Bad Comedy Scripts
Trump is pointing the Birther mob at Ted Cruz. Other Birthers question Rubio’s citizenship, and a few are calling him an “anchor baby”. There are a lot of reasons to question the men’s suitability for any public office, but their citizenship isn’t one of them.
TransCanada has a hissy fit:
TransCanada has filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration and plans to file a claim under the North American Free Trade Agreement over the U.S. government’s rejection of the company’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
I wonder if they understand the US rules about discovery, because I don’t think they want to hand over all of their data concerning that pipeline.
7 comments
Somehow I sense the presence of Koch Cologne all over this.
Shirt
I think TransCanada doesn’t realize that the US doesn’t have the Canadian rules regarding press coverage of trials, where the press is not allowed to publish anything until the trial is finished. Their dirty laundry coming out after the trial (and they have a *lot* of dirty laundry, like Enron-style energy market tampering) must not concern them, they must see a *lot* of profit in that pipeline.
I don’t know whether the Koch bros are involved, but there’s enough oil industry dirty money involved to make it irrelevant.
In addition to ‘sovereign immunity’ which means you can’t sue the Federal government unless they agree to be sued, it is already well documented that many of TransCanada’s claims during the permitting process were not totally accurate.
I don’t know why they are bothering with this, because at $40/barrel it isn’t worth the investment. In another 10 years it might make business sense, but currently there is too much oil available.
I don’t doubt that the oil industry would be happy to donate to TransCanada’s cause, but they don’t want to be identified. If they openly back this they might have to answer questions under oath.
Bryan, pipeline companies get the same amount of money regardless of the price of oil. They’re like freight companies, they don’t care the price of what they’re shipping, if it takes a certain volume and weighs a certain amount they charge a certain price, period.
My guess is that they suspect that they can ship for enough cheaper than the railroads that it’ll make it profitable over the next four decades. Remember, they aren’t expecting a payback in the short term, this is a long play. In reality it takes 30 years to pay off infrastructure of this scale, it’s like buying a house, not like buying a loaf of bread.
The Canadian reporting indicates that TransCanada is essentially the general contractor with the financing coming from Canadian oil producers. A pipeline would definitely be cheaper than rail transportation, especially after several train accidents that resulted in loss of lives and damage to private property. Both Canadian and US authorities are pushing for safer tank cars, but they can’t make up their minds on the standards.
No matter what the cost of the pipeline or charge for using it, I have a hard time believing to is a good financial move with oil at or below $40/barrel.
TransCanada is going to be the operator too. In other words, TransCanada gets the profits, and if the pipeline goes bust, the oil companies get the risk. What a deal ;). They profit regardless of the price of oil! Talk about your American-style business. Sounds a lot like a scam, but that’s their business model and it seems to work for them.
If the oil companies are going along with this model, they deserve what they get. At least the losses are being covered by the government, like US banks.