Category: RT Press Releases

Anti-Keystone XL Protests Erupt Across Country

  By , ,

WI-light-brigadeAnti-Keystone XL Protests Erupt Across Country With More Planned Soon – Thirty-Seven Arrested Already

—For Immediate Release—

MEDIA RELEASE: March 20, 2013

Press Inquiries: Ron Seifert, Tar Sands Blockade, 940-268-5375, kxlblockade@gmail.com

Over 30 protests as part of Week of Action to Stop Tar Sands Profiteers held by over 50 grassroots organizations take on corporate investors bankrolling the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline

____

Wednesday, March 20, 2013- One month after the largest climate rally in U.S. history urged President Obama to deny the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline’s northern segment, protesters in dozens of cities throughout the U.S. are confronting KXL’s corporate backers directly.

Thirty-seven have been arrested over the last ten days for disrupting business as usual at TransCanada and their investors’ offices, with more are planned before the week is over.

The March 16-23 Week of Action to Stop Tar Sands Profiteers, in solidarity with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance’s Direct Action Camp in Ponca City, Oklahoma, is endorsed by over 50 grassroots environmental organizations around the country. Organizers seek to expose green-washed corporations like TD Bank, a top shareholder in TransCanada, and force them to divest from the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

“Its encouraging to see people around the country taking action to stop tar sands profiteers,” said Ron Seifert, spokesperson for Tar Sands Blockade. “No longer will we allow them to build KXL and invest in toxic projects that endanger the health of low-income and communities of color. We will not allow “business as usual” to continue.”

Here are a few highlights from the Week of Action so far:

Check www.tarsandsblockade.org for live updates from actions around the country. At least 18 more actions are planned between now and Saturday, March 23rd, including six more actions against TD Bank in New York City, Washington D.C., Montpellier, VT, Newark, DE, New Haven, CT, and Asheville, NC.

One of the largest events of the week will be tomorrow, Thursday, March 21 in Oklahoma. Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance is taking action to physically stop KXL construction. Read more here: http://gptarsandsresistance.org/

###

Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action Kicks Off With Over 50 Organizations and Over 30 Planned Events

  By , ,

TSB-FB_TK_SMALLStop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action Kicks Off With Over 50 Organizations and Over 30 Planned Events


Grassroots organizations across the US and Canada are taking action March 16 – March 23to demonstrate that TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is a toxic investment

___

Over 30 actions and events are planned this week to directly confront the corporate profiteers bankrolling the Keystone XL pipeline and the broader tar sands industry. These actions come at a critical time as investor confidence in Alberta’s tar sands is waning due to major delays and resistance to Keystone XL’s construction timeline.

Grassroots activists from over 50 organizations are uniting to send a strong message to the industry that TransCanada and its financial backers must rethink their investments in tar sands, the dirtiest fuel on the planet. Organizers will march, hold rallies, give trainings, and physically disrupt “business-as-usual” for those who seek to profit from the exploitation of marginalized people and the destruction of our collective future.

Some of the top tar sands profiteers facing protest this week: TD Bank, Valero Corp, TransCanada, CIBC World Market, and Tortoise Investment Management, to name a few.

WHO: Over 50 national and local grassroots organizations across the US and Canada are joining Tar Sands Blockade in a call for actions: 350.org, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Greenpeace USA, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, Indigenous Environmental Network, Rainforest Action Network, Rising Tide North America, Southwest Workers Union, and Utah Tar Sands Resistance, etc. Full list can be found here: http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/weekofaction/weekofactionorgs/

WHAT: Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action

WHEN: Saturday, February 16, 2012 – Saturday, February 23, 2012

WHY: Stop tar sands profiteers from investing in the toxic Keystone XL pipeline.

WHERE: Communities across the country. Some of the highlights include:

  • White Plains, New York, March 20th – Action at Tortoise Investment Management, one of the biggest investors in Keystone XL.
  • Ponca City, Oklahoma, March 21st – Mass Action to Stop Keystone XL Construction in Oklahoma. Direct action training camp hosted by Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, March 18-22.
  • Washington, DC, March 21st – “Holy Days Climate Action” an interfaith civil disobedience at the White House. Followed by a rally at the Canadian Embassy hosted by DC Rising Tide.
  • San Antonio, Texas, March 23rd – Community rally at Valero Corp Headquarters, one of KXL’s biggest investors.  Hosted by Students United for Socioeconomic Justice Action, Southwest Workers Union, and Idle No More
  • Los Angeles, California, March 22nd – Rally at CIBC World Markets, one of TransCanada’s major investors.
  • New York, New York, March 23rd – “Divest From TD Bank Day of Action!” hosted by Occupy the Pipeline, 350.org, and Sane Energy Project. There are events at TD Bank locations in at least six cities throughout the week.
  • San Francisco, California, March 23rd – A big direct-action training and Idle No More round dance at the Federal Building with Bay Area 350.org and Rising Tide S.F.

