Bold Alliance has filed its Requests for Admission, Interrogatories and Requests for Production with the Nebraska Public Service Commission, as an official intervenor in the PSC’s review of TransCanada’s application for a permit to build the proposed Keystone XL pipeline through Nebraska.
The main arguments in Bold Alliance’s filings with the PSC (embedded below):
- Keystone XL isn’t needed: There is no U.S. demand for additional tarsands pipelines, so Nebraska should not risk our natural resources so that Canada can get their tarsands to the export market.
- TransCanada is a foreign corporation using eminent domain for private gain: The company has bullied landowners with threats of eminent domain, when they had no authority to do so. If the PSC grants TransCanada the power of eminent domain, it will be the first time in Nebraska’s history that a foreign corporation is allowed to seize Americans’ land for corporate gain.
- Bold’s Build Our Energy barn is an asset for Nebraska: the solar-powered barn that stands in the path of Keystone XL is a site with aesthetic and economic value, providing a venue for events and generating electricity that Nebraskans use to light and power their homes and farms.
- Keystone XL is all liability for Nebraska: minor short term revenues that will be replaced by generations of risk.
- Nebraska’s water is our most valuable natural resource: Keystone XL could do immeasurable and irreversible damage to our world-class aquifer, farmers’ wells, and the over 200 bodies of water including the Niobrara River in the path of the pipeline.
In its Request for Production, Bold Alliance asks TransCanada to provide details of its “shipper agreements” with oil companies looking to ship their oil via Keystone XL, as well as details and projections for a proposed “on-ramp” for U.S. oil to be transported via KXL.
Bold also asks TransCanada for proof that Keystone XL is necessary and in the public interest, given current market conditions with low oil prices, as well as available capacity on other pipelines like its own Keystone 1, Kinder Morgan’s “Trans Mountain,” Enbridge’s “Line 3” and Energy Transfer’s “Dakota Access.”
There will be more motions filed by all the various intervenors before the PSC holds its intervenor hearings on Keystone XL Aug. 7-11 in Lincoln, NE. Sign up to join us.
Click here for more background on the “Build Our Energy Barn,” the solar-powered barn built in the path of Keystone XL that feeds clean energy back onto Nebraska’s grid.
