Well, heck: if I'm going to be on some South Dakota emergency management terrorist watch list, I might as well be at the top of that list!

No one needs to send a bomb threat to make this point: booming domestic oil production and decreasing supply (we talked about this on Sunday!) make the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline unnecessary to national security:

Given the American petroleum boom, it is now harder to make the case that the oil the line would carry is vitally needed to quench the nation's thirst for fuel.

Instead, analysts say that in this era of plenty the Keystone’s main function isn't meeting U.S. needs, but getting oil from the land-locked province of Alberta to overseas markets via U.S. refineries on the Texas coast. Two pipeline projects from Alberta to the Canadian coast face such stiff opposition that some analysts say they're unlikely to be built.

..."With this outlook, why would the United States need the controversial Keystone XL pipeline?" asked Earle Gray, the former editor of Oilweek magazine and author of several books about Canadian oil, in the Toronto Star.

"We do not really need the oil," said an editorial entitled "Pipeline to Nowhere" by Jerald L. Schnoor, editor in chief of Environmental Science & Technology, published this month by the American Chemical Society. Schnoor said the real key to securing energy independence is to use less oil [John H. Cushman, Jr., "With U.S. Awash in Oil, Nat'l Interest Argument for Keystone Weakens," Inside Climate News, 2013.05.21].

The boom threatening the Keystone XL pipeline isn't some eco-terrorists dreamed up by corporate fascists. It's Americans producing more oil and using less. That's what really terrifies the oil profiteers.

And now I think I'll walk to work.

I read that the United States is producing as much oil as it did in 1992. By 2018, we're on track to produce as much oil as we did at our previous peak in the early 1970s. We're also learning to squeeze a lot more GDP out of a barrel oil than we did twenty or forty years ago, so our demand is going down. That means we can kiss the Middle East goodbye and stop subsidizing oil with trillions of dollars of military spending, right?

[Energy expert Michael] Levi warns against overestimating the political and economic benefits of lower U.S. imports, however. Because the oil market is global, a supply disruption in the Middle East would send prices higher everywhere — including for U.S. consumers — even if the U.S. imports no oil from the Middle East. For that reason, the U.S. will still need to help maintain stability in the region ["Growth in US, Canadian oil production reducing imports, pushing Middle Eastern oil to Asia," AP via Fox News, 2013.05.14].

Sometimes I wonder if there's just no winning against Big Oil. They to take our land and water for pipelines and fracking, promising that their projects will bring us energy independence. But then as we make concrete steps toward that independence (still slurping, mind you, their addictive, poisonous potions), we still have to send our kids to fight and die for Middle East oil, for the sake of the stability of the global petro-economy.

So what's easier: disengaging completely from fossil fuels, or remaining the global corporations' volunteer security force?

D.A. Barber finds that the booming wealth of the Bakken oil fields isn't trickling down to Native American North Dakotans. He also notes that South Dakota is part of a seemingly inverse relationship between good economic stats for us white folks and poverty for our Indian neighbors:

While the national average poverty rate for Indians is 27 percent, South Dakota had the highest poverty rate at 48.3 percent, followed by North Dakota at 41.6 percent. Other states with exceedingly high Indian poverty rates include Minnesota (38.4 percent), Nebraska (38.1 percent), Montana (36.3 percent), Arizona (35.1 percent), and Utah (31.7 percent).

What's interesting is that some of those states with the highest Indian poverty rates also had an equally wide schism in terms of the lowest recent unemployment numbers. While the current national unemployment rate is 7.6 percent, the lowest unemployment rates by state include mostly energy boom states. North Dakota ranked lowest at 3.3 percent, followed by No. 2 Nebraska at 3.8 percent, No. 4 South Dakota (4.3 percent); and No. 5 Utah and Wyoming (4.9 percent). In fact, within the Bakken boom counties, unemployment drops to 1.7 percent.

...The Bureau of Indian Affairs Labor Force Report estimates the real unemployment rate on North Dakota's reservations can be as high as 55 percent, while reaching 83 percent on South Dakota's reservations [D.A. Barber, "The Energy Boom: American Indians Need Not Apply?" Huffington Post, 2013.04.30].