Map of 30 public rallies and actions: http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/weekofaction/planned_actions/

CONTACT:

Ron Seifert, Tar Sands Blockade, 940-268-5375, kxlblockade@gmail.com

More info: http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/weekofaction-main/

Protestor Locks Himself to Conference Equipment, Disrupts TransCanada Presentation At Oil Industry Gathering

  By , ,
ethan_loud

Ethan speaking to room full of fossil fuel profiteers

Houston, TX — February 28th, 2013, 1:45pm — a protestor with Tar Sands Blockade this afternoon locked his neck to a projector screen in the middle of a TransCanada presentation at the North American Crude Marketing Conference in Houston. In taking direct action, Ethan Nuss confronted in-person Paul Miller, TransCanada’s Executive Vice President of Oil Pipelines, and a ballroom of tar sands industry investors, demanding a halt to the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Nuss successfully disrupted the second annual conference hosted by Platts. Among other things, the gathering is intended for fossil fuel industry executives and their financial backers to collaborate on schemes to transport dirty and dangerous tar sands from Canada to the Gulf Coast so it can be refined and sold on the international market, thereby expanding the industry.

“TransCanada’s ‘business as usual’ spells death and destruction for our communities,” said Ethan Nuss. “My conscience won’t allow me to watch this multinational corporation and their profiteers poison impacted communities from here in Houston’s polluted East End to indigenous people at the point of tar sands extraction in Alberta, Canada. This must stop.” Ethan further shares his reasons for taking direct action below:

At last year’s marketing conference, Paul Miller explained the necessity of the southern leg of Keystone XL through Oklahoma and Texas to the expansion of the exploitative tar sands industry. TransCanada’s own fourth quarter report, released last week, revealed that the controversial pipeline is less than half completed, despite the Canadian pipeline corporation’s previous projections for completion of the southern segment this April.

This revelation highlights that Tar Sands Blockade’s sustained civil disobedience campaign since last August has been successful in delaying Keystone XL construction. Today’s action is part of growing momentum for an upcoming national week of action called for by Tar Sands Blockade and allies from March 16-23, with over 60 actions currently reported nationwide.

“This is just a morsel of what TransCanada and other tar sands profiteers can expect in the coming weeks and months,” said Kim Huynh, a spokesperson with Tar Sands Blockade. “All over the country, communities are gearing up to take to the streets, offices, extraction sites and public events to show that our movement won’t relent until we’ve made this investment as toxic for TransCanada and its financial backers as the very tar sands being piped through Keystone XL. Our tar sands-free future begins now.”

Earlier this week, 20,000 gallons of crude oil leaked into Otter Creek in Tyler County, TX from a pipeline owned by Sunoco Logistics. Otter Creek flows into Russell Creek, which feeds the Neches River. The leak did not trigger Sunoco’s detection systems but was discovered by local residents reporting oil in their water.

Lifelong Oklahoman Youth Pastor suspended from KXL Construction Equipment, locked to machinery.

  By , ,

TSB OKBREAKING: Lifelong Oklahoman Youth Pastor suspended from KXL Construction Equipment, locked to machinery.

Earlier this morning, Stefan Warner, a youth pastor who was born and
raised in Harrah, OK, locked himself to machinery being used to build the
toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline through Creek land by treaty near
Schoolton, OK. Warner is taking action to protect the North Canadian River
and
the health of the towns and land it runs through from being irreversibly
damaged by diluted bitumen (tar sands) leaks and spills, as well as to
send a clear message that the current day colonialism and disregard for
the health and sovereignty of indigenous peoples in Alberta and along
the pipeline is unacceptable—from a Christian perspective, as well as a
human perspective.

Tar sands pipelines have a horrendous track record: the existing
Keystone 1 pipeline leaked twelve times in its first year, and at least
thirty times to date. In 2010, the added dangers of tar sands pipelines
were demonstrated by Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline spill of over a million
gallons of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The
Kalamazoo Tar Sands spill is the costliest inland spill in United States
history, draining the oil spill coffers and placing the $800 million and
rising price tag onto the backs of local and federal taxpayers. But it
is not the monetary burden that weighs heaviest; the toll on human life,
health and local ecosystems is immeasurable, and in the immediate, the
toxicity of the diluted bitumen and undisclosed proprietary chemicals
has proven devastating.

In addition to the immense dangers posed by the Keystone XL, TransCanada
has been misrepresenting the economic effects of the pipeline. The
majority of construction jobs are temporary and have been filled by
Wisconsin-based contractor Michel’s, not Oklahomans and Texans. Despite
TransCanada and the State Department’s rhetoric of energy independence,
the diluted bitumen transported by the Keystone XL is destined for
export to foreign markets after being refined in Gulf Coast refineries,
and the National Resources Defense Council asserts that the KXL will
increase domestic gas prices.

“I grew up in a town where the North Canadian River runs right through,
and we can’t let the North Canadian become another Kalamazoo ,” said
Oklahoman youth pastor Stefan Warner. “I figure folks have to take action to
stop our beautiful Oklahoma from being marred by a foreign corporation,
and stand up to fight big corporations who think that poisoning people
and stealing land is acceptable so long as they make a profit.”

Warner is acting with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a coalition of
Oklahomans and allies fighting to prevent construction of the Keystone
XL which will bring dangerous and toxic diluted bitumen from the
biome-consuming Tar Sands gigaproject to refinery communities in the
Gulf. This action comes in the wake of dozens of similar actions which
have actively fought construction of the Keystone XL in Oklahoma and
Texas. In light of reports of shoddy welding by TransCanada
whistleblower Evan Vokes and the recent release of photographs depicting
holes in the weld of a pipe buried in Texas, the struggle to keep the
Keystone XL from being completed is even more urgent.