TransCanada, the company that would build and own the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada’s tar sand fields to the U.S. Gulf Coast, has dialed up its lobbying in Congress after a U.S. State Department report that favored the pipeline. The giant oil pipeline is perfectly clean and safe, say the lobbyists. TransCanada will be using the best, newest technology, monitoring and materials. The citizens of Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska and points south need not worry their little heads.

Then, BOOM! A TransCanada natural gas pipeline in Manitoba, Canada blew up in a spectacular fireball on January 25, reaching hundreds of feet into the air. It burned for 12 hours and only its rural location prevented a human catastrophe. (A nearly identical gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California killed eight people and burned a neighborhood in 2010). A TransCanada pipeline in Ontario exploded in a nearly identical manner in 2011. Another TransCanada pipe in Ontario blew up in 2009 as well.

A week after the Manitoba blast, TransCanada still didn’t know what caused it, or wouldn’t say.

Oil pipelines may fail without fireballs, but are no less dangerous to neighbors and the environment. No matter what a pipeline carries, maintenance and vigilance matter. But keeping a pipeline from exploding-or gushing a lake of flammable, toxic crude oil into local water supplies-isn’t a profit center. (What would pour out of Keystone XL is actually a slurry of corrosive tar and chemical-laced, highly flammable thinners.) To a corporation, safety spending is a dead loss. Only the lip service is free.

Ronald Reagan famously said of negotiating with the Soviet Union, “Trust, but verify.” The same goes for the promises of TransCanada, yet U.S. pipeline regulators are too strapped for staff and money to verify even existing pipeline safety, according to a New York Times story.

Another TransCanada pipeline explosion in 2009, in Ontario’s northern wilderness, was blamed on “95% corrosion” of the pipe. A Canadian government report said TransCanada’s inspection tools “failed to accurately assess” the level of corrosion.

The real question about the Keystone XL pipeline is why the United States should bear all of these risks, for no reward. A Consumer Watchdog study last year found that the pipeline, by sending Canadian oil overseas from the Gulf Coast, would actually raise gasoline prices in the U.S. The number of permanent jobs created would be paltry. Domestic oil production is rising and U.S. consumption is falling, so there is no economic rationale for more tar sands oil.

The XL pipeline, with all its attendant risks of spills, pollution–even deliberate vandalism or terrorism–is being built through America but not for America.

Canadians who understand the danger are turning down proposals for oil pipelines to their own Pacific coast.

Oh, and the U.S.State Department report that TransCanada’s lobbyists are waving so proudly? It was drafted by a subcontractor with financial ties to TransCanada. Chalk up one more reason why the U.S. should decline to be TransCanada’s beast of burden.

Posted by Judy Dugan, Research Director Emeritus of Consumer Watchdog.

It seems that PG&E is in the news all to often the past year. From tragedy to problems for customers with new SMARTMETERS, I have not posted of any other specific industry/service provider anywhere close to the PG&E story, as it continues to unfold. The latest…

Senator blocks utility giant’s attempts to dodge questions on San Bruno blast

SACRAMENTO – Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez (D-Shafter) today charged that PG&E has failed in its pledge to be transparent and open in the wake of the San Bruno tragedy, avoiding questions posed by legislators and attempting to bog the Senate down with irrelevant documentation.  He reiterated a list of questions he would like answered.

Last month, Florez asked the utility to stop hiding behind claims that its hands were tied on releasing information due to the ongoing federal investigation.  Lawyers for the National Transportation and Safety Board told Florez that, contrary to PG&E chairman Peter Darbee’s claims, they had placed no restrictions on PG&E releasing the documents requested by the Legislature.

Shortly thereafter, a top PG&E executive on Smart Meters was caught lying about his identity to infiltrate a website devoted to sharing concerns about the digital meters.

Disturbed by the pattern of behavior, Florez wrote again on November 19th, 2010, to Darbee, restating the questions he would like answered, including the risk assessment for gas transmission lines statewide and when they were last inspected, a breakdown of how PG&E says it spent $100 million on improvements and whether or not the utility completed improvements for which it requested and received rate hikes.