So why doesn't the rising employment tide raise Indian boats in South Dakota? Even if Big Oil can't find lots of engineers on the Dakota reservations (I apologize, Lakota neighbors, if I underestimate the number of underutilized engineering degrees you have), aren't Bakken    and Keystone XL supposed to generate all sorts of economic activity across sectors that benefit every available worker?

Exxon's latest oil pipeline breach has provoked lots of negative press for TransCanada and its contentious Keystone XL pipeline proposal. Salon.com neatly encapsulates the issue, juxtaposing a video of the 10,000-barrel mess in Arkansas with the basic reasons I've been laying out for why there is no compelling reason to take on the risk of another tar sands pipeline across South Dakota:

• Keystone XL would not reduce foreign oil dependency. In fact, according to its own presentation to investors, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline is quite clear most if not all of the extracted tar sands oil would be sent to oversees markets (where oil fetches a higher price).
• Keystone XL would increase domestic oil prices. Again, this comes not from environmental activists but the Keystone XL pipeline company itself. According todocuments produced by TransCanada, the company notes that because new pipeline capacity would allow Midwestern oil reserves to be drained and shipped, the Keystone XL pipeline would have the effect of increasing domestic oil prices in the United States, especially in the Midwest.
• Keystone XL would not create nearly as many jobs as promised. In its early applications for permits, TransCanada said the Keystone XL pipeline would create about 3,500 to 4,200 temporary construction jobs. After all, once the pipeline is built there’s not much work to be done except for cleaning up spills. But when the pipeline hit political roadblocks, TransCanada increased the number of jobs the project would supposedly create to over 20,000 — a number frequently repeated by supporters of the pipeline project. But PolitiFact found these assertions were false. TransCanada is simply inflating the numbers to try and sway public opinion and political support [Sally Kohn, "New Spill Reveals How Horrible Keystone Could Be," Salon.com, 2013.04.01].

The oil goes to China, our prices go up, and the job figures are lies... when will folks like John Thune and Tim Johnson get it?

Economist and oil market analyst Philip Verleger summarizes the No-Keystone-XL argument much more concisely:

"The oil crisis is going away," Verleger says. "We have plenty of oil. We have too much oil" [Tracy Samilton, "EPA's Push For More Ethanol Could Be Too Little, Too Late," NPR, 2013.04.01].

If we don't need Keystone XL's oil, we don't need it's risk. President Obama, shut TransCanada's land grab down.

p.s.: Note that Verleger makes that statement in an argument that we don't need any more government support for ethanol, either. Uh oh!

pp.s.: A new EPA report finds that 58.4% of the rivers and streams in the vast Plains region are in poor condition. Keystone XL won't improve that number.

The new four-officer Northern Plains Squad of the South Dakota Highway Patrol put in its first day of work today. The HP has charged this new squad with the unenviable duty of patrolling the entire northwest quarter of the state, with a focus on U.S. Highway 85 and S.D. Highway 79, which bear the brunt of Bakken oil field traffic.

To keep these increasingly busy and hazardous routes safe, Sergeant Desmond Watson now oversees three new troopers, brought to you by federal dollars:

The new squad was made possible by a federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant, which allowed for the three new trooper positions within the highway patrol [Kaylee Tschetter, "SD Highway Patrol Squad to Activate in Belle," Black Hills Pioneer, 2013.03.29, p. 2].

President Bill Clinton created the COPS program in 1994 to promote a change in policing philosophy toward preventing crime by getting police to interact more with community members. Now COPS seems to be just a "hire more officers" program... and maybe part of the disturbing trend toward militarization of the police that the ACLU is currently investigating.

Uncle Sam has given South Dakota $375K to cover our three new troopers' pay and benefits for three years. Then South Dakota will foot the full bill for the Northern Plains Squad, to which Tschetter reports the SDHP already plans to add four more troopers to handle the growing traffic and crime along our northwest corridor...

