Keystone XL lets it flow

It was declared dead, it came back to life.  Let's call it Zombie Pipeline.

The Keystone XL Pipeline runs under Julia Trigg Crawford’s North Texas farm. It’s been carrying crude for over a month. But (this past Wednesday) business is scheduled to open in earnest on the controversial pipeline, with oil flowing from Cushing, Oklahoma to refineries in Texas. That’s why she’s worried about an “unusual flurry of activity” she noticed over the weekend.

“Track hoes, skids, water trucks, electrical trucks and construction crews showed up,” Crawford tells StateImpact Texas. “They unearthed the pipeline, attached wires and sensors, wrapped it in something and then covered it up.”

She says TransCanada  — the company that owns the pipeline — later told her it was installing heat sensors. (Representatives from TransCanada did not respond to an interview request by deadline). ...

[...]

At peak capacity, the pipeline will deliver 830,000 barrels of oil per day to Gulf Coast refineries. Supporters of the project argue that pipelines are the safest means of transporting oil, and say it will provide a boost to the economy. Opponents have fought it over concerns for the environment and land rights issues among other things.

Now, as the Obama administration continues to consider whether to allow the northern leg of the project, which crosses an international border and is subject to presidential approval, the perception of how the southern pipeline operates may be of even greater importance. Crawford hopes the president is now looking at “data” on the pipeline and saying, “‘Wait a minute, there aren’t as many jobs that are being generated, this is an export pipeline, there are threats to our waterways,’” Crawford says. “You know, we need to see what significant impacts to our environment it has.”

Despite the stalling by he Obama administration, the filthy dirty tars sands oil has been coming anyway to the Texas refineries, the only ones that can process it into marketable petroleum products.  It's been coming by rail from Canada -- along with highly volatile Bakken shale oil from North Dakota -- then offloaded at Cushing's vast storage facilities, and now it's moving into the pipeline, oozing its way south and then out of it in Houston and Port Arthur.

The dangers associated with the rail shipments, which have made a lot of headlines recently, is ironically brightening KXL's future.  If you're inclined to believe a bought-and-paid-for US Senator, that is.

A government warning about the dangers of increased use of trains to transport crude oil is giving a boost to supporters of the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline.

U.S. and Canadian accident investigators urged their governments Thursday to impose new safety rules on so-called oil trains, warning that a "major loss of life" could result from an accident involving the increasing use of trains to transport large amounts of crude oil.

Pipeline supporters said the unusual joint warning by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada highlights the need for Keystone XL, which would carry oil derived from tar sands in western Canada to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Oil started flowing Wednesday through a southern leg of the pipeline from Oklahoma to the Houston region.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said the yearslong review of Keystone has forced oil companies to look for alternatives to transport oil from the booming Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana to refineries in the U.S. and Canada. A planned spur connecting Keystone to the Bakken region would carry as much as 100,000 barrels of oil a day.

"Clearly because this project has been held up, that is creating more (oil) traffic by rail," Hoeven said Thursday. "Those companies are being forced to deliver their product by rail because they don't have the pipelines."

Clearly not, Senator.

"It's disingenuous for supporters of Keystone XL to suggest that if we (open) Keystone, we won't have safety risks posed by crude-by-rail, and if we don't built the pipeline we will" have those risks, said Anthony Swift, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council who has studied the Canadian tar sands.

Shipment of oil by train is likely to continue, whether or not Keystone XL is approved, Swift and others said, as companies seek to capitalize on an oil boom that has pushed North Dakota to become the second-largest oil producing state after Texas.

So there you have it. "Fuck you America, we got money to make selling gasoline to China, so we're jamming this pipeline through, and your kids can just get leukemia and die.  Oh, and fuck Al Gore and his climate change, too."

"We don't care about your protests, we don't care about no laws, and we damn sure don't care about no stinking environment.  We got quarterly projections to meet and bonuses to make and stockholders to be accountable to, and besides the price of politicians is going up.  So there's all that.  Now GTF out of our way; we're the oil bidness.  Nobody jacks with us.  Nobody."

Maxey Scherr vs. David Alameel *updated*

This remains the top fight on the card in the US Senate Democratic tilt.  It was just ten days ago (!) that Wendy Davis waded into a quiet primary and endorsed Alameel, surprising and disappointing a few of us pundits.

Davis did not mention abortion rights, the issue that was the focus of her 13-hour filibuster in 2013. That, and past contributions that Alameel has made to Republican candidates, has prompted some activists to question his commitment to abortion rights.

Not just that.  There was no mention of Alameel's position on women's reproductive freedom on his Senate website, either.  And his 2012 Congressional website had been taken down, and there were mumblings about an anti-choice YouTube from that campaign.

