Environmentalists who oppose the Keystone XL pipeline are using a lawsuit filed by the project’s developer to illustrate why they hate President Obama’s decision to join the TransPacific Partnership trade deal.
The group Friends of the Earth says TransCanada, instead of “honoring the president’s reasoned decision” to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, “wants to turn to secretive trade tribunals to force American taxpayers to compensate it for a project that should never have been proposed.”
TransCanada, the pipeline’s builder, sued the Obama administration Wednesday for denying its permit application to build the pipeline to move Canadian oil from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The permit had been undergoing review by the State Department for seven years, and the company wants to be compensated for the billions of dollars it spent during that time awaiting a decision on the final leg of project. The president denied the project in November, ahead of major climate negotiations in Paris, based on the harm it would do to the climate.
In addition to suing the government in federal court over Obama’s unconstitutional use of executive power in the decision, it is also pursuing $15 billion in compensation under the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. The latter action is what is so bothersome to the environmentalists, who see trade agreements undermining decisions by sovereign nations on climate change and the environment, according to Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica.
“This is why Friends of the Earth opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements, which allow companies and investors to challenge sovereign government decisions to protect public health and the environment,” Pica said.