Following his initial request, PG&E provided Florez’s office with boxes holding thousands of pages of documents, none of which addressed the questions asked, giving the impression the utility giant was attempting to bog the office down with paperwork rather than live up to its promise of transparency and openness in the wake of high-profile gaffes.

I will keep posting the latest developments on this issue as I learn of them.

It is good to see that someone in Sacramento is taking the investigation into the horrible PG&E pipeline explosion and loss of life and property seriously. Does not appear that anyone will get away with sweeping the “facts” that lead to the incident (and I really am at a loss of words to adequately describe the explosion and aftermath) get swept “under the rug.” That “someone” in this case is California State Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez.

In an effort to determine the causes of the San Bruno gas line explosion and prevent future such trajedies, Senator Florez is asking Pacific Gas & Electric and the California Public Utilities Commission to turn over hundreds of pages of internal documents to the state Senate.

Arguing that PG&E failed to fix what it knew to be a potentially dangerous problem, the Senate Majority leader is also asking the utility to provide the names of PG&E personnel who worked in the vicinity of the San Bruno pipeline in the days prior to the blast.

In separate letters today to PG&E and the CPUC, Sen. Florez, D-Shafter, cites a pattern of concealment on the part of the utility and a pattern of lax oversight by the public watchdog.

“More than two weeks after the tragedy, we are left with an inescapable question: Did PG&E’s neglect and deferred maintenance, a pattern of nonfeasance, cause the tragedy?” Florez said.

Florez is seeking a wide range of documents that he believes will help to uncover a practice of launching new technologies and yet at the same time, the utility giant has given short shrift to upgrading decaying gas lines that run up and down the state, beneath homes and businesses.

“I believe if these documents are released, they will reveal that PG&E was literally asleep at the switch when it came to identifying and fixing dangerous gas lines such as Line 132 beneath San Bruno.”

“I think we need to know if PG&E received millions of dollars in rate hikes to improve decrepit gas lines but yet, for inexplicable reasons, failed to do the work.”

“Without the documents that I am requesting, I would argue that this is what happened with Line 132,” Florez said. “PG&E had money allocated to do the upgrade. But the repairs were never done. How come? Where did those millions of dollars go?”

In the wake of the San Bruno tragedy, Florez said, PG&E has done its best to confuse the public, issuing a series of inconsistent statements.

In early news accounts, PG&E officials conceded that the utility had received millions of dollars in capital expenditures to repair Line 132 because of its “likelihood of failure” and “unacceptably high” risk.

Then, in later press accounts, PG&E insisted that Line 132 was not a high risk and did not even rank on the most recent list of the Top 100 “high-risk” lines.

Why was Line 132 removed from the most recent “high risk” list? Did PG&E make repairs to Line 132 that lessened the risk? Or was the accounting of these high-risk lines so arbitrary that decaying lines were moved on and off the list–without rhyme or reason?

Then there is PG&E’s insistence that it knew nothing about gas odors emanating from the San Bruno pipeline in the days prior to the explosion. The utility also denies that its records show that PG&E crews were dispatched to the neighborhood in the days prior to the blast.

Florez is seeking the names of PG&E personnel who recently worked in the area.

“Our office wants to question those PG&E workers. Do we believe PG&E higher ups? Or do we believe resident after resident quoted in prominent newspapers about gas odors and PG&E trucks sent to the San Bruno neighborhood in the days prior?

“Frankly, after butting heads with PG&E over the past year on rate hikes and SmartMeters, I don’t trust their corporate culture.”

Florez says his office has much experience digging into PG&E and would act as a state clearinghouse for the information.

“PG&E is a morass to dig through, but we know the questions to ask and the documents to seek. My plan is to share those documents with my fellow legislators who will be holding hearings on the matter. The public deserves to know the truth.”

Stay Tuned! I will post updates on FreeFlightNewMedia.TypePad.Com and a summary as warranted here on Calitics.com.