[News] The US and Canada Are Preparing for a New Standing Rock Over the Trans Mountain Tar Sands Pipeline

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://theintercept.com/2018/07/17/trans-mountain-pipeline-tar-sands-canada-us-kinder-morgan/ 



  The U.S. and Canada Are Preparing for a New Standing Rock Over the
  Trans Mountain Tar Sands Pipeline

Alleen Brown <https://theintercept.com/staff/alleenbrown/>, Will Parrish 
<https://theintercept.com/staff/will-parrish/>- July 17 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

_In British Columbia’s_ southern interior, on unceded land of the 
Secwepemc Nation, Kanahus Manuel stands alongside a 7-by-12-foot “tiny 
house” mounted on a trailer. Her uncle screws a two-by-four into a floor 
panel while her brother-in-law paints a mural on the exterior walls 
depicting a moose, birds, forests, and rivers — images of the terrain 
through which the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will pass, if it can 
get through the Tiny House Warriors’ roving blockade. The project would 
place a new pipeline alongside the existing Trans Mountain line, 
tripling the system’s capacity to 890,000 barrels of tar sands bitumen 
flowing daily from Alberta through British Columbia to an endpoint 
outside Vancouver.

On May 29, the Canadian government announced that it would nationalize 
the Trans Mountain pipeline to assure the expansion would be built, 
putting up 4.5 billion Canadian dollars ($3.5 billion) to acquire the 
pipeline and other assets from the Texas-based energy giant Kinder 
Morgan. The purchase has dramatically raised the stakes of the fight for 
both the administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and pipeline 
opponents like Manuel.

Should construction begin as scheduled in August, the Tiny House 
Warriors expect waves of allies from Indigenous nations inside Canada 
and beyond to join them as they wheel 10 of the houses into the 
pipeline’s path. Near the pipeline’s terminus outside Vancouver, members 
of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation have constructed a traditional “watch 
house” from which to monitor the progress of construction.

Resistance to the pipeline is already escalating: On July 3, seven 
pipeline opponents rappelled from Vancouver’s Ironworkers Memorial 
Bridge in a daylong blockade of tanker traffic associated with the 
existing Trans Mountain line. Last week, the Tiny House Warriors wheeled 
the homes into a provincial park that sits on the site of a historic 
village near Clearwater, British Columbia, in an assertion of their 
title to the land. On Saturday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police 
singled out and arrested Manuel, whose livestream 
<https://www.facebook.com/100012060671019/videos/474470766298275/> of 
the incident has garnered more than 500,000 views on Facebook. She was 
detained on a charge of “criminal mischief” and released later that day. 
The struggle against the expansion, Manuel told The Intercept, could 
become “the Standing Rock of the north.”

That’s exactly what law enforcement agencies on both sides of the 
U.S.-Canada border fear. For more than a year, U.S. and Canadian 
authorities have been girding for a mobilization comparable to the 2016 
resistance in North Dakota, according to law enforcement communications 
and government reports obtained by The Intercept. In Canada, Trudeau 
received a Cabinet memo discussing the implications of Standing Rock for 
Trans Mountain one week after his administration approved the pipeline 
expansion.

In Washington state, where a branch of the existing Trans Mountain line 
feeds processed tar sands bitumen to four refineries along Puget Sound, 
law enforcement agencies are preparing for the anti-pipeline struggle to 
spill over to the U.S. side of the border. The sheriff’s office in 
Whatcom County monitored activists’ plans to travel to British Columbia 
for a recent Trans Mountain protest, and information collected was 
shared with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Washington State 
Patrol, and the Washington State Fusion Center. The sheriff’s office has 
arranged at least two multiagency law enforcement trainings on protest 
response in the last year and a half.

The documents underscore the heightened scrutiny and surveillance 
Indigenous-led movements fighting resource extraction have faced in the 
wake of the mass mobilization at Standing Rock. The Trans Mountain 
pipeline is part of a much bigger system whose tendrils reach deep into 
the United States. Trudeau’s bailout is the latest shot fired in a 
cross-border battle over the fate of the oil sands, bringing the 
Canadian fight to a head just as two oil sands pipelines, Enbridge Line 
3 and Keystone XL, receive their own key approvals in the U.S. and move 
closer to construction. Canadian government officials are relying on 
completion of the three pipelines to convince oil companies to continue 
expanding tar sands production in Alberta.

