invite responseComments 1 - 8 of 8 Search these comments
4
HEY YOU
2016 Dec 12, 8:44pm
Just a version of failing infrastructure?
It's just a little creek & not upstream or in my backyard.
As long it happens to another,I don't care.
That's what america is about.
6
Patrick
2016 Dec 12, 9:47pm
Patrick
2016 Dec 12, 9:47pm
I'm all for a clean environment, it's just that this spill is a little too coincidental with the Dakota Access pipeline's being in the news lately, and starting to fall out of the headlines...
7
Y
2016 Dec 13, 5:23am
Y
2016 Dec 13, 5:23am
Obligatory:
www.youtube.com/embed/WIE1BpW2zyw
A pipeline leak has spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into a North Dakota creek roughly two and a half hours from Cannon Ball, where protesters are camped out in opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline.
8
anonymous
2019 Feb 25, 3:05am
PIPELINES ARE PEOPLE TOO !
Bills Criminalizing Pipeline Protest Arise in Statehouses Nationwide
The oil and gas industry has started its 2019 lobbying efforts with a bang.
Eight different statehouses across the nation are considering bills criminalizing protests on property owned by the the oil and gas industry which critics say could squelch pipeline protesters and others calling attention to climate change-causing infrastructure.
The bills offer steep criminal penalties for trespass onto oil and gas industry-owned private property defined as “critical infrastructure” under state law. The legal definition of “critical infrastructure,” which incorporates essentially all assets serving as the bedrock of the current economic system, has greatly expanded in the post-September 11 era. With that expansion came increasingly harsh criminal enforcement mechanisms available to prosecutors in the name of protecting national security.
It is no coincidence that the bills are rolling out simultaneously with nearly identical language, in various states. The Real News has traced these bills back to model bills emanating from two organizations, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Council of State Governments (CSG), both of which receive generous financial backing from the oil and gas industry. In turn, the organizations serve as facilitators for doling out model legislation to state legislators.
Critical infrastructure bills of this sort, first passed in statehouses in early 2017 following the mobilization at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, have been taken up by both ALEC and CSG for use as model legislation.
In the first month of the year, Indiana, Wyoming, Illinois, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Idaho, and Ohio have all taken this template-based model legislation under consideration, which mirrors two bills passed in Oklahoma in 2017. Sandwiching them together as one, ALEC created the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act at one of its annual meetings held in December 2017. And the lobbyists and legislators involved in the organization in the room that day gave it a “yes” vote.
ALEC is a corporate-backed organization of state legislators and lobbyists; its membership base mostly consists of Republican members of state legislatures. It convenes three times per year for educational panel sessions, networking, and to vote on model bills. Those model bills then get distributed to state legislators nationwide, often becoming state law.
Just a week after ALEC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Act was approved, the Council of State Governments (CSG), another corporate-funded organization, also adopted the same Critical Infrastructure Protection Act as model legislation, or what it calls Shared State Legislation. Like ALEC’s model bills, CSG also distributes its Shared State Legislation to statehouses across the country. But unlike ALEC, CSG has a bipartisan membership base and its general budget receives funding largely from taxpayers.
The ALEC and CSG model legislation calls for criminal punishment in the form of incarceration or heavy fines for those who “willfully and knowingly trespass or enter property containing a critical infrastructure facility without permission by the owner of the property.” It also allows for conspiracy charges to be brought against “persons who are found to have committed any of the crimes.”
Under the original Oklahoma bills, anyone who trespasses on critical infrastructure can face up to six months in jail and up to a $1,000 fine. If the state can prove intent to damage the property, individuals can be fined up to $10,000 and face a year in prison. And for actually damaging property, protestors can face up to 10 years in prison and be fined up to $100,000. Co-conspirators can see fines of up to $1 million.
In 2017, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma all saw like-minded legislation pass, with the two pieces of Oklahoma legislation taken up as the gold standard by ALEC and CSG. Iowa and Louisiana both passed the model bill. Ohio considered the bill in 2018, but it did not pass; it’s been taken up again in 2019. In Wyoming and Minnesota the model bills advanced to the desks of their respective governors, but both received a veto.
CSG receives funding from companies such as Koch Industries, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Marathon Petroleum, as well as industry trade association groups like American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Chemistry Council, Edison Electric Institute, and American Gas Association. ALEC’s corporate funders include or have included the likes of Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Energy Transfer Partners, Shell, and a long list of others.
Critics of the legislation have previously told The Real News that even if does not pass, its introduction creates a chilling effect for frontline activists who commit acts of civil disobedience in defiance of industry projects like pipelines and refineries.
“[The legislation] is going to create a real chill around the communities, the environmental communities, the civil rights communities, and others who are fighting against the pipeline and these energy things,” Bill Quigley, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans, told The Real News in a 2018 interview about the legislation in Louisiana. “This [is] criminalizing of dissent [and] criminalizing of alternative views. Again, the private for-profit oil companies are trying to force the state to use its powers to inhibit and clamp down on the First Amendment rights of people who are looking for ways to try to stop the pipelines.”
In advance of the ALEC meeting in December 2017, Marathon Petroleum, American Chemistry Council, Edison Electric Institute, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and American Gas Association all wrote a letter to the state legislators informing them that ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force would consider the model bill at the forthcoming meeting.
“Energy infrastructure is often targeted by environmental activists to raise awareness of climate change and other perceived environmental challenges. These activities, however, expose individuals, communities, and the environment to unacceptable levels of risk and can cause millions of dollars in damage,” they wrote in the letter, obtained and published by The HuffPost. “This model policy would help safeguard our nation’s critical infrastructure, while also holding individuals and organizations accountable for tampering with, and disrupting operations.”
Connor Gibson, a researcher with Greenpeace USA’s investigations team, provided research for this article, a trove of which is published on the blog PolluterWatch. Gibson, a longtime watchdog of ALEC, pointed to the contradiction of Koch Industries funding ALEC while also nominally supporting federal criminal justice reform.
“ALEC legislators are out full force pushing bills to make felons out of peaceful protestors,” said Gibson. “Ironically, this is all happening while ALEC and Koch Industries are seeking credit for recent Congressional efforts to free nonviolent offenders from prison.”
Much much more, longer read with graphs, videos: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/bills-criminalizing-pipeline-protest-arise-statehouses-nationwide.html
Bills Criminalizing Pipeline Protest Arise in Statehouses Nationwide
The oil and gas industry has started its 2019 lobbying efforts with a bang.
Eight different statehouses across the nation are considering bills criminalizing protests on property owned by the the oil and gas industry which critics say could squelch pipeline protesters and others calling attention to climate change-causing infrastructure.
The bills offer steep criminal penalties for trespass onto oil and gas industry-owned private property defined as “critical infrastructure” under state law. The legal definition of “critical infrastructure,” which incorporates essentially all assets serving as the bedrock of the current economic system, has greatly expanded in the post-September 11 era. With that expansion came increasingly harsh criminal enforcement mechanisms available to prosecutors in the name of protecting national security.
It is no coincidence that the bills are rolling out simultaneously with nearly identical language, in various states. The Real News has traced these bills back to model bills emanating from two organizations, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Council of State Governments (CSG), both of which receive generous financial backing from the oil and gas industry. In turn, the organizations serve as facilitators for doling out model legislation to state legislators.
Critical infrastructure bills of this sort, first passed in statehouses in early 2017 following the mobilization at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, have been taken up by both ALEC and CSG for use as model legislation.
In the first month of the year, Indiana, Wyoming, Illinois, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Idaho, and Ohio have all taken this template-based model legislation under consideration, which mirrors two bills passed in Oklahoma in 2017. Sandwiching them together as one, ALEC created the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act at one of its annual meetings held in December 2017. And the lobbyists and legislators involved in the organization in the room that day gave it a “yes” vote.
ALEC is a corporate-backed organization of state legislators and lobbyists; its membership base mostly consists of Republican members of state legislatures. It convenes three times per year for educational panel sessions, networking, and to vote on model bills. Those model bills then get distributed to state legislators nationwide, often becoming state law.
Just a week after ALEC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Act was approved, the Council of State Governments (CSG), another corporate-funded organization, also adopted the same Critical Infrastructure Protection Act as model legislation, or what it calls Shared State Legislation. Like ALEC’s model bills, CSG also distributes its Shared State Legislation to statehouses across the country. But unlike ALEC, CSG has a bipartisan membership base and its general budget receives funding largely from taxpayers.
The ALEC and CSG model legislation calls for criminal punishment in the form of incarceration or heavy fines for those who “willfully and knowingly trespass or enter property containing a critical infrastructure facility without permission by the owner of the property.” It also allows for conspiracy charges to be brought against “persons who are found to have committed any of the crimes.”
