“News as We See It” by R.T. Fitch
Even While in Bed Together the Partners Cannot Agree
Houston (SFTHH) – El Paso Corp. denies recent news stories that claim their controversial $3 Billion Ruby Pipeline is “delayed over concerns about cultural sites and endangered species.”
Richard Wheatley, media relations manager for El Paso, stated that construction on the pipeline, which will run from Opal, Wyo., to Malin, Ore., is expected to begin in late June or early July, depending up the receipt remaining of approvals.
“We are currently on track for a March 2011 in-service date,” he said.
Stories released, earlier this week, cited a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) estimate of July for issuance of the right-of-way grant. The estimate, Wheatley said, “is conservative in our view. Ruby is diligently pushing for earlier agency action and remains confident we can beat BLM’s estimate.”
The BLM is required to have biological opinions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the historic preservation offices from each state prior to the project moving forward. Wheatley is of the opinion that the biological opinions will be issued this week.
The BLM currently has in hand Memorandums of Agreement from Wyoming and Utah, and is waiting to receive MOAs from both Nevada and Oregon before it can issue the right-of-way grant.
On April 5, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the project. Shortly after that, a motion for a rehearing was filed by Western Watersheds Projects. Katie Fite of the WWP claims that the route crosses too many undeveloped public lands when it could be built along current highways and other developed corridors.
“Basically they’re opening up this remote and untouched area with this proposed pipeline route,” said Fite.
Captive Calico Wild Horses- Photo by Elyse Gardner
Likewise the BLM has come under fire from Environmentalists and Wild Horse Advocacy groups for using the pipeline as an excuse to capture and virtually destroy the Calico Complex herd, one of largest remaining publicly owned wild horse herds in the United States. Almost 2,000 horses were stampeded into traps and are now held captive in feed lot conditions with the death toll nearing the 100 mark.
To date the BLM has disregarded international public outcry on the issue and Wheatley claims that the destruction of pristine public lands was already covered in FERC‘s April approval, which called relocating the pipeline to a less controversial track would be “problematic and ineffective” because it would cause even more environmental disturbance, route the pipeline through a patchwork of jurisdictions and land ownerships, cause it to come close to population centers and add 150.8 miles to the pipeline’s length.
FERC has one more week to either grant the motion or take no action on it, in which case the motion would be considered dead.
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Categories: Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Not unexpected the blm had no troubles with Utah and wy.making way for their Ruby pipeline.
Those 2 states have seemed to me to be the hardest on wild horses for 10s of years. It’s Utah where the blm contractor calls their home state. It’s Utah where they ran thousands of wild horses off cliffs using their aircraft years ago. Utah and Wy. must have cattle grazing and wild horse clearing/killing down to an ‘easy science’ by now.
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Utah and Wyoming have several serious “issues” as far as I’m concernned; how they “manage” their natural and wildlife resources is just one.
In addition, where do these people get off saying it’s THEIR resource(s) and they get to decide what to do with them? What arrogance. Those horses, forests, wolves, minerals belong to all of us/US. How is it that a private firm, and 4 states with the approval of a corrupt, imcompetent federal agency can decide? There are citizens and organizations that disapprove of this project. How is it that they aren’t considered?
And really, the reason these resource sucking trolls are placing the pipeline where it is is for two reasons: (1) shortest (ergo CHEAPEST capital outlay) route, (2) fastest timeline that also physically opens up these areas to further extraction/development opportunitiesis.
I say something happen similar to this in my state with high voltage power lines….it was a done deal from the get go via eminent domain, right-of-way, good of the nation BS. Where’s my compensation for the loss of the wild horses and burros roaming free, benefiting the ecosystem, protecting open spaces, etc? Where do I go to get my compensation for loosing all that just so 150k people can have natural gas service?
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Well, remember it was WY voters that elected Slaughterhouse Sue Wallis.
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That sounds like the basis for a good lawsuit, who do we contact?????
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“relocating the pipeline to a less controversial track would be “problematic and ineffective” because it would cause even more environmental disturbance, route the pipeline through a patchwork of jurisdictions and land ownerships, cause it to come close to population centers and add 150.8 miles to the pipeline’s length.”
God forbid we put a pipeline intended to just service 150,000 homes close to a population center of humans or through private land. That would be just awful. Wouldn’t want to ruin that cattle ranch or strip mall parking lot. Let’s rip up wilderness instead. Bet we can follow this one back to Dick Cheney too.
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If it is Halliburton it is Cheney! He has renamed us the “United States of Halliburton”!
I’m just reeling with how did this all happen? What have we all been doing? How do we fix it? And how do we keep this from happening again?
My opinion – much to do with radio talking heads on ALL sides. They have destroyed us. They take the stand that they are just entertainers, yet people buy into it all – some psychological tricks of their trade going on for ratings, thas all.
There are a couple of great documentaries on how this psychology works – find them – see them. Wish I had made a list of them.
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I thought I had seen the brainwashing of the public documentaries–oh excuse me that was a documentary on Hitler
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WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO NEXT HORSES ARE A BIG PART OF NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY THEY TOOK OUR PEOPLE STUCK THEM ON A PIECE OF LAND AND CORRALED US JUST LIKE THEY ARE DOING TO THE HORSES I SAY ROUND ALL OF THE BIG CORP. PEOPLE AND DO TO THEM WHAT THEY HAVE DONE AND CONTINUE TO DO TO US SEE HOW THEY LIKE IT
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I actually believe that is where they perfect their technique is in the round up and subsequent relocation of the Native Americans to unwanted lands. Now they just use those same lands as dumping grounds for every toxic material or run over the sacred lands and burial grounds to put in another uranium mine
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Thank you for keeping us posted on this RT– excellent article.
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I read that motion by the WWP when they first filed it. It is just super and tells it like it is about all the “short cuts” and graft. IF FERC lets it die, we’ll know where they’re loyalties lie.
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Let’s see if we can draw a corelation between drilling 5000 feet down into the ocean floor (where a horrendous hole in the Earth herself is SPEWING 210,00 gallons of crude into a pristine & living Gulf) and the installation of several hundred miles of pipe wending it’s way through pristine & living Desert transporting highly flammable gas.
I read every dry-ass page of the 312 pages of Ruby Pipeline EIS. And nowhere in it is there a section on Disaster Preparedness. It’s ok if blasting through rock releases mercury in the form of dust all over the place because they know about it. It’s ok to tap precious & previously unpolluted aquifers for the water needed to construct this monstrosity because they know about it.. They gotta wash the tires to keep invasive weed seeds from spreading(?). There’s even a coupla paragraphs ‘devoted’ to Wild Equines. But knowing the inherent intelligence & inadvertant idiocy of the Human Being, should the unthinkable occur, what’re they gonna do?!
Gas released into the environment. The fire that must surely follow, so intense in heat & scope Emergency Services, who have had to travel hundreds of miles themselves, can’t get close enough to shoot water or retardant into it. The landscape, which has never needed nor welcomed a human presence, Forever Lost.
At least the Gulf, in 20 years or so, may experience a recovery of a sort. In the Desert, 20 years won’t be a pisshole in the snow.
Don’t forgive them, Father, for they KNOW what they do.
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Here is a paragraph from a White House release today 6/2/2010
“If the laws on our books are insufficient to prevent such a spill, the laws must change. If oversight was inadequate to enforce these laws,oversight has to be reformed.If our laws were broken leading to this death and destruction,my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice on behalf of the victims of this catastrophe and the people of the Gulf region.”
OK it’s about the oil spill–just insert “kill” for spill and remember about the Wild Horse and Burro Act 1971 and don’t forget that every horse in those pens is a victim. Those are President Obama’s words. hmmmmm any confidence??
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“….we will bring those responsible to justice….”
I wonder if that would include the rock-headed fool who received a written warning about this a year ago – and chose to ignore it.
Yes, it’s about the spill. And our Equines. And our Public Lands. Because all of it is connected and every decision and declaration made by said fool and his minions has resulted in one common thread – unprecedented destruction.
“If oversight was inadequate…oversight has to be reformed.”
“If”? Nope. Not one iota of confidence.
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Australians used to push Aborigines of f of cliffs . They had to learn it was not nice to do that. Perhaps we will learn that it isn’t nice to do that to horses too.
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Wyoming is where the proposed pipeline originates, so natural gas suppliers in that state clearly stand to benefit. It crosses Utah, Nevada and Oregon, so is being touted as a source of construction jobs in those states. But the ultimate beneficiary of the Ruby Pipeline project is my own Golden state of California, specifically Northern California, along with the Pacific Northwest (Oregon and Washington) and the states along the proposed pipeline route (Utah and Nevada) including Idaho. Seven Western states by my count–California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming–have a stake in the Ruby Pipeline project. “These people” are us, and we need to address this project from the demand side as well as from the supply side.
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Go read some of the previous posts…no one here said that energy demand doesn’t exist. It’s all about HOW sweetie! What many of us are BITCHING about, amoung other points is that these extraction trolls continually do it on the cheap without due and diligent consideration to the problem/destruction side any development brings. In this case, specifically destroying pristine habitat including natural water resources and removing wiild horses only because it is a shorter, cheaper, quicker route than the one proposed by WWP. It’s all about money, honey!