In an era in which the climate crisis is rapidly accelerating and 
scientists are predicting widespread insecurity should political leaders 
fail to force a dramatic shift away from fossil fuels, the leaders of 
two of the world’s wealthiest countries are doubling down on pipeline 
construction and oil production. Meanwhile, managing the perceived 
security threat of those who stand in the way has increasingly become a 
priority for law enforcement.

“We take it very seriously,” said Manuel, who spent months fighting the 
Dakota Access pipeline and has long been involved in struggles for 
Indigenous sovereignty. “We’ve seen so many of our people being 
wrongfully convicted, being thrown in jail — Indigenous land defenders 
being criminalized.”

As with other Indigenous people in British Columbia, the Secwepemc have 
never relinquished their territory by way of treaty, land sale, or 
surrender, and they did not consent to the Trans Mountain expansion. 
“Everything flows from the land,” Manuel said. “If the land is 
destroyed, we are also destroyed. And that’s why we’ll stand so fiercely 
in defense of this land.”


      Canada’s Global Energy Ambitions

The Trans Mountain fight can be traced back to 2006, when then-Canadian 
Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged that the country would become a 
global “energy superpower” akin to Saudi Arabia. At the center of his 
plan was the development of Alberta’s tar sands, underground reserves of 
sand, clay, and oil, which has involved laying waste to vast swaths of 
Canada’s verdant boreal forests. To deliver the high carbon-emitting 
crude to refineries and markets abroad, energy companies proposed a 
series of new pipelines, including Trans Mountain, Keystone XL, Enbridge 
Line 3, Energy East, and Northern Gateway.

U.S. imports of Canadian oil have more than doubled since 2005, with 
increased tar sands production driving the bulk of the increase. But, 
along with a precipitous drop in oil prices, pipeline opposition 
movements have proved to be a genuine threat to continued tar sands 
expansion. Two proposed pipelines — Northern Gateway and Energy East — 
have been killed in the last two years.

The remaining oil sands pipelines inching toward construction face the 
promise of massive resistance. After the Obama administration killed 
Keystone XL in the wake of protests, it was brought back from the dead 
by newly elected President Donald Trump and received approval from 
Nebraska’s Public Service Commission to build along an altered 
<https://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/controversial-keystone-xl-pipeline-route-across-nebraska-is-approved-but/article_58ad0982-cbe1-11e7-8db6-07270bf564b6.html> 
route. Last week, the pipeline company notified the Cheyenne River Sioux 
Tribe of South Dakota that it would begin preparing construction sites. 
“We will be waiting,” tribal Chairman Harold Frazier replied in a 
one-line letter 
<https://twitter.com/CRSTChairman/status/1017544831566921728>. On June 
28, Enbridge Line 3 received a key approval 
<http://www.startribune.com/state-regulators-approve-certificate-of-need-for-controversial-enbridge-pipeline-project/486845211/> 
from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. “Enbridge and Minnesota 
have their Standing Rock,” Ojibwe activist Winona LaDuke posted 
<https://www.facebook.com/winona.laduke.5/posts/1798304950217435> on 
Facebook.

And in Canada, Kinder Morgan sparked a national crisis in April when it 
halted all nonessential spending on the Trans Mountain project pending a 
guarantee from Trudeau’s government that the pipeline would be completed.

At issue were “extraordinary political risks” stemming from resistance 
on the part of British Columbia’s provincial government, the company 
stated. Half a dozen First Nations had filed legal challenges to the 
pipeline, arguing that their land and waters would be threatened in 
areas they never signed over to the Canadian government, and Premier 
John Horgan proposed 
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-oil-britishcolumbia/british-columbia-edges-back-from-ban-on-increased-oil-shipments-idUSKCN1G62ZX> 
a temporary ban on any increase in tar sands oil shipments 
<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-attempts-to-cool-alberta-trade-war-by-referring-pipeline-fight-to-courts/article38074486/> 
out of the province’s ports while a panel studied the potential 
consequences of a spill. In retaliation for obstructing production, 
Alberta’s provincial government prepared to cut off gasoline supplies to 
British Columbia.

Trudeau, who campaigned on promises of carbon emissions cuts and 
reconciliation with First Nations, stepped in to buy the project — 
stating that the pipeline was in the “national interest.”

