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This is a story with many aspects. This is actually a pretty big protest. Far bigger than one guy sitting on the sidelines and far bigger than a few ranchers locking themselves away in some building in the middle of nowhere but for some reason this protest is getting very little coverage.
I intentionally posted the most inflammatory one I could find in the hopes that people would actually be forced to research this themselves.
And it's far bigger than 50.
At least 6 additional Native American tribes from across the country are gathering with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
A pipeline is about 100X more safe than a railroad to transport oil across country. It's out of sight and out of mind and very rarely do they leak, especially the modern day pipelines built with modern methods. Outside damage causes the vast majority of leaks and that can be minimized by public awareness campaigns and good pipeline markers. Also, crude oil is not that harmful to the environment if there is a leak. It can be cleaned up and if it's not refined it's almost like fertilizer. It readily breaks down in the soil.
What this is is outside activists encouraging these Indians to protest for money and attention.
I'm not going to question the safety of rail vs. pipeline carriage one way or another.
What I do want to point out is that the production, transport and refining of petroleum products has changed considerably (and repeatedly) over the forty-plus years since the first concerns over energy supplies surfaced back in the early Seventies.
When new oilfields first emerged, whether in Pennsylvania in the 1860s or East Texas in the early 1930s, railroads were first used for the shipment of crude petroleum to refineries. When the volume of traffic developed to justify the capital cost of a pipeline, one was built, usually to the closest tidewater or lake port so that inexpensive movement by tankship could be utilized.
And when submarine warfare jeopardized coastal shipping between the "oil patch" of Texas and Oklahoma and the East Coast during World War II, the famous "Big Inch" pipeline was built; during construction, the railroads scraped together a fleet of aging tank cars and did a surprisingly good job of filling in.
For reasons related in part to the emergence of smaller train crews (2 men vs 5, hence -- no caboose) post-1983, and economic deregulation, much, but not all of the efficiency of pipelines over rail movement has been negated, particularly when no pipeline system is already in place; the dispersed nature of the Bakken (North Dakota) field, which would require a more elaborate network of "gathering" lines, is also a factor.
Point being, simply, that the more complex (more players) the market for petroleum, the higher the cost of capital-intensive pipelines and refineries, and the greater the vulnerability to political interference, the more likely that those within the oil industry will opt for maximum flexibility at minimum capital cost.
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Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-01-2016 at 01:58 PM..
I intentionally posted the most inflammatory one I could find in the hopes that people would actually be forced to research this themselves.
And it's far bigger than 50.
At least 6 additional Native American tribes from across the country are gathering with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Bah, Indians can't stop squat if it's built outside the reservation.
And yet they are. It was discovered because of their protests that the company building the pipeline didn't have the proper permits.
I'd like to see anyone else build on government property without permits.
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50 protesters not " thousands "
