An
international trade agreement is being negotiated in secret. You should know about it because it will
affect you. Called the Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement, or
TPP, this trade deal would regulate much more than
trade between the U.S. and 11 nations from the Pacific Rim including Australia,
Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore
and Vietnam. While China is not
currently party to this secret dealmaking, it is believed that they and other
nations will eventually sign on to the pact.
The TPP would pump up the pressure on fracking
and shale gas development in the U.S.
The deal would also empower foreign corporations and interests to
challenge our environmental and community protections and put a chill on the
creation of new protections called for by science and experience.
And to top it off, the President wants Congress
to pass a piece of legislation called the Bipartisan Congressional Trade
Priorities Act of 2014, or “Fast Track” for short, that will give the President
super powers to negotiate this deal, to sign the deal on behalf of
the United States, to draft and to put forth before Congress legislation that
would change or modify existing U.S. laws to bring our
country into compliance with the TPP.
And Fast Track would relegate our Congress to a mere “yea” or “nay” vote. No
hearings, no amendments, and very little conversation at all. The U.S. Constitution carefully shares
authority for international dealmaking between the President and the Congress –
President Obama wants to change that with Fast Track.
How will the TPP increase the pressure for
shale gas drilling and fracking?
Three ways:
F By weakening environmental protections in place,
F By diminishing the creation of new protections as science and experience may require, and
F By providing automatic approvals for LNG exports that will take U.S.
shale gas overseas.
So when you get to the end of this post, be
sure to immediately write or call your Congressional representatives and tell
them to vote “no” on Fast Track and to vote “no” on the TPP. To have the Delaware Riverkeeper Network send
your letter go to: http://bit.ly/DRN-NoTPPorFastTrack
TPP Allows Foreign Corporations to Challenge U.S. Environmental Protections and
Win.
The
TPP, like other trade agreements, would allow foreign investors, including
corporations, to bring legal actions against the U.S. government through Investor-State
Dispute Resolution (ISDR). Foreign investors and corporations could assert that
our environmental protection laws have diminished their investments, including future
profits, and that as a result the U.S. should have to pay.
ISDR
claims can result in massive payouts, the repeal of environmental and community
protection laws, and chill the creation of new laws for fear of losing in
arbitration tribunals which don’t follow normal rules regarding conflict of
interest
By the end of 2012, corporations had used
the ISDR process to initiate 514 investor-state cases
against 95 governments. They had launched attacks on a range of regulations,
including toxic chemical bans, timber regulations, green jobs requirements, and
more. Example cases include:
Ethyl
Corporation — In 1997, Canada enacted a law restricting
the import and interprovincial transport of methylcyclopentadienyl
manganese tricarbonyl (MMT) a gasoline additive that contains manganese, and
that was thought to be injurious to public health. Soon after, the sole
supplier of the additive, a Virginia company named Ethyl Corporation, claimed
that this amounted to expropriation in violation of NAFTA and sought $350
million (CA).
The Prime Minister, believing Canada could lose in arbitration, ordered the
Canadian negotiators to settle, repealed the MMT law, issued an apology, and
paid $19.5 million (CA) to the corporation.
Occidental—In 2012, in Occidental v. Ecuador, the International
Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) issued its largest award in
history, $2.3 billion (US), in favor of Occidental.
Ecuador was sued for canceling Occidental’s contract when Occidental sold forty
percent of its interest in a section of the Amazon where the company was
exploring and extracting hydrocarbons. Occidental had signed a contract that
required government approval for a transfer of interest, and which stated that
Ecuador would have the option to terminate the contract if such a transfer
occurred without approval.
Lone
Pine Resources, Inc. — In September, 2013, Lone Pine
Resources, Inc. filed a Notice of Arbitration against Canada because of claimed
violations of NAFTA. Their claim arises
out of a ban on fracking in the St. Lawrence River passed by the Province of
Quebec in order to allow it time to study the dangerous process. Lone Pine
Resources is charging Canada with “arbitrary,
capricious, and illegal revocation of the [company’s] valuable right to mine
for oil and gas under the St. Lawrence River ... without due process, without
compensation, and with no cognizable public purpose.” The corporation is seeking
$250 million in damages.
In
the U.S., environmental protection laws like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air
Act were designed to be technology forcing, to require industries to come up
with cleaner and better practices if they hope to comply with US environmental
laws and to get the permitting they need to operate. Under the ISDR concept these technology
forcing approaches are, by their very nature, hurdles to operations and
profits, and so become obvious targets of ISDR challenge. TPP and Fast Track
undermine these fundamental US environmental protection strategies that have
been so irreplaceably important in advancing environmental protection
technology and practices in almost every industry.
