A quick post to alert you to two noteworthy news items:
Photo courtesy of kctv5.com
First, a natural gas pipeline ruptured in Missouri yesterday. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the fireball, as you can see, is dramatic and frightening. The company that owns that pipeline (in part)? Our very own Energy Transfer. But as a friend of ours put it, you don’t have to worry; they are diverting supply so shipping will continue as normal…
The other news item is that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Hasemyer of Inside Climate News has written an article about the grassroots efforts opposing ET Rover. As always, it’s excellent, and features a cast of some of our favorite characters, including our hero Kathy Thurman and our friend Jeff Axt, the Brandon Brawler. The money quote is from Thurman. Recalling the protracted Enbridge nightmare, Thurman said, “”We weren’t going to let this happen again.”
Business as usual. Property Owner to ET Rover: “Gas man speak with forked pipeline”.
Property Owner to ET Rover: “No, I don’t want to sell you the easement on my land for beads and trinkets worth $24. I know that was the price your ancestors paid for Manhattan and that you think it is a fair price.”
ET Rover employee to another ET Rover Employee: “Let’s not lie in our application to the FERC. We will just tell them that most of the gas will be sold in the U.S. Of course, we will sell it to our subsidiaries, related companies and trade partners during late spring, summer and fall…….. and they will store it/ inject it into the Michigan gas storage fields until the winter. During December, January, February and March, they will sell it back to one of our related companies and we, in turn, will pipe it to Canada, which traditionally pays the highest price of all. After all, the saying, ‘buy low and sell high’ doesn’t just apply to stocks in Wall Street, it really should have been our motto all along”.
ET Rover employee to landowner: “That fire you see in your back yard has nothing to do with global warming; it is our free contribution to help you with your heating and lighting bills. You should be grateful.”
Second ET Rover employee: “Fire? What fire?”
ET Rover Employee to Landowner: “In the anniversary of having our pipeline in your back yard, we decided to celebrate by providing smoke signals like the ones that the Native American ancestors used to make. Here is to smoke in your eyes”!
Second ET Rover Employee: “Hey, that’s a good idea; We’ll just smoke them out of their properties with our Imminent Domain spiel”
Our next-door neighbor has a dilbit pipeline flowing just a short distance from and parallel to a natural gas pipeline. It makes no sense. If the natural gas pipeline goes, there goes the dilbit pipeline, and then we are talking one serious, serious problem. The law needs to be changed so that we don’t have these pipeline corridors which are clearly unsafe.