Spire Energy, a natural gas firm that supplies 1.7 million homes in Missouri, Alabama, and Mississippi warned customers in an email that a federal review of the STL Pipeline could jeopardize their energy supply.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will discuss revoking the pipeline’s permit during a Nov. 18 hearing.
In an email to customers, Spire Energy president Scott Carter wrote that “The STL Pipeline was built to support your energy needs, along with those of more than 650,000 homes and businesses in the St. Louis region,” adding that “Since 2021, this safe, fully operational pipeline has been bringing even more reliable and affordable natural gas to our community. Unfortunately, while the STL Pipeline continues to operate today, it is now in jeopardy.”
The STL Pipeline runs from Illinois to Missouri and received initial FERC approval in 2018, beginning to serve customers in mid-2019.
Shortly after the pipeline became operational, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) sued to overturn the approval. A June ruling by the Missouri Court of Appeals sided with the EDF, noting that FERC did not “adequately analyze the pipeline’s permit request,” punting the matter back to the FERC.
The EDF has accused Spire Energy of “fear-mongering” by warning customers of blackouts. In a press conference Thursday, Carter doubled down, reiterating the threat posed by the FERC to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“Our commitment has been to remain informative,” Carter told reporters, rebutting fear-mongering accusations, according to the Dispatch. “We’ve continued to highlight the importance of the pipeline.”
The STL Pipeline is allowed to continue operating until mid-December pending FERC’s decision, NBC affiliate KSDK-TV reported.
President Joe Biden has diverged from Trump-era energy policy as part of a shift in priorities towards combatting “climate change.”
Since taking office, Biden revoked permits of the Keystone XL pipeline, froze oil drilling off the coast of Alaska, and placed another Michigan pipeline providing energy to the American Midwest under review.
Recent negotiations at the COP26 Conference in Glasgow have also produced stronger commitments to slash greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, “phase down” coal and provide further financial assistance to developing countries. This all comes as Americans face higher costs for energy due to supply shocks and inflationary pressure created in part by pandemic lockdowns.
Biden appointed Rich Glick to chair FERC. In September, the president selected former Washington, D.C., Public Service Commission Chairman Willie Phillips to join FERC, giving Democrats majority control of the five-person commission.
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US officials have echoed these concerns. “A massive and well-coordinated cyberattack on the electric grid could devastate the economy and cause a large-scale loss of life,” warns Richard Andres, a research fellow at National Defense University’s Institute for National Security Studies.
Certainly, the average American doesn’t seem to be too optimistic about the national response in the event of, say, a major catastrophe like the loss of the power grid.
That said, 9 in 10 people in a recent National Geographic Channel survey said they believe the world will experience a major catastrophe, and of those, about one-third expect it to occur “less than a year from now.”
In case of such a catastrophe, 57 percent of those surveyed said they would turn to friends and family for help, while 14 percent said they believed the government would be “the most help.”
Three-quarters of the respondents said they believed the country will experience a “catastrophic cyberattack” in their lifetime, and more than half say they don’t think the United States is ready for it.
The Congressional EMP Commission and National Academy of Sciences warns that, every century or so, the Sun hits the Earth with a coronal mass ejection of such power that it generates a geomagnetic super-storm, like the 1859 Carrington Event. In 1859, the Carrington Event damaged the primitive electronics of the time worldwide. Fires broke out in telegraph stations. Telegraph cables burst into flames causing forest fires. So powerful was the EMP that it penetrated miles down through the depths of the Atlantic Ocean and burned out the just laid telegraph cable linking North America to Europe.
Electricity was still a novelty in 1859, and in those horse and buggy days not vital to survival of civilization. However, if a Carrington Event recurred today, it would crash electric grids and critical infrastructures worldwide, and put at risk the lives of billions.
The 21st Century is run off of electricity, and in the United States, that electric grid is woefully out of date – and that has left the country quite vulnerable. People’s daily lives depend upon reliable energy, and there are many, such as hospital patients, whose very survival depends upon electricity in the short term.
