The pipeline vs the farm: Keystone XL dealt setback

Could one family farm stop a multi-billion-dollar pipeline project from going ahead? Probably not, but a Texas family farm will at least have its day in court.

The Province newspaper reports that TransCanada Corp., the Canadian company hoping to build a $7-billion pipeline extension project allowing Canadian crude to flow to Texas Gulf refineries, has been restrained by a U.S. court from building the line through the Crawford Family Farm in northeast Texas.

The farm rejected a cash offer by TransCanada Corp allowing it to build the pipeline across the property.

But lawyers representing the farm accuse the company of acting in bad faith and withholding key information about the project, as well as doing a “slipshod” study of the archeological impacts, The Province reported. The land contains artifacts from the Caddo Indians.

The two sides will give arguments in a hearing on Friday that will determine whether TransCanada can expropriate the property under eminent domain laws, which give the state the right to seize a citizen’s private property, with due monetary compensation, but without the owner’s consent.

The company has obtained 99% of the easements it needs in Texas, said the Province.

President Barack Obama in January rejected the $7 billion-plus Keystone XL pipeline which would have carried 700,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the Alberta oil sands to refineries along the US Gulf coast.

Meanwhile,Republicans in the US Congress are trying to include provisions that would approve the Alberta-to-Texas pipeline in a highway bill that is working its way through both houses of the legislature this week.

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