Under the original Oklahoma bills, anyone who trespasses on critical infrastructure can face up to six months in jail and up to a $1,000 fine. If the state can prove intent to damage the property, individuals can be fined up to $10,000 and face a year in prison. And for actually damaging property, protestors can face up to 10 years in prison and be fined up to $100,000. Co-conspirators can see fines of up to $1 million.
In 2017, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma all saw like-minded legislation pass, with the two pieces of Oklahoma legislation taken up as the gold standard by ALEC and CSG. Iowa and Louisiana both passed the model bill. Ohio considered the bill in 2018, but it did not pass; it’s been taken up again in 2019. In Wyoming and Minnesota the model bills advanced to the desks of their respective governors, but both received a veto.
CSG receives funding from companies such as Koch Industries, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Marathon Petroleum, as well as industry trade association groups like American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Chemistry Council, Edison Electric Institute, and American Gas Association. ALEC’s corporate funders include or have included the likes of Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Energy Transfer Partners, Shell, and a long list of others.
Critics of the legislation have previously told The Real News that even if does not pass, its introduction creates a chilling effect for frontline activists who commit acts of civil disobedience in defiance of industry projects like pipelines and refineries.
“[The legislation] is going to create a real chill around the communities, the environmental communities, the civil rights communities, and others who are fighting against the pipeline and these energy things,” Bill Quigley, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans, told The Real News in a 2018 interview about the legislation in Louisiana. “This [is] criminalizing of dissent [and] criminalizing of alternative views. Again, the private for-profit oil companies are trying to force the state to use its powers to inhibit and clamp down on the First Amendment rights of people who are looking for ways to try to stop the pipelines.”
In advance of the ALEC meeting in December 2017, Marathon Petroleum, American Chemistry Council, Edison Electric Institute, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and American Gas Association all wrote a letter to the state legislators informing them that ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force would consider the model bill at the forthcoming meeting.
“Energy infrastructure is often targeted by environmental activists to raise awareness of climate change and other perceived environmental challenges. These activities, however, expose individuals, communities, and the environment to unacceptable levels of risk and can cause millions of dollars in damage,” they wrote in the letter, obtained and published by The HuffPost. “This model policy would help safeguard our nation’s critical infrastructure, while also holding individuals and organizations accountable for tampering with, and disrupting operations.”
Connor Gibson, a researcher with Greenpeace USA’s investigations team, provided research for this article, a trove of which is published on the blog PolluterWatch. Gibson, a longtime watchdog of ALEC, pointed to the contradiction of Koch Industries funding ALEC while also nominally supporting federal criminal justice reform.
“ALEC legislators are out full force pushing bills to make felons out of peaceful protestors,” said Gibson. “Ironically, this is all happening while ALEC and Koch Industries are seeking credit for recent Congressional efforts to free nonviolent offenders from prison.”
Much much more, longer read with graphs, videos: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/bills-criminalizing-pipeline-protest-arise-statehouses-nationwide.html
Pipeline spills 176,000 gallons of crude into creek about 150 miles from Dakota Access protest camp
A pipeline leak has spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into a North Dakota creek roughly two and a half hours from Cannon Ball, where protesters are camped out in opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline.
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes, as well as environmentalists from around the country, have fought the pipeline project on the grounds that it crosses beneath a lake that provides drinking water to native Americans. They say the route beneath Lake Oahe puts the water source in jeopardy and would destroy sacred land.
North Dakota officials estimate more than 176,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from the Belle Fourche Pipeline into the Ash Coulee Creek. State environmental scientist Bill Suess says a landowner discovered the spill on Dec. 5 near the city of Belfield, which is roughly 150 miles from the epicenter of the Dakota Access pipeline protest camps.
The leak was contained within hours of the its discovery, Wendy Owen, a spokeswoman for Casper, Wyoming-based True Cos., which operates the Belle Fourche pipeline, told CNBC.
It's not yet clear why electronic monitoring equipment didn't detect the leak, Owen told the Asssociated Press.
Owen said the pipeline was shut down immediately after the leak was discovered. The pipeline is buried on a hill near Ash Coulee creek, and the "hillside sloughed," which may have ruptured the line, she said.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pipeline-spills-176-000-gallons-192837222.html
#PipelineSpill