A coalition of Indigenous organizers labeled the purchase a “declaration 
of war.” “We mean it literally. The military will be called,” Manuel and 
other organizers wrote in a statement 
<https://www.secwepemculecw.org/act-of-war>. “It is the national pattern 
to use criminalization, civil action, and other penalties to repress 
Indigenous resistance to these policies by bringing to bear the weight 
of the law and police forces against Indigenous individuals and 
communities.”

Some boosters of Trans Mountain have also predicted dire consequences 
for protesters. “There are some people that are going to die in 
protesting construction of this pipeline. We have to understand that,” 
David Dodge, a former head of the Bank of Canada who has served as an 
adviser to the Alberta government on infrastructure projects, stated 
<https://edmontonjournal.com/business/energy/people-are-going-to-die-protesting-trans-mountain-pipeline-former-bank-of-canada-governor> recently.

For the climate, construction of the pipeline could be catastrophic. 
Numerous analysts have found that continued tar sands 
expansion is incompatible with efforts to avoid the worst effects of 
climate change, and the pipeline stands in stark conflict with Canada’s 
international emissions reduction commitments. A 2016 report 
<http://ceaa-acee.gc.ca/050/documents/p80061/116524E.pdf> by the 
Canadian government’s environmental protection agency estimated 
production and processing of Trans Mountain’s oil would emit 13 to 15 
million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Asked to comment on opposition to the project, Mackenzie Radan, a 
spokesperson for Canada’s natural resources minister, told The Intercept 
that 43 Indigenous communities along the Trans Mountain had route signed 
mutual benefit agreements with Kinder Morgan “worth hundreds of millions 
of dollars.” However, some leaders from those communities have 
underlined 
<https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/ne9ayw/why-first-nation-chiefs-sign-trans-mountain-pipeline-deals> 
that the agreements don’t equal consent so much as lack of resources to 
put up a fight and perception of the pipeline’s inevitability.

“This project was subject to the most exhaustive review of any pipeline 
in Canadian history. Canadians know that the environment and the economy 
go hand in hand. They know you don’t have to make a choice between 
growing the economy and protecting the environment,” Radan added. 
“Together we’re leading the way in the transition to a lower carbon future.”


      A Threat to the Safety of Property

Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies have frequently 
categorized pipeline opponents as extremist, violent, and criminal. The 
government has focused particularly on Indigenous activists, coining 
terminology such as “violent aboriginal extremists 
<https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/mbxyw8/rcmp-files-say-violent-aboriginal-extremists-are-undermining-pipeline-plans>.”

Kanahus Manuel was born into Indigenous political struggles; her father 
is the late Art Manuel, a well-known activist and intellectual who spent 
his life fighting for decolonization. She felt called to go to Standing 
Rock as police repression escalated. Law enforcement and private 
security agents responded to protests 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-security-firms-counterterrorism-tactics-at-standing-rock-to-defeat-pipeline-insurgencies/> 
with dogs, pepper spray 
<https://theintercept.com/2016/11/21/medics-describe-how-police-sprayed-standing-rock-demonstrators-with-tear-gas-and-water-cannons/>, 
rubber bullets, mass arrests, and water hoses sprayed in below-freezing 
temperatures. Quieter was the sprawling intelligence-gathering operation 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/06/03/standing-rock-documents-expose-inner-workings-of-surveillance-industrial-complex/>, 
which included social media monitoring, undercover operatives 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/12/11/standing-rock-dakota-access-pipeline-fbi-informant-red-fawn-fallis/> 
posing as protesters, aerial videography 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/09/29/standing-rock-dakota-access-pipeline-dapl-no-fly-zone-drones-tigerswan/>, 
and information-sharing that crossed state, federal, and local 
jurisdictions and included the oil company.

“Nothing really surprises me when it comes to the colonial government. 
We’ve seen them work hand in hand with corporations on every issue,” 
Manuel said. “And it’s never anything new. Each time, it means we have 
to fight harder.”

Indeed, the surveillance and police response at Standing Rock was 
reminiscent of activities in Canada in years prior. In 2014, the Royal 
Canadian Mounted Police attempted to map out networks of Native 
protesters under a program called Project SITKA, according to 
<http://aptnnews.ca/2016/11/08/rcmp-intelligence-centre-compiled-list-of-89-indigenous-rights-activists-considered-threats/> 
a report 
<http://michaeltoledano.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/CSIS_117-2016-47_Project-Sitka.pdf> 
obtained by Andrew Crosby and Jeffrey Monaghan, the authors of “Policing 
Indigenous Movements: Dissent and the Security State.” The police 
compiled “protester profiles” of 89 individuals identified as posing a 
“criminal threat” — the report noted that the events most attended by 
these protesters were those “opposing natural resource development, 
particularly pipeline and shale gas expansion.”

