Here’s one more sign we may not need to tear up good prairie and surrender land rights to a foreign corporation with the Keystone XL pipeline: TransCanada is thinking about converting an existing natural gas pipeline to carry tar sands oil to eastern Canada:

The giant pipeline is TransCanada’s original business and is one of Canada’s nation-building infrastructures. For decades, it is has moved natural gas from Empress, Alta., down to the U.S. northeast and into Ontario and Quebec.

But the pipeline is running at half capacity because of the discovery of big new shale gas deposits such as the giant Marcellus in the United States that are pushing new supplies into the pipeline’s historic market. The new supplies are so abundant they have depressed natural gas prices to decade-low levels, while pushing up transmission costs for producers and customers.

…If technically feasible, the conversion would be nation-building in new ways.

The pipeline could potentially carry between 300,000 barrels a day and 800,000 b/d, [TransCanada CEO Russ] Girling estimated, making it a significant channel for growing oil sands production in Alberta that risks being stranded as a result of activists opposing new pipeline plans to the United States and to Canada’s West Coast [Claudia Cattaneo, "TransCanada Mulls Switching Natural Gas Mainline to Oil Service," Financial Post, 2012.04.27].

Now tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems there would be less environmental and land-rights impact from working on an existing pipeline than from laying an entirely new pipeline. Reusing existing infrastructure instead of building new means less infrastructure to maintain and less taxes for TransCanada to pay, which I would think would mean less cost to the oil companies and ultimately to us.

TransCanada has converted natural gas pipeline to oil pipeline before. The Keystone 1 pipeline running through eastern South Dakota gets its flow from a stretch of converted natural gas pipeline south of Winnipeg.

A trans-Canada TransCanada route keeps Keystone XL from fouling South Dakota’s land, water, and property rights. By all means, CEO Girling, make it so!

David Owen, president of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce, visits the Yankton Elks to agitate in favor of Governor Daugaard’s corporate welfare policies. He tries to defend tax refunds to big companies with this comment on the revenues we surrendered to TransCanada for building the Keystone pipeline in eastern South Dakota:

Owen admitted that the TransCanada project was not the best use of incentives but still defended it.

“Keystone is not a total loss to me, but I have to concede that the pipeline was going to go where it was going to go regardless of the incentive,” he said. “We gained an awful lot because of that incentive” [Nathan Johnson, "State Chamber Plans To Oppose Daugaard’s Economic Development Law Referral," Yankton Press & Dakotan, 2012.03.29].

Forgive me for thinking words have meaning, but Owen appears to be saying that we gained something by giving away money to make something happen that would have happened anyway.

Aren’t Romney Republicans trying to tell me that businessmen know how to spend money wisely?

A “pig in a poke” is a lovely idiom for “an offering or deal that is foolishly accepted without being examined first.” That’s not quite an accurate description of the Keystone 1 pipeline. But TransCanada needs to get a bigger poker to get a pig out of its pipe:

TransCanada Corp. will shut down its Keystone oil pipeline in April for up to several days to find and remove an errant “pig,” from the 500,000-barrel-per-day oil system, the company said Monday.

The piece of equipment, a pipeline inspection gauge (pig), was being used during a routine cleaning operation of the Hardisty to Cushing, Okla., line when it became disconnected, TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said.

“I can’t speculate on how long it will take to remove the pig but it should be completed within a few days,” Cunha said in an email [Dina O'Meara, "TransCanada to Shut Keystone Pipeline in April to Remove 'Pig'," Calgary Herald, 2012.03.20].

The pig broke away on March 15 somewhere upstream of the Steele City, Nebraska, pumping station but has not hindered a normal flow of oil through Keystone 1 at 500,000 gallons a day. With oil flowing at that enormous pressure, you fellows at the refinery in Cushing might want to check your oil for pig parts.

We can hope that waiting a couple weeks before shutting down the flow and cleaning out the pipes signals that there’s no need to be concerned about nuts and bolts zooming through the pipe and damaging or plugging a valve. But maybe TransCanada figures that tar sands oil is so acidic and abrasive that it will simply wear that pig down to nothing before they have to open the hatch and fish it out.

Congresswoman Kristi Noem continues to demonstrate that she is not paying attention to anything other than the talking points her handlers hand her. In another unannounced drop-in, Rep. Noem showed up at an economic roundtable in Yankton to spout propaganda for the Keystone XL pipeline. She made the wishful claim that approving the Keystone XL pipeline would “drastically” reduce gas prices overnight.

But when quizzed about news reports discussing energy analyst Philip Verleger’s conclusion that Keystone XL will increase gasoline prices, Noem whimpers that she is unfamiliar with those reports.

Unfamiliar?! Kristi, really? I’ve been reporting Verleger’s analysis and TransCanada’s own documents showing the price-increase business case for over a year. Even advocates giving Keystone XL serious study must be aware of the counter-arguments to your common economic assumption. Do you not read, Rep. Noem?

