Thursday, July 23, 2020

Another Pipeline Defection



It was barely two weeks ago that insurance giant, Munich Re, announced that it was no longer willing to provide coverage to the Justin Trudeau Memorial Pipeline, a.k.a. Trans Mountain.

Now there's been another defection.
Zurich Insurance Group has decided not to renew coverage of the Trans Mountain pipeline, according to a media report. 
The news comes roughly a year after the large Swiss insurance company declared it would reject companies that operate “purpose-built” transportation infrastructure for oilsands products, including pipelines. 
The Trans Mountain pipeline, owned and operated by a federal Canadian Crown corporation and its subsidiaries, transports a heavy tar-like substance called bitumen and other petroleum products from Alberta’s oilpatch to a terminal in Metro Vancouver.
In what sounded a bit like whistling past the graveyard, a spokesman for Mr. Trudeau's pipeline venture said, "There remains adequate capacity in the market to meet Trans Mountain’s insurance needs."

It's kind of sad to watch the financial, investment and insurance sector treat the Tar Sands and its infrastructure like some dodgy communicable disease.  Even Norway's sovereign wealth fund, built on North Sea oil revenues, has divested its Tar Sands holdings.

9 comments:

  1. "There remains adequate capacity in the market to meet Trans Mountain’s insurance needs." Well, yes. Now that TM has been nationalized, the feds always have the option of self-insurance, i.e. if anything goes wrong, the taxpayers are on the hook.

    Cap

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  2. To some extent, it looks like Mr. Trudeau is a sucker who can be conned into footing the bill with public funds. The big players will set back until the infrastructure is up and running and then demand to control it. I hope I'm wrong and they do have better motives.

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  3. I struggle to understand how Mr. Trudeau came down on the side of the petro-state, Cap. However what's done is done.

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  4. Toby it won't be the first time government has use public funds to build something and then turned it over to the private sector at a big loss only to see it generate huge returns for its new owner. Ask the folks in Ontario about that.

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  5. Anonymous Toby said...
    To some extent, it looks like Mr. Trudeau is a sucker...

    Mr Trudeau is ,even accounting for his age, immature.
    His decisions have little ground in reality.

    Dodgy thing this voting in a democracy!
    Never know what you will get.

    TB

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  6. That's party due to the undemocratic reality that a party can get 39 per cent of the vote and yet receive a powerful majority. That's not voting in a democracy. It isn't governance with the consent of the governed.

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  7. .. the hits just keep on comin.. another head slap for Mr Kenney

    MetLife just updated their plan.. Coal and tar sands will no longer be supported..
    Yes.. there are loopholes and workarounds.. but but and but..
    The money train aint stopping in Alberta anymore
    So Teck (coal) & Bitumen.. no ticket to ride

    that means fully 97% of Canada's 'vast oil reserves'
    is losing investment trust.. and even worse.. INSURANCE
    For those who aint aware - without INSURANCE
    the boys don't play hockey, football, baseball
    at Pro or amateur levels, and stadiums do not operate

    no hot dog for you Mr Kenney

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  8. Hey, Sal. Ever notice that these days you get up in the morning knowing the world might look far different by the time you get back to bed?

    Others have told me they share the mounting sense of anxiety I'm experiencing as America draws near to the November 3rd elections. Both sides contend the other will be working to 'steal' the election although the Republicans, through gerrymandering, voter suppression and the perversion of the Electoral College, have made a fine art of that for decades.

    I'm coming to think of Washington D.C. as Venezuela on the Potomac.

    The wheels are coming off the wagon, Sal. Whether it's the Tar Sands and the J. Trudeau Memorial Pipeline, Bill Morneau's 'recovered memory,' Trump and America's nascent social upheaval, the infernal pandemic, another Great Recession looming, and the now oft overlooked climate crisis, it feels like the 'five stages of grief' on a loop. All these crises and no one is coming up with an answer to even one of them, not even one.

    I don't know, buddy. It's not a great background for contemplating your own mortality.

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  9. .. I'm lookin for the 'river to cry me' Mound

    When unsure of my mortality.. Mark Twain an easy fix
    and if I get lost, Tom Thomson helps ..
    He was never 'lost'
    but admitted to being mighty confused a few times
    re just where he was ..

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