[Ted Cahill]

Just came accross this article.  I've slightly paid attention to this issue in the news, but only now learned this proposed oil pipeline is to go through the Nebraska Sand Hills.

It would be interesting to hear from those involved with the sandhills courses and what they think of this proposed pipeline project.  How would the project, as proposed, effect the courses already established.  Would it negatively absorb prime land for future sandhills courses?  Seems like a topic that his board would have been keen to- have I missed earlier posts?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/11/nebraska-keystone-xl-pipeline-ranchers.html

[Garland Bayley]

Obama has put this on hold for at least a year. Boehner must have bent his ear.

[Pete_Pittock]

Just coming to the table? A recent map has the proposed pipeline entering Nebraska somewhere around Valentine and the Prairie Club. From there it would head SE and cross the Platte somwhere around Grand Island and continue SE. A counter route would have more of a diagonal through the Dakotas and head south in Nebraska east of the sandhills. Nebraska officials would have a large say in the matter.

If you think that Speaker Boehner had any part in this just google (or whatever) 'Boehner Keystone' and see that its politics as usual.
Its like he forgot all about his rounds of golf in the sandhills.  

[Terry Lavin]

To paraphrase the probable Republican nominee:  Oil companies are 'people' too!

[Carl Rogers]

How many courses can the area realistically have?  Yes, its isolation makes travel problematic...

How much water can the course(s) expect to consume without faster depletion of the aquafier?

My problem with the pipeline has to do with the oil industry itself with its cavalier attitude and record toward safety and the environment.  No question the oil in North America is needed.

[Tom_Doak]

I would have thought they would run the pipeline roughly alongside some of the main roads, instead of off through the ranch lands, where it's tough to monitor.  If so, I would not think it would be much of a distraction.  But I don't have an opinion on whether it should exist at all, or not.

The North Sea oil pipeline lands right at the south end of the golf course at Cruden Bay.  You'd never know it was there except for a few warning signs.  We also had a major pipeline running through both courses at Stonewall.

P.S. to Carl:  The amount of water used by 6-8 golf courses in the Sand Hills is a drop in the ocean compared to the Ogallala aquifer.  But, there will probably be restrictions someday soon, because the aquifer IS being depleted by other activities.

[Mike Sweeney]

I would build one right through Sand Hills Golf Club rather than in Afghanistan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan_Oil_Pipeline

As it is Veterans Day, this is what we make our young people do:

http://www.filmannex.com/movie/patrol-base-miraker-kala/29094

This footage is downloaded by NATO everyday, and is a sample of what is really going on overseas while we (myself at the top of the list) have silly arguments over green speeds.

[Chris Johnston]

Water isn't the problem, people are.  There just aren't many people available to work at the clubs.

I doubt there will be many new courses unless existing ones expand.  People are scarce and infrastructure is a massive cost.  Large debt doesn't work in a 5 month season.

Some of the very best golf ground is in the isolated and unpopulated Sandhills.  Tells me God has a sense of humor.

If the pipeline gets done, there will be less people to work at the clubs.  Believe it or not, five people matter.

We are lucky to have on-site housing.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

I have always found the politics of pipelines interesting. They get the same attention that significantly more active and intrusive industrial activities get. They can be built in this day in time with incredible safeguards. That said on the negative you still have the construction intrusion to lay the line. The area can be restored making for a 1 plus grow in adverse time. However when one builds a pipeline of any other industrial complex on sand with an aquifer below,there are no safeguards. I cannot believe it was not routed around the sandhills to begin with. In the world of crazy irony, I can show any of you guys leaking surface lines all over any old oilfield in the world. OLD being a keyword.  Business practices have changed. However enforcement has not. The Feds are worse than most states at enforcing regulations in this area. They put you through hell to get a permit then after you get it you never see then again. If a pipeline is built in an area with a typical depositional environment. The odds of the ground water being impacted is less than 1/10000. It would be 1/10000000 if the state and feds would inspect and at least pay lip service to the regulations.

