TransCanada takes next step to get $15 billion for Keystone XL rejection

According to legal papers filed Friday, Calgary-based TransCanada made the formal request for arbitration from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment disputes, says CBC Canada.

TransCanada Inc. filed a request for arbitration Friday under the North American Trade Agreement, arguing that the State Department’s actions led the company to believe the project would win approval.

Similar to the notice TransCanada filed in January, the company alleges in the compensation request that the government concluded numerous times that the pipeline would not have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The company also said the decision to block the project exceeded US President Barack Obama’s constitutional powers.

A yard in Gascoyne, ND., which has hundreds of kilometres of pipes stacked inside it that are supposed to go into the Keystone XL pipeline, is shown on Wednesday April 22, 2015.

Obama rejected the cross-border crude oil pipeline last November seven years after the company first proposed the project. Critics of the planned pipeline said transporting oil sands bitumen to refineries on the USA gulf coast would contribute to global warming.

The TransCanada filings argued that the U.S. government’s decision “was symbolic, and based merely on the desire to make the USA appear strong on climate change”.

Despite Keystone XL’s rejection, this remains the official policy of the United States government.

The proposed 1,897km, 36in-diameter crude oil pipeline will begin in Hardisty and extend south to Steele City.

The company claims that the denial was “arbitrary and unjustified”.

Opponents of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership are holding the case up as another in a laundry list of reasons for opposing the free trade agreement between the USA and 11 other Pacific Rim nations.

The heads of NAFTA members, Mexico, the United States and Canada are set to meet in Ottawa for a North American leaders’ summit on June 29.