Livingston actress/activist Margot Kidder arrested at the White House

Actress and activist Margot Kidder, of Livingston, was reportedly arrested on the steps of the White House today. Kidder, dressed in black in the photo above, was in Washington as part of a two-week protest to push the Obama Administration to deny Canadian oil giant TransCanada’s permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline. Kidder is active in the group Montana Women For. She was photographed holding a sign that said “Montana Women For An Oil Free Future.” 

Kidder, best known for her role as Lois Lane in the Superman movies, was arrested fellow actress Tantoo Cardinal (in orange), who starred in Legends of the Fall and Dances with Wolves.

According to the Canadian Press:

Canadian actress Margot Kidder was among the latest slate of environmentalists to be arrested outside the White House on Tuesday, handcuffed and sent to jail on the fourth day of a two-week civil disobedience campaign against TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline.

Kidder, born in Yellowknife but now living in Montana as an American citizen, was arrested alongside fellow Canadian actress Tantoo Cardinal by U.S. Park Police for refusing to vacate a White House sidewalk.

Just as dozens of others have since Saturday, Kidder and Cardinal were charged with failing to obey an order governing protests on the sidewalk, police said. They were expected to be released later Tuesday.

"We're the first state the pipeline goes through," Kidder, 62, best known for playing Lois Lane in four "Superman" movies, said before her arrest.

She marched from Lafayette Square, directly north of the White House, to the sidewalk lining the northern edge of the presidential residence along with three other women who described themselves as "Montana grandmothers."

"It's bound to leak, there's no way it's not going to ... they always assure us these things are safe, and they never are safe," Kidder said.

BREAKING NEWS: Activists lock down Montana Governor’s Office over oil pipeline

UPDATE: Here’s the raw video from today’s meeting between environmental activists and Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Warning: there is some harsh language that may  not suitable for all viewers.

I’ll have more on this as the day goes on, including photos and video from today’s protest in Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s office, but here’s the latest.

More than 100 environmental activists from across the country descended on Schweitzer's office Tuesday morning to demand that he rescind his support for the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the Exxon Mobile megaload transportation project.

Schweitzer met with the rowdy group of activists in the reception room of his office, but refused to meet their demands that he give up support for the massive pipeline project and the transportation project to serve the Canadian tar sands. Activists from Northern Rockies Rising Tide, Earth First! and other environmental groups said last week's rupture of an ExxonMobil pipeline that fouled dozens of miles of the Yellowstone River downstream of Laurel is a prime example of why Schweitzer should "toss big oil out of Montana."

Schweitzer met with the group for about 20 minutes and listened to their complaints and concerns before one of the activists began playing the piano in the reception room, prompting the other activists to jump on tables and dance and chant.

The governor said he hoped the environmental activists could put their passions toward ending the nation's addiction to foreign oil, which prompted boos from the crowed.

Missoula activist Nick Stocks of the Northern Rockies Rising Tide said that the activists were prepared to stay in the lobby of the governor's office indefinitely.

I’ll update this post throughout the day with more quotes from the meeting as well as video.

Schweitzer still supports oil sands/Keystone XL despite tough talk on Yellowstone oil spill

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has taken a tough public stance against ExxonMobil in the days following the 44,000 gallon Yellowstone River oil spill. Schweitzer has said he’ll be on Exxon “like smell on skunk” and that the Yellowstone River won't be clean, "until Montana says it’s clean.” Schweitzer has publically accused Exxon officials of not being transparent, directing security guards to keep the press away from the unified command center, and not being honest about the true nature of the spill. He's said that the company's interests "are not aligned with Montana's interest," and that ExxonMobil officials' "primary goal here was to limit the liability to the shareholders, not to be straightforward with the details of the spill and subsequent cleanup."

One Politico headline initially proclaimed that “Montana gov has boot on neck of ExxonMobil,” though the headline was recently changed to somewhat less hyperbolic “Montana gov on ExxonMobil like 'smell on a skunk.’”

Many environmental groups – including representatives from the National Wildlife Federation on a conference call to reporters last week — have lauded Schweitzer for his hard-line approach to dealing with ExxonMobil during the disaster.

But others have accused Schweitzer of talking out of both sides of his mouth on the issue. They cite Schweitzer's  ardent support for coal, oil and gas development in Montana, his backing of ExxonMobil’s plan to truck more than 200 massive Korean-built tar sands processing modules across the state into Canada, and his support for Keystone XL pipeline, which would pipe Canadian tar sands crude (the same type of crude that fouled the Kalamazoo River when an Enbridge Energy pipeline burst there last year) from the Montana-Canada border to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

Schweitzer on Wednesday told NPR On Point host Tom Ashbrook there is no contradiction between his support for fossil fuel development and his hard-lined response to ExxonMobil’s cleanup of the Yellowstone:

“We’re going to continue to develop energy in Montana. We’re an energy state. But we will not be a sacrifice zone for this energy’s needs. We will develop this energy on our terms, we will protect the landscape and the wildlife of Montana for this generation and future generations, and that energy that we develop in Montana will be developed on our terms.”

The Montana Environmental Information Center’s Jim Jensen doesn’t buy the notion that fossil fuel energy development can be “done right,” as Schweitzer and others claim.

“They’ve never done it right yet,” Jensen said on the same hour-long radio program.

As for Schweitzer, Jensen had this to say:

“Just two weeks ago he had a well-publicized meeting here in Helena with ExxonMobil executives and the result of that was him telling us that we should trust them to haul these massive loads of equipment up the Snake River, up the Lochsa River in Idaho and then the Blackfoot River in Montana into Alberta where they are developing these massive, hideous tar sands…he is a short-skirt cheerleader for that project.”

Missoula Independent columnist and former longtime environmental lobbyist George Ochenski also criticized Schweitzer for his continued support of the megaloads and Canadian tar sands development:

“Schweitzer has been a big booster of allowing Exxon to ship mega-loads of oil production equipment to Alberta's tar sands on Montana's two-lane highways. He also cheers on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would be two and a half times larger than Exxon's ruptured line and transport tar sands crude across Montana. We can only hope when he finally gets a first-hand look at the destruction such corporate failures engender, he might reconsider his far-too-cozy relationship with Big Oil. His allegiance should be to Montanans, not Exxon Mobil.”

I recently asked Schweitzer if his lack of trust in ExxonMobil and their lack of transparency in dealing with the Yellowstone River oil spill has colored his views on the Keystone XL pipeline or Exxon’s impending megaload transportation project.

Here’s what he had to say:

“Well, as I've said from the very beginning, we would trust but verify. But at least as for the pipeline division I'm down to verifying and then verifying again.

“Any study that has been conducted on megaloads has been conducted within the context of the Montana Environmental Policy Act, and (the company) and the Montana Department of Transportation are following the Montana Environmental Policy Act to the letter of the law, as the public expects us to do.”

Protests spew over Montana-Gulf pipeline plan

As I wrote about in USA Today, Environmental groups and landowners, upset by last month's oil spill in Michigan, are urging the Obama administration to deny a proposal for an oil pipeline that would go from the Montana-Canada border to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

Alberta-based TransCanada's proposed 1,661-mile Keystone XL pipeline would link up with its existing 2,151-mile Keystone pipeline, which began operations in June, and go through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

The Keystone XL would cross dozens of rivers and streams from Montana to Texas, including the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, and the the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast shallow underground water table that's a major source of water for much of the High Plains region.

Opponents say last month's spill underscored the dangers of the United States' reliance on fossil fuels. A pipeline ruptured on July 25 and spilled nearly a million gallons of crude oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in southwestern Michigan, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates.

Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defense Council opposed the Keystone XL project even before the Michigan spill, but the incident has increased scrutiny and elevated concerns.

Last week representatives from some of the nation's leading environmental groups wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood urging him refuse to issue a permit to TransCanada:

"Last week’s Enbridge oil pipeline spill of more than 1 million gallons into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan is the latest of more than 2,500 significant pipeline incidents that have occurred in United States over the last decade, which have resulted in 161 fatalities and 576 injuries. Enbridge’s operations alone were responsible for over 600 spills that released more than 5 million gallons of oil into the environment. This history of pipeline spills taken alongside the BP Gulf oil spill catastrophe, clearly demonstrate the need for additional government oversight and safety measures when it comes to our oil extraction and transportation."

***

"Recognizing DOT’s role as a consulting agency on TransCanada’s presidential permit application to the State Department for the Keystone XL Pipeline Project – the next major tar sands oil pipeline under consideration – we urge DOT to recommend that the pipeline not be built."

Groups opposing the expanded pipeline have also popped up on Facebook. Last week, protesters demonstrated outside Chicago's Palmer House Hilton hotel, where President Obama was attending a Democratic fundraiser, and hung a banner over Obama's Lake Shore Drive route that read, "Pres. Obama: Stop the Keystone Pipeline, Stop the Tar Sands."

"This disastrous oil spill in Michigan is yet another wake-up call to the tragic impacts of our oil dependence," says Alex Moore of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “Coming on the heels of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, this spill reinforces the need for us to build a clean energy economy, not more pipelines.”

TransCanada's vice president of Keystone Pipelines, Robert Jones, says the company is committed to safety and will use state-of-the-art leak-detection systems with automatic shut-off valves. Emergency response plans, he says, are already in place if a leak were to occur.

"We could react to that leak automatically," Jones says.

Before TransCanada can begin construction, it must get approval from several federal agencies, including the State Department, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land Management.

Last month, the State Department added 90 days to the review process.

TransCanada also needs permits from Montana and South Dakota.

Utility officials in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas say their states don't require permits for interstate oil pipelines. The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission approved the project in March. Tom Ring of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality says a decision could come this fall.

TransCanada hopes to begin construction early next year and complete the project by early 2013, spokesman Terry Cunha says.

Once completed, the combined Keystone system would have the capacity to deliver 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day to U.S. refineries, including 500,000 barrels from the new portion, which is expected to cost $7 billion, Cunha says.

The proposed pipeline would run through part of Agnes Reeves' ranch in eastern Montana. Her son, Tom Reeves, says the pipeline spill in Michigan has exacerbated his family's concerns.

“The Michigan spill shows that pipeline spills can and do happen,” Reeves said. “That it was a terrible environmental disaster, and I certainly would not want such a disaster to occur in Montana.”

Last week TransCanada withdrew its application for a special permit that would have allowed the company to pump oil through the pipeline at higher-than-normal pressures. Critics had blasted the waiver application as a profit-boosting measure that would have increased the risk of a catastrophic pipeline failure.

TransCanada officials dismissed that accusation, saying the waiver request was based pipeline standards used in Canada.

Jones, said if U.S. demand for Canadian crude oil requires the company to expand its pipeline system in the future, then the company would consider re-applying for a safety waiver in the future.

“I think it would be speculation for us right now to determine when that would happen,” Jones said.