[RJ_Daley]

Here are some interesting lists of prior pipeline accidents.  Just the last 10-15 years alone are enough to make one wonder what the ongoing safety factors are.

[ur]lhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents[/url]

With all the money involved in building and then cashing in on the investment, I can't see why an alternative safer route that avoids the major clean water geographically significant areas, even if it involves a 1000 more miles of cost to avoid the high plains aquifer should be the way to go.

[Tom_Doak]

With all the money involved in building and then cashing in on the investment, I can't see why an alternative safer route that avoids the major clean water geographically significant areas, even if it involves a 1000 more miles of cost to avoid the high plains aquifer should be the way to go.

Dick:

Once you start talking like that, of course, it's NIMBY everywhere.  And that's part of the problem, too:  most Americans would rather we build a pipeline through Afghanistan [at whatever cost, human or financial] than deal with it themselves.

On the other hand, a hundred years from now, and perhaps sooner, that water under there might be more valuable than the oil.

[Craig Sweet]

It is not so much the pipeline that should be our concern as it should be the source of the oil. The  tar sands oil in Canada uses nearly as much energy to extract as it produces.  It uses huge amounts of very hot water (takes energy to heat) and leaves behind toxic ponds that require propane fired canons to keep water fowl from landing in them. It releases more than three times as much co2 as conventional oil drilling. It WILL become a major contributer to global warming.  The area mined is stripped of vegetation and left a toxic waste land. The site currently being mined is expected to grow to nearly 100,000 inhabitants during the life of the project. 

Worry all you want about the pipeline coming within a few miles of a golf course, but worry more about a leak occurring on top of the aquifer. Pipelines do fail, as we know from the pipeline in Alaska, as well as the recent break here in Montana of a pipeline running beneath the Yellowstone River.

[John Kavanaugh]

I prefer any pipeline, or smokestack for that matter, over giant white wind turbines.

[Brad Wilbur]

My home town in southeastern South Dakota (Elk Point) has been slated by Hyperion to build the first oil refinery in the United states since 1976.  The last time I checked, a lot of the permitting had been done, and it had passed a county vote, but was not visibly moving forward.  It has been pretty controversial in the area, partially because it's hard to believe someone telling you how "green" it will be:

http://www.hyperionec.com/news/media-coverage/Hyperions-Phillips-Ending-the-Lull/

[Anthony Butler]

With all the money involved in building and then cashing in on the investment, I can't see why an alternative safer route that avoids the major clean water geographically significant areas, even if it involves a 1000 more miles of cost to avoid the high plains aquifer should be the way to go.

Dick:

Once you start talking like that, of course, it's NIMBY everywhere.  And that's part of the problem, too:  most Americans would rather we build a pipeline through Afghanistan [at whatever cost, human or financial] than deal with it themselves.

On the other hand, a hundred years from now, and perhaps sooner, that water under there might be more valuable than the oil.

Agree on the price of water... already looking like the next bubble market.

Despite the head in the Sand Hills mentality of one political party, every large company is already starting to plan for a future without oil. It will no longer be the dominant transport or heating fuel at the end of my lifetime... (touching wood for both my lifespan and that of our environment).

Unfortunately the NIMBY effect also makes the adoption of alternative energies problematic in some communities.

[Craig Sweet]

John, why do you prefer smokestacks and pipelines to wind turbines? I don't know any wind turbines that have caused billions in illness, polluted far away lakes, land, and groundwater. Not to mention the extreme nature of extractive industries on the landscape.

Last year during Congressional hearings on the XL Pipeline, a private practice expert on pipelines, and a government official charged with enforcing standards on current pipelines, testified that there are NO standards for pipelines like the proposed XL...the pipeline will not be carrying oil as we think of oil...it will carry bitumen. It is corrosive, abrasive, and will run at temps. of 150 F. Both testified that current standards are not good enough...

