Doocy asked at the White House briefing why the administration is “considering” shutting down Line 5, which carries oil and gas liquids from Canada through Wisconsin and Michigan.
“That is inaccurate, that is not right. Any reporting indicating that some decision has been made, again, is not accurate,” Jean-Pierre said before explaining that Michigan and Enbridge, the pipeline owners, are involved in legal proceedings.
“What’s inaccurate?” Doocy asked.
Jean-Pierre said the reporting about “wanting to shut down the Line 5” is inaccurate.
But the Fox reporter said he didn’t mention “wanting,” and asked whether the administration was “studying the impact of shutting down the Line 5.”
“Yes we are,” Jean-Pierre admitted.
“So then what is inaccurate?” Doocy pressed.
“I thought you were saying that we were going to shut it down, but that is not inaccurate. OK, great. But the Army Corps of Engineers is preparing an environmental impact to look through this,” she said.
Politico reported that the Department of Energy is having an “ongoing discussion” about the impact Line 5 would have on energy markets.
Comment: IMO the lie is that the motivation for the move against this pipeline is concern for the local environment. In fact it is partly political “suck-up” to the usual Indian tribal superstition about “sacred lands” and more political “suck-up” to the environmental crazies who wish to kill oil and gas production to protect Mother Gaia even if that means we should all buy ox-carts. Oh, sorry, oxen fart too much methane. pl
https://nypost.com/2021/11/08/biden-might-close-michigan-pipeline-white-house-admits/
energy using complex societies can not support the same level of human population if that energy consumption is greatly curtailed.
it isn’t rocket science.
cutting back energy consumption reduces the human population. that is what the green movement is all about.
ensuring your grandchildren perhaps even your children are not born
Spot on. The global elite are neo-feudal Malthusians. They figure there are waaaayyyy too many peasants in the world that will consume some of the resources that rightfully belong to themselves. Useless eaters. Climate Change and its “solution”, The Soylent Green New Deal are the rubrics used to sell what is really a depopulation scheme.
Granholm was playing this routine back when she was governor of Michigan. Whitmer’s been threatening shutting that pipeline down the whole time she’s been a legislator and governor. On a related note, this tidbit showed up in my history feed from borg-book. It dates back to 2008:
“You know, during the campaign, Saul used to say, “If you like what Jennifer Granholm has done to Michigan, you’ll love what Barack Obama does to the country.” (Saul Anuzis, chair of the Repbulican party of Michigan at the time.)
Looks like Barack taught Biden all he knows. How’s that inflation looking for all of you out there? Even my professor friends in college land out in OK are admitting it ain’t good. No surprise Joe is crashing in the polls.
Little that I enjoy more than driving along The Lincoln Highway (Rt 30) around Shanksville, PA, where an elaborate driveway leads to a building from which one can gaze upon a nondescript hole in the ground. The property used to be a coal strip-mining operation but is now surrounded by windmills. That long driveway does not even rate a traffic signal on Rt. 30. (One assumes Secret Service ensured that POTUS entourage could safely turn into the site last Sept. 11, and also that the rest rooms were secured.)
Anyhow — just down the road there’s a buffalo farm. Not too long ago I stopped to snap photos of buffalo with their young. Extraordinary sight: large mound, presumably Mama Buffalo, with a tiny (large dog-size) mound of brown fur snuggling close; over three dozen of such double-dots on the landscape, Mom and Baby. Made me smile.
The area is mountainous, at about 1/2 mile elevation. It’s delightful to stand on a mountaintop and look out for miles to view other, lesser mountaintops under clear blue skies.
I’m hearing that nitrogen is in “supply chain disruption” mode and farmers are not going to have the fertilizer needed to plant their crops. The future is looking bleak.
The picture of Granholm says it all; she’s what used to be called a “common scold” and would make a perfect elementary school principal.
The trouble with Line 5 deals with its crossing of the Mackinac Straits. These two pipes were installed in the Eisenhower Administration and are eventually to be replaced by a pipeline replacement through a tunnel in the bedrock under the Strait. Despite their age and several problems, more oil and gas is being pumped through them increasing the risk of an accident. Michigan ordered that pipeline crossing shut down by May 2021. As of August, Enbridge, the pipeline owners, refused to comply. Canada envoked a bilateral treaty to negotiate a solution. Thus the Army COE is preparing for those negotiations.
TTG,
As was asked many times while I was in Michigan, how many leaks out of that pipeline have there been since it was built and just why haven’t they approved any replacement, even one that runs along the floor of the lake just like this one? Then there’s the question of ‘risk’ of trucking the fuel, as well as the economic cost. Which is certainly not born by the envronmentalists in SE Michigan. As to the order, the last I read the government of Canada interceded because a great deal of the fuel goes there.
“The government points to a treaty signed in 1977, under which the countries agreed not to interfere with cross-border oil pipelines like Line 5. ”
https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/05/11/ottawa-steps-into-legal-dispute-over-michigans-order-to-shut-down-the-line-5-oil-pipeline.html
Fred,
Close to 100% of the product transported through line 5 is from Canada to Canada. The line has spilled at least 1.13 million gallons of oil in 29 incidents on US territory since 1968. Only one was detected by a leak detection system. Enbridge’s Line 6B spilled 1.1 million gallons of tar sands bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in 2010. That cleanup cost 1.2 billion dollars. No leaks have occurred at the Mackinac crossing… yet. That line was damaged by anchor strikes in 2018 and underwater pipeline supports were damaged in 2019. If Enbridge executives would deposit an escrow fund of several billion dollars to cover a potential oil cleanup, maybe that would sooth Michigan’s worries.
