From The Daily Caller
Michael Bastasch | Energy Editor
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blamed the Keystone XL pipeline for leaking about 5,000 barrels of oil in rural South Dakota about two years ago.
There’s just one problem: The Keystone XL pipeline has not been built yet.
During a House hearing Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that “Keystone XL, in particular, had one leak that leaked 210,000 gallons across South Dakota” while she questioned Wells Fargo president and CEO Timothy Sloan.
Ocasio-Cortez probably confused the Keystone XL pipeline with the Keystone pipeline, which has been operating since 2010. Keystone XL is still under construction, but would also bring oil sands from Canada to Nebraska where it would connect to existing pipeline.
Environmentalists spent years opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, filing court challenges and successfully lobbying former President Barack Obama to personally reject the project in late 2015. President Donald Trump reversed that decision in early 2017, but Keystone XL’s progress has since been delayed by activist lawsuits.
The existing Keystone pipeline, however, was responsible for leaking up to 9,700 barrels in South Dakota in 2017. The initial estimate for the spill was about 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons of oil. Both Keystone and the planned XL line are operated by Canadian pipeline giant TransCanada.
TransCanada said it repaired the pipeline and cleaned-up the spill, Reuters reported in 2018, though the event has been used by environmental activists to gin up opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.
Ocasio-Cortez, who recently introduced the Green New Deal resolution, also took aim at Wells Fargo’s financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which sparked violent protests along the project’s planned route throughout 2016. (RELATED: Greenpeace Tries To Erase Inconvenient Co-Founder From History)
U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks about the first few months of her tenure in congress with Briahna Gray at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festivals in Austin, Texas, U.S., March 9, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Flores.
Like Keystone XL, the Trump administration reversed the Obama administration’s blocking of the project. Dakota Access went into service in 2017. TransCanada had plans to begin building the Keystone XL pipeline later this year, but a February federal court ruling could delay construction until 2020.
Ocasio-Cortez also grilled Wells Fargo’s Sloan over their financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline, asking the bank CEO if his company should be responsible for cleaning up any oil spills. The freshman Democrat also claimed the Dakota Access pipeline has leaked five times since it began operating two years ago.
“So, hypothetically, if there was a leak from the Dakota Access Pipeline, why shouldn’t Wells Fargo pay for the cleanup of it, since it paid for the construction of the pipeline itself?” Ocasio-Cortez asked in Tuesday’s hearing.
“We don’t operate the pipeline, we provide financing to the company that’s operating the pipeline,” Sloan said, also noting Wells Fargo had an environmental oversight group.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
She is executing a green fascist plan to enforce progressive authoritarianism through regulated industries like banking, insurance, credit card processing. Avoiding those pesky constitutional limits to power.
I would really like to know what Leftist NGO provides her with her talking points and questions
AOC is an actress. She meant Keystone, and merely messed up her lines.
So who is pulling her strings?
Apparently a new group calling themselves the “Justice Democrats”. A hard-left group with a virulent anti-American agenda. They also claim credit for the election of House members Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and four others.
Here is a video which is making waves all over the interwebs. It is a wonder that it has not been censored into oblivion yet. It is long, but well worth the time.
An “OMG moment”, or a “Crazy Tin-Foil Hat Conspiracy” You decide.
I watched that vid, sent to me by a friend. As I watched, I thought, “Outlandish! Conpiratory!”
When done, I looked up Justice Democrats on duh web. OMG! WTF! It’s all TRUE! They aren’t even trying to hide it!
-Cortez is scripted by Cenk Uygur and Saikat Chakrabarti of Justice Democrats.
The spooky thing is the parallels between -Cortez and Obama.
How long do they think they can keep cram-programming this blank cortex on the way to congressional chambers, before she befuddles more facts and history and really embarrasses the Dems?
She has become the ultimate poster child for raising the minimum age to run for public office.
Confusing Keystone with Keystone XL is inconsequential. What we should be concerned about is that Democrats are behaving in a harassing, or even a threatening manner to a major lender in an effort to discourage them from financing projects they don’t like.
“…Ocasio-Cortez also grilled Wells Fargo’s Sloan over their financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline, asking the bank CEO if his company should be responsible for cleaning up any oil spills. The freshman Democrat also claimed the Dakota Access pipeline has leaked five times since it began operating two years ago.
“So, hypothetically, if there was a leak from the Dakota Access Pipeline, why shouldn’t Wells Fargo pay for the cleanup of it, since it paid for the construction of the pipeline itself?” Ocasio-Cortez asked in Tuesday’s hearing….”
When AOC says “paid for,” I presume she means that Wells Fargo financed it. So okay, let’s apply AOC’s school of thought here to another situation.