Go take a look at the Gulf and tell me that, whether land or water based extraction the regulatory authorities do a good job of what if’ing worst case scenarios, protecting wildlife, etc. I don’t think so. And when are the A*hole developers (whether residential, commercial, energy) going to be required to plan more than 3 years into the future as to the impact of said development and true costs? What are these 150k homes doing for energy right now or is it the projected crap argument? How much conservation is going on in the proposed service area? Everything comes at a price and providing cheap energy is disingenous. It also delays the effort to start finding independent renewable sources.
It is not unreasonable to be skeptical, distrusting, cynical and flat-out angry at this type of business as usual; especially when it is a prime removal tool of wild horses and burros. And a reminder, removal (especially zeroed out) is not a management tool…it is an extermination tool and in violation of the 1971 Act.
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The state of California has been getting something of a pass when attention is paid to the Ruby Pipeline. We are a state that cares about environmental impact and yet all the impact is in other states, with consumers in California reaping the benefit of a “new” source of natural gas without paying the environmental price. I believe I read that an alternate route that would have tracked existing development, minimizing impact, but would have gone through California, was rejected in large part to avoid California environmental regulations (no “fast track” there). Politically speaking, California legislators and regulators may be vulnerable on this.
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Denise – you are a good girl and may consider yourself kissed upon yer li’l head.
If Northern Cali (where I also live) IS a beneficiary, it’s by investment; the project map appears to deliberately avoid entering the state. And according to the Proposal, this project is for the benefit of 150,000 households in the state of Oregon, those who participate in it’s construction, and El Paso/Ruby, et.al.
INDEPENDENT renewable resources would be for the Fed to help these households set up solar & wind production as primaries to run their homes. Hell, for the Fed to help ALL – by offering funding & financing for retrofits on older homes and requiring alternative energy sources built in to new ones. (I’m talkin’ individual homes here, not fields and fields of solar & wind FARMS) What is it about the Sun and Wind that has these guys avoiding the bit?
Why, ’cause no one can OWN the Sun & Wind, and the most immediate beneficiaries there would be the fellas who construct solar panels, turbines and other sensible alternatives; secondary benefits would be hundreds of thousands of households NOT terminally addicted to gas, oil & electricity.
It would seriously cut into the traditional booty-kissin’, toe-suckin’ booze-and-bonus mentality currently enjoyed by oil & gas providers & their Federal clones. And we sure wouldn’t want them to have to learn new & RESPONSIBLE ways of doing business, would we.
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It all is nothing more than an attempted land grab–along with water and mineral rights–if they can get away with it. No different than the robber barrons that we all read about in history. We all understand the need for energy. What we don’t need are monopolies.
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http://hamptonroads.com/2010/06/wild-horses-become-north-carolina-state-horse?cid=ltst
NC adopting the wild horse as state emblem
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Doing some research on oil spills and found these of interest:
These first two from a blogger at a newspaper post – 1)”first of all, just because they are drilling in the Gulf of Mexico does not mean the US gets the oil. It is sold on the open market. We get some royalties but not necessarily the oil – as I understand it”. So, we are not drilling nearer to home to end our dependence on foreign oil at all? Sound like welfare ranching – we subsidize them so they can send that beef to foreign markets for profit? 2) “BP’s net income in 2009 was $16.6 billion, or $45.4 million a day, in that time, according to separate data compiled by Bloomberg.” And yet, here is a company that evidence suggests sacrificed safety and endangered the environment, industries, jobs, etc., in pursuit of more, more and more dollars by reckless cost-cutting. The solution is obvious: Following criminal and civil legal actions, force these companies to act ethically by imposing rock-solid regulation. It’s obvious that today’s corporations, rather they be oil, financial, or other, will not regulate themselves nor act in a socially responsible manner. They worship at one alter and one alter only, be that of Greed.” 3) Obama stated yesterday in a taped conference as best I can recall that “BP reported 5 billion dollars in gains to share holders since the oil spill and have spent millions on a PR campaign. Warns BP not to nickel and dime the folks suffering from this disaster.” 4) “Worlds worse oil spills and spills we don’t hear about –
http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/Theworld_sworstoilspills/Article/
And
5) Earlier this week one of the panel members of the View said something very close to this: “this oil spill is evidence of the effectiveness of deregulation and free enterprise at its best because the industry, not government meddling, was providing the solution”. Say what?
But it’s not all bad news, the ocean does seem to recover, but after much time and effort. This does warn that previous recoveries were in less stressed circumstances than the Gulf has suffered over the years – so we’ll see. No immediate fix though for the folks – BP must do right by them. Of course we taxpayers will probably end up with the bag, maybe not. I find it difficult to determine in a Global Corporate World how we expect to hold a multinational corporation accountable – so we’ll have to wait and see about that also.
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