12:04:45 AM: The environmentalist kooks are going to destroy America, if we let them. Oil companies pay millions for leases on land for oil and gas exploration, only then to spend millions more in legal fees fighting environmentalist groups. All before a drill bit touches the ground!

http://www.nbcaugusta.com/news/local/19701069.html

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From: MattsPop 8/9/2008 2:45:11 AM: Them rascals are going to cause some hassles on a pipeline I've got an investment in.

http://madvilletimes.blogspot.com/2008/03/north-dakotans-fight-transcanada.html

And now to really mess up MattsPop's golf swing:

CALGARY: Environmental groups are suing the U.S. State department over its approval of the Keystone pipeline, which is being built by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. (TSX:TRP) and Houston firm ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP).

The State Department did not adequately look into the environmental impacts of the pipeline when awarding its presidential permit to the companies, said Mark Trechock of the Dakota Resource Council, one of the groups opposing the project.

"The State Department´s environmental impact statement was really shoddy and it needs to be redone. And of course while they´re redoing it, they should stop construction on this thing until they do it right," he said in a telephone interview from Dickinson, N.D.

The more than 3,100-kilometre pipeline will cross the eastern part of the Dakotas on its journey from Hardisty, Alta., to the U.S. Gulf Coast refining hub of Port Arthur, Texas.

Residents in the area are concerned the pipe will not be thick enough and that oil will leak onto their land.

"We had people all up and down the pipeline that were saying, `This is going to threaten our water supplies and we don´t want this,´" Trechock said.

Dakota Rural Action, based in Brookings, S.D., and the Natural Resource Defence Council, headquartered in New York, have also signed on to the complaint, filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. ["Environmental Groups Sue U.S. State Department over Keystone Permit," The Canadian Press, cited in Oilweek.com, 2008.08.08].

Wrecking your golf game, checking your unbridled profits, all for the sake of clean land and water—that's us libs! ;-)