Southern leg of Keystone XL pipeline has massive structural flaws, opposition mounts

It seems that the company building the southern leg of the KXL pipeline is violating their own standards and doing some very shoddy work.  Local landowners ahve had their land seized by eminent domain, and now the builder is coming back through, digging up the land again and welding in some very short sections of pipe, in violation of their own supposed “standards”.

From EcoWatch:

“Enough is enough,” said Michael Bishop during our phone conversation Saturday morning after he found out TransCanada and its vendor, Michels, are planning to dig up buried pipe, part of the 485-mile southern segment of the Keystone XL pipeline, on his property in the east Texas rural community of Douglass.

The representative for Michels, who showed up on Bishop’s property last week, said he was there to mark the utility lines prior to the crews “coming out next week to replace the anomalies.” Bishop asked if they were going to dig up portions of the line they just laid and the representative responded, “Yes, those sections where anomalies are.”

Property owners along the pipeline route have been concerned about potential leaks even before the pipeline construction began. TransCanada’s Keystone 1 pipeline, which runs from Canada to the U.S. Midwest, experienced 12 spills in the first year after it began operation in June 2010—the highest spill rate of any oil pipeline in U.S. History.

Now Texas and Oklahoma residents are even more outraged with the news of the pipeline anomalies and the ExxonMobil Pegasus pipeline rupture on March 29 that spewed Canadian tar sands oil in a suburban community in Mayflower, AR, where residents are still complaining of health problems and the impact on wildlife and the environment.

Here’s some video showcasing the problems with this section of the pipeline:

An explanantion of what we are seeing in the video:

The video clearly shows that this is a bigger problem than what the TransCanada propaganda machine is saying publicly. This is the smoking gun.

My sources tell me that the so called ‘anomalies’ total over a mile in a short, 60-mile section of north Texas including Wood County. Additionally, it is apparent that inspector oversight during the welding process, as well as deficiencies in the trenching and laying of the pipe, occurred.

I have been told that the minimum segment allowable by law is eight feet, but the video clearly shows segments being replaced that are much less, including one segment that is three feet or so in length.

When the new segments are welded up, how can the public be assured that the work will not be a repeat of the shoddy, prior performance that has brought them back to our properties? If we were concerned about leaking before construction began, how can we have confidence in TransCanada at this point?

Additionally, if this is allowed to be put into service, the federal government is going to be complicit in a criminal act when this leaks and destroys our land and groundwater, forcing the permanent evacuation of hard working landowners who might be compensated but will never fulfill their dreams or leave a legacy for their children and grandchildren. PHMSA [Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration] must act and permanently shut this project down now.

It’s time to cancel this project, once and for all.  I trust James Hansen – when he says the completion of KXL is “game over” for the climate, I believe him.  To those who say the pipeline will secure our own energy future, you are dead wrong – the refined product will be shipped out of the USA, and fuel prices will rise in the midwest if this is completed.

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