• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Pipeline Roundup: Trade with China May Have Driven Trudeau Push for Kinder Buyout

June 3, 2018
Reading time: 4 minutes

china canada trudeau xi

Justin Trudeau/Twitter

9
SHARES
 

A Canadian trade deal with China in 2014, and the Trudeau government’s continuing interest in keeping its trading partner happy, may be at the heart of the federal decision last week to buy out the Kinder Morgan pipeline, Canadian journalist Bruce Livesey suggests in a post for The Guardian.

“Trudeau’s ferocious desire to build the pipeline at any cost seems bizarre on the face of it,” Livesey writes. “Ostensibly, his government claims the pipeline is good for the Canadian economy. But the pipeline will be shipping unrefined oil—known as bitumen—to be refined in the U.S. and Asia. This will cost oil refinery jobs in Canada, which is where most employment in the oil industry exists. Canada has been closing refineries for years now. The pipeline will only accelerate this trend.”

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

The deal also means Canada “will never come close to meeting its commitments to the Paris climate accord,” he adds, federal assurances to the contrary. “Most of the oil in Alberta’s tar sands will have to stay in the ground to prevent a global warming catastrophe.”

But when it came down to a Cabinet decision, all of that may have been secondary to the government’s desire to keep working with—and avoid a messy trade dispute with—one of the world’s fastest-growing industrial economies.

By 2009, five years before the Harper government sealed the deal on the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA), an arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNOOC), had bought into two Alberta tar sands/oil sands operations that hold an estimated five billion barrels of oil. Then in 2013, CNOOC purchased Nexen, the country’s third-largest fossil company. Notwithstanding its commitment to rapid decarbonization, “China needs the oil to help fuel its industrial growth,” Livesey notes.

The problem with FIPAs, he writes, is that they are “frequently used by corporations around the world to challenge public policies or community decisions that interfere with their ability to make money.” Canada has paid out $160 million to U.S. corporations under the FIPA chapter of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and Canadian mining companies are using similar provisions to claim damages for community opposition in developing countries.

The Canada-China deal “allows Chinese energy companies to challenge local, provincial, and federal policies or laws that interfere with their ‘right’ to make a profit from energy projects,” Livesey explains. “So any environmental regulations, or halted pipelines, or First Nations land claims, could be subject to lawsuits brought by Chinese corporate interests.” Canadian companies would have the same right in China.

“More troubling, there is no requirement in the treaty for the federal government to make public the fact of a Chinese investor’s lawsuit against Canada until an award has been issued by a tribunal,” Osgoode Hall international investment law professor Gus Van Harten has noted. “This means the federal government could settle the lawsuit by paying out public money before an award is issued, and we would never know.”

In 2016, the federal government began negotiating a free trade deal with China, and Livesey says Trudeau is “desperate” to keep those talks in play. At the time according to the Globe and Mail, “a senior Chinese official said this will require Canadian concessions on investment restrictions and a commitment to build an energy pipeline to the coast”.

The net result: “In what might be a strategy to avoid lawsuits from Chinese companies that may result in massive secret payouts, Trudeau’s government may find itself arresting Canadians,” Livesey writes.

In other pipeline news, while details of the Kinder Morgan bailout deal will be confidential until the fall, National Observer reports that it includes C$1.5-million retention bonuses for Kinder Morgan Canada executives Ian Anderson and David Safari. “The arrangements were reviewed and approved by the Kinder Morgan Canada board of directors and are consistent with industry practice for a project and transaction of this size,” wrote Trans Mountain spokesperson Ali Hounsell.

A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also shows that the deal “may have saved companies operating in the Canadian oilsands about $700 million in losses that they would have been forced to absorb if the pipeline operator had abandoned its project,” Observer notes. “This would be their share of expenses to cover the existing construction expenses by Kinder Morgan, based on the agreements they signed to be shippers on the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline.”

The news of the executive bonuses prompted federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer to criticize the deal, Observer reports this morning. “Trudeau’s failure means billions of tax dollars paid to Kinder Morgan to leave Canada,” he wrote. “Now we learn the bailout included massive bonuses to executives. Fewer opportunities for Canadians, but more taxpayer funded bonuses for millionaires.”

The federal Export Development Corporation, assigned to provide a loan guarantee for the $4.5-billion bailout, was still figuring out its role in the deal last week, two news reports focused on First Nations in British Columbia and Alberta that want to invest in the project, and renewed protests in B.C. rebranded the project the “Justin Trudeau Memorial Pipeline” while a judge placed strict new limits on protests at the pipeline construction site.

In The Guardian last week, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben slammed Trudeau as “the world’s newest oil executive”, suggesting the PM had revealed his “true self” by deciding to nationalize a pipeline. “In case anyone wondered,” McKibben wrote, “this is how the world ends: with the cutest, progressivest, boybandiest leader in the world going fully in the tank for the oil industry.”

McKibben countered any sense that the purchase is a “clever financial decision” that will pay off for Canada in the long run. “This is simply a scared prime minister playing politics. He’s worried about the reaction in Alberta if the pipe is not built, and so he has mortgaged his credibility. His predecessor, Stephen Harper, probably would not have dared try—the outcry from environmentalists and First Nations would have been too overwhelming.” Trudeau may be counting on his “liberal charm” and his contrast with Donald Trump to “soothe things over”, McKibben adds, “but it seems like a bad bet to me”.



in Canada, China, Community Climate Finance, COP Conferences, Energy Politics, First Peoples, Jobs & Training, Legal & Regulatory, Pipelines / Rail Transport, Tar Sands / Oil Sands

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Mike Mozart/Flickr
Ending Emissions

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
328
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures
Canada

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE
Ending Emissions

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61

Comments 1

  1. Ingamarie says:
    5 years ago

    Until the people wake up and realize that Big Oil isn’t going to bring them wealth….until the 99% accept the reality of climate change and the irrefutable role that fossil fuels are playing in CO2 rise…..all our politicians will find themselves desperate to appease foreign energy interests.

    Trudeau likely does understand climate change; what he hasn’t figured out yet is that neither money nor worldly power are going to save anyone…..those at the top just have more opportunity to become climate criminals.

    Forty years ago, we chose global free trade over sustainable ethical development. NOw everywhere on the planet, folks who don’t live there make the decisions that destroy land and water for the locals. We might have to side with Trump on this one, and work to scrap the entire international cartel.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
328
jasonwoodhead23/flickr

Canada, U.K., U.S. Must Cut Oil and Gas 76% by 2030 to Keep 1.5° Alive, New Analysis Finds

March 23, 2022
506
Joshua Doubek/Wikipedia

No New Jobs Came from Alberta’s $4B ‘Job Creation’ Tax Cut for Big Oil

October 6, 2022
502
Sam Balto/YouTube

Elementary School’s Bike Bus Brings ‘Sheer Joy’ to Portland Neighbourhood

October 16, 2022
260
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
325
RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.4k

Recent Posts

Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
125
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
94
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
132
Next Post
admarkt / Pixabay

Taft: Trudeau Government Had Alternatives to Buying Kinder Morgan Pipeline

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}