Around dawn on Oct 11, across the northern United States, five pipelines were struck at various remote sites roughly simultaneously.
Near-simultaneous strikes has been a hallmark of Al Qaeda, be it the embassy bombings in Africa, 9/11, or bombings in London and Madrid. Except in this case, instead of bombs, the weapons were bolt cutters. In several cases, flowers, not shrapnel, were left behind. Hitting in remote areas, the perpetrators targeted pipeline block valves. The intention, as their hashtags say, was to #ShutItDown.
Wearing white plastic hardhats, each with a large red ‘X’ label across the forehead, these protesters tampered with five of the key international pipelines that ship Canadian “tar sands oil,” as the activists called it, to American markets. The lines included Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain in Washington, Spectra Energy’s Express line in Montana, TransCanada’s Keystone in North Dakota and Enbridge’s Lines 4 and 67 in Minnesota.
The acts of vandalizing these block valves were broadcast live via Facebook.
“BREAKING: To avert climate catastrophe, activists are shutting down pipelines bringing Tar Sands Oil into the US, in solidarity with Standing Rock,” their posts said. The reference to Standing Rock is the North Dakota band protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline south of Bismarck, N.D.
While individuals or pairs went onto the site, others videoed the acts and the subsequent arrests. Police showed up, and cordially arrested the trespassers.
These people should have been thrown to the ground, eaten dirt with a knee on the back of their necks when they were arrested. Despite their self-righteousness, these truly militant and criminal acts should be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law. Interfering with infrastructure vital to national security is not something the American government is liable to take likely.
Shutting down pipelines is not a joke. It’s not chaining yourself to a bulldozer. Thankfully, SCADA monitoring system would have monitored any pressure variation and shut in the system before anything serious, like a spill, could happen.
Not surprisingly, these protests were videoed and broadcast with cellphones made of petrochemicals. Their high visibility vests were made of petrochemicals. And, in each of the videos I watched, they drove there.
“Shutting down” might be too strong of a term. It didn’t looking like they did much cranking on those valves. Nonetheless, at least two of the pipeline companies shut down their lines as a precaution.
I’m familiar with most of the major pipeline rights-of-way in Saskatchewan. I usually notice them every time I drive past one, to the point where my kids are probably sick of it. Often I’ve wondered about the security of sites such as block valves like the ones these protestors tampered with. You can bet after this little fiasco, there will be millions spent on video cameras for every site that doesn’t have them already.
The real worry is actual terrorism. No amount of security cameras, chains or fences in the world is going to speed up response time to sites in the bald prairie. Thankfully, since pipelines are well buried, any damage would be limited.
These vandals, whose group picture on their Facebook page shows them to be white men and women in their 50s and 60s, stated they did this, “in support of the call for International Days of Prayer and Action for Standing Rock. Activists employed manual safety valves, calling on President Obama to use emergency powers to keep the pipelines closed and mobilize for the extraordinary shift away from fossil fuels now required to avert catastrophe.”
I surely hope they had time to feed their horses on the way to and from these attacks. Wait, didn’t one talk about where his Jeep was parked?
Right – it’s catastrophic, until the Jeep needs to be filled up at Phillips 66. Then it’s just convenient.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
