Trudeau Government Fails

The senior annalists in the PCO and specialists within federal ministries must be pulling their hair in exasperation.  These politically neutral professionals can't speak publicly about the Trudeau chaos they live in. 

Canada arrived at nationalization of K-M incrementally through a series of Liberal mistakes, where they ignored the warnings of the experts, whom we all pay for.  Canada has some great talent at the senior levels of the Public Service.  Trudeau seems to be wasting it, otherwise Canada would not have spiralled downward into a $4.5 billion penalty to get a pipeline built. 

Once the decision was made way back when, and the nature of the opposition to K-M was known, they should have delivered the strongest message to the nation, that no matter what, the project was going ahead.  However, they waffled and hid, which emboldened the radicals into thinking that they were winning, rather than just driving up the cost for all citizens. 

Trudeau did not have the courage or wisdom to expend political capital early, by announcing additional investments in federal prosecution services, extra RCMP assignments, and sending a fully engaged legal team to Courts everywhere that there was an issue for hearing.  He should have raised the prospect to use the Army if needed as a last resort, to preserve "peace-order-and good government', as many were publicