TransCanada Drops Eminent Domain Lawsuits

The company said it was moving its petitions to the state regulator after withdrawing from a lawsuit filed by Nebraska landowners challenging the company’s claim to eminent domain for land intended for the Keystone XL pipeline.

About 9% of property owners who fell along the route, and were needed to complete the pipeline, refused to sign an easement with TransCanada.

“We believe that going through the PSC is the clearest path to achieving route certainty for the Keystone XL Project in Nebraska”, the company wrote in a news release.

TransCanada needs presidential approval of the pipeline before construction begins because the project crosses the Canada/U.S. border.

The pipeline would travel from Canada through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines to carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

And Kleeb told the Omaha World-Herald that no matter where the fight takes place, “We have a hundred landowners who will continue to refuse to give up their land through eminent domain”.

Mark Cooper, a spokesman for TransCanada, said that despite the company having won approval for the route from now-former Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, “there has been uncertainty in the courts” about the legality of that process. That victory was based on a legal technicality as four of the state’s seven Supreme Court judges in January agreed with the challengers that the law underlying the approval process violated Nebraska’s constitution.

It’s a change of strategy for TransCanada on Keystone XL.

TransCanada made the decision while facing an October 19 trial date in a lawsuit brought by landowners.

“It has always been clear that TransCanada has no legal route through the state of Nebraska and no legal right to use eminent domain against landowners”, she added in a statement. “What they are really doing is trying to set things up for after the election”, Noseworthy said. A few Democrats and environmental groups say the promised jobs would largely be temporary and that the project would further the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels just as Mr. Obama has emphasized the need to shift to renewable sources of fuel.

TransCanada Inc. announced Tuesday that it will stop pushing for the project under a state law that’s now being challenged in the courts. EnerCom is a multi-disciplined management consulting services firm that regularly intends to seek business, or now may be undertaking business, with companies covered on Oil & Gas 360®, and thereby seeks to receive compensation from these companies for its services.