TPP Increases U.S. Export
of Shale Gas Which Means More Drilling and Fracking.
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| LNG in Boston |
The Natural Gas Act prohibits the import or export of natural gas, including liquefied
natural gas (LNG), to or from any foreign country without receiving prior
approval from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). To get DOE approval the agency must conduct a
review that includes environmental and economic impacts, and determine that the
proposed LNG facility and its exports or imports “will not be inconsistent with the public
interest.”
BUT
….
The
NGA goes on to require that the DOE deem as consistent with the public
interest any applications to authorize the import or export of natural gas,
including LNG, from and to nations which have entered into a free trade
agreement with the U.S. requiring national treatment for trade in natural gas –
i.e. Free Trade Agreement countries, or FTA countries. Applications for authorization to export
natural gas to FTA countries is required, by the NGA, to be “granted without
modification or delay.”
As
of October 31, 2012, FTA countries that require national treatment for trade in
natural gas, included: Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman,
Panama, Peru, Republic of Korea and Singapore.
The TPP, if passed, would add new nations to the
FTA list including: Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Vietnam, with China
expected to join in the near future. And
because the TPP is being designed as a docking agreement, it means that it can
be joined at any time by any nation willing to meet its terms. So the list of nations with FTA status will
most certainly grow.
By adding to the list of FTA countries for whom LNG
export would be deemed in the public interest and therefore subject to
automatic approval, the TPP will be increasing the speed and volume of shale
gas exports overseas. This will in turn
ramp up the pressure for more shale gas development including associated
deforestation, development, fracking, drilling, pipelines, compressors and
other associated construction, infrastructure, devastation and pollution.
As of September, 2013, the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) has before it thirteen applications and eight potential
projects identified by the industry, in the U.S., that if approved
would export almost 43% of the natural gas produced in this country in a
given year.
The
process of shale gas development destroys communities and the environment. Even the conservative Pennsylvania Supreme Court
has recognized the inevitability of destruction wrought by shale gas
development:
“The industry uses
two techniques that enhance recovery of natural gas from these “unconventional”
gas wells: hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” (usually slick-water fracking)
and horizontal drilling. Both techniques inevitably do violence to the
landscape.” (p. 8).
“By any
responsible account, the exploitation of the Marcellus Shale Formation will
produce a detrimental effect on the environment, on the people, their children,
and future generations, and potentially on the public purse, perhaps rivaling
the environmental effects of coal extraction.” – p. 118
Conclusion
The
TPP has been under secret negotiation since 2008 and the only glimpses the
public has had of the deal are those leaked and shared on the http://www.wikileaks.org website. The deal is so secret that not only is the
public prohibited from reading its terms, but so too is Congress. By contrast, it is reported that over 500
corporate representatives have been privy to the terms of the deal as members of the negotiations team, among them: DuPont, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical
and Halliburton.
The
Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement (TPP) is a secret deal being kept
secret because “those in the know” are very aware that if the public and
Congress could read what was in the document the majority would oppose it and
it would never pass. It is time to take
TPP into the light and let some informed dialogue and decisionmaking
happen.
And
that can only occur if Fast Track is never passed.
Lone Pine Resources Inc. v.
Government of Canada, Notice of Arbitration Rules of the United Nations
Commission on International Trade Law and Chapter Eleven of the North American
Free Trade Agreement, filed Sept. 6, 2013, available
at: http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/assets/pdfs/disp-diff/lone-02.pdf;
Cole Stangler, Mining Company Sues
Canada Over Fracking Ban in Quebec , November 2013, available
at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15847/mining_company_sues_canada_over_fracking_ban_in_quebec/.
“(c) Expedited application and approval process
It is time for good judgment, not just good fortune. The half mile buffer good “fortune” gave to
the residents of Dunkard far surpasses what the DEP or the Governor would see
them have (see picture that shows the comparison of what good fortune gave
Dunkard versus what Abruzzo and Corbett continue to argue for). Secretary Abruzzo and Governor Corbett continue
their efforts to reduce the buffer of protection between between drilling sites
and houses, between the poisonous hazards on these site and the streams that
provide us our drinking water, between dangerous drilling infrastructure and
every aspect of our communities. 
