Diamond Injustice

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. Benjamin Franklin

Plains All American (PAA) and Valero have done great injustice to communities trespassed by bulldozers, drilling rigs and carbon steel pipes just to lower the cost of transporting shale crude oil to the Valero Memphis refinery.

In nature, there are many shades of green, from lime-green to pine-green. The 2017 University of Oklahoma Green Energy Week was a darker shade of green, what most people call black. The main event was a panel discussion on the Diamond Pipeline sponsored by the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Kristen van de Biezenbos, an OU Law Professor, explained how routes are selected. “Oil and gas companies try to buy the cheapest lands often situated in tribes’ territory, one of the reasons they don’t put pipelines through urban communities,” she said.

Van de Biezenbos also explained a fundamental notion, “We have pipelines because we need a way to move oil and gas.” This statement is based on false assumptions.

Crude oil is mostly used for gasoline and diesel to fuel internal combustion engines, a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Electric vehicles, using electric motors and batteries, powered by solar panels, are superior alternatives to 1900’s combustion engine technology. Today, we do not need to frack our national parks, oceans, or Arctic.

The second false assumption is “oil is good, more oil is better.” As soon as shale crude is fracked at the wellhead, the cost and hazards increase. Storing and transporting crude increases cost and does not create value. Would you pay two dollars more for a gallon of gasoline from a remote refinery or well? The best possible scenario is when a barrel of crude arrives at a gasoline pump, several months later, without spills or incidents along the way.

Let’s step back and look at what is at play for communities and people in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee.

Social justice

Social justice is a concept of fair and just interactions between individuals and society. Oil and gas pipelines, with the help of public and private security forces and our state representatives, have taken private property by force, threatened the freedom of speech, and the right of peaceful assembly to protect our environment. New laws in Oklahoma protecting pipelines are intended to intimidate water protectors. Similar laws in Arkansas were proposed. Americans are not treated justly by oil & gas. The Diamond experience has been about racial and economic injustice.

Climate justice

Constructing a bulk crude oil pipeline, 100 years of greenhouse gas emissions, and the oil and gas industry efforts to stop solar and wind distributed power generation is ecocide.

Environmental Justice

Destroying our land, rivers, clean air, and public health is unacceptable. Instead of moving the pipeline to reduce environmental damages, Diamond paid its way. Let’s look at the details.

The key to the project was approval from the US Army Corps of Engineers to drill under Arkansas rivers to construct the line. The USACE had the power to stop the project. All the Arkansas environmental protection agencies – the Game & Fish Commission, the Health Department, the Department of Natural Heritage, and the Natural Resources Commission – asked the USACE to require environmental studies for each river crossing. Instead, Diamond paid USACE an undisclosed amount for environmental damages and a permit for the entire project.

Diamond paid for the construction of a new water intake facility to stop Clarksville Water & Light’s challenge with the PSC. Diamond paid for damages to federally endangered and threatened species of bats. The Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission acquired more than 500 acres in northern Arkansas, away from the pipeline, with partial funding from Diamond.

Native American Justice

Diamond’s land grab is Native American genocide. Why would PAA have the right to build pipelines through tribal lands ignoring their sovereignty, culture, treaty rights, and environmental pollution to sacred land and rivers? Attacking the people who have a tradition of caring for Mother Earth and the way of survival, is a grave, unforgivable injustice.

These willful violations based on greed and ignorance must stop. Crude should not be allowed to flow in Diamond.

Dr. Luis Contreras