A few months ago there was a long discussion here of the Keystone Pipeline and how it is taking land from folks in East Texas through the power of Eminent Domain. My position on this, which stems from years of pipeline operations, was that the law in Texas was clear. Pipelines that are Common Carriers have Eminent Domaine. By the way... That is still the case in Texas.

But one guy has challenged this in court by claiming that Keystone is not a Common Carrier. So far he has won in every case and now a court is asking Keystone to prove their line deserves CC status.

This is no small deal. The pipelines I was involved with would transport crude or refined products for anyone who had the money to pay the transportation charges. After all, we made money by transporting stuff, so if you had oil to transport we wanted to be your go to guys. This made us, legally, a Common Carrier just like a truck line. We were owned by a major oil company, and we shipped a lot of their oil, but they did not get moved up the list because of it. We sold to the highest bidder and made a ton of money doing so.

At least one commentator on here has some property involved in this route. Therefore an article in today's Houston Chronicle should be of interest to them.

(A link is now posted below. I commented I did not know how to do this and Elchivito provided instructions on how this is accomplished. Thanks!)

And as an aside..... A lot of folks have whined about how important this line is to the US and blah, blah, blah, and my response to this has always been that yes, there is opposition to the line, but everyone would be shocked to see who was really trying to stop this. I get into this part of the world now and then, and you don't meet a lot of Obama voters there.

And from what the latest court has found those trying to stop it might have just found a way to do so.