Canada Tries Turning Up Heat on Obama as Keystone Stalled
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, which has failed to persuade President Barack Obama to approve TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL, moved yesterday to turn up the heat on the U.S. administration.
Finance Minister Joe Oliver, Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird traveled to New York this week, arguing in media interviews and at an energy conference that Obama has unfairly entangled the $5.4 billion pipeline with U.S. politics. According to Oliver, Canada’s intention is is to keep the issue alive with the U.S. public and business.
“This is a democracy, and I’m sure the government listens to the people,” Oliver said in an interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters.
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The issue has become the biggest bilateral irritant between the world’s two largest trading partners, fueled tensions between Obama and Harper and threatens Canada’s ability to develop its oil resources.
The proposed pipeline, which would transport crude from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast, is in its sixth year of review by Obama. The latest delay came in April, with Obama’s administration giving federal agencies more time to comment. That further stalled a project first proposed in 2008 and originally intended to come online in 2012.
“It’s not going to vanish as a business issue for those who are going to be directly impacted” in the U.S., Oliver said. “There’s a real sense this is a very unhappy delay.”
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Deliberate Delay
The official U.S. position is that the administration is making every effort to ensure it adequately consults on the pipeline. Canadian officials claim Obama is deliberately delaying approval of the project to assuage environmentalists.
“We feel entitled to say, ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t right, this isn’t fair,’” Oliver said in the interview.
Messages left at the State Department and White House seeking comment on the Canadian officials’ statements weren’t immediately returned.
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Whatever its environmental impact, Keystone’s political implications loom large. Republicans and Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate who are running in key energy states, such as Alaska and Louisiana, are pressuring Obama to approve the project. Delays have frustrated Harper, who has made the construction of energy infrastructure a national priority. Harper, who faces elections next year, has been criticized by the opposition Liberal Party for bungling the file.
At a meeting on Monday in New York organized by Goldman Sachs, Canada’s Baird said the U.S. was intentionally delaying Keystone for political purposes, undermining the interests of a key ally.