Let’s say I buy a new car, and my local bank finances the purchase of it for me by giving me a new car loan. If I get into an accident with the new car that is my fault, I can argue that the bank is responsible for repairing the damage (as opposed to my insurance company) because they financed the purchase of the car.
If there is a law that arguably makes a finance company responsible for the operation of something they merely financed, I would like to see it. If that law does not exist, then it appears as though individuals like AOC reserve some right to assign responsibility for an incident based on their preconceived beliefs and ideas alone rather than on any law. It isn’t entirely unlike taking the law into your own hands and locking up people as you see fit.
In a somewhat related vein, AOC has already stated that she is starting an Orwellian thought-criminals list of congresspeople in her own party who don’t vote the way she expects them to. She might well have much of the MSM to help her compile the list.
This is just my opinion for whatever it’s worth: The more the Democrats veer to the far left, the more they tend to display a willingness to manifest totalitarian thinking and totalitarian ways of doing things. If there is a growing intolerance for diversity of thought and “Orwellian thought-crime” from the opposition in this country, the more is starts to worry me. The far right might well manifest the same thing.
The younger generation today that did not grow up during the Cold War appears to lack any real understanding about why we fought it. Seeing some of them find there way to Congress is highly disturbing.
Some people think she is just an actress, and that the people behind her are the really dangerous ones.
Conspiracy or not, it an interesting thought….
Don’t let facts get in a lefty’s way.
Besides, it is just oil, clean it up, fix the pipe, and get on with life.
Yes. Crude oil is messy but for the most part chemically inert. It’s hard to even light on fire.
Meanwhile the REMs needed by many “green” technologies are highly reactive and can do some nasty things to the local environment should they leak out.
Alexandriia Occasional-Cortex lives on Planet X which has quite different facts to here to Earth.
AOC is so condescendingly clueless. She wants to blame banks for oil spills and climate change. Hey AOC, how about take that one step further, and blame consumers of fossil fuels (like YOU!)? You refuse to stop flying or riding in ubers, but somehow it’s everyone else’s fault?
Still waiting for those climate catastrophes that were predicted 20 years ago.
How is it possible the every time someone opens their mouth they say something more stupid than the time they did before.
AOC is dangerous. Ignore her stupidity, she is either useful idiot or fellow traveler. Her job is shift the Overton Window to the left, sharply.
The key to statements about the pipeline is not that she got the pipeline wrong. She was trying to make the financiers of the pipeline liable for a leak.
That is a very dangerous concept and goes hand in hand with the Green New Deal. In order to stop companies that are deemed “evil” extending liability for environment damage to financial institutions they do business with. With a mere suggestion from the gov’t financial institutions would choke off banking for targeted companies or industries. Operation Chokepoint writ large.
Don’t be lulled. She putting out dangerous ideas, and getting them into the public sphere, meanwhile too many people laugh and point at her “mistakes”.
Yup, the interesting point is that someone so dangerous can be so amusing. Stealthy, and scary.
==============================
Yet only one here has hinted that pipelines are the SAFEST way to transport hydrocarbons. They are way safer than trucks or trains.
So much ignorance, so little time.
By the way, re Alexa, don’t the ignorant would be demagogues deserve representation too?
==================
Lol! She will soon question why the interviewee stipulates that the world is round, and asks why the interviewee paid for ads that try to convince the public with such racist round world views.
Unearned confidence of that about which one is ignorant always has the brightest glow.
A time traveling pipeline from the future traveled back in time, spilled the oil, and traveled back to the future, just to help AOC out with her New Green Deal! LOL
Let’s run our Nuclear Country on the scientific expertise of a “Bar Tender”.
Maybe, in this modern age, we should have some qualifications on who gets to become a Senator and/or Representative.
OR, maybe, the Republicans used a “False Flag” to get her elected.
Opps. Need more popcorn.
The story going around I like best is that blondes now are telling Alexandria Occasional Cortex jokes…
When I watch these House inquisitions, I always wonder why the people being questioned by leftist / fascists like AOC don’t insist that the questioner rephrase the questions without the accusatory, unrelated, or just peripheral, social justice themes in them. Refusing to answer questions constitutes contempt, but insisting on clear questions without the add-on social justice themes doesn’t. If they persist until the questioner is forced to phrase the question in adult language, ie, not college-speak, eventually the questioner will be forced to withdraw the question entirely or make it clear that it’s a loaded, illegitimate question…and the person being questioned can go back to the same tactic until something like grown-up discourse happens. This assumes the leftist / socialist / fascist is able to engage in that. Why these businessmen and women act like scared little kids when facing morons like AOC is a mystery to me. If they can handle running multi-national corporations, they can certainly handle idiots like AOC. Maybe class in handling politicians and political inquisitions is in order for executives…
Ah but it will has going to have happened.