But in the event of a long-term outage, nearly everyone’s lives would be placed in jeopardy, as commerce, deliveries, fuel, communications and more would grind to a halt.
According to the Wall Street Journal made clear in their special report, the dated grid is completely vulnerable to attack:
The Bakersfield attacks last year were among dozens of break-ins examined by The Wall Street Journal that show how, despite federal orders to secure the power grid, tens of thousands of substations are still vulnerable to saboteurs.
The U.S. electric system is in danger of widespread blackouts lasting days, weeks or longer through the destruction of sensitive, hard-to-replace equipment.
Most substations are unmanned and often protected chiefly by chain-link fences. Many have no electronic security, leaving attacks unnoticed until after the damage is done. Even if there are security cameras, they often prove worthless. In some cases, alarms are simply ignored.
The vulnerability of substations was broadly revealed in a Journal account of a 2013 attack on PG&E’s Metcalf facility near San Jose, Calif. Gunmen knocked out 17 transformers that help power Silicon Valley; a blackout was narrowly averted. The assailants were never caught.
It isn’t just EMPs and natural disaster that poses a threat to the grid, but there is also the potential for attacks on individual power substations in the vast network of decentralized and largely unguarded power grid chain. A U.S. government study established that there would be “major, extended blackouts if more than three key substations were destroyed.”
Hank Kunneman POWERFUL MESSAGE: BLACKOUT IS COMING !! TRUMP Activates Emergency Broadcast Systeam
How Horrific Will It Be for the Unprepared? – For Every Bit Of Food, Water, Ammunition, Or Supplies
I have become personally so disenchanted with the way people fail to prep. People still don’t understand how important it is to put away. I have gotten into arguments over this and had cretins call me a fool because I put away food, water, and supplies. I thought about this and the frustration that other preppers have with this laid back idiotic attitude that there is no need for preparation. There are good people that just can’t/won’t start preparing. They have the money to do so, but just don’t want to. Many have only seen what happens to non-preppers on TV, but it still doesn’t make an impact.
In this article I detail some hard core realities to show just how awful it will be for those that don’t prep. Every one of these scenarios is something that has occurred to the non-prepper throughout history. While strong images come to mind, the purpose is to jar some people out of their inaction and into action before it is too late.
Preppers are good people and care much about those around them, and unless something does jar those around them that choose not to prep, their own survival chances could be reduced. For every bit of food, water, ammunition, or supplies you sacrifice to the non-prepper, the fewer irreplaceable supplies are left for you and your family in a crisis situation. It is hoped that the following can help certain people put into TRUE perspective just how horrific it will be for those that don’t prepare.
Here are the awful consequences for those refusing to prep.
As the world continues to decay at multiple facets, the common person has and continues to be lulled into a sense that everything is improving and will continue to for the distant future. After all, to them unemployment has peaked out and will drop until everyone that wants to work will easily be able to find good paying work, North Korea is no threat because all their long range “bottle rockets” fizz out, sanctions will eventually make Iran give up their nuclear program, oil prices will start going down after June or so, Europe will bail out Greece and Spain and everyone else, and U.S. debt will eventually come under control.
As the world continues to decay at multiple facets, the common person has and continues to be lulled into a sense that everything is improving and will continue to for the distant future. After all, to them unemployment has peaked out and will drop until everyone that wants to work will easily be able to find good paying work, North Korea is no threat because all their long range “bottle rockets” fizz out, sanctions will eventually make Iran give up their nuclear program, oil prices will start going down after June or so, Europe will bail out Greece and Spain and everyone else, and U.S. debt will eventually come under control.
After 2021 everyone that has prepared themselves will go back to more “sensible” lives. “Good times are coming”, baseball season is here, let’s get back to watching some more crackerjack news.
It is amazing how people become good conversationalists with most others discussing all the gossip related news, while becoming mentally tranquilized into a totally deceptive state of denial of truly dangerous issues of the times. It’s the blind leading the blind… right off the cliff.
Rather than dealing with harsh reality, people surround themselves with easy to digest material that can be talked about without directly influencing anyone’s lives. Meaningless chatter. Even for those unwilling to even think to prepare for a societal catastrophic event, there is also no desire to even face the extreme possibility of a sudden loss of one’s employment. A personal SHTF.
Look at some of the terrible personal pain experienced in America right now – and it hasn’t even hit the fan on a grand scale. Those people who have lived it up on credit, who failed to put much of anything away for a rainy day, who’ve lost their job, and who eventually lost their unemployment benefits are experiencing the first level of collapse. This is happening to millions of people in our own country, all around us, as we speak.
These Americans, who once enjoyed the luxuries that modern living had to offer, are now at their wits end, with very little hope for a return to their previous lives. They are no longer able to pay most or any of their bills. Many have to humiliatingly turn to others for help to pay for food, or worse, to obtain old, unhealthy and poor tasting food from locally funded food banks.
Their credit cards are totally worthless. Many have been evicted from their homes and have uprooted their families to live either on the street, in tent cities, with relatives, or have been forced to live at homeless shelters, They’ve have had their vehicles repossessed, or simply can’t afford the gasoline anymore. Their living conditions often make it difficult, if not impossible, to look presentable for job interviews. For many, the life of stability they knew just a short while ago is gone, replaced with fear and a constant stress to the point of nervous breakdown.
A personal economic meltdown is confined to the individual or family, or at worst a few families. The human civilization remains intact and so do society’s safety nets.
With food assistance, rental assistance, homeless shelters, and family to turn to, even the most destitute are almost always able to find some sort of help – however menial.
It is no wonder with these known assistance programs, then, that people have forgotten or never thought to consider what happens IF and WHEN human civilization goes through a strong enough SHTF event. If that happens on a mass scale what happens to everyone that needs help that has not prepared ahead of time? What happens when governments are in such total disarray or destroyed altogether that they can’t help even if they wanted to?
The media and others have portrayed the good people that sacrifice much if not all “luxuries” of life to prepare themselves and their family and friends for extreme times, as chicken littles. Those who have made the choice to store up emergency food, water, and other necessities to avoid extreme life threatening risks, including suffering horribly during and after a widespread SHTF event, are laughed at and ridiculed often for “wasting” their lives on delusional paranoia.
But who is delusional? Those who see the signs around them and understand how vulnerable the system is, or those who believe that things never change, that politicians have their best interests at heart, and that if the worst happens the government will be there to provide everything they may need?
How many have considered the dire consequences of their failure to prepare in the event that the infrastructure and everything a country’s people depend ontotally collapses?
The misery from long term unemployment and lack of money is like a walk in the park compared to the severe anguish and dangerous conditions that await those who have failed to prepare for the aftermath of a large scale cataclysm. The “minor” problems of unemployment that seem extremely major and painful to most today should serve as a wake up call to what life will be like when something much, much worse happens – when those proverbial safety nets are no longer there to catch us.
Many preppers have become deeply frustrated at those around them, especially those that truly mean something to them, because they simply refuse to put away anything at all for emergencies. The prepper is usually a person that cares a lot and it is often difficult for them to take a tough stance towards the people that they care about. However, unless someone changes the habits of those people that fail to get ready, decisions will need to be made, and they won’t be easy.
Almost every single person, even a very poor person, has the capacity to put away emergency food and supplies. Even homeless people have stashes of something just in case things become so bad that the normal hand outs and thrown-away items dry up. Many people with good sources of income don’t even have an extra can of food or any water put away at all. This is stupidity beyond words.