...which means South Dakota will be footing the bill for more of the externalities caused by Big Oil's exploitation of North Dakota's natural resources.

On a weekend about salvation, Fast for the Earth is planning to save the planet with a roadtrip to Nebraska. The Brookings group is organizing carpools from eastern South Dakota to join the protest events Bold Nebraska is organizing on April 17 and 18 to fight the Keystone XL pipeline.

The State Department is holding a public hearing in Grand Island, Nebraska, to take comment on the new Draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement it issued on March 1. Fast for the Earth, Bold Nebraska, and other organizations want to bring as many anti-pipeline, pro-property rights voices as they can to counter the voices that Big Oil will surely ship in to push TransCanada's inflated jobs numbers.

If you like clean water and clean farm land, hop in the van with Fast for the Earth... or send them a little gas money!

In perhaps the most curious energy-exploration news of the week, Deadwood oil driller Natali Ormiston plans to start drilling for oil near Wasta next week. Ormiston and her company, Quartz Operations (also organized just last November), plans to drill 9,700 feet into hard Precambrian rock over a billion years old. In other words, she's not drilling for dinosaur or trilobite oil; she's drilling for oil made from bacteria, algae, and sponges.

The state Board of Minerals and Environment is skeptical:

9. The Precambrian formation is a geologic formation from which neither oil nor gas has been discovered in economic quantities in South Dakota or neighboring states, and is not a formation traditionally associated with the discovery of oil and gas.

10. Quartz Operations has not submitted any documentation or information substantiating that oil or gas is likely to exist in economic quantities in the Precambrian formation in the locations of the proposed wells.

11. The cost of drilling an oil well to a depth of approximately 9700 feet in other more easily drilled target formations is approximately $3 million per well.

12. Quartz Operations has no experience drilling oil and gas wells, or producing oil or gas. During the application process, Quartz Operations submitted invalid mineral leases and substantially incomplete applications. Quartz Operations refused to disclose their basis for belief that oil and/or gas exists at the Precambrian formation that is the target formation for the two complete applications for drilling permits. Quartz Operations has not disclosed the identity of an oil well drilling contractor hired to drill these wells [Rozanne Gield, Deputy Attorney General, "In the Matter of the Applications of Quartz Operations...," South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment packet, 2013.03.11].

But on Thursday, the BME said to Ormiston, "Go ahead, knock yourself out." The board required that Quartz Operations plunk down two more bonds, $110,000 for one well and $130,000 for the other, on top of the $20,000 bond Ormiston has already deposited with the state. Ormiston wrote those checks on Thursday and got her permits.

Did somebody hit it big at the Silverado and go crazy? That's $260,000 in bonds, plus at least $6 million for two wells for which there is no public evidence of payoff. Among the few logical explanations here are that Ormiston has one heck of a divining rod (in this case, a doodlebug!), or somebody in the Mafia is bankrolling some really deep hidey-holes near Wasta.

In more West River mining news, environmental activists may find another target in the Black Hills: sand mining. Cambrian Resources, which Rapid City energy lawyer David Ganje just brought into existence last November, has acquired silica sand mining claims for 600 acres in Custer, Pennington, and Lawrence counties. Sand mining is essential to the fracking process that is driving the domestic oil boom. Ganje says he has data indicating possibly 80 million tons of fracking sand in the Black Hills, which would be the closest such deposit to the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. According to Adam Hurlburt's reportage in the Black Hills Pioneer, that 80 million tons would fetch $16 billion, bring up to 50 jobs to the Hills, and supply the fracking industry's sand needs for 1.2 years.

Such sand mining has drawn fire in Minnesota, where activists argue that blasting, water depletion, wear and tear on roads and bridges, dust pollution (paging Kristi Noem!), and health hazards from breathing silica outweigh the economic development benefits. The Minnesota Legislature is considering a moratorium on new silica sand mines, and several southeast Minnesota counties are putting the brakes on new sand mines as they study the pros and cons. Folks in the Black Hills should demand similar caution before Cambrian gets the permits and a buyer to punch more dusty holes in the Hills.