"Maine Town Fights Plan To Use Pipeline To Export Oil Sands Crude"

"SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — Tom Blake, like thousands of his neighbors in this coastal town, is used to living alongside the oil industry. Tank farms cluster in neighborhoods, by the park where families watch the movie "Frozen" on a summer night, next to schools and senior citizens apartment buildings. As a child, Blake, the town's former mayor, used to jump into high snow drifts from the massive oil tank next door.

Now, after decades as a New England hub for importing crude oil and distributing fuel, South Portland is enmeshed in a dispute with the oil industry that echoes far beyond southern Maine.

On Monday night, the South Portland City Council, including Blake, is expected to pass an ordinance that would prevent the export of crude oil from the waterfront. The product of a relentless 18-month campaign by residents and Maine environmental groups, the measure is a response to plans by Portland-Montreal Pipe Line, or PMPL, to reverse the flow of its import pipeline in order to export oil sands crude from Canada, the same petroleum that would run through the controversial Keystone XL pipeline in the Great Plains."

Neela Banerjee reports for McClatchy July 21, 2014.

SEE ALSO:

"Amid the Oil Boom, Fear" (Albany Times Union)

"Oil Sands Under Fire on East Coast" (Toronto Globe & Mail)

"Maine Residents Fight American Petroleum Institute Lobbyists Over Ban on Tar Sands Shipments" (DeSmogBlog)

"South Portland Approves Law Barring Tar Sands Oil" (Portland Press Herald)

"Tar Sands Battleground: South Portland" (Portland Press Herald)