I asked Senator John Thune about the Keystone XL-gas price increase issue last month; he dodged the question as well. But he at least didn’t make the silly claim that he had heard of no such evidence.

But let’s look at Rep. Noem’s claim that merely approving the Keystone XL pipeline would drastically reduce gas prices overnight. TransCanada’s original Keystone 1 pipeline, which now pumps maybe half a million barrels per day of Canadian tar sands oil beneath eastern South Dakota, received State Department approval four years ago, on March 11, 2008. The Energy Information Administration provides the following data on gasoline prices around that time:

Hmm… massive Canadian tar sands pipeline approved, and no drastic overnight decrease in fuel prices.

Nor did the actual operation of Keystone 1 produce any drastic change in gas prices. June 2010 gasoline prices here in the Midwest were around $2.70 a gallon. They floated around that level the rest of the summer, then climbed to about $3.00 by Christmas 2010 and haven’t dropped below that price since. (This week’s average Midwest price: $3.78 per gallon.)

Neither the approval nor the operation of the Keystone 1 pipeline lowered gas prices in South Dakota. Energy analysts and TransCanada itself say Keystone XL will raise our gas prices. Rep. Noem willfully ignores these facts.

…unless your name is Big Oil.

Rep. Kristi Noem and her House colleagues approved H.R. 1433, the Private Property Rights Protection Act, on a voice vote last week. The bill includes this encouraging language on the sense of Congress that eminent domain is a grave threat to rural America (emphasis mine):

SEC. 8. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING RURAL AMERICA.
(a) Findings- The Congress finds the following:

1. The founders realized the fundamental importance of property rights when they codified the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which requires that private property shall not be taken ‘for public use, without just compensation’.
2. Rural lands are unique in that they are not traditionally considered high tax revenue-generating properties for State and local governments. In addition, farmland and forest land owners need to have long-term certainty regarding their property rights in order to make the investment decisions to commit land to these uses.
3. Ownership rights in rural land are fundamental building blocks for our Nation’s agriculture industry, which continues to be one of the most important economic sectors of our economy.
4. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London, abuse of eminent domain is a threat to the property rights of all private property owners, including rural land owners.

One of the key selling points District 8 Senator Russell Olson likes to make in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline is that TransCanada is now generating all this wonderful tax revenue with Keystone 1 in eastern South Dakota that we couldn’t get from mere farmers. By supporting HR 1433, Rep. Kristi Noem, next to whom Russ was so pleased to sit when she visited Pierre that he hasn’t recovered enough to post any more updates on his Facebook page since Feb. 21, apparently disagrees with the absolute goodness of a pipeline built by a foreign company on eminent domain.

HR 1433 sounds more good notes on why we must protect rural America from profit-driven eminent domain (again, with my emphasis):

(b) Sense of Congress- It is the sense of Congress that the use of eminent domain for the purpose of economic development is a threat to agricultural and other property in rural America and that the Congress should protect the property rights of Americans, including those who reside in rural areas. Property rights are central to liberty in this country and to our economy. The use of eminent domain to take farmland and other rural property for economic development threatens liberty, rural economies, and the economy of the United States. The taking of farmland and rural property will have a direct impact on existing irrigation and reclamation projects. Furthermore, the use of eminent domain to take rural private property for private commercial uses will force increasing numbers of activities from private property onto this Nation’s public lands, including its National forests, National parks and wildlife refuges. This increase can overburden the infrastructure of these lands, reducing the enjoyment of such lands for all citizens. Americans should not have to fear the government’s taking their homes, farms, or businesses to give to other persons. Governments should not abuse the power of eminent domain to force rural property owners from their land in order to develop rural land into industrial and commercial property. Congress has a duty to protect the property rights of rural Americans in the face of eminent domain abuse.

Now if only Rep. Noem and her colleagues were serious about protecting South Dakota farmland from the predations of Canadian oil profiteers. Section 9.1.A.iv specifically excludes pipelines from the uses of eminent domain prohibited by statute. In other words, Rep. Noem’s Big Oil donors are welcome to continue threatening liberty and rural economies for their own profit.

As I follow the reports on the Lakota blockade of trucks carrying 115-ton oil industry treater vessels across the Pine Ridge reservation yesterday, I see that our friends from TransCanada are taking another backdoor route to win the hearts, minds, and stomachs of South Dakota officials. The South Dakota Association of County Commissioners holds its spring workshop for commissioners and welfare officials in Pierre two weeks from tomorrow.

Dusty Johnson will kick off the show at the Pierre Ramkota with an opening address. The PUC will present a program on siting pipelines. And then at 5 p.m., our county officials will be treated to a social hosted by our friends from Calgary, TransCanada Pipeline:

Enjoy the pickle wraps, fellas… but don’t get snookered. Remember: we have what TransCanada wants. Don’t give away the farm!