Within a week of Trudeau’s November 2016 approval of the Trans Mountain 
expansion, his Cabinet was preparing him for a crisis on the scale of 
Standing Rock, a document Crosby obtained via public information request 
shows. The clerk of the Privy Council, who acts as a deputy to the prime 
minister, sent a memo 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599942-Memo-for-the-Prime-Minister-2016-12-06.html> 
to Trudeau, marked “secret,” titled “Approval Process for the Dakota 
Access Pipeline.” “Following the recent approval of the TransMountain 
Expansion Pipeline,” the memo notes, “a number of Indigenous 
stakeholders have drawn parallels to Standing Rock, indicating that 
there would be similar protests if TMX goes ahead.”

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service distributed its ownassessment 
of Trans Mountain 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599938-CSIS-Intelligence-Assessment-2016-12-09.html>, 
also obtained by Crosby, which identified several U.S. developments that 
had potential to impact Canada’s tar sands ambitions. In a section 
marked “violent confrontations and resource development,” the document 
references the ongoing protests at Standing Rock, asserting that 
“several violent confrontations between law enforcement and pipeline 
opponents have flared up since September resulting in hundreds of 
arrests and millions of dollars of damage to corporate equipment.”

“While we cannot publicly disclose our investigational interests or 
methodologies, we can say that CSIS’s threat assessment for the energy 
sector remains constant,” CSIS spokesperson Tahera Mufti told The 
Intercept in a statement.

RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Janelle Shoihet told the Intercept, “The RCMP is 
an impartial party in these demonstrations, meaning that we monitor 
demonstrations to ensure the safety of everyone and will take action on 
a case-by-case basis, with a focus on enforcement should there be any 
criminal activities that pose a threat to the safety of individuals or 
property.”

The prime minister’s office forwarded a query about the Privy Council 
document to Radan, the spokesperson for Canada’s natural resources 
minister. “The right to peaceful protest is at the foundation of our 
rights and freedoms in Canada but we expect people to express their 
views peacefully and in accordance with the law,” Radan said.

To Monaghan, the focus on criminality is a red herring intended to 
discredit resistance movements that challenge the interests of the 
Canadian state. “This has nothing to do with specific criminal 
activity,” he said. “They might talk about it in terms of TTPs [tactics, 
techniques, and procedures] or use other jargon, but what worries them 
is actually that these social movements are being extremely successful 
at swaying public opinion and asserting Indigenous land claims.”

5-final-1531496422

Map: Soohee Cho


      Preparations in the Pacific Northwest

If the Trans Mountain expansion is built, giant oil tankers will carry a 
portion of the oil through the hook-shaped Salish Sea, which separates 
Washington state and Vancouver Island, and into the Pacific Ocean. The 
area is home to an iconic pod of orcas, whose dwindling population 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/science/orcas-whales-endangered.html> 
has been attributed in part to noisy engines that make locating prey 
difficult. With the pipeline, tanker traffic through the orcas’ habitat 
could increase by a factor of seven. From there, some boats may continue 
to Asia, while others will likely head to California, home of the 
refineries best equipped to handle the sludgy oil.

Another portion of the oil could travel via a branch line known as the 
Puget Sound pipeline, which delivers fuel along a 69-mile route to four 
refineries in Ferndale and Anacortes, Washington. Financial disclosure 
documents filed by Kinder Morgan indicate there’s potential for the 
Puget Sound pipeline’s capacity to be expanded 
<https://sedar.com/CheckCode.do;jsessionid=00007X99H_PkEQMbqnTLo1HPuxo:188setvlh> 
from 240,000 to 500,000 barrels a day. Environmental organizations in 
Washington have pledged to resist any expanded transport of tar sands 
oil through the region.

A May 2017 field analysis report 
<https://theintercept.com/document/2017/12/11/may-2017-field-analysis-report/> 
prepared by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence 
Analysis and seven fusion centers, including the one in Washington, set 
the stage for U.S.-based surveillance in the wake of Trans Mountain’s 
approval. It singled out construction of the pipeline as a development 
that could lead to “an increased threat of violence in the coming months 
from environmental rights extremists against pipeline-related entities 
in the Midwest and Western United States,” as well as “enhanced sharing 
of violent TTPs between US and Canadian environmental rights extremists.”

