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HockeyDad...when he said, "Let's Have Some Fun".


You're against pipelines, jobs and now fun.

The list grows.

1) Environmental impact/risk of both the pipeline extension and the shale sands oil extraction process.

2) It raises the price of oil in the midwest by making it easier to export canadian oil tax free through US refineries in the Gulf.

3) The US should be taxing Canadian oil that is transported through the pipeline, refined in the US and then exported to international destinations. Why should we allow the companies that want to build this pipeline extension to exerceise emininent domain to take the land required for the pipeline to facilitate the transport of Canadian diluted bitumen across US soil in order to allow it to be refined and exported outside the US tax free? Because the oil companies that own the refineries aren't making enough profit???

4) Whether the diluted bitumen goes through a pipeline entirely on Canadian soil or through the US, it will be exported to places other than the US.

US Landowners get strong armed and screwed for the benefit of a Canadian Oil company.

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Eminent Domain Fight Has a Canadian Twist

Dave Weaver for The New York Times

Randy Thompson, a Nebraska landowner, is challenging the assumption by TransCanada that it can seize land for an oil pipeline.

By LESLIE KAUFMAN and DAN FROSCH

Published: October 17, 2011

A Canadian company has been threatening to confiscate private land from South Dakota to the Gulf of Mexico, and is already suing many who have refused to allow the Keystone XL pipeline on their property even though the controversial project has yet to receive federal approval.

Randy Thompson, a cattle buyer in Nebraska, was informed that if he did not grant pipeline access to 80 of the 400 acres left to him by his mother along the Platte River, “Keystone will use eminent domain to acquire the easement.” Sue Kelso and her large extended family in Oklahoma were sued in the local district court by TransCanada, the pipeline company, after she and her siblings refused to allow the pipeline to cross their pasture.

“Their land agent told us the very first day she met with us, you either take the money or they’re going to condemn the land,” Mrs. Kelso said. By its own count, the company currently has 34 eminent domain actions against landowners in Texas and an additional 22 in South Dakota.

In addition to enraging those along the proposed pipeline’s 1,700-mile path, the tactics have many people questioning whether a foreign company can pressure landowners without a permit from the State Department — the agency charged with determining whether the project is in the “national interest.” A decision is expected by year’s end on the pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Alberta to American refineries.

A government official with knowledge of the permitting process who would address the issue only on condition of anonymity said, “It is presumptuous for the company to take on eminent domain cases before there is any decision made.”

Landowners have begun joining forces and challenging the company’s assumption that it can legally seize land.

“With so many unanswered questions about the safety of this project, perhaps it’s time for the U.S. to hit the brake pedal,” Mr. Thompson wrote in testimony for a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in May. “And perhaps it’s time that our government starts placing the concerns of American citizens over and above those of a foreign corporation.”

Mr. Thompson said he intends to fight to keep the pipeline, 36 inches in diameter, off his land. Eminent domain laws generally allow for the confiscation of private property if taking it is judged to serve a larger public good. These kinds of laws differ slightly from state to state as do the processes by which pipelines are approved and licensed. As a result, there is both debate and confusion over whether TransCanada has the right to use the courts to demand easements from property owners in advance of final approval for the project.

A TransCanada spokesman, Shawn Howard, says the company does not have to wait for a license from the State Department to begin securing land. He said the company has tried to obtain voluntary agreements, but when that fails the company has the right to force lease agreements upon landowners in all six states the pipeline would pass through. All of TransCanada’s permit applications, he said, have been made through its subsidiary in Omaha, Keystone Pipeline.

“We have been given the legal advice that we can do this in parallel to the process going on in Washington,” Mr. Howard said. “If we didn’t think we had the authority or ability to do this, we wouldn’t be doing it.”

A senior State Department official, who asked not to be identified because the permit process is continuing, said TransCanada had not sought federal approval to invoke eminent domain. He said the department had no authority on the issue and that it was up to state law and the courts to determine appropriate use of eminent domain laws.

