Tar Sands Blockade Releases Photos of Flawed Welds on Keystone XL Pipeline

Photo taken from inside a portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, showing visible holes in the welding!

Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel, The Woodlands, TX – 9 am Thursday, January 31st, TransCanada executive Tom Hamilton’s presentation of a Keystone XL case study at the Pipe Tech Americas 2013 conference was interrupted when a blockader chained himself to audio equipment and delivered a speech to the nearly 300 attendees. Hamilton, the Manager of  Quality and Compliance for the Keystone Pipeline, was supposed to give a forty-minute talk about safety and regulations related to the southern portion of the KXL pipeline. Instead, Tar Sands Blockade organizer Ramsey Sprague gave an impassioned rebuttal highlighting TransCanada’s poor safety record.

As you can see in the video posted below, for several minutes before security dismantled the audio equipment and arrested him Sprague described shoddy welding practices and dangerous corner-cutting throughout TransCanada’s operations exposed by whistleblowers like Evan Vokes, a metallurgic engineer who came forward in May 2012, leading to an investigation by Canada’s National Energy Board. Sprague reminded attendees that TransCanada’s first Keystone pipeline has already leaked over 30 times and that other industry leaders such as Enbridge are similarly negligent, with over 800 spills since 1999. He derided TransCanada for routing the KXL pipeline through ecologically sensitive areas and through communities like the one in Douglass, TX, where construction crews are actively laying pipe within sight of the Douglass public school.

Tar Sands Blockade Calls For Solidarity Actions November 19th

Alright, eco-warriors, consider yourselves on notice. Tar Sands Blockade is stepping our game up, and we’re calling on you to do the same.

We’ll be throwing down in a big way next Monday, November 19^th, somewhere near Nacogdoches, Texas, the heart of outlaw territory in this region for hundreds of years, and we want you to do the same. If you’re close enough or able to travel, of course we’d love to have you here with us, but we also want to see communities rising up and defending their homes from the wanton destruction of extractive industry everywhere.

Thousands of protesters surround White House in opposition to TransCanada Pipeline

Demonstrators carry a giant mock pipeline while calling for the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline during a rally in front of the White House. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/REUTERS

By Katarzyna Klimasinska

Environmentalists opposed to TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline encircled the White House, urging President Barack Obama to reject the project even if it means overruling his own State Department.

“It will be the real test of his character, you know: Is he going to stand with people’s power, or oil power?” Bill McKibben, organizer of the demonstration, said in an interview after the rally in Washington yesterday whose sponsors said it drew as many as 12,000 people.

The $7 billion pipeline would carry oil from Alberta across Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas to Gulf Coast refineries. Pipeline opponents say extracting crude from Canada’s oil sands emits three times more carbon than conventional oil production and a spill could pollute fresh- water supplies.

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Also covered by other mainstream media such as here