Two Arrested At Keystone XL Pipeline Work Site In Oklahoma

Two Texas men were arrested Monday after chaining themselves to a piece of equipment at a construction site for the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Hughes County Sheriff's Office says the incident occurred at a rural location southwest of Holdenville.

The two men, Benjamin Butler and Eamon Danzig, were booked into the Hughes County jail on a complaint of trespassing.

Both men say they are part of Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a group that's protesting the pipeline.

The group's web site shows a photo of Butler and Danzig chained to the equipment and says Butler and Danzig "took action today to prevent the Cross Timbers bioregion from being poisoned by this inherently dangerous tar sands pipeline, just as the surrounding wetlands and residential areas have been poisoned as a result of Exxon's Pegasus pipeline rupture near Mayflower, Arkansas."

TransCanada has proposed a 1,700-mile pipeline to carry oil derived from tar sands in Alberta to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

Although the northern leg of the project has not received federal approval, the company currently is constructing the 485-mile southern portion of the pipeline that will transport oil from storage facilities in Cushing, Oklahoma to Texas.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.