Mixed results for the eco mob

Two developments this week indicate the stark difference in the political climate with regards to energy on opposite sides of the 49th parallel. President Donald Trump wants to continue to unleash the U.S.’s vast fossil fuel potential, which has had a dramatic, positive effect on job creation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks to a carbon tax and a regulation-forced transition to a land of sunshine and windturbine lollipops.

On Wednesday, Canada’s National Energy Board announced that it was expanding its review of the Energy East pipeline proposal, which would take Alberta oil to Quebec and the East coast, to include both its impacts on climate, and climate policy’s impact on it. This promises to make even more complicated what is already a regulatory bog, and represents a major victory for radical anti-development ENGOs such as Greenpeace.

Meanwhile, south of the border on Tuesday, U.S. limited partnership Energy Transfer Equity, promoter of the Dakota Access Pipeline, announced that it had filed a racketeering lawsuit against Greenpeace and other ENGOs, alleging that this eco mob “manufactured and disseminated materially false and misleading information … for the purpose of fraudulently inducing donations, interfering with pipeline construction activities and damaging Energy Transfer’s critical business and financial relationships.” Plus “acts of terrorism” against a pipeline that had undergone three years of “rigorous environmental review.”

There is a significant Canadian connection in Energy Transfer’s case. It follows a similar suit brought last year by Montreal-based Resolute Forest Products against Greenpeace following Greenpeace’s campaign claiming that Resolute, one of the most respected companies in the forest industry, is a “Forest Destroyer.” There is no doubt that Resolute’s action inspired Energy Transfer. Indeed, it is using the same lawyer, Michael Bowe. The fact that Bowe works for Kasowitz, Benson & Torres LLP, which has represented Donald Trump, was naturally brought up by Greenpeace as a point of attack. It is irrelevant. Bowe is a racketeering law expert, and was brought to Resolute’s attention by Resolute’s largest shareholder, Toronto-based Fairfax Financial Holdings. Fairfax had used Bowe to pursue a case against giant U.S. hedge fund SAC. Fairfax won.

But don’t these parallel suits indicate that there is a similarity of approach on both sides of the border? Far from it. Resolute’s legal actions could not have been more un-Canadian, or more specifically un-corporate Canadian. Resolute has received zero public support from other companies or representative business organizations, who have all stressed how important it is to sit down with radical ENGOs in the hope of receiving “social licence.” The fruits of that attitude were obvious in the NEB decision.

One needs to do no study of the likely impact of Energy East on the global climate because it could not possibly have any. However, bringing in the threat of climate policies incorporates massive uncertainty.

The NEB’s decision, revealed in a letter to Energy East sponsor TransCanada, suggested that it had decided to incorporate climate change as a result of “public interest” (that is, form letters organized by ENGOs), plus “governmental actions and commitments,” which make absolutely no sense in terms of affecting the global climate. The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA) immediately claimed that climate policy considerations had no place in regulatory reviews, but the industry is in many ways reaping the fruit of being too scared both to challenge “consensus” science and take on ENGO lies.

In fact, Energy East looks like a zombie project. It would not be considered if more economic pipelines to the Gulf Coast and West Coast could be built. However, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway was killed by the Trudeau Liberals, and although Ottawa has given the nod to the expansion of the TransMountain system, the NDP government in B.C. has declared itself utterly opposed.

It is ironic, meanwhile, that those who are such great proponents of the law in stopping projects scream blue murder when the law is used against their own tactics of misinformation and intimidation.

Energy Transfer can expect the usual bleating from Greenpeace that its suit is merely designed to “silence” the ENGO and close down public debate. Indeed, the bleating has already begun.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the two RICO suits is what the discovery process will reveal about Greenpeace’s secret coordination, not just with other ENGOs but also with sympathetic government authorities.

We don’t need such an inquiry in Canada. It’s all too obvious that government authorities — from Ottawa though Victoria to the NEB — are very sympathetic indeed to the radical environmental cause.

The tactics used by Greenpeace and its cohorts in the Dakota Access were honed and refined in the much more comprehensive battle against another TransCanada-sponsored project, Keystone XL, which — following President Trump’s approval — is now attempting to drag itself across the regulatory finish line in Nebraska.

This raises the intriguing question of whether TransCanada might ever consider launching, or joining, a RICO suit against Greenpeace and co. I asked a TransCanada spokesman. He said he couldn’t possibly comment.

However, he did confirm that those involved in a valve tampering/sabotage incident last year are due to come to trial in North Dakota in October. They are facing felony charges with a potential maximum prison sentence of 10 years. A stiff sentence might be salutary. Meanwhile Greenpeace’s RICO suits could prove very expensive, which would be salutary too.