On March 8, John Gargett, of the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office 
Division of Emergency Management, distributed an article published in 
the Bellingham Heraldtitled 
<https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/state/article204097869.html#storylink=cpy>“This 
Could Be Like Standing Rock,” which described an upcoming protest 
against Trans Mountain planned in British Columbia. In theemail 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599944-Whatcom-County-Sheriff-s-Office-Emails-2018-03-08.html>, 
sent to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and sheriff’s department 
personnel, Gargett wrote, “We should be aware that we do have the Kinder 
Morgan pipeline, storage and stations here in our county (as well as 
Skagit) that serve the refineries.”

“The Sheriff’s Office has been tracking the event for a few weeks now,” 
Lt. Steven Gatterman replied 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599944-Whatcom-County-Sheriff-s-Office-Emails-2018-03-08.html>, 
copying the Washington State Patrol. “Several ride-sharing posts have 
appeared indicating people will be traveling to BC from the Seattle and 
Bellingham areas,” he added. “The biggest threat to our area may be 
where these travelers land if they are denied entry into Canada.”

Twenty sheriff’s deputies and 20 state troopers were designated to 
respond to any protests that sprung up along the border (none ever did). 
Gatterman added that the Sheriff’s Crime Analysis Center was searching 
for “intelligence information.”

“I find their actions outrageous, but I’m not surprised,” said Jamie 
Sayegh, a water protector from Bellingham who was part of a group that 
drove to the protest in British Columbia. “The truth of the matter is 
that our political system routinely allows corporations to use the 
government to defend the so-called rights of companies like Kinder 
Morgan to destroy our lands, our water, our lives, and trample the 
rights of Indigenous people.”

Gatterman also zeroed in on a group that had staged an anti-pipeline 
protest 
<https://theintercept.com/2018/01/14/facebook-warrant-pipeline-protest-whatcom-county-justice-department/> 
in the area in February 2017 that blocked traffic on Interstate 5. The 
group, Red Line Salish Sea, formerly known as the Bellingham #NoDAPL 
Coalition, is now organizing against Trans Mountain. Gatterman’s email 
to state and federal law enforcement inaccurately claimed the group was 
responsible for vandalism to a Kinder Morgan facility in a neighboring 
county in 2016. In an interview with The Intercept, Gatterman 
acknowledged that his note might have been mistaken and the incident he 
referenced was likely one carried out by a separate group.

“We are working in solidarity with the tribal groups and their nations 
that are standing against the destruction of their homelands,” said 
Michelle Vendiola, a Walker River Paiute tribal member from Washington’s 
Lummi Reservation and a founder of Red Line Salish Sea. “We have brought 
people up to British Columbia whenever the call is put out that that’s 
what’s needed.”

Vendiola is intimately familiar with Whatcom County law enforcement 
officials’ monitoring of anti-pipeline activists. Local prosecutors 
obtained 
<https://theintercept.com/2018/01/14/facebook-warrant-pipeline-protest-whatcom-county-justice-department/> 
a search warrant to collect private information from the Facebook page 
of the Bellingham #NoDAPL Coalition as part of an investigation into the 
I-5 blockade that ultimately led to criminal charges against Vendiola 
and six others.

“It’s crazy to think about how prepared they are getting to try to quash 
dissent here in Washington,” Vendiola said.

As March wore on, law enforcement’s efforts to prepare for large 
protests continued. An email Gatterman sent a few weeks after the 
Vancouver-area protests provided instructions for around 50 role players 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599943-Role-Player-Training-2018-03-28.html> 
who would pretend to be protesters during a joint training exercise at 
Whatcom Community College involving around 30 officers from the 
sheriff’s department and the Washington State Patrol.

“Some of you will be carrying signs, some of you will be locked together 
in what is called a ‘sleeping dragon,’” Gatterman wrote. “We are looking 
for a few role players to dress in all black to simulate an anarchist 
group. This group also covers their faces with masks or bandanas.”

Gatterman told The Intercept that the I-5 protest, as well as another 
road blockade in May 2016 in protest of a Trump rally, had motivated the 
department’s response to the Trans Mountain mobilization and inspired 
them to set up the training. He said the sheriff’s office wanted to be 
sure officers knew how to safely handle techniques like the sleeping 
dragon, which were used in both protests.