Then a week ago, Scherr pushed back.  Then, day before yesterday, and in the midst of the Republican eruption over Wendy Davis' life story, Alameel revised and extended his remarks on several issues, including women's right to choose.  Then yesterday...

On Wednesday, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade ... Alameel sent out a letter highlighting his support for a woman's access to abortion and decrying "the continued Republican attacks on choice."

And Scherr pushed back again.

Scherr added in a phone interview that she is skeptical of Alameel's current commitment to abortion rights.

“If he’s for these things, how come he’s given $1.6 million to the candidates and causes that have fought to block choice for women?" she said.

When asked about Scherr's claim, the campaign released the following statement:

“David Alameel is a longtime, proud pro-choice Democrat and strong supporter of Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court set as the law of the land decades ago. It’s unfortunate that some politicians feel the need to fling baseless accusations at fellow Democrats to score political points instead of working together to highlight Senator John Cornyn’s extreme, anti-choice record in Washington.”

The other candidates in the race for the Democratic nomination are getting drowned out in this wave of earned media by Scherr and Alameel.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing in one case.

Along with Alameel and Scherr, three other Democrats are running for U.S. Senate: businessman Michael Fjetland, Odessa physician Harry Kim and Kesha Rogers of Houston, a LaRouche candidate who favors the impeachment of President Obama.

While it would certainly be a smorgasbord of schadenfreude for the media, not to mention a boon for the third party candidates on the November ballot -- which include the Green, Emily Sanchez, one of three Libertarians, and the four independents -- if Steve Stockman and Kesha Rogers were the duopoly nominees, that would be a pretty horrifying development for Texans generally.

As mentioned at the end of this, Scherr and Fjetland appear to be the two most qualified Democrats to move on to a runoff.  And Dr. Alameel is welcome to continue making his generous contributions from the sidelines of the arena, and not from the playing field.

Update: Via Socratic Gadfly, Dr. Alameel is a member of the Catholic Foundation's Advisory Board.  The board gave a significant grant last year (.pdf) to the Catholic Crisis Pregnancy Centers/Birthchoice.  That organization -- the one in Dallas, where the foundation is also headquartered -- is quite obviously not a women's clinic where pregnancy termination is an option.

Crisis pregnancy centers generally are not known for their pro-choice initiatives.  I suppose if I were an enterprising journalist, my first question of Dr. Alameel might be: is there any internal conflict between the advisory board's awarding of this grant and your pro-choice views?

Update II: Alameel also lists the two most pro-life Democratic state representatives in the Texas House, Ryan Guillen and Joe Pickett, as endorsees.  If Alameel is so strongly pro-choice... then that must have something to do with money.  What do you think?

The last words

Oh, there will be more sewage flushed out by the conservative slime machine, but it will soon flow into the gutter and on out to the Gulf.  The infrastructure built to quickly lance the right-wing boils and clean out the pus and infection from the body politic has improved significantly since the days of the Swift Boat attacks, and even since the birth certificate bullshit morphed into l'affaire Bengazee'.

Just short excerpts.

Peggy Fikac of the San Antonio Express-News suggested Tuesday that Team Abbott has pitched reporters on a version of the story. “Abbott’s campaign has questioned details and pointed out discrepancies in the story she tells of her life,” Fikac wrote.

The ex- is not going there.

Wendy Davis' second ex-husband, Jeff Davis, says he doesn't want to talk any more about his ex-wife, adding he wasn't pleased with the explosive debate that originated from his recent comments about the Texas gubernatorial candidate.

"Despite our differences, Wendy would make a very capable governor," he said Tuesday in an email response, in which he declined a request for an on-camera interview with CNN.

"Certain comments seem to always be taken out of context and the firestorm of Facebook/hashtag stuff is not useful for forming opinions," he added.

And the truth is winning out.

Reframe it around a man. And here's the interpretation: Can you believe the sacrifices he made for his family, to get his degree, and lift them out of their situation? Lived in a mobile home a few months, lived with his mother, lived in a small, cheap apartment, went into debt, paid off his loans, endured long weekends to make sure he was involved in the raising of his children while reading the law, and managed to eventually become a Texas State Senator and run for governor. The marriage didn't survive but the couple separated amicably and continued to raise their children together and still have mutual respect. Who is this great man?

You would think that if Wendy Davis were actually were a liar, then conservatives would not just overlook it but praise it, as they did when Nixon lied about being a crook, when Reagan lied about not knowing anything about Iran/contra, when W lied about WMD, when Christie lied about not knowing about GWB lane closures...

When have conservatives ever had a problem with lying?

That hypocrisy just won't fly either.  But maybe we can convince it to crawl back down into the sewer, where it lives.

