Stroud, Okla., is a fairly sleepy town. So it’s going to be an unusual sight when the Oklahoma Sierra Club hosts a protest against a cross-country oil pipeline that crosses near the town.
According to the Oklahoma City-based The City Sentinel newspaper:
The Oklahoma Sierra Club has set the date for an event called “GreenWalk Against Toxic Tar Sands.” The group is asking Oklahomans to join them on Saturday, Sept. 21, at a “lawful and peaceful gathering,” focusing on the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Participants will meet at 9 a.m. at Foster Park Pavilion in Stroud, OK, for a briefing by tar sands experts and activists. Speakers from Arkansas will discuss how the recent Mayflower tar sands leak has affected their lives.
Following the meeting, attendees are invited to walk or drive to the location where the Keystone XL Pipeline crosses Route 66 just east of Stroud. A photo will be taken of each participant with the KXL in the background along with a personal printed message for the President.
It might be a moot point to hold the protest. One billionaire oilman interviewed by The Oklahoman newspaper a couple of weeks ago said the Keystone XL pipeline was “not critical any longer” for the company that is extracting oil from the tar sands of Alberta. He said the expansion of other oil pipelines and more rail transport would make up the difference.
Concerns exist about running the pipeline through central Oklahoma after a swarm of earthquakes there. But the aforementioned ugly pipeline rupture in Mayflower, Ark. — and Exxon’s cagey response to it — probably did more to damage the prospects of the Keystone XL pipeline than anything.
Then again, transporting oil by rail entails its own hazards, as the folks in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, attest.
Companies are going to continue extracting oil from tar sands because the market demands it. So a pipeline might be the least-bad option of moving it to refineries.
(Image of the Keystone pipeline in Nebraska by Shannon Ramos, via Flickr)