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Wed, 2013-02-06 11:31Carol Linnitt
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Is TransCanada Laying Defective Keystone XL Pipe in Texas?

TransCanada, the company currently constructing the southern segment of the Keystone XL pipeline, claims to use "top quality steel and welding techniques" throughout its pipeline network. 

Last week, however, activists fighting the construction of the pipeline released images of what they claim are improperly welded pipeline seams. The photos were released by Keystone XL blockader Ramsey Sprague at the Pipe Tech Americas 2013 conference in Texas and were taken by blockader Isabel Brooks.

Brooks took the photographs from inside a pipe segment on December 3, 2012 to document what they say was daylight pouring through weld seams between segments. "All of us looked at it," Brooks told DeSmog, speaking of the defective seam, "and it was clear light was coming in from the outside...It was definitely clear what it was."

An hour after the protesters were extracted from the pipe segment, says Brooks, it was in the ground. "[Other protestors] told me that it was in the ground that day and buried. So they didn't test it again," she said. "I know exactly the piece of pipe that it's at, so if we were to dig it up I know it would be right there and as clear as that day."

These two images from inside the pipe were released by Sprague last week:

Read more: Is TransCanada Laying Defective Keystone XL Pipe in Texas?
Sun, 2012-01-08 12:14Ben Jervey
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Bechtel Whistleblower Warns Against Keystone XL; Witnessed Shoddy Work on TransCanada’s Keystone I

Back in August, DeSmogBlog’s own Emma Pullman co-produced a startling infographic about how the first section of TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline system was “Built to Spill,” with a dozen spills recorded in the pipeline’s first year of operation.

According to a must-read bombshell Op-Ed in the Lincoln Journal Star, these spills came as no big surprise to the workers closest to the project. The piece, published on New Years Eve by a former Bechtel engineer who worked on that original stretch of pipeline, tells the story of gross safety negligence and lax oversight in constuction of that first Keystone line, and warns against letting TransCanada again bring that threat to American soil.

Mike Klink was an inspector for the project, and claims he was fired by the company after repeatedly raising concerns about the substandard materials and poor construction of the pipeline. Klink warns that the company's missteps and shortcuts that already resulted in 12 spills in one year should serve as fair warning against TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

Read more: Bechtel Whistleblower Warns Against Keystone XL; Witnessed Shoddy Work on TransCanada’s Keystone I
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