Landowners and their lawyers are pushing local courts to do just that. While it is impossible to say how many cases are working their way through the legal system, in addition to the 56 Texas and South Dakota cases, TransCanada acknowledges it has sent “Dear Owner” letters to dozens of families in Nebraska.

Timothy Sandefur, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit advocate for property rights issues, said that if the project is approved, the company will be on firmer ground. As unfair as the laws might seem, he said, the right of way of pipelines and railroads as public goods has been well established, regardless of whether they are foreign-owned. “Property owners almost never win these suits,” he said.

But lawyers for the landowners, particularly in Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, argue that TransCanada has not met the requirements to invoke eminent domain under those states’ laws. In South Dakota, however, a judge has already ruled that TransCanada could use eminent domain to secure land for a previous pipeline project.

David A. Domina, a Nebraska lawyer whose firm represents 45 landowners, said there was “no way” that TransCanada has eminent domain powers under Nebraska law, and that the company was “acting in bad faith.”

In East Texas, where residents are used to having cordial dealings with oil companies, landowners said they had never seen a company behave as aggressively as has TransCanada.

Norman Ladd, a lawyer in Tyler, Tex., whose firm represents more than a dozen landowners, said the company has low-balled on prices and threatened to use eminent domain “instead of coming down here and saying we can work with you.”

TransCanada has taken reticent landowners before special county boards in Texas, one of the first steps in that state’s condemnation process. The boards determine only how much landowners should be compensated, not whether eminent domain laws apply.

With drilling and pipeline building expected to expand into more shale fields and the news over the weekend that Kinder Morgan was buying the El Paso Corporation to expand its pipeline network, these types of land use challenges may well increase in coming years.

Supporters of Keystone XL argue it will help bolster domestic energy security and spur job growth. But many politicians, particularly in Nebraska, oppose much of the pipeline’s route because they say it poses a danger to the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides more than a quarter of the water for the country’s agricultural crops.

Environmental groups argue that extracting and burning the heavy crude drawn from Alberta’s oil sands will increase greenhouse gas emissions. They also warn that if there is a spill or a leak, it would cause severe environmental damage and be extremely hard to clean up.

In what has been interpreted as a virtual green light for the project, a State Department report in August concluded that the pipeline would have minimum environmental impact if operated under federal regulations.

Mr. Howard said the company has already secured legal agreements with 90 percent of the landowners it needs in Nebraska, and that he does not expect a few unhappy landowners to slow the process or force changes to the intended route. But TransCanada backed off and dropped its lawsuit against Sue Kelso’s family, when it was clear that the family was not going to acquiesce. Mr. Howard said the company decided it would be better to reroute the pipeline around the Kelso property for “various reasons” based on convenience.

An East Texas landowner, Eleanor Fairchild, said that a TransCanada representative arrived at her house a few days before her husband died of Alzheimer’s in 2009. At first, she considered the $42,000 offer — later raised by $18,000 — for a 50-foot easement on her 425 acres. But she said that the more she learned about the pipeline, the less she wanted it on her land.

“It was a hard decision whether I wanted to fight and spend all this money even though I could lose the thing,” Ms. Fairchild said in a weary drawl. “But somebody needs to fight them. I decided it would be me.”

TransCanada’s condemnation suit against her is pending.

1A. Environmentalist/not in my backyard agenda. There is absolutely no route for the pipeline that would meet with approval. No more pipelines should ever be built.

1B. We are concerned about the shale sands oil extraction process in Canada is just more of the environmentalist agenda. We will respectfully decline this oil and purchase from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia instead although the environmentalists would like to believe that we'll just develop some magic non fossil fuel energy source instead. The goal is to choke the country into forcing some new energy source to be discovered now rather than once fossil fuels become more scarce and less cost effective. Canada will produce this oil and find a market for it even if the USA is "too good" for it. Take a look at Nigerian oil and see if we're "too good" for it as well!