After the I-5 protest, Gatterman said, his office had also assembled a 
special team 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599939-Draft-Memo-Civil-Disturbance-Team-2017-02-27.html> 
to manage public demonstrations and had requested that the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency’s Center for Domestic Preparedness conduct a 
Field Force Operations training 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599940-FEMA-Field-Force-Operations-Training-Details.html> 
on how to police protests. According to a roster for the FEMA training, 
obtained via a public records request, roughly 40 state and local law 
enforcement officers participated, as well as 19 CBP officers.

“There’s work on formations as far as how to execute safe techniques — 
arrest techniques,” Gatterman said of the FEMA training. “They show some 
examples of things like tripods hanging from trees and overpasses, just 
to get you awareness of the different things you might encounter. 
There’s talk about throwing acid on officers, urine, feces, things like 
that.” A summary of the training 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599941-FEMA-Field-Force-Operations-Training-Flyer.html> 
obtained via records request describes it as providing the “skills 
necessary to prepare for and successfully mitigate threat incidents 
involving civil disorder,” including through the “use of riot control 
agents and less lethal munitions.”

Whatcom County’s records officer withheld a single document in response 
to The Intercept’s records requests, calling nondisclosure of it 
“essential to effective law enforcement”: a May 11, 2017, email from a 
county undersheriff to staff members concerning a National Sheriffs’ 
Association webinar called “Protest on the Prairie.” Cass County, North 
Dakota, Sheriff Paul Laney led a webinar by the same name on May 7, 
2017, in which he shared lessons with police across the country on how 
North Dakota law enforcement dealt with resistance to the Dakota Access 
pipeline, an investigation 
<https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/07/20/emails-bush-iraq-war-pr-delve-off-the-record-strategies-dakota-access-pipeline> 
by DeSmog and MuckRock revealed last year. “We viewed the webinar for 
training and informational purposes,” Whatcom Undersheriff Jeff Parks 
told The Intercept.

Gatterman said that outside of the British Columbia protest, the 
sheriff’s department had not actively monitored organizing against Trans 
Mountain. The agency’s response to the March protest involved examining 
what he described as “open source information” including public-facing 
Facebook pages.

Kurt Boyle, director of Washington fusion center, said that besides 
reviewing Gatterman’s emails forwarded by the state patrol, the fusion 
center took very little action in response to the Trans Mountain 
protests. “The only time we would actually take a look at it would be if 
there was the potential for some violence or vandalism or some attack on 
equipment that may cause danger to people or destroy things,” he said. 
“We don’t monitor social media.”

“Due to our robust capabilities, U.S. Customs and Border Protection 
frequently works with other federal, state and local agencies on many 
different missions,” CBP spokesperson Daniel Hetlage wrote in a 
statement to The Intercept. The Washington State Patrol did not respond 
to a request for comment.


      A Radically New Landscape

Just as Standing Rock shifted public understanding of the extremes to 
which governments would go to support fossil fuel companies, so has the 
Trans Mountain fight.

Clayton Thomas-Muller, who works with the climate justice organization 
350, has been involved in fighting the tar sands for over a decade. 
“We’re in a radically new landscape, with an entirely new campaign that 
needs to emerge. The federal government of Canada has demonstrated just 
complete hypocrisy in the purchase of this pipeline using public funds,” 
he said. “To paraphrase Vice President Bob Chamberlain of the Union of 
BC Indian Chiefs … a foreign oil corporation based in Houston gave the 
sovereign nation of Canada an ultimatum, and Canada buckled.”

So far, one of the largest producers in the Alberta tar sands region, 
Suncor, has shrugged 
<https://calgaryherald.com/commodities/energy/trans-mountain-deal-fails-to-change-suncor-position-on-canadian-competitiveness/wcm/1ca8d82c-21e0-42d9-8b1d-50215e6290fb> 
at Trudeau’s multibillion-dollar gamble, pointing out that the “normal 
processes didn’t work very well.” The company has declined to commit to 
any new investments.

The Canadian government is hoping to find another buyer for the pipeline 
before its deal with Kinder Morgan is finalized at the end of July. The 
government has sweetened the deal by offering to indemnify any buyer 
against losses caused by construction delays and guarantee a rate of 
return if the project’s future owner is unable to complete construction 
because of legal decisions. Still, it’s unclear that they’ll be 
successful in selling it until after the pipeline is built.

If they don’t, then the Standing Rock of the north will be a battle 
where the line between the interests of the police and the pipeline 
owner will be virtually indistinguishable.


-- 
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