It was Ruby River Capital LLC that filed a request for arbitration against Canada with the World Bank Group’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) on Thursday.
She relies on arguments related to the American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
Ruby River Capital is owned by the companies of LNG Quebec’s two promoters, renamed Symbio Infrastructure in March 2021. The companies are Freestone, a development company funded and led by Jim Illich, and Breyer Capital, founded in 2006 by the current Jim Illich. CEO.
Projects, once worth $14 billion, aimed to build a terminal in Saguenay to export liquefied natural gas imported by pipeline from western Canada via existing pipelines, as well as a 780-kilometer pipeline to be built to connect northeastern Ontario to the Port of Saguenay. The liquefied natural gas would have been exported by boat down the Saguenay River.
Rejections from Quebec and Ottawa
The part of the terminal called Énergie Saguenay was first rejected by the Quebec government in July 2021 after the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) published a critical report in March 2021. The project had more disadvantages than advantages.
The Canadian government, through the Department of Environment and Climate Change, also rejected the liquefaction terminal project in February 2022. The Minister, Steven Guilbeault, then relied on the conclusions of the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada’s (IAEC) environmental assessment report.
The AEIC had highlighted the increase in polluting greenhouse gases, the project’s impact on marine mammals, including the St. Lawrence Beluga, and its impact on Innu First Nations cultural heritage.
GNL Québec offices were located in Saguenay.
Photo: Radio Canada / Pascal Girard
For its part, the company believed that the project as a whole would have helped reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by replacing more polluting energies such as coal. The liquefaction plant would have been hydroelectric, which would have reduced its environmental impact.
In June 2022, Symbio Infrastructure announced that it had reached an agreement with the Ukrainian state-owned company Naftogaz to supply liquefied natural gas and hydrogen to Ukraine, which was already at war at the time.
Last September, Jim Illich held talks with Steven Guilbeault and Minister for Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne on the sidelines of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Canada.
The federal environmental impact assessment procedure for the part of the gas pipeline is still ongoing, but it has become obsolete to a certain extent, since the project no longer makes sense without a terminal.
The news was first reported by the Investment Arbitration Reporter (IAReporter) website, a publication specializing in this area. This publication believes the prosecutor alleges that the decision made by Ottawa was primarily political, which would violate free trade agreements.