XL has a shorter pipeline in use right now and it has had numerous leaks.

[Steve Lang]

  Vintage 2001 there were already > 55,000 miles of crude pipelines.. with NE already having a big E-W canadian crude trunk line




and > 95,000 miles of refined product pipelines

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

There is nothing green about a chemical plant. There are also many different kinds of pipelines which carry many different materials. They have different safety standards and potential issues of concern as well. It is not a simple subject. It is very easy to not be talking apples and apples in a heartbeat. Tom, nice touch on value of water. An Australian company spent much of the 1990s buying up water rights up and down the eastern seaboard of the US. I think they will make a killing on the deal.

[Ronald Montesano]

With two freshwater lakes surrounding us, the folks of western New York and southern Ontario are quite fortunate.

I'll take Jaka's comment as tongue-in-cheek, the way he meant it.

[Peter Pallotta]

Just FYI - some news from yesterday.

Nebraska and TransCanada Corp reached a deal on finding a new route for the stalled Keystone XL pipeline that would steer clear of environmentally sensitive lands in the state.

The U.S. State Department ordered the company last week to find a new route for the line in a decision that set back the $7 billion, Canada-to-Texas pipeline by more than a year.  (The pipeline would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude from Alberta's oil sands to Texas refineries; but environmentalists strongly oppose the project, because of the route, concerns about spills, and carbon emissions from production of oil sands crude.)

In the deal with Nebraska, the state would pay for the new studies to find a route that would avoid the Sand Hills region and the Ogallala aquifer, which provides water for millions in the area.  Nebraska State legislators will vote on the deal on Tuesday, Mike Flood, the legislature's speaker said.

Peter

In a related article by a supporter of the pipeline, blame for the delay was put on TrasCanada for the public-relations botch job that was the naming of the project XL - as in extra large - in the first place; as well (as per the Wall Street Journal) as on President Obama: "The Keystone cop-out couldn't be a clearer expression that this Administration puts its anti-carbon obsessions - and Big Green campaign donors - above job creation and blue-collar construction workers. He's President of the 1%."  But most interesting to me was this:

"But there's more to the anti-Keystone movement than greens, something that may be more difficult to fight. These are the property-rights defenders who are unhappy with TransCanada's use of expropriation - under U.S. laws of eminent domain - to take over land to make way for the pipeline. In Nebraska and South Dakota, where TransCanada is laying new routes for the XL, local landowners are marshalling opposition to eminent domain practices. Eminent domain allows corporations, with state help, to force local landowners to give up control over land. Compensation is paid, but the exercise of eminent domain is a court-challenge process. In recent years, eminent domain trends appear to be moving against allowing corporations the rights they once had.  Eminent domain is also seen - often rightly - as a subsidy to corporations. Such subsidies can be worth millions. The eminent U.S. leftist Alexander Cockburn (no friend of global warming greens) wrote that the Keystone XL 'will require one of the largest and most aggressive eminent domains actions since the construction of the Interstate highways.'"

[Steve Lang]

  Avoiding the Ogallala aquifer in NE essentiall takes it to the east coast of NE

[Ronald Montesano]

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/08/politics/senate-keystone-vote/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

What happens now?

[David Harshbarger]

I read recently that the delay is in large part to give more time for more assessment to get a routing around the aquifer. The current vote is political positioning.

[Tim_Weiman]

David,

Insiders know Obama is actually a big supporter of the pipeline.  The re-routing has already been agreed to. The vote to approve will come after Obama gets re-elected and he no longer has to appease his friends on the left.

In the meantime, Candian crude is moving to the Gulf Coast by rail. Less efficient compared to the pipeline but the infrastructure already exists for the most part.

[Tom_Doak]

Tim:

Thank you for a moment of clarity, even if it sadly just convinced Jenny not to vote in the 2012 Presidential election.

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