Related: While the feds try to figure out who gets to issue approval for the southern leg of the Keystone XL, TransCanada says it will be ready in just a few weeks to submit plans for the revised Keystone XL route. Expect a change of just 100 to 110 miles with just 20 more miles of pipe to get around the Nebraska Sandhills, says TransCanada honcho Alex Pourbaix

Land mogul and neighbor Ted Turner says he doesn’t want Keystone XL wrecking his beautiful Bad River Ranch:

Closer to home, the pipeline presents an immediate threat to drinking water for millions and to the livelihood of farmers and ranchers. To transport via pipeline, the thick tar sands crude must be mixed with toxic chemicals and then pumped at extreme temperature and pressure. This sets the stage for more pipeline failures and spills that create a highly toxic mess.

The existing Keystone 1 tar sands pipeline has spilled more than 12 times in its first 12 months of operation. In July 2010, a spill of more than 800,000 gallons of toxic tar sands crude from the Enbridge pipeline contaminated more than 30 miles of water and shoreline along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. This created public health problems, threats to groundwater, widespread fish kills, and destruction of wildlife habitat, contamination that is still being cleaned up at a cost exceeding $700 million. Downstream landowners like me are thinking this is a preview of coming attractions if Keystone XL is built [Ted Turner, "Keystone Oil Pipeline Would Risk Disaster," CNN, 2012.02.22].

Turner, a more experienced and successful businessman than I, agrees with me that the economic benefits promised by TransCanada and Republican pipeline boosters are mostly bogus:

Meanwhile, the pro-pipeline lobby is pushing the public to accept Keystone XL with fuzzy promises about jobs and security. But TransCanada’s jobs claims have been widely discredited, and there is no guarantee the oil transported by the pipeline would remain in the United States for sale. An attempt in Congress to require the oil to be consumed in the United States was rejected just last week, and it has been widely detailed that Gulf Coast refineries plan to export the finished product to Europe and Latin America. How do we become more energy secure under that scenario? [Turner, 2012.02.22]

In other news, a diesel pipeline has ruptured and spilled about 500 barrels of fuel up by Aberdeen. Stuff happens. Let’s minimize the stuff.

Update 2012.02.25 19:04 MST: Kevin Woster gets more on Turner’s Keystone XL concerns from Turner’s ranch manager Tom LeFaive.

Harding County neighbor Bret Clanton goes walkabout up north and finds this remarkable sight next to tiny Gascoyne, North Dakota:

TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline depot, Gascoyne, North Dakota, 2012.02.16. Photo by Bret Clanton

That’s Keystone XL pipeline laid out along Highway 12. TransCanada has been stockpiling pipeline at Gascoyne and other sites up and down the Great Plains since last fall, before TransCanada had federal permission to build the Keystone XL. The federal government rejected TransCanada’s flawed Keystone XL application in January, yet TransCanada continues to move steel into position on American soil.

TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline depot, Gascoyne, North Dakota, 2012.02.16. Photo by Bret Clanton.

TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline depot, Gascoyne, North Dakota, 2012.02.16. Photo by Bret Clanton.

Clanton takes a wild guess and says the site appears to be 50 to 60 acres. He shared a beer with locals who say they’ve heard TransCanada plans to stockpile around 300 miles worth of pipeline at the depot. As is shown in the third picture, the pipes are kept in place by laying them across four low, parallel dirt berms.

Clanton sees that the workers busily stacking the regular flow of new pipe are from Michels Pipeline Construction, the same Wisconsin outfit that ran the show on the Sibson farm and other eastern South Dakota points along the Keystone 1 route in 2009. Clanton chose not to hop the fence and risk a run-in with the roughnecks moving big steel, so he didn’t get the chance to see how much of the pipe is stamped “Made in India” like the Keystone pipe now sitting under Mike and Sue Sibson’s farm.

TransCanada has previoulsy balked at telling us which companies are producing that pipe due to confidentiality agreements. But after pressure from U.S. lawmakers, TransCanada has just put out a press release listing its suppliers:

• Welspun, Little Rock, Ark.: 332,800 tons (50 percent)
• Evraz, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada: 156,266 tons (24 percent)
• ILVA, Italy: 103,147 tons (16 percent)
• Welspun, India: 69,457 tons (10 percent)

Worth noting: TransCanada said just two weeks ago that “We have not sourced any steel from India.” Apparently 69,547 tons falls within TransCanada’s definition of zero… just as 1.4 spills every ten years really means 33 leaks in one year.

The majority of the steel that is supposed to contain 900,000 barrels of high-pressure toxic tar sands oil a day is coming from Welspun, the same outfit that supplied lots of defective steel during the 2007-2009 pipeline construction boom. And now a lot of it is sitting out in the open in North Dakota, waiting for construction that now may not start for two years.