Keystone Pipeline Checked for Defective Steel
December 10, 2010
This week we hear that the activity along the Keystone pipeline is actually TransCanada digging up sections of the pipeline in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Missouri, after tests revealed 47 anomalies where the pipe may have expanded beyond regulatory limits. The potential for problems with the pipeline was analyzed in a Plains Justice report this summer. We’re glad to see that TransCanada is following up on the anomalies, but it does make their constant assurances that the Keystone XL will be “the safest pipeline ever built” ring a little hollow. Safer than the one they just built that keeps springing leaks?
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Great Plains Tar Sands Pipelines 
My farm in Marion County is located next to the TransCanada Keystone Cushing Extension Pipeline. Construction on this section of pipeline was completed in September and the farmer had planted winter wheat on the construction easement. On November 19, 2010 pipeline construction crews came back with heavy equipment and excavated a section of the 36″ diameter pipe near a creek crossing, the section was a bend in the pipe and was cut out and removed. There were other similar excavations occuring at the same time in Marion County. I assume a new section of pipe was installed and the easement was regraded and the crews left on December 6, 2010. I have asked PHMSA official, Harold Winnie, about this occurance and was told that tests had revealed faulty pipe bends and that the replacements were being installed before the pipeline is operational in March, 2011. I was told that there would not be any more tests following the replacement work. I am very concerned about the about the overall integity of this pipeline and the quality of the materials used in its construction. It is even more unsettling that this section of the Keystone Cushing Extension will be permitted to carry even more tar sands crude at higher pressures if the Keystone XL pending permit is granted. I have been told by members of the press that TransCanada and particularly spokesman, Jim Prescott, have been in total denial about the removal of bad pipe and only refer to it as a “quality assurance” program.
Kansans need to become informed about TransCanada as a corporate citizen. In 2006 they bilked 10 years of property tax exemption from the six pipeline corridor counties aided by a gullible, ill-informed and/or corrupt Kansas Legislature. We need to demand a total review of the pipeline materials and radiological tests with transparency to the public before a single barrel of tar sands sour crude is permitted to flow through Kansas.
We don’t need this pipeline! On TV I seen a report that they are using cheap foreign made pipes! Let our President know that we don’t need Canada destroying our lands. They don’t do a real clean up what a mess.