TransCanada’s Response to NE State Senator Flood
October 18, 2011
TransCanada responded today in writing to Nebraska State Senator Flood, promising among other things to post a $100 million bond payable if any spills weren’t cleaned up, post emergency response personnel closer to places where emergency response might be needed, and replace water for any wells that are contaminated. Which raises the question of why TransCanada wasn’t planning to do any of these things before Nebraska kicked up a fuss.
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Great Plains Tar Sands Pipelines 
I came up with the below website upon placing in these words into a search engine:
TransCanada +keystone +pipeline +oil +spill +compensation
I asked the White House if they could tell me what might be the procedure and manner in which a landowner who had this pipeline built along their land, if there had been a spill on their land, what might be the avenue one might have to go, to seek compensation. And of course, they never responded. So, here’s what I found, which is probably better information rather than what I might have received via the internet in an answer.
This PDF is quite interesting and very informative.
What I can see from reading, the establishment which would be the one responsible for compensating anyone in the US whose property in the states this pipeline ran across, or was close to, would be the TransCanada Pipeline only. To get to this company, one has to go through our governmental offices to get the help that would be needed. Can you imagine how long that will take to complete this paper trail to get someone to clean up a spill and all the other things that will have to be done to clean up and get one’s land back where it was when the pipeline had been just installed. Whose to know what compensation TransCanada will allow and how long it will take. Are we really willing to take that chance with our homes, state, country?? Interestingly, all the dangers that our EPA has already established is well included in this pdf and we are still going to want this piple to go through??
TransCanada-Keystone Crude Oil Pipeline
Click to access final061407.pdf
$100 million may sound like a lot, but didn’t I read that the cleanup for the Enbridge Kalamazoo River tar sands oil spill has climbed over $500 million?
Bonding and spill response are irrelevant in practical terms, because the answer to the question of how you clean up a spill of chemically diluted bitumen in an aquifer is: you don’t.