I also didn’t think it was a conservative view to allow a foreign corporation to dictate/force a US citizen to cede their land and/or property rights.
I'll repeat my post #93...
No. It's totally within the law. And has been since the founding of the nation.Pipelines are "common carriers" -- committed to shipping product for all comers, based on a published rate.
As with public roads, such "common carriers" -- basically including railroads and pipelines -- have the right of "eminent domain". They can force the sale of right-of-way in the courts, if necessary.
However, because they are less subject to terrain, pipelines are a little more flexible in these matters -- and will re-route around a stubborn property owner...if it's feasible.
On the other hand, there's no good reason to be a "stubborn property owner". With pipelines, property-owners are compensated appropriately and don't suffer any loss of use of the property -- save a brief period during construction.
In other words, this isn't a Kelo situation. If necessary, eminent domain would not be applied whimsically, but fully within the law and it's original meaning. Whether it's a foreign company or not, the project contributes to the public good -- energy independence, reliable supply and stable prices, which will benefit the entire economy.
Nor is the property owner being asked to take any injury that he isn't fully compensated for -- with no long-term damage whatsoever.
Since 1990, more than 110 million gallons of mostly crude and petroleum products have spilled from the nation’s mainland pipeline network. More than half of it occurred in three states — Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana — where more pipelines exist.
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But the Exxon Mobil pipeline spill, initially estimated to have released at least 157,000 gallons of crude oil and driven more than 20 families from their homes, represents only a fraction of the regular oil losses from the huge network of pipelines stretching across the United States.
Between 2008 and 2012, U.S. pipelines spilled an average of more than 3.1 million gallons of hazardous liquids per year, according to data from the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the nation’s pipeline regulator. Those spills — most commonly caused by corrosion and equipment failure — caused at least $1.5 billion in property damage altogether.
In 2010, a historic inland spill of 819,000 gallons of diluted bitumen — a kind of oil from the tar sands in Alberta — shut down the Kalamazoo River for miles after a pipeline break in Marshall, Mich. Enbridge Inc., a Canadian pipeline company, ended up buying 150 homes from locals too unsettled by the disaster to return.
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So yeah...no damage at all.