Update: The Inanity of Sanity has more. And also Jack.

Nobody likes Barry Smitherman

It's not just the residents of Azle and elsewhere in Frackland, but also the media and even a few Republicans.  Let's see what's troubling the Texas Railroad Commissioner who wants to be Attorney General now.

The North Texas citizens at the Texas Railroad Commission hearing (yesterday) morning tried to make it as simple as possible: For as long as anyone could remember, there hadn’t been earthquakes in Azle and surrounding areas. Then the fracking boom took off and the wastewater injection wells went in. Soon the earthquakes started, more than 30 in just the past few months, rattling homes and nerves. A considerable amount of research, including work by SMU scientists, links wastewater injection wells to earthquakes.

“No disrespect, but this isn’t rocket science here,” said Linda Stokes, the mayor of Reno, a small town 20 miles northwest of downtown Fort Worth. “Common sense tells you the wells are playing a big role in this.”

[...]

People in the Azle area have grown increasingly angry at the Texas Railroad Commission, which has pledged to hire a seismologist to study the issue, but has refused to shut down the suspect injection wells. Almost 1,000 people attended a raucous Jan. 2 meeting in Azle, organized by Railroad Commissioner David Porter. Residents asked the commission for a 90-day moratorium on wastewater injections in the Azle area—a call reiterated today.

[...]

But commissioners, including Republican Chairman Barry Smitherman, who is running for Texas attorney general, made it clear that they have no plans to do so. Smitherman mentioned several times today that two of the suspect injection wells closest to the quake epicenter in Azle have seen reductions in the amount of fluids injected even as earthquake activity continues.

“If it had ramped up and continued to ramp up, then that might’ve been the culprit,” Smitherman said. Smitherman seemed to be suggesting that the frequency of earthquakes is linked to the rate of fluid injection. However, as NPR-StateImpact Texas has reported, the more important factor may be the cumulative total of wastewater injected.

While touting the benefits of fracking—and standing behind a weirdly technical definition of fracking to avoid making a connection between the hydraulic fracturing process and the disposal of the wastewater that results—Smitherman would promise only to study the issue more.

“We are still investigating the connection, we want to find out what the connection is, if any,” he said. “Once we find out, then we can hope to take additional steps.”

That's not going to fly in rural Texas in GOP primary season, Bare.  Nobody cares how whipped the frackers have you with their big checks; you're going to have to do something besides stall.

Here's video of him fending off a press corps that smelled bullshit yesterday.



Our pal TXSharon at BlueDaze covers fracking as her exclusive beat, and her posts are worth reading, reviewing, and referencing.

This is a plenty hot enough fire for him, but as it turns out Smitherman has a few resume' issues of his own.  For that, we go to Big Jolly.  Read the whole thing; this is an excerpt from the end.

So when Smitherman says he put “bad people in jail”, he isn’t lying. Because five men did spend a few days in jail after Smitherman prosecuted them for Misdemeanor crimes.

But Johnny Holmes he ain’t (for those not familiar with Holmes, he is a legend at the HCDAO). Smitherman never prosecuted a single felony in his short time at the HCDAO.

Why is Smitherman exaggerating his split-second as a prosecutor and refusing to talk about his 17 years as a banker? That’s a question for another day.

Look, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t know any of the candidates. Smitherman lives in Austin and his two opponents in North Texas. I just knew something wasn’t right about Smitherman’s statements, so I went looking for the truth.

And the truth is that if we as Republicans are going to dissect Wendy Davis’ life story and find exaggerations and omissions here and there, and make them into campaign issues to try and disqualify her in the minds of voters, we’d probably better look at our own candidates. And Barry Smitherman can’t pass that test. And yes, I’ve tried to contact that mysterious woman that supposedly looked Smitherman in the eye and silently thanked him for convicting her boyfriend – I haven’t been successful yet but I’ll keep trying. Because something about that doesn’t feel right either.

Dave, Wikipedia says Smitherman got fired from his job as a banker... which is probably why he doesn't like to talk about it.

Smitherman began a career in banking, and rose to become the head of Bank One's national municipal finance group before he was fired in April 2002. Bank One's stated reason for the termination was that Smitherman had failed to get company approval before he co-authored an opinion column in the Houston Chronicle with two Houston city council members, in which the authors discussed how the city could improve its credit rating. In January 2003, Smitherman became a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s office, and in May 2003 Perry named him to the board of the Texas Public Finance Authority.

Barry Smitherman is by far the worst of another terrible lot of Republicans running for statewide office in 2014, so I won't be sad if he doesn't clear the primary.  Then again, maybe he's the perfect conservative for Sam Houston to run against in the fall, in a Ken Cuccinelli sort of way.  You never can tell.