Bold Alliance

05/28/2026

"The safest pipeline is no pipeline at all,” said resident of Wayne county Shelli Meyer. “But it has to have restrictions, like setbacks from cities, towns, schools, hospitals. It’s different than oil or natural gas because you can’t see it, it’s odorless, and it will be a plume."

A packed room of concerned citizens jammed the Boone County Commissioners meeting Wednesday morning to voice concerns over property rights, local economics, and public safety.

05/14/2026

"...Summit also said its project will travel west from Iowa through Nebraska to “advance a dedicated sequestration solution” in Wyoming as “the core of the system.” The Bold Alliance network Wednesday slammed Summit’s plans to transport CO2 across Nebraska, saying that’s not in the public interest of Nebraskans.

“Nebraskans are not willing to expose our families and farms to the risks of a CO2 pipeline rupture,” Shelli Meyer, director of Bold’s Nebraska Easement Action Team, told E&E. Meyer pointed to an incident in Satartia, Mississippi, in 2020. The rupture led to the hospitalization of 45 people.”

After legal and permitting setbacks, the Iowa-based developer said it would trim its mileage and move its planned CO2 storage site from North Dakota to

05/13/2026

Bold issued the following statement after Summit Carbon Solutions issued an announcement that it now intends to attempt to seek a route through the state of Nebraska for its proposed risky carbon dioxide (CO2) pipeline:

“Transporting a dangerous waste product across the entire state of Nebraska so that a private company can capture billions of dollars of our tax dollars is not a public use, and surely is not in the public interest of Nebraskans. Bold and the Nebraska Easement Action Team will oppose Summit’s latest scheme to appease its investors,” said Shelli Meyer, Director of Bold’s Nebraska Easement Action Team (NEAT) landowners’ legal co-op. “Nebraskans are not willing to expose our families and farms to the risks of a CO2 pipeline rupture, like what happened in Satartia, Mississippi in 2020, where vehicles attempting to flee stalled and dozens were hospitalized due to lack of oxygen, with some experiencing negative health impacts to this day.”

After the citizens of South Dakota voted overwhelmingly to ban the use of eminent domain to seize landowners’ private property for CO2 pipelines, Summit was confronted with a “pipeline to nowhere,” as the company initially intended to pipe the CO2 through South Dakota into North Dakota, where it would be injected into underground sequestration well waste dumps.

Now, Summit says its new plan is to instead attempt to obtain a pipeline route directly across the entire state of Nebraska, to an alternate underground CO2 waste dump site in Wyoming. The company will also switch focus from offering ethanol plants a way to improve their “carbon scores,” to “enhanced oil recovery” as a potential use for the captured CO2 – erasing whatever climate benefits the company and its ethanol plant partners are claiming from the project, if the CO2 will instead be utilized to extract and burn more oil.

Just like an alliance of landowners stood together to defeat the proposed Keystone XL pipeline through Nebraska, landowners with the Nebraska Easement Action Team landowners’ legal co-op are organizing landowner and community opposition within impacted counties threatened by Summit’s potentially deadly carbon pipeline. NEAT landowners and their attorneys stand ready to file litigation should Summit attempt to seize Nebraskans’ farmland via eminent domain.

Bold’s Easement Teams in Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota have also been organizing landowner opposition to the Summit CO2 pipeline for years. Bold’s Easement Teams are helping fund attorneys who have represented landowners at agency hearings that resulted in pipeline permit rejections in North Dakota and South Dakota, and the most-contested project in the history at the Iowa Utilities Commission, where landowners with the Iowa Easement Team also continue to challenge Summit’s pipeline route approval in the courts.

About Bold’s Easement Action Teams:
The Easement Action Teams are a project of the Bold Education Fund. The EATs work with local communities to provide immediate legal representation to landowners facing pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. Our first priority is to protect landowners’ property rights and water. We believe landowners should have the ultimate right of what does and does not happen on their land. We stand against the use of eminent domain for private gain. (https://easementteams.org) The first landowners legal co-op formed was the Nebraska Easement Action Team, which successfully organized landowners to fight the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, and currently works with landowners fighting carbon pipelines in the state. (https://neeasement.org)

About Bold Pipeline Fighters Hub:
The Bold Pipeline Fighters Hub, a project of the Bold Education Fund, provides technical, legal, story telling and organizing assistance to any community fighting pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure, with the goal of protecting the land and water. (https://pipelinefighters.org)

About Bold:
The Bold Alliance and Bold Education Fund are coordinating state-based groups with our Pipeline Fighters Hub and landowner legal groups called the Easement Action Teams to stop pipelines from using eminent domain for private gain. (https://boldalliance.org)

BOLD is rooted in projects that protect our land and water.

05/06/2026

“To call this plan half-baked would be an insult to baking,” wrote energy lawyer and anti-pipeline advocate Paul Blackburn in a blog post last month. Blackburn is an advisor to Bold Alliance, the activist network that opposed the last Keystone XL proposal. Many of the same activist groups that opposed the prior pipeline are getting ready to oppose this one as well. The Bold Alliance, which organized tribes and rural landowners against Keystone, has said it will litigate any attempt to extend a pipeline into Nebraska.”

