From an email:
There are at least 3 people chained to trucks just north of Sulphur Springs near Saltillo, Texas with numerous observers taking photos/footage. Directions below. The Tar Sands Blockade protesters are blocking the clearing and trenching of the TransCanada pipeline route as they are chained to clearing machines outside of town. Law enforcement has just arrived. Since the last action took at least 5 hours to clear the scene, we anticipate this going on for some time today.
Directions: Hwy 67 west of Saltillo, take FM 3533 North to dead end at FM 3532. Left on 3532 for a couple of miles–you will see them on the right-of-way.
Spokesperson onsite is Ron Seifert at 843.814.2796.
For more about the blockade, go to tarsandsblockade.org with live streaming. Go to the site and see the streaming.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Someone needs to look at the truck & train traffic out of ND & tell me a pipeline wouldn’t be safer. I know it’s an option everyone thinks they can control but, the sale of the tar sands crude will not be stopped by our refusal to allow pipeline transport.
Then you should volunteer to let them sieze part of your land for their pipeline.
We have pipelines under our surface, low & high pressure..We all do & if not under our land, near it.
When any pipeline company has come to us for a new right-of-way we, the land owner, are paid the market price to dig up the surface, bury the line & monitoring system then, restore the surface to the same grade & vegetation as was there before the ditch witch went through.
When a bigger area is needed for transmission equipment, they USUALLY buy the land. If not purchased, their rental is substantial.
It sure beats having trucks run up & down our roads 24/7/365.
Who is the we in “We all do?” Because I had 42 acres and I had no pipelines on or near my property.
They absolutely do not pay market price for land. That is total bull$hit. When they seize your land for a pipeline, they pay a minimal amount per foot (in this area it’s usually between $7 and $15). You are not allowed to use that land for anything but shallow crops. You cannot ever build on it or plant trees or anything. Oh, and you can plant grass but they don’t. They leave the bare dirt and the workers use your land for a toilet because industry cuts corners at every opportunity and does not provide one. Which means you will have to dodge the piles of human feces on your land.
They do not buy the land! One poor guy in Dish, Texas was going to develop his land to pay for his retirement. They made it impossible for him to use his land for anything but grazing and he did not receive substantial anything.
Furthermore, guess who owns abandoned pipelines and who is responsible for clean up? https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bwsxa7SpCLLDOTJlMjcyNzItNjNkMC00NWIyLWIyMjgtMmQ3YmM5NTkxMmE3
Clearly, you need to get out from behind your desk and visit the real gas patch not the one where you guys get inoculated.
IF you use gas for heating or cooking, you have a pipeline on your property.
Our right of ways are negotiated with the land owner Both the location & compensation.
Behind my desk? Not sure I deserve that.
Sharon, I have come to understand you make things up when you have no facts. You have plenty of facts to blog about. You should stick to those.
Nick,
Let me repeat: …I had 42 acres and I had no pipelines on or near my property.
I’m pretty sure I know the difference between the different kinds of pipelines and what their purpose is. I’m pretty sure I know how natural gas gets into a house.
You are a landman in Oklahoma. Maybe in Oklahoma you have things a little better than we do in Texas but there is no REAL negotiation here. You take the money they offer or you go to court. The Ruggieros got a pipeline and NO MONEY. They tried to negotiate the location of the pipeline–across their only exit–but there was no negotiating. I have heard of a few cases where the landowner was successful in negotiating the location but it’s rare.
There are several news stories about how Dish, Texas has been covered in pipelines and how it has halted development. There are even news stories about the pipeline workers defecating on people’s land.
I don’t make things up! I can email people who will be happy to come on here and set you straight about this.
Nick: First of all, I have known Sharon for a long time, and although we don’t always see eye to eye on some things, I’ve never known her to be anything but brutally honest. Perhaps there’s been a time or ten that you disagreed with her opinion, but that doesn’t make what she has said or posted untrue.
Your Industry, on the other hand, is nothing but smoke and mirrors and lies and deception. Here’s some good ones told right to my face: “Methane is everywhere underground, so that’s why you have these bubbling pockets on your property.” Here’s a great one: “Oxygen turns water red, that’s why that red fluid you see oozing out of the bubbling methane pockets is like that. Perfectly fine.”
And then we have the distortion and sleight of hand tricks that no one falls for anymore, one of my recent favorites is from that Paid Liar Tim Shepstone; Shepstone attempted to set me straight on water consumption due to fracking and drilling. He actually claims, (and has some of his own personally written ‘science’ to back up his b.s., too) that natural gas development actually creates more fresh water than it uses because the development process creates water VAPOR. As if vapor is the same as fluid, especially when it comes to water. I don’t know if fracking creates water vapor or not, but I do know that water vapor evaporates almost instantly it comes in contact with the Texas sun and ambient air temperatures.
As far as pipelines go, property owners at best get to negotiate with the pipeline company, but I’ve seen it myself that it’s no negotiation over whether or not a pipeline is installed. The lease called for me to be paid $0.50 a foot. I said NO. One of my other neighbors, who happens to really love money, negotiated with them and got himself $10.00 a foot. That became the new offer. Said NO again. Two days later, they were digging up my land and installing a pipeline, and I was paid NOTHING. A couple of weeks later, I found the landman driving around, and I asked him where my money was. He replied that I had to fill out a form agreeing to the installation of the pipeline, and then I would get paid. My response was “I have to give you written permission to do something you’ve already done?” He just laughed and said “Yep, it’s crazy, I know, but that’s how it works. The pipeline is still there, we are not, never signed his permission slip for permanently altering my property and we never got paid. They also never repaired the fence or re-seeded the 30 foot wide 700 foot long swath of land, either, or repaired my driveway. Why? Because like most bullies, that’s their way of letting me know whose the boss.
Or maybe we could talk about Juila Trigg Crawford. Trans Canada says they tried to negotiate with her several times, and although she kept saying NO, Trans Canada persisted. Now Trans Canada is suing her to have her property condemned so that they can install their damn pipeline. Such good neighbors those Trans Canada people. And, by the way, some of them are crying like little school girls over the fact that they are losing MILLIONS every day that goes by without a pipeline. I would have thought that for the many millions they are supposedly losing, they could have either offered Trigg several million and still be ahead, or re-routed the pipeline and offered somebody else the money. But no, bullies are bullies, so off to court they go.
Barry Smitherman, Chair of the TRRC, is running for re-election, as I’m sure you know. He even has ‘Property Rights’ as one of his key topics on his campaign website. If you click on it, Barry will tell you that his idea of ‘property rights’ is “When we install a pipeline on your property, you’ll get full market value for your land”. Interesting that he says ‘we’. More interesting is that Barry has proven he doesn’t know the first thing about property rights, even the basic definition of it.
Lastly, also UNlike Industry, Sharon lets people like you post pretty much whatever you want. I’ve been blocked and banned from Energy In Depth, Barry Smitherman, Chesapeake and a host of others that only post happy smiley faces and regurgitate the lies that have been fed to them. NO room for discourse of any kind. (But I should warn you, when you finally debase yourself and engage in personal attacks-usually when you run out of actual facts-Sharon will block you for that)
While I am an “energy employee”, I am not the industry nor am i prepared to defend the wrongs made by the ones that do not do what is right. I do believe a pipeline transporting oil & gas is less of a burden on everyone than trucks moving the same volumes.