US State Department sued over permit approval for "Alberta Clipper" tar sands oil pipeline
Four environmental and Native American advocacy groups have filed suit challenging the US State Department’s August approval of Enbridge Energy’s plans to build the Alberta Clipper tar sands pipeline. The pipeline would pump 450,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day from northern Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin for refining. In their complaint, the plaintiff groups claim that the State Department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to adequately analyze the indirect and cumulative impacts of the proposed pipeline. They further argue that the State Department’s approval was unconstitutional because Congress has not fully delegated its authority to regulate pipelines to the Executive Branch. Plaintiffs have requested preliminary and permanent injunctions to halt the construction of the pipeline.
The Alberta Clipper pipeline is planned to stretch 384 miles in the United States, running through Minnesota’s Chippewa National Forest and its Leech Lake tribal lands. Plaintiffs allege that the construction would impact over 200 water bodies and would destroy more than 1,200 acres of upland forested lands, more than 650 acres of open lands, and more than 1,300 acres of wetlands.
By approving the pipeline, the plaintiff groups allege that the State Department is overlooking the serious environmental, climate, and human health impacts of tar sands oil, the production of which results in three times more greenhouse gas emissions than that of conventional crude oil. Tar sands oil also contains eleven times more sulfur and nickel, six times more nitrogen, and five times more lead than conventional oil. Plaintiffs claim the approval decision is a departure from the Obama administration’s commitment to clean energy.
"This project will lock our nation into a dirty energy infrastructure for decades to come," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. "Instead of increasing our reliance on oil and piping in pollution, the State Department should support clean, American energy and the jobs that come with it."
The complaint was filed on September 3, 2009 in the US District Court for Northern California. The suit names Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Deputy Secretary James Steinberg and the US Army Corps of Engineers as Defendants. The plaintiff groups are The Indigenous Environmental Network, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club. Plaintiffs are represented by the non-profit law firm Earthjustice.
US-Canada "clean energy dialogue" to address coal, oil sands, and carbon capture
On February 19, President Obama made his first foreign trip, as he traveled to Canada to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. One of the main topics on the agenda was a “US-Canada clean energy dialogue” – an attempt to cooperate across the border to protect the environment and improve energy security. One of the main goals of the new initiative is to reduce carbon emissions, in particular by developing cost-effective carbon capture technologies and ways to push the emissions underground instead of into the atmosphere. The leaders also mentioned creating a more efficient electric grid.
Carbon emissions are an existing problem in US coal deposits, and Canada has similar problems with its oil sands. In fact, a week before President Obama arrived, Syncrude Canada Ltd., a major oil company, was charged with violating environmental laws in connection with toxic waste caused by oil mixing with sand.
The meeting reflects Obama’s stated goal of being a global leader in climate change. He is hopeful that the dialogue between the United States and Canada will spark the interest of other countries that have environmental issues, in particular India and China. The discussion of goals did not get very specific, however – President Obama stated, “I think the clean energy dialogue is an extraordinary beginning because right now there are no silver bullets to solve all of our energy problems.” Canada has allocated $1 billion to its Clean Energy Fund, and the United States economic stimulus package has allocated $3.4 billion to “Fossil energy research and development.”
Investors ask SEC to include climate risk disclosure obligations in revised oil and gas reporting requirements
In response to a June 26, 2008 SEC proposal to modify the oil and gas reporting requirements, a group of investors and environmental organizations (including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and Ceres) submitted a letter to the SEC on September 8, 2008 urging the SEC to consider climate-related risks in the course of revising the reporting requirements. The group's comment letter follows the release in late July of a WWF (formerly World Wildlife Fund) study, "Unconventional Oil", which reports that "increased investment in unconventional fossil fuels, such as Canadian oil sands and US oil shales, may dangerously contribute to climate change" and "demonstrates the significant investor risk associated with these unconventional oils." Among the study's conclusions: "Oil sands extraction produces three times the carbon emissions of conventional oil production, whilst oil shale extraction produces up to eight times as much."
Among other things, the SEC has proposed to expand the definition of “oil and gas producing activities” to include such “non-traditional” or “unconventional” sources as bitumen extracted from oil sands and oil and gas extracted from coalbeds and shales. In its comment letter, the investor group suggested that reporting companies
be required to disclose reported reserves that have higher than average full life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with their extraction, production and combustion. Such “carbon intensive reserves” could be subject to potentially enormous risks associated with their extraction and development, including litigation-related risks and higher carbon taxes.
We do not believe that companies should be allowed to disclose additional oil and gas reserves (other than proved reserves) unless such additional categorical and descriptive information is required, along with any other potential liabilities that could be expected. Unless and until the SEC adopts a strict and diverse disclosure framework including geographic location and these risks, the current restrictions on including oil and gas reserves from sources that require further processing (e.g. tar sands) should be maintained.
The comment period closed on September 8, 2008. (Additional comments are also available on the SEC Web site.)