The Trump administration is rushing to approve a 650-mile pipeline to bring oil from Canada’s tar sands into the U.S.

04/28/2026

"...One of the people I spoke with, her name's Jane Kleeb. She was one of the key organizers who helped build this really huge coalition of people opposed to the Keystone XL Pipeline. She's from Nebraska. They banded together farmers and ranchers and Indigenous activists and environmentalists throughout the region and on a national level.

She had talked about how since [Keystone XL Pipeline] and since some other major pipeline projects have faced a lot of opposition, companies have started to sort of break their projects up into smaller pieces. So if it's just a pipeline from Montana to Wyoming, and in particular, if there are rights of way already for a lot of these sections, it might not generate as much opposition. Then, if there needs to be a new pipeline from Wyoming to Nebraska, again, that's a shorter route and it might not galvanize this kind of huge national campaign in the way the Keystone XL Pipeline did going all the way from Montana to Texas.”

If built, the Bridger Pipeline will transfer crude oil from Canada into Phillips County, Montana to Guernsey, Wyoming.

04/23/2026

Iowa landowners targeted by CO2 pipelines have raised concerns about eminent domain for half a decade. Senate Majority Leader Mike Klimesh has failed to keep his promise. Tell Senator Klimesh: Keep your word and let the Senate vote on HF 2104!
CALL (515) 281-3371
EMAIL [email protected]

04/22/2026

WATCH: In 2023, Bold founder Jane Kleeb was awarded the Climate Breakthrough Award, enabling the creation of Bold's Energy Builders project, which provides education, training, legal, communications, and organizing support to rural communities that want to see more clean energy built in their towns.

Specifically, Bold’s Energy Builders project helps:

+ Organize communities around fair zoning that brings energy parity across all sectors. It is not fair that fossil fuel corporations use eminent domain for their private gain. It is also not fair that fossil fuel corporations are not required to have decommissioning plans in place. Wind and solar projects do not use eminent domain and have decommissioning plans in place. We want to see those same good policies applied to fossil fuel projects as well. That is fairness. That is energy parity.

+ Address concerns from land use and our visual landscapes to balance the development of clean energy with the needs we have at the local level. Push back on disinformation from fossil fuel corporations. Big Oil is spreading misinformation so communities stay locked into only oil and gas. In order to have true energy freedom in our country, we need to diversify our energy sources to include wind and solar.

+ Generate wealth for those who live in the towns where clean energy is being built. A key component of the Energy Builders’ project is to create an “American Energy Dividend” that gets paid to citizens in the county where the clean energy projects are built. We will also create “Community Benefit Agreements” so people who live and work the land get to make decisions on what is best for their town. This is a clear contrast to what fossil fuel corporations have done for decades which is to run roughshod over families using eminent domain and leaving pollution as a lasting legacy.

+ Build unlikely alliances of farmers, ranchers, union workers, Tribal Nations and climate advocates so we are creating clean energy projects for the long haul that benefit all of us not just a few at the top.

+ Elect candidates who support ending eminent domain for private gain, fair zoning, good paying union jobs and building wealth at the local level.

Climate Breakthrough Awardees on Building A New World

04/10/2026

“...When we’re fighting oil pipelines it’s really hard to get certain members of the Republican Party on board,” says Emma Schmit of Bold Alliance, an environmental group that protested against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Republicans tend to support big oil projects, seeing them as essential to energy security. But some are less sure of the benefits of a pipe carrying carbon dioxide. Many landowners say they are worried about safety, often citing a separate case in Mississippi in which residents were poisoned after a carbon-capture pipeline ruptured. Summit says there have been no fatalities from such projects.

In the meantime landowners of varying political stripes are lobbying lawmakers to take up an amended bill at Iowa’s state Capitol each week. On a recent frosty morning dozens showed up in red shirts with slogans including “We the people of Iowa are pi**ed off”. One sign asked, “What topples without eminent domain protections?” Close by, a line of several large dominoes etched with phrases that included “LIBERTY” and “THE AMERICAN DREAM” were knocked down.

How a pipeline tangled political alliances in Iowa

04/10/2026

“It’s just a kind of bait and switch,” Jane Kleeb, founder and executive director of Bold Alliance, an advocacy group founded in 2010 to fight Keystone XL, told ICN. Kleeb helped organize a broad coalition of farmers and ranchers, Indigenous leaders, environmentalists and others across the Plains and Gulf Coast who pushed Obama to reject that pipeline. Since then, she said, companies have begun to break up their projects to try to avoid facing as much opposition.

“When pipeline companies do this, when they basically don’t put all their cards on the table, they’re not flaring up lots of communities,” Kleeb told ICN.

A company has proposed to build a crude oil pipeline crossing the Canadian border near where the long-contested project would have entered the United States.

