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In response to the President’s move to sidestep the judicial order on Keystone XL, the Indigenous Environmental Network immediately filed suit on Friday with the same federal court in Montana, claiming that President Trump lacks the authority to issue pipeline permits as Congress administers federal lands.
The Keystone pipeline would cut through historical tribal lands in Montana and South Dakota, and the same judge had rejected the pipeline’s earlier permit because the Interior Department allegedly did not assess the cumulative impacts of greenhouse gases and the risk of oil spills.
White House officials maintain that President Trump’s permits are not subject to court review. The order the President will sign tomorrow comes at a time when pipeline safety is an increasing concern after several high profile pipeline explosions, including a deadly one last year in South Lawrence, Massachusetts. Members of Congress from Massachusetts plan to introduce a bill this week called the Leonel Rondon Pipeline Safety Act, named after the 18-year old victim of the explosion, which is intended to strengthen pipeline safety by closing regulatory loopholes and increasing safety standards.
Why This Matters: The Trump Administration seems determined to help the oil and gas industry build more pipelines regardless of whether it puts more human lives or precious ancestral lands at risk. The pipeline industry’s safety record is poor. At an oversight hearing yesterday, Congressman Daniel Lipinski noted that from 1999 to 2018, “the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) reported 11,992 pipeline incidents that resulted in 317 deaths, 1,302 injuries, and more than $8.1 billion in damages. Incidents increased nearly twofold from 1999 to 2018.” And in 2018 alone, 8 people were killed and 92 injured in 633 pipeline incidents.
Pipeline explosion in South Lawrence, MA last year Photo: AP
by Amy Lupica, ODP Staff Writer Less than two weeks after being confirmed, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has announced that the Biden administration is resuming an Obama-era program that gave billions in loans to clean energy companies. Granholm, during talks at the CERAWeek energy conference on Wednesday, pointed the clean energy businesses the Department of Energy loan program […]
by Natasha Lasky, ODP Staff Writer The world desperately needs more sources of emissions-free energy, yet as these power sources are brought online, we must also contend with their impact on animals and ecosystems. In California, government officials are trying to rescue California condors, which are critically endangered, from being killed by the blades of […]
In the wake of one of the largest power losses in United States history, the conversation about green energy in Texas is back in the headlines. Emily Holden and two other investigative reporters collaborated on a story that ran in The Guardian, The Texas Observer, and San Antonio Report exposing how the Texas Gas Service was successful in significantly watering down a plan by the city of Austin to reduce the use of natural gas there in the future.
Why This Matters: The oil industry has spent billions to manipulate the national conversation around green energy.
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