TransCanada Seeks $15 Billion From U.S. Over Keystone XL Pipeline – The New York Times

OTTAWA — TransCanada said on Wednesday that it would seek $15 billion in damages over the Obama administration’s decision to cancel the company’s Keystone XL pipeline project.

The company is taking the unusual step of suing through the North American Free Trade Agreement, calling the decision “arbitrary and unjustified.” The Canadian business also filed a lawsuit in Houston asking that the decision be overturned.

“TransCanada has been unjustly deprived of the value of its multibillion-dollar investment by the U.S. administration’s action,” the company said in a statement. “Rather, the denial was a symbolic gesture based on speculation about the (false) perceptions of the international community regarding the administration’s leadership on climate change.”

The $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline would have connected Canada’s oil sands to American refineries on the Gulf Coast, offering the promise of improving prices. Canadian energy companies viewed the pipeline as the key to sustaining growth, since the United States buys the vast majority of petroleum produced by the oil sands.

But many American environmentalists used the project as a proxy for the oil sands, a energy source that they considered particularly polluting. The pipeline plan got caught in a regulatory and legal struggle, as the State Department environmental review dragged on for years.

In November, President Obama rejected the plan, saying the pipeline would undercut the country’s leadership on climate change. Still, he added “this pipeline would neither be a silver bullet for the economy, as was promised by some, nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others.”

TransCanada said it would take a write-down of $1.8 billion to $2 billion for its fourth quarter.

…(read more).

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Joseph Stiglitz 2015: TTIP is a particularly bad agreement

GEDProject

Published on Oct 10, 2015

Joseph Stiglitz is critical of TTIP

An Interview with Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz

Watch the entire interview with Professor Stiglitz here:

http://ged-project.de/2015/10/06/an-i…

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz spoke with GED’s Uli Schoof during a recent trip to Berlin regarding trade agreements, tariffs andtransperancy.

In this part of the interview, Stiglitz talks about the two major multi lateral agreements, TPP and TTIP and who they benefit.

Stiglitz covers Big Pharma and intellectual property rights and discusses who benefits from the lack of transparency which has dominated the public’s perception of the negotiation of these agreements.

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VIDEO: Nobel Prize winner fact-checks the president on TPP

CREDO Action

Published on Mar 4, 2016

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and the head of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch program, Lori Wallach, fact-check President Obama’s statements on the TPP.

Sign the petition: Tell Congress to reject the TPP: http://credo.cm/tpp

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A Carbon Bomb Defused: Obama Rejects Keystone XL in Historic Win for Environmental Activism

Democracy Now!

Published on Nov 9, 2015

Democracynow.org – The environmental movement is celebrating one of its biggest victories to date: President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. After years of review and one of the most vocal grassroots campaigns this country has seen in decades, Obama announced Friday he will not allow Keystone on his watch. The pipeline would have sent 830,000 barrels of crude every day from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The fight to block the pipeline saw activists chaining themselves to construction machinery along the pipeline’s route, hundreds getting arrested in acts of civil disobedience outside the White House, and hundreds of thousands taking part in the largest climate change march in history, the People’s Climate March, just over a year ago. We are joined by two guests deeply involved in the victorious fight to stop the Keystone XL: Clayton Thomas-Muller, a leading organizer and writer on environmental justice and indigenous rights in Canada, and Jane Kleeb, executive director of Bold Nebraska, a political advocacy group that emerged as one of Keystone XL’s chief opponents.

Global Climate Change
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