04/09/2026

"Here we go again. The Big Oil powers-that-be have a Keystone XL obsession that just won’t die. Opponents are just as adamant that it won’t be built. The latest industry brainstorm is to bring a whole bunch of dirty tarsands oil from Canada to Guernsey, WY, and then…well, “some future company” would need to build an additional pipeline, in order to get that oil down to refineries on the Gulf Coast. That’s a risky plan for a pipeline investor," write Kenny Bruno and Paul Blackburn.

"To review: the pipeline company TransCanada, which later became TC Energy and then recently spun-off into new corporate entity “South Bow,” first proposed building the Alberta to Texas tar sands pipeline in 2008. As a transboundary pipeline, it required not only state permits and land acquisition from farmers and ranchers along the route, but also a Presidential Permit determining it to be in the national interest.

It was sailing along its permitting process despite opposition from First Nations in Canada, when climate scientist James Hansen pointed out that if the super-dirty high-carbon Alberta tar sands were fully developed it would be “game over” for the climate. At the same time, farmers and ranchers in Nebraska noticed that the route went through the fragile Sand Hills region and threatened the Ogallala aquifer.

A battle royale ensued, with an unlikely alliance of farmers and ranchers, students, tribal nations, grassroots climate activists and environmental non-profits joining together against KXL supporters, which included the Alberta government, the Canadian government, the Republican party, about half of the Democratic party, and the entire oil industry.

Remarkably, the unlikely alliance won. Barack Obama denied the Presidential Permit in 2015. Donald Trump approved it on the first day of his first term, but litigation prevented it from moving forward for the next four years. Joe Biden re-cancelled it on the first day of his presidency, and KXL was not built.

Now, however, there is an inkling of a plan to sort of revive KXL, although “plan” is an exaggeration. A company called Bridger is testing the waters by proposing to take bitumen, the technical term for the thick gooey hydrocarbon also known as tar sands or oil sands, from Alberta and pipe it through Montana to Guernsey, Wyoming. From there, according to press reports, “spurs” would be “bolted on” to take it to refining hubs and to the Gulf Coast for export. But it’s over 700 miles from Guernsey to the hub in Cushing, OK, and over 400 miles to Steele City, NE where it could connect to existing underutilized pipelines.

Four hundred (400) miles is not exactly a “spur” that you “bolt on.” In fact, that route would require a state permit from the Nebraska Public Service Commission, and the acquisition of land — through eminent domain if necessary — from hundreds of Nebraskans. The process would take years, and generate the same controversy it did back in the early 2010’s. And if South Bow fails to get the full route built before the militantly pro-oil US president is out of office, the cross border Presidential Permit could be denied – again.

That “spur,” potentially cutting across the entire state of Nebraska, is the part that “some future company” would be responsible for. To call this plan half-baked would be an insult to baking.

The current war in Iran is making oil and energy markets more volatile than anytime since the 1970’s, with oil prices over $100. That might make it seem that tar sands oil, which is not only the dirtiest but most expensive oil to produce, could still make money. But in the long run, oil will probably settle somewhere under $100, because that’s where Saudi Arabia, OPEC and the US producers want it – high enough to generate high profits, but not high enough to provoke recession.

And in the even longer run, the world will inevitably electrify transportation, because this dependence on oil, with its wars and spills and price spikes and insecurity and pollution and global warming, is just too crazy.

Let’s add up the risks:
-The US is producing more oil than ever, and doesn’t need dirty Canadian tar sands oil.
-”The future company” and the second half of the project connecting down to the Gulf may never materialize, making this a pipeline to nowhere.
-If the Venezuelan oil sector is revived, it will have easier access to the Texas refineries and export facilities than Alberta tar sands oil.
-The price of oil in the long run is only marginally high enough for tar sands oil to be profitable.
-The opposition to taking of land by eminent domain will be intense, especially for a project that will export oil.
-A pipeline like this will cost billions of dollars.
-A pipeline like this will spill and contaminate land and water along the route.
-Climate change is still real, even if the US government denies it.
-The US President will not grant a permit with nothing in return, he will want a piece of the action.

Let’s add up the rewards:
-A few thousand short term construction jobs.
-A few dozen permanent jobs.
-Tax revenue for counties along the route.

The risks far outweigh the rewards. Which is why this pipeline should not be built.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality are now jointly accepting public comments on permit applications for the project through May 1, and holding several public meetings in Montana.

Bold Nebraska, the group that helped lead the original fight against Keystone XL by organizing farmers and ranchers along the route into an unlikely alliance with Tribal Nations, grassroots advocates, and national environmental groups, is collecting comments from citizens for the docket that it will deliver by mail on the May 1st deadline. Click here [see comments] to use Bold’s form to submit a public comment to oppose the new “Keystone Light” pipeline project.

Kenny Bruno is a pipeline fighter, an advisor to donors in the environmental health field, and the author of Greenwash: The Reality Behind Corporate Environmentalism.

Paul Blackburn is an attorney and energy policy advisor to Bold Alliance, providing legal services on pipeline and renewable energy matters.

The Big Oil powers that be have a Keystone XL obsession that just won’t die. Opponents are just as adamant that it won’t be built.