2. The problem of below market prices for oil in the Midwest will be resolved through reversing existing pipelines or reducing sales to the USA. This competitive advantage to refiners in the Midwest will not last regardless of Keystone XL. I doubt you really care that refiners in the Midwest get cut-rate oil compared to Gulf Coast or West Coast refiners.

3A. Foreign Trade Zones are part of Federal law and apply to all goods and services, not just oil.

3B. Eminent domain for an easement, not to take land. Up to the courts to decide.

4. More of the blogger theory that the oil is only for export. This doesn't pass the sniff test.


There is nothing new here. This is the standard talking points being used to throw against the wall and see what sticks. If the pipeline didn't go through Nebraska, went to Northern Louisiana to refineries that were not in FTZs, and the oil was 100% guaranteed to stay in the US, it would not make a difference. The goal is to choke out fossil fuel through any means necessary so there is no satisfactory solution except to kill the pipeline.

So anyone who consumes any gasoline or oil products in the US has no right to express concern about building infrastructure that will facilitate and propagate oil extraction processes, primarily "fracking", that clearly have numerous long term adverse effects on the environment as well as producing massive quantities of airborne and liquid contaminants and waste products, many of which are known carginogens and many of which may cause other non-carginogenic, but serious health issues? Bull****. By your logic you're responsible for the BP spill in the Gulf, not BP. How many birds did you de-grease onthe gulf coast?

Fracking is the 21century equivalent of hydraulic mining that took place in the latter years of the original Gold Rush when mines had played out and panning wasn't effective on an industrial scale. It's a method that uses and contaminates vast quantities of water with chemicals used in the process and naturally occurring, but in many cases toxic, by products that are released from underground as a result of the application of the process. In Canada, the extraction of oil from Shale sands over time will result in the destruction of significant amounts of forest that also creates adverse environmental effects.

Oil companies with a vested interest in this method of extraction will use their political clout, legal coercion, and if necessary military force to make sure that opposition to the propagation of fracking, not just in Canada, but in numerous US States is squelched. 20 years from now if things go the way the companies involved in extraction by fracking want it to, we'll significant environmental and health issues manifested as a result.

The companies that manufactured or used asbestos, lead based paint, and many other substances that were once used on a widespread basis and then found to be highly toxic understandably (due to economic motive) never immediately caved to initial concerns about adverse health effects of those substances, Oil companies won't give a crap about ruining the environment or poisoining people as a result of implementing this ruinous extraction process until it's way too late.

So yes, I do use some gasoline as does everyone in a modern industrial society. I frankly don't drive that many miles a year. But that's immaterial. It's legitimate for people to express concern and try to influence their elected representatives to appropriately regulate and/or restrict the propagation of industrial processes that have high potential or demonstrated adverse environmental and health impacts, even if they happen to use, out of necessity, a resource that could be made cheaper by allowing production practices that have significantly higher degrees of risk associated with them.

I watched a guy from Haliburton drink some fracking fluid... as far as I know he's still alive.. so fracking must be safe..

Frack babies..??

So can we work together to kill the pipeline and then I can get you to get a tramp stamp tattoo of the ethanol logo?

E-25 baby!

That is what your blogger told you. The oil will just pass right through to Houston and load up on tankers and the crews will wave at the inbound tankers with oil from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria as they pass in the Houston Ship Channel! You bit hard on that one.

...but you didn't say no to the tramp stamp ethanol tattoo!

When was the last US refinery built?

The delicious sweet goodness of ethanol has eliminated the need to build refineries. Now we're idling them or even shutting them down in certain markets that are over-served.

Damn it...YOU'RE ruining the surprise ending!

I can't seem to recall voting for ethanol....

Georgia ethanol plant sold, at taxpayers' loss - By Dan Chapman


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The failed Range Fuels wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that sucked up $65 million in federal and state tax dollars was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar to another bio-fuel maker with equally grand plans to transform the alternative energy world.

LanzaTech, a New Zealand-based biofuel company, paid $5.1 million for the plant in Soperton. Its main financial backer: Vinod Khosla, a California entrepreneur who also bankrolled Range Fuels, and helped secure its government loans, before Range went bust last year.

