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Permalink Reply by LP on June 18, 2009 at 12:56

"Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, has called attention in recent weeks to the higher U.S. supply estimates driven by shale gas plays. He calls increased estimates a "game changer" and very good news."

Are they finally getting it? Is the light blub coming on?

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Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on June 18, 2009 at 17:02

Do you remember the Alaskan Pipeline that the liberals and environmentalists delayed and fought in the courts" The 48" pipe from Japan was bought and delivered to Alaska in 1968. All the construction equipment was trucked in or "roaded in" on the ice roads in the winter of 1968-69.

It was 1974 before the court cases were settled and work could start. Also due to the Arab Oil embargo in the early 1970s, I guess that changed some minds when everyone had to wait in line for gasoline,

Where would the USA be today if the anti-progress opponents of the pipeline had won? Where would have our oil come from since then, up till today, if the line had never been built?

One thing, the line was calculated to cost $800 million. After all the road blocks were removed and the work done, it wound costing between $10 and $11 billion.

Where would the Haynesville Shale be today if each needed pipeline to get the gas to market were
fought by the same anti-progress people? Tied up in court for years to come? Thank Goodness that Louisiana and Texas are Gas & Oil friendly states.

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Permalink Reply by sesport on June 18, 2009 at 18:09

How are you able to tell who the anti-progress people are?

Thanks & best - :0)

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Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on June 19, 2009 at 8:08

Generally these are "Not-In-My-Backyard" people. An area that this is prevalent is the New England area. They pay extremely high fuel oil prices, yet want to keep out pipelines and natural gas. Various levels of local governments file law suits to kill the projects.

Look how they have fought and killed some proposed LNG Import Terminals in this area. They are even against offshore wind farms.

Some groups use the Endangered Species Act to stall or try to stop projects. Remember the "Snail Darter" and "Spotted Owl" which caused such damage to the timber industry.

Look at the recent stories of a small fish (minnow) found in an irrigation canal in the Imperial Valley of California. Farmer were forced to quite using water (as the fish could be drawn up into the pumps) and their crops and trees are dying. Who gains then?

There was a large diameter pipeline laid across a desert in California. The welding crew shut down for lunch. While they were eating, a Desert Tortoise came from off the ROW and got in the shade under a side boom tractor.

Under the rules, no construction worker could touch the critter. They had to call the government agent, to come and put the critter off the ROW. He was the only person that could legally touch one.

When you are paying several thousand dollars per hour to run this crew and they are sitting, an not working, until the creature is moved, this is costly.

As bad as this can be in the USA, in the U.K. and Europe it can be run into the ground. We once had to stop a job a few hundred yards from a tree because there was some rare spider living in the tree. It happened to be expecting. All equipment had be taken back to the last road crossing and hauled around. We could not even drive the equipment around the tree to one side. (Do spiders have ears?). I guess they did not want the mother to get scared and miscarry.

Months later, after the baby spiders were born, we had to haul back and fill in the missing section. This does run up the cost of the job, which as it was "ordered", becomes "Cost-Plus" and gets passed onto the consumers.

We even once did a job in an English National Park, where the only person that had control over where we put the pipeline was an old Lady from the Auburn Bird Society. She also controlled us on what limbs could be trimmed. She didn't want any trees cut. We did a lot of dodging around. Some trees had to be cut just to get the equipment by.

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Permalink Reply by sesport on June 19, 2009 at 18:10

I was referring to the pipeline project from Alaska. Who is identified as the anti-progress people?

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Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on June 20, 2009 at 4:05

Wilderness Society
Friends of the Earth
The Environment Defence Fund
Alaska Native Groups



TAPS began issuing letters of intent to contractors for construction of the "haul road", a highway running the length of the pipeline route to be used for construction. Heavy equipment was prepared, and crews prepared to go to work after Hickel gave permission and the snow melted. Before Hickel could act, however, several Alaska Native and conservation groups asked a judge in Washington, D.C. to issue an injunction against the project continuing. Several of the native villages that had waived claims on the right of way reneged because TAPS had not chosen any Native contractors for the project, and the contractors chosen were not likely to hire Native workers.

