Ranchers Tell Keystone: Not Under My Backyard

Oil has put bread on Eleanor Fairchild’s table in Wood County, Tex., for more than 50 years. Her late husband was a geologist who worked on exploration for different energy companies, and was part of a team that discovered oil in Yemen in the 1980s. That doesn’t mean she welcomed a TransCanada worker who appeared on her doorstep in March 2009. The company wanted to run nearly a mile of its 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline across Fairchild’s 350-acre farm 90 miles east of Dallas, the representative explained, and was willing to pay her $43,000 for an easement on five acres. Fairchild pondered the offer for several weeks. She says the company upped it to $60,000, but “they were really pushy, and that doesn’t go over well with me,” Fairchild says. “It’s my land.”

TransCanada announced it will soon reapply for the federal permit it needs to build a northern portion of Keystone, from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Neb.; the Obama administration denied its first application in January. The southern leg running from Cushing, Okla., to the Texas coast doesn’t require Washington to sign off because it doesn’t cross an international border; the company plans to start work on that leg in June. Another force delaying TransCanada from breaking ground: The company needs rights of way on about 2,150 properties in five states.