Local Update On Keystone XL -- July 15, 2018

Updates

July 17, 2018: from the BillingsGazette -- 283 miles across Montana -- 

July 16, 2018: back story, I guess, from Reuters, May 3, 2018 -- TransCanada will start work on Keystone XL in Montana in autumn, 2018 --

• preliminary work to begin in the fall of 2018 in Montan
• full construction to commence in 2019
• information in a latter from the US State Dept to "Native American" tribes, specifically
• the Assiniboine
• the Sioux tribes

No mention whether a letter was sent to Pocahontas but I assume as a Congressperson she gets an info copy.

Original Post

A reader alerted me to "folks in the local area" (southwest North Dakota / eastern Montana) preparing for "action" near Baker, Montana, as TransCanada prepares to start laying pipeline.

Key locations:

• Baker, MT: will be an entry terminal (an "on-ramp") for the Keystone XL
• the pipeline route appears to carry it near Camp Crook to the south of Baker
• Gascoyne, ND: east of Bowman, ND -- a staging area for Keystone XL pipeline? See below.

I believe the Keystone XL completely skirts North Dakota.

The question was asked in an e-mail: where will TransCanada first start working in this area?

One reader who apparently knows the area well and has his ear close to the ground suggested in an e-mail:

It sounds like they will start hauling to Baker first? 

Bowman, Baker, Buffalo, & Camp Crook have had meetings .... 

Once they get closer to Camp Crook I do not know which highway they will be hauling on but Gascoyne will be a target area as folks can hold up the progress of the line at that location. 

Maybe Hwy 85?

Gascoyne, near Scranton, ND, is a few miles to the southeast of Bowman. See this post from several years ago.

Gascoyne, from The Bismarck Tribune, January 26, 2017 -- more than a year ago

• 230 miles worth of heavy steel pipe in a vast laydown yard, alongside highway 12
• unloaded there in 2011
• green-coated pipe owned by TransCanada
• the pipe is stacked near the BNSF Railway loop between the ghost town of Gascoyne and the grain elevator town of Scranton

This is the map of the towns mentioned in the e-mail:

Route of the Keystone XL: