Global Warming on Free Republic here, here and here
Posted on 01/08/2016 5:01:25 PM PST by Dartman
The Keystone XL saga has taken a new twist in the New Year. On Jan. 6, TransCanada (the company that would have built and operated the Alberta to Texas pipeline) launched two lawsuits over President Obama's November rejection of the pipeline.
One of the lawsuits will challenge the president's constitutional authority to grant permits when Congress has already acted, as it did in early 2015 when a bipartisan bill was passed approving the construction of the pipeline.
The second lawsuit seeks damages of more than US$15 billion by issuing a claim under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the basis that the denial of the permit was "arbitrary and unjustified."
For the NAFTA case, TransCanada argues that: "In its decision, the U.S. State Department acknowledged the denial was not based on the merits of the project. Rather, it was a symbolic gesture based on speculation about the perceptions of the international community regarding the Administration's leadership on climate change and the President's assertion of unprecedented, independent powers."
The courts will eventually decide whether TransCanada has merit in either case. But one thing is certain: the Keystone XL pipeline decision should have never come to this if the major concerns surrounding the pipeline were safety and climate change, which they were.
When President Obama rejected Keystone XL, he cited the urgency of climate change and the need for American leadership on that problem as key reasons for his decision.
As we previously wrote, concern over climate change was a weak reason to reject the pipeline. Contrary to some of the rhetoric out there, Canada's oilsands have a very small impact on global greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, accounting for only 0.1% of global GHG emissions.
The tiny emissions impact of the oilsands was best captured by comments from Fatih Birol, now the executive director of the International Energy Agency's (IEA). In a 2014 interview, he stated that "to be frank, the additional CO2 emissions coming from the oilsands is extremely low."
And long before oil prices collapsed, when the IEA was expecting oilsands production to increase by more than three million barrels a day over 25 years, Birol added "the emissions of this additional production is equal to only 23 hours of emissions of China--not even one day."
In fact, President Obama's own State Department review of Keystone XL found that transportation alternatives (only rail, rail/pipeline, rail/tanker) to Keystone XL could increase annual CO2 emissions from transport by between 27.8% and 41.8%.
And when it comes to protecting the environment from oil spills, Keystone XL has clear advantages over transportation by rail, the logical fallback if pipelines are blocked.
Our recent analysis of pipeline vs. rail safety in the transportation of oil and gas found that rail is more than 4.5 times more likely to experience an occurrence when compared to pipelines. Another analysis using U.S. data came to similar conclusions as we did, but also found that transportation of oil and gas by pipelines is associated with fewer injuries.
Only time (and the intricacies of U.S. law) will tell what the outcome of TransCanada's lawsuits will be. But the saga of Keystone XL should never have ended up where it did. When it comes to moving oil and protecting people and the planet, pipelines are our best option.
- Green is senior director of natural resource studies, and Jackson is a policy analyst, at the Fraser Institute.
ping
Will Obama be able to ignore this, as he ignores so much else that he finds inconvenient, or does it have teeth?
They should save their money.
Forget the lawsuit.
Trumps ‘acomin.
I like your thinking. :)
I know he has said a lot of things in public, but I am not sure he has mentioned Keystone. I wish he would say construction begins on Jan 21, 2017. Maybe he will also dump Obungler's EOs, and dump that ridiculous Iran deal.
Violating a Treaty is something that nobama won’t be able to ignore or slime around and get out of.
This might get interesting.
If TransCanada wins either lawsuit, who pays up?
I’m suspecting it’s me, and other taxpayers. Or maybe our children.
If only there was a way to put a lien on everything owned by office-holder opponents of Keystone, until THEY (and maybe THEIR children) personally pay the settlement. Obama, especially. Maybe they’d think twice about such inane rulings.
NAFTA disputes are not settled by lawsuits, they are settled by an arbitration panel and the judiciary in each of the NAFTA nations has to honor the arbitration panel's decision.
There have been many decisions handed down by the NAFTA arbitration panel thru the years. And under TPP disputes will also be resolved by arbitration.
This TransCanada dispute would be very similar to the MetalClad and Methenex disputes, which were also pursued under Chapter 11.
When ever a nation doesn't honor the arbitration panel's decision, then the arbitration panel awards "sanctioned retaliation" to the offended country, which means that the offended country can legally retaliate by applying tariffs to goods from the offending country.
There has been only one instance of "sanctioned retaliation" under NAFTA and that was over the US not letting in the Mexican trucks, which allowed Mexico to legally impose tariffs on other US goods such as apples, which made US apples more expensive than Chinese apples, and hurt US apple growers. However, Mexico took the US into arbitration under Chapter 20, and Chapter 11 may be different.
Here is an older article where Investor-State dispute resolution mechanisms and the arbitration panel are discussed in regard to the Keystone pipeline.
You can also find a lot of info by Google searching Investor-State trade agreements, or Investor-State disputes, or Investor-State law.
A lot of people don't like the fact that the arbitration panel can trump US laws/regulations. The leftwingers don't like it because they think that investor protections in Chapter 11 give the investors too much power over labor, the environment, and social justice. That's why the unions are madder than hell at Obama over the TransPacific Partnership(TPP)
That one will get thrown out. Obama perfectly legitimately vetoed that bill.
The second lawsuit seeks damages of more than US$15 billion by issuing a claim under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the basis that the denial of the permit was "arbitrary and unjustified."
Now that one is more substantive. It's hard to know the ultimate reason that Obama vetoed the pipeline. It could be because of his concern about the climate. Or it could be that he wanted to pre-empt Trans-Canada getting a delay in the review until a new occupant rolled into the WH.
Global Warming on Free Republic here, here and here
In 4th paragraph, vetoed = denied.
To quickest way to neuter this “green” movement is separate them from the taxpayers’ green.
The sooner these environmentalist agitators need to finance this junk science with their own money and not the confiscated income of productive Americans, they sooner they will be compelled to either abandon this grift and get jobs or better yet produce honest science.
While privately funded organizations refuting the enviro-hype are helpful, there just not enough of them and are pitted disproportionately against state funded propaganda.
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