On April 1, 1970, Judge George Luzerne Hart, Jr., of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered the Interior Department to not issue a construction permit for a section of the project that crossed one of the claims. Less than two weeks later, Hart heard arguments from conservation groups that the TAPS project violated the Mineral Leasing Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, which had gone into effect at the start of the year. Hart issued an injunction against the project, preventing the Interior Department from issuing a construction permit and halting the project in its tracks.[13]

After the Department of the Interior was stopped from issuing a construction permit, the unincorporated TAPS consortium was reorganized into the new incorporated Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. Former Humble Oil manager Edward L. Patton was put in charge of the new company and began to lobby strongly in favor of an Alaska Native claims settlement to resolve the disputes over the pipeline right of way.[14]


[edit] Opposition
Opposition to construction of the pipeline came from two primary sources: Alaska Native groups and conservationists. Alaska Natives were upset that the pipeline would cross land traditionally claimed by a variety of groups but would not contribute economically to those groups. Conservationists were angry at what they saw as an incursion into America's last wilderness.[15] Both opposition movements launched legal campaigns to halt the pipeline and were successful in preventing construction from 1970 to 1973.


[edit] Conservation objections

A caribou walks next to a section of the pipeline north of the Brooks Range. Opponents of the pipeline asserted the presence of the pipeline would interfere with the caribou.Although conservation groups and environmental organizations voiced opposition to the pipeline project before 1970, the introduction of the National Environmental Policy Act allowed them legal grounds to halt the project. Arctic engineers had raised concerns about the way plans for a subterranean pipeline showed ignorance of Arctic engineering and permafrost in particular.[16] A clause in NEPA requiring a study of alternatives and another clause requiring an environmental impact statement turned those concerns into tools used by the Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth, and the Environmental Defense Fund in their spring 1970 lawsuit to stop the project.[17]

Due to the injunction against the project, Alyeska was forced to do further research throughout the summer of 1970. The collected material was turned over to the Interior Department in October 1970,[18] and a draft environmental impact statement was published in January 1971.[19] The statement met with massive criticism from almost the moment it was released. The statement amounted to 294 pages but generated more than 12,000 pages of testimony and evidence in Congressional debates by the end of March.[20] Criticisms of the project included its effect on the Alaska tundra, possible pollution, harm to animals, geographic features, and the lack of much engineering information from Alyeska. One element of opposition the report quelled was the discussion of alternatives. All the proposed alternatives—extension of the Alaska Railroad, an alternative route through Canada, establishing a port at Prudhoe Bay, and more—were deemed to pose more environmental risks than construction of a pipeline directly across Alaska.[19]

Opposition also was directed at the building of the construction and maintenance highway parallel to the pipeline. Although a clause in Alyeska's pipeline proposal called for removal of the pipeline at a certain point, no such provision was made for removal of the road. Sydney Howe, president of the Conservation Foundation, warned: "The oil might last for fifty years. A road would remain forever."[21] This argument relied upon the slow growth of plants and animals in far northern Alaska due to the harsh conditions and short growing season. In testimony, an environmentalist argued that arctic trees, though only a few feet tall, had been seedlings "when George Washington was inaugurated".[22]

The portion of the environmental debate with the biggest symbolic impact took place when discussing the pipeline's impact on caribou herds.[23] Environmentalists proposed that the pipeline would have an effect on caribou similar to the effect of the U.S. transcontinental railroad on the American Bison population of North America.[23] Pipeline critics said the pipeline would block traditional migration routes, making caribou populations smaller and making them easier to hunt. This idea was exploited in anti-pipeline advertising, most notably when a picture of a forklift carrying several legally shot caribou was emblazoned with the slogan, "There is more than one way to get caribou across the Alaska Pipeline".[24] The use of caribou as an example of the pipeline's environmental effects reached a peak in the spring of 1971, when the draft environmental statement was being debated.[24]

For the complete article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Alaska_Pipeline_System#Conservat...

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Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on June 20, 2009 at 4:41

Another delaying tactic used after the injunction was lifted, was to require all workers hired on the job to be citizens of Alaska (having lived in Alaska for at least one year previous to being hired). As Alaska had few pipelines or history of building pipelines, before this one, the odds of finding 21,000 experienced Alaskan workers were nil.

No experienced pipeline worker would go to Alaska and sit for a year, not working, in hopes to getting a job.

I am not sure what group came up with this-it could have been the Unions which controled the work, which was heavily "Feather-bedded" to an unbelieveable degree.

The residency requirement was taken to the courts and found unconstitutional as a citizen of any American state is allowed to work in any other state without having to meet a residency requirement. Again delaying work start.

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Permalink Reply by twomule on June 19, 2009 at 8:38

LOL, I 'm not going to touch that one.

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