Post-Mortem On Keystone XL. Ending Big Oil’s Inevitability.
Soon after his inauguration, President Joe Biden signed an executive order reversing the previous administration’s approval of the Keystone XL(KXL) pipeline. After over a decade of marches, protests, tree-sits, lawsuits, pledges of resistance, endless politics and an enduring unusual alliance of Nebraska ranchers, Indigenous groups, East Texas landowners, environmentalists and scrappy radicals putting their bodies on the line along the pipeline route, Biden sent it to the dustbin of history. It was over. Again.
In 2015, after the first KXL permit rejection by Barack Obama, and nearly five years of organizing and supporting resistance to the project, I penned an article for CounterPunch titled, “When We Fight, We Fuck Shit Up: Keystone XL and Delegitimizing Fossil Fuels” that reflected on some of the stories and lessons of the campaign.
In 2011, the Keystone XL oil pipeline became a household name when hundreds of people participated in two weeks of sit-ins at the White House demanding that Barack Obama reject the pipeline’s permit. Led by a coalition of Indigenous groups, ranchers and farmers, and environmentalists, the “Tar Sands Action” galvanized a new movement against oil in North America.
In 2012, while the coalition disputed permits for the northern leg, running from Alberta to Oklahoma, Obama had fast-tracked the permit for the southern leg with the stroke of a pen. Before the ink was dry, Canadian Oil giant TransCanada quickly began construction on the pipeline in over a dozen locations between Cushing, OK and refineries on the Gulf Coast. The strategic masterminds in Big Green deemed any attempt to stop the southern leg as “unwinnable.”
Before that, in the piney woods of east Texas, landowner and carpenter David Daniel had laid the groundwork to resist the Texas portion of Keystone XL. He began with a simple process of community outreach. “There are more people in our community that are non-landowners that are taking on the issue. It was very difficult to start finding people, so I had some yard signs made,” he said. The first on-the-ground campaign against Keystone XL in Texas began with an outreach campaign initiated by Daniel: “[I]t just started building from there. We held a town hall meeting, and shortly after that we decided to form STOP (Stop Tarsands Oil Pipelines).”
Soon, the perfect storm of local resistance, an energized climate movement, radical environmentalists, craven Democratic politicians and aggressive Canadian oil companies led to the emergence of the “Tar Sands Blockade” (TSB). TSB and its allies used nonviolent, yet confrontational, tactics to disrupt pipeline construction. Besides demonstrations, protests, blockades and sit-ins, they launched an 85-day tree-sit directly in the path of pipeline construction. Near Houston’s refinery complex, TSB stood with low income communities of color in urban Houston.
TransCanada and police responded with violence, escalated criminal charges and civil litigation. TransCanada hired local off-duty police to serve as private security. They used pepper-spray, Tasers and brute force against the protestors putting their bodies in the way of the construction. According to a civil lawsuit filed by TransCanada, the campaign had cost them over $5 million.
Tar Sands Blockade organizer Cindy Spoon recently reminded us, “David [Daniel] faced immense repression from Transcanada. He was put under a gag order and forbidden to ever tell his story or publicly talk about KXL or Transcanada by name.”
At the same time, operatives within the pro-Obama Washington D.C. environmental establishment undermined TSB in media and movement circles. They demanded that TSB leave their tree-sits, denounced them as a “black bloc in the trees” (which isn’t an insult in my book, btw) and leaked stories about them to the press. Even recently, after Biden’s executive order, these operatives doubled down with, “All the grassroots organizing in the world probably couldn’t have held it back another 4 years so Dems were the only chance.” The animus towards grassroots direct action continues.
Eventually, the company completed the southern section and oil flows through the southern leg today.
But the precedent of a ferocious movement fighting back set by frontline communities and grassroots rabble-rousers along the southern route was critical not only to the defeat of the northern leg, but also the flowering of other grassroots campaigns against the fossil fuel industry. Around the continent, tapping into the “currency of moods” through days of action, disruptions at events featuring politicians and corporate executives, divestment, constant digital and media communications, vigils, protests, civil disobediences and a pledges to resist created a culture of resistance that has now grown to provide relief those most impacted by capitalism and extraction.
Along the northern line of the pipeline, Lakota groups, led by groups like Owe Aku International Justice Project and Moccasins on the Ground, and organizers Joye Braun and Deb Whiteplume, organized a series of skill building workshops, direct action trainings and spiritual preparation for the fight there. While construction never got off the ground along the northern route, the organizing and training in Lakota territory came into play when the mass uprising happened at Standing Rock and many went to fight the Dakota Access pipeline.
From Deep East Texas to Standing Rock to the Indigenous-led campaign currently trying to stop Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota, grassroots movements best tell their stories through action. The relentless campaign waged in East Texas may not have stopped the southern leg’s construction, but did change the story from Big Oil’s inevitability to “when we fight, we fuck shit up.”
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Scott is a long time climate organizer. And co-host of the Green and Red Podcast.
