York News-Times: Real reason TransCanada won't move Keystone XL pipeline away from Ogallala Aquifer

Photo: screencap from this Occupy Omaha video

TransCanada is now claiming that it is "impossible" for it to move its proposed Keystone XL pipeline away from the Sandhills, and has now escalated its threat strategy from merely menacing landowners to an attempt by its lobbyist, Joe Kahout, to intimidate Nebraska by raising the possibility of a TransCanada lawsuit if pipeline legislation is passed during a special legislative session.

Against this backdrop, a new post by Jane Kleeb at Bold Nebraska drew our attention to a pugnacious and revealing editorial by Greg Awtry, publisher of the York News-Times, who has actually read the Environmental Impact Statement and its supplement. Read his editorial in its entirety here.

     ...If you think, by the nature of this headline, this editorial is more about TransCanada and their blind quest to put profits over prosperity, then you would be right.
     If one digs deep enough into TransCanada’s very own (EIS) Environmental Impact Study, (I prefer to call it EIS, “Eventually It Spills”) you would uncover the real reasons TransCanada wants to put the pipeline in a straight line directly though the fragile Sandhills and over the Ogallala Aquifer...
     Could it be that $1.6 billion in extra capital expense? Of course it is. TransCanada wants to build this high pressure, overheated pipeline as cheaply as possible, to give their investors as much return on their investment as possible.
     I wonder if you know that in 2008 TransCanada went out and signed contacts with oil companies to transport their tar-sand oil to the gulf coast, through Nebraska.
     TransCanada told them if they built the pipe on a straight line it would cost the oil companies 25 percent less to transport their oil, so the oil companies signed on based on the shorter route through the Sandhills and over the aquifer saying the longer route would be unacceptable to them.
     It’s on page 49 of the EIS Alternatives section...

     “The Keystone XL project that the shippers supported was the project as presented in the Presidential Permit application. A material departure from this proposal and the associated higher cost would have made the project commercially infeasible... Contract shippers on Keystone XL pay a fixed and a variable toll to transport crude oil to market. Both the fixed and spot tolls would have increased by approximately 25 percent from adoption of the Keystone Corridor Alternative at the initial routing stage as a result of the increase in capital costs. Transportation rates at this level would not have been acceptable and commercial support for the project would not have been received.”

     There you have it. TransCanada was asked to come up with alternative routes to avoid the Sandhills and Ogallala Aquifer, but the oil companies didn’t like that route because it would cost them more, so profits over prosperity took over and TransCanada submitted the straight-line proposal to the State department for approval.
     Now TransCanada not only wants to bury a pipeline in Nebraska, they may find themselves buried in a mountain of worthless contracts if they are forced to reroute it into the Keystone 1 corridor. Here’s the truth. Nebraska is in TransCanada’s way.
     The people of Nebraska don’t want this to cross the Sandhills or the Ogallala Aquifer. TransCanada doesn’t give a hoot about Nebraska, the Sandhills or the aquifer. It does give a hoot about building the pipeline via the cheapest route.