TTG,
“since 1968” You mean over 53 years. Michigan doesn’t want ‘escrow’ they want to appease the greenies. They could have approved the permits for a new line years ago.
Enbridge could have built lines through Canadian land to replace the Mackinac Straits crossing. Surely it would have been less hassle than dealing with their cousins to the south. Canadian greenies are not nearly as annoying as US greenies. It surely would have been easier than the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
There’s always tankers on the Lakes, but nobody wants them, either.
TTG
“their cousins to the south.” Well, that is nicer than some of things your wife has said about Canadians in the past. Maybe you all prefer Anglo-Canadians.
TTG,
There is a reason that current pipeline follows the path it does and was approved decades ago. Those underlying conditions haven’t changed.
pl,
I had to think back on that one. Ah yes, the damned Quebecois who would come into Macys in Albany demanding that their Canadian money be accepted for payment at the same value as US money. They would go from cashier to cashier trying to intimidate the young girls into accepting their cash. They were told to go upstairs and get their money exchanged as they left in a huff. Yes, SWMBO did refer to them as les damned Quebecois. Coins were no big deal. Everybody had Canadian coins in their pocket, but paper money – get it exchanged.
Our RPI hockey team was almost exclusively recruited from Ottawa at that time. Saint Lawrence University, for some reason, recruited mostly from Quebec. Those games were always wild.
TTG
Nobody in my household is likely to forget this selective bigotry.
It would be nice to see the Army COE actually BUILD something before de-commissioning something that is already working. The Biden Administration is beholden to extremists looking for oil infrastructure to shut down.
Fun Fact: despite their anti-oil agenda, the U.S. is producing 11.5M bpd, just 10% less than our all time high of 13M bpd. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCRFPUS2&f=W
Republicans have this notion that oil production ended after Trump.
We could end our theft and blockade of Iranian / Venezuelan property. Technically they are part of OPEC but they would insist on going back to their old quota levels and that would pressure all of OPEC. In any case there was no justification for Trump to go psycho on them in the first place.
CJC,
Leaving Venezuela and Iran alone, wouldn’t that be a novel idea. Taking great state politics out of world energy supply would be a hard sell to many. At the same time we could let Europe decide how much oil and gas they want to buy from Russia. That would solve a lot of problems. What would we do with all the extra time on our hands?
The Shutdown of The American Pipe Lines…and Oil and Gas Supplys that will Keep us Independent. Appears to be The Crown Jewel..In King Bidends Crown..This policy would hve been Initated with or without Trumps prior actions…I Believe they will shut this Pipeline down too..Using Environment Excuses…and Attack Oil and Gas Supplys Non Stop…These folks are Extremeist.. It wont Stop..King Biden will soon be joint By King Charles,,,The Green..of Great Britian..and Fellow Traveler..That British Tranformation is Event in the Near Future..There is a Tremendous amount of Power and Momentum To Push Geo/Political Events to Intense Levels..Of Hysteria and Manipulation…The “Reactors” Are In Melt Down..Critical Mass..Control Of The Masses..and World Domination..Add It UP..The Numbers Dont Lie…What Comes Next..Im sure..will Be Beyond Amazing.. Will China Follow Nazi Germanys Example after Thier Own World Olympic Games Next Year..?? Then a regional War….All The other Political Social Factors..are Already In Place…Except The Complete Economic Collapse..currently Being Manipuated as We can Tell…
Here is an explanation for what is happening and why – https://fort-russ.com/2021/11/crisis-europe-shock-decarbonization-of-industry/ Not may favourite source of information, but it’s the only translation that I could find.
Does any one seriously argue that we will hamstring the safety of the Republic on account of the religious feelings of a tiny minority who represent defeated nations? This is akin to asking the English to limit all development until consulting with Druids. Do people want the Great Republic to fail?
matthew
Yes, the commies want the Republic to fail so that they can “build back better.”
TTG has already touched on this in a comment from yesterday, but I will add my two cents worth……….
Pipelines remain the most cost effective method for transporting large volumes of liquid hydrocarbons overland. And on a volume to volume basis, pipelines tend to be safer than transport by rail or tanker truck.
However, when a release occurs, one can end up with a hell of a mess.
In July 2010, the Enbridge 6B pipeline ruptured at Marshall, Michigan adjacent to a creek tributary to the Kalamazoo River. Over one million gallons of diluted bitumen (produced from the Athabasca oil sands in Canada) were released.
At the time I was working in the environmental services division of a large, Kansas City-based engineering firm. We got a nice piece of work responding to this spill; mainly providing personnel to provide field supervision and QA/QC oversight for cleanup crews. I was not involved, but my colleagues who did told me when they returned to the office that it was one hell of a mess.
Once the lighter, volatile components of the bitumen had vaporized, the heavier components sank to the river bottom, which required expensive dredging to remove. Thirty-five miles of the Kalamazoo River was closed to all activities (boating, fishing, etc) for almost two years while the cleanup took place and the ultimate price tag exceeded one billion dollars (although in today’s world, this qualifies as chump-change).
No doubt this incident goes a long way towards explaining the hostility of Michigan pols to both Enbridge and pipelines.
On the other hand, it is a fantasy to believe that we can totally decarbonize our economy and continue to enjoy the standard of living that we do. I expect fossil fuels (including demon coal) to make a significant contribution to our energy mix for decades to come.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_River_oil_spill
Ed,
I was living in Michigan and involved in MI Democratic party politics at the time. The animosity to pipelines pre-dates that leak by many years. The amount spilled and actual damages were often exagerated in the press. The ‘clean up’ costs were certainly exorbitant.