Every day lightweight disasters happen in all parts of the world that disturb services enough that people are confined to their homes for a certain amount of time. While recovery is short, people are still uncomfortable during these times. Look what happens after a power outage at night and you will be mystified at how many homes are completely dark for hours. People have not even bought an extra couple of candles or any battery operated light sources. Even in well-to-do neighborhoods you may hear only a lone generator going after a blackout. This lack of preparedness is truly frightening and plays itself out again, again, and again every time services are disrupted for minor to major reasons. It’s as if there is something wrong with storing extra food, water, and supplies.
Even after “lessons” played out to what happens to those non-prepared,most people still feel that it just cannot happen to them, or won’t ever happen to them again. It should be proof enough to people what happens to those unprepared after disasters simply by looking at those that have gone through it firsthand. The difference, though, comes in that these disasters have had recovery periods and help from others. Even Haiti received some help and conditions remain putrid over there.
After a TRUE SHTF, it is presumable that government help and others coming to the aid of those in need WON’T happen for long periods of time. During that time those that have chosen to not put food, water, and necessities away are going to be in life threatening positions.
Most people just don’t get that when the supermarket shelves are empty they will stay that way for an extended period. When the utilities go down, especially water, it may be weeks, months, or longer before they come back, if ever. Without what someone needs to survive each day, it is not going to magically appear, and depending on the goodwill of others to feed them and sacrifice their own family’s survival chances is a terrible choice.
People MUST know what life will be like after SHTF in mega fashion if they refuse to prepare. This is NOT new. Terrible events have plunged people into the deepest levels of desperation and hopelessness, and they will happen again and again.
While the above consequences to the non-prepper are extremely abysmal for anyone to read, the simple fact of the matter is they have already happened time and time again to those that have nothing put away. People have resorted to cannibalism and gone to levels of primitive savage behavior out of shear desperation and out of literally losing their minds to the physical depletion of food and water that keeps the physical body operating. Sometimes showing the extreme severity and results of a person’s lack of action, such as failure of the simple act of putting away extra food, water, and supplies, can be the kick in the complacency that they need.
It’s really easy to put away food and supplies. All one has to do is add a little bit of extra food to the grocery cart for long-term storage. Over time this adds up to a well stocked pantry of supplies.
There is something that is in a can of food that everyone can eat and enjoy the taste of, so talk to family members about their nutritional preferences and start stocking up. Toilet paper and other supplies that really don’t have any expiration date can be put away and forgotten about ’til needed.
There MUST be common sense and intelligence to see what happens IF they don’t stock up for the future. There has to be the DESIRE to get started, and this is the real problem with so many.
Once started, however, prepping becomes a type of life saving routine or positive lifestyle habit. It is easy and can and will save one from misery. It may save their life and the lives of their family from ruin when SHTF, which is almost inevitably going to happen someday. Every month and year that goes by without a true SHTF event, makes it more likely that it will happen. Basic statistical chance shows this to be the case, but people continue the same pattern of behavior that has led them to the same devastation countless time before.
Books can be your best pre-collapse investment.
Carnivore’s Bible (is a wellknown meat processor providing custom meat processing services locally andacross the state of Montana and more. Whether your needs are for domestic meator wild game meat processing)
The Lost Book of Remedies PDF ( contains a series of medicinal andherbal recipes to make home made remedies from medicinal plants and herbs.Chromic diseases and maladies can be overcome by taking the remediesoutlined in this book. The writer claims that his grandfather was taughtherbalism and healing whilst in active service during world war twoand that he has treated many soldiers with his home made cures. )
Easy Cellar(Info about building and managing your root cellar, plus printable plans. The book on building and using root cellars – The Complete Root Cellar Book.)
The Lost Ways (Learn the long forgotten secrets that helped our forefathers survive famines,wars,economic crisis and anything else life threw at them)
LOST WAYS 2 ( Wordof the day: Prepare! And do it the old fashion way, like our fore-fathers did it and succeed longbefore us,because what lies ahead of us will require all the help we can get. Watch this video and learn the 3 skills that ensured our ancestors survival in hard times offamine and war.)