LanzaTech hasn't received the same type of loans, but the company has received $7 million from the U.S. departments of Energy and Transportation to assist in the development of alternative fuels.

The Range fiasco harkens other, failed renewable energy companies that received major taxpayer funding. California solar panel maker Solyndra got $535 million in federal loan guarantees. Beacon Power of Massachusetts, which makes energy-storage equipment, took in $43 million in federal money. Both filed for bankruptcy last year.

Range cost U.S. taxpayers $64 million and Georgia taxpayers another $6.2 million. Tuesday's sale netted $5.1 million which will help offset losses suffered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Georgia's money, which paid for some of the ethanol-making equipment, won't be recouped outright, but state officials expect LanzaTech to use the machinery.

Sam Shelton, director of research programs at Georgia Tech's Strategic Energy Institute, was long skeptical of Range Fuels' plans and technology.

"It was too damn big a risk for an apparently unproven technology and the due diligence I personally performed on Range would not entice me to invest in it," Shelton said Wednesday. Shelton was invited by Range a few years back to check out its operation in Colorado where it was based.

"Government should not be in the venture capital business selecting technologies," he added.

Range was the alternative energy rage in 2007 when then-Gov. Sonny Perdue held a press conference to announce dot-com billionaire Khosla would help finance the $225 million wood-to-ethanol plant in economically depressed Treutlen County, 155 miles southeast of Atlanta.

Later that year, at a groundbreaking in Soperton's industrial park, Perdue boasted that "Range Fuels represents a new future for our country." And Georgia, with its 24 million forested acres, would become world renowned for cellulosic ethanol which, conceivably, turns pine trees and scrap into fuel.

The Bush administration's Energy Department steered a $76 million federal grant to Range. The Department of Agriculture followed up with an $80 million loan guarantee. Georgia officials pledged $6.2 million. Treutlen County, one of the state's poorest, offered 20 years worth of tax abatements and 97 acres in its industrial park.

Private investors reportedly put up $158 million. In all, the project raised more than $320 million.

Range, unable to turn wood into ethanol, closed its doors a year ago. It never came close to creating the 70 jobs once promised.

"We are disappointed that this company did not succeed," said USDA spokesman Justin DeJong. "It’s important to remember that USDA has a long history of successful lending that supports rural homeowners, business owners, utilities and cooperatives, and over 90 percent of USDA’s loans are successfully repaid."

The OneGeorgia rural development fund put up the $6.2 million which Range used to buy equipment. Alison Tyrer, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said parts of the initial deal with Range may remain in place with LanzaTech. Range had until 2015 to invest at least $150 million, and create at least 50 jobs, before the state would consider "clawing back" the investment.

"The accountability is still there," Tyrer said. "Technology is almost by definition innovative and with innovation there's a certain amount of risk. But the state is as prudent as it can possibly be with taxpayer money."

Jeb Simons, an engineer in Savannah whose family hails from Soperton, doesn't expect much of the taxpayer investment to be recouped. He blames Khosla.

"He takes government money, builds the place and takes the money and runs," said Simons, " . . . and now he's double-dipping on government funds for round two. That's taxpayer money that could go toward schools or hospitals or be given back to taxpayers."

Khosla, who made his billions as a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has invested heavily in alternative energies, cellulosic ethanol in particular. Khosla is listed as "a key investor" in LanzaTech and sits on the board of directors, according to the New Zealand company's website. A call to Khosla Ventures was not returned Wednesday.

LanzaTech, according to a spokesman, will use the Soperton site to turn wood residue into fuels and chemicals. Most of the company's work, so far, revolves around the conversion of carbon monoxide into ethanol and other "drop-in" fuels. It is developing a low-carbon jet fuel for Virgin Atlantic Airways.


http://www.ajc.com/business/georgia-ethanol-plant-sold-1289567.html





Oh yeah...we need more ethanol.