The Public Utilities Commission ended its hearing on the renewal of TransCanada’s permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline across western South Dakota. And on that ninth and final day of testimony and cross-examination came a report that, if the PUC or President Obama block Keystone XL, TransCanada might try to use the North American Free Trade Agreement to recoup its $2.4 billion investment in the pipeline:
The 1994 trade pact between the United States, Canada and Mexico allows corporations to file what’s called a Chapter 11 claim (not to be confused with bankruptcy) against a member nation to settle disputes. If TransCanada were to win such a case before a special NAFTA tribunal, U.S. taxpayers could be on the hook for monetary damages.
TransCanada CEO Russ Girling recently left a possible NAFTA challenge on the table when asked what the company would do if Obama rejects the pipeline permit application.
“TransCanada will employ whatever means necessary to protect its shareholders and its shareholder value, but that’s not our focus at the current time,” Girling said. “As I said, our focus is on the regulatory proceedings” [Joe Duggan, “If Keystone XL Permit Is Rejected, Transcanada Might Sue U.S. for $2.4 Billion It’s Already Spent,” Omaha World-Herald, 2015.08.05].
TransCanada has already spent 30% of the $8 billion it says Keystone XL will cost. Imagine you wanted to build a million-dollar mansion in Aberdeen. Imagine you spent $300,000 on your architect and lawyers and negotiations with neighbors before you got your building permit from the city. Imagine the Aberdeen City Council rejected your building permit because you’d need all sorts of variances and your plan posed too many risks to drainage and existing utilities. You would not be entitled to make taxpayers cover your premature expenses; it would be your own fault for developing a plan that conformed with permitting rules, not to mention spending so much money on a project for which approval was not certain.
TransCanada has already used eminent domain to trump American landowner rights; NAFTA’s Chapter 11 would allow them to trump our courts and regulatory sovereignty and take us to the cleaners for its own premature spending. We should not have to pay TransCanada for gambling billions of dollars on its expectation that we would approve their dangerous and unnecessary pipeline.
The PUC will now take written responses to issues raised in the last nine days of live testimony. The PUC won’t decide on the Keystone XL permit until November. If the PUC does rule against Keystone XL, TransCanada should have to eat its own costs for its premature spending.
Blackmail, but will pay gladly to rid ourselves of this vermin. Koch sucks up all with no returns, so typical of their fake libertarian thinking. Anything to screw their government, send them back to their motherland.
costner spent $26 mill if i recall news reports, before walking away from his multi-hundred mill deadwood destination/gambling resort on Indian land. “taking” may have resulted in the planned railroad easement. has he sold the thousand acres w/building foundations and utility stubs yet?
jerry, whatdahyah think of kochs’ black civil rights p.r. make-over?
This story of TransCanada making threats is an indication of their arrogance. Now maybe people in our nations Capitol will know how us landowners have been treated over the past seven years. Screw them.
I suspect TransCanada has put out very little of its own money….I believe it is just being funneled through them from somewhere in Texas….
If the USA is forced to repay TCanada for its foolish venture, those accountable should including the SDPUC for granting the bozos common carrier status several years ago, over the objections of pipeline experts like the late Curt Hohn who warned the PUC of the precedents being set. The SDPUC is fully responsible for giving TCanada the ability to clobber landowners in South Dakota with the threat of eminent domain long, long before TCanada had the right to build KXL in our nation.
The PUC is supposed to be the public’s watchdog. Here is another case where the watchdog betrayed the public’s best interests by jumping into TCanada’s lap far too soon.
NAFTA gets worse over time.
“TransCanada might try to use the North American Free Trade Agreement to recoup its $2.4 billion investment in the pipeline:”
This is one of the worst aspects of international trade deals, and TPP is no different. The treaties are written by mega corporations for their particular benefit. ExxonMobil, Walmart, Kochs are given priority over national governments. Regardless of what Pierre, DC, or Pine Ridge might do, NAFTA can overrule them.
Government for the corporations,
By the corporations,
Has taken over this earth.
(Larry could certainly do that paraphrase better.)
leslie, The p.r. dude is just making some moolah from the masters. Everyone knows how the game is played and after the game gets unexciting, they will be dropped like yesterdays news cycle. What should be done is that the county commissioners in South Dakota that supported this nonsense, should be billed for the mental anguish landowners have been put through trying to quell the infestation of these rats.
Spot on Jerry. Spot on.
When did this concept of being reimbursed for financial failures start?
We have probably all made some kind of bad investment at sometime in our lives, did the government pay you back for the losses?
NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific nonsense treaty, put corporations and their profits, or “maybe profits” over the rights of what used to be sovereign people. How about a little, “no taxation without representation”?!
Roger, I don’t know when that nonsense started, but we see corporations trying to pawn their risk off on us all the time. Who do they think they are, farmers with crop insurance?
John, I think this point about national sovereignty should provoke our conservative friends as much as TransCanada’s eminent domain issue should. As 96 notes, our conservative PUC didn’t care about eminent domain, and neither did the rest of the SDGOP. Invoke NAFTA to make us pay money, and maybe they’ll pay more attention… although I get the impression they’ll just blame Obama.