TransCanada Sues Obama Admin. Over Keystone

But the company’s decision still stands to stress Obama’s relations with his northern neighbor as he prepares a state dinner for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was elected just weeks before the president rejected Keystone as incompatible with the fight against climate change. TransCanada cited records dating back to 1875 to claim that Obama exceeded authority reserved to Congress, including communications from President Ulysses S. Grant in which the Civil War hero indicated that Congress had authority to decide whether to let a French company lay telegraph cables in Virginia. The Obama administration supported its decision based on the perception that the pipeline will be bad for the environment, and the need to appease those in the global community had that false belief. The lawsuit doesn’t seek legal damages but wants to have the permit denial invalidated and requests that restricts any future president from blocking the pipeline’s construction. The White House and the State Department both declined to comment on the lawsuit or the NAFTA challenge.

In filing a NAFTA claim, TransCanada said it “had every reason to expect its application would be granted”, after it had met the same criteria the U.S. State Department used when approving other similar cross-border pipelines. As envisioned, Keystone would snake from Canada’s tar sands through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, then connect with existing pipelines to carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day to specialized refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

“The suit is a reminder that we shouldn’t be signing new trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership that allow corporations to sue governments that try and keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

The Obama administration in November rejected the controversial project – which pitted the energy industry and congressional Republicans against environmental advocates and most Democrats – more than seven years after it was proposed by TransCanada.

“Through the NAFTA claim, TransCanada will be seeking to recover more than US$15 billion in costs and damages that it has suffered as a result of the U.S. Administration’s breach of its NAFTA obligations”, the company said.

For decades, we have seen the negative effects that NAFTA has had on our country. “This is about a foreign company trying to undercut safeguards that protect the American people, ” said Anthony Swift, director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s Canada project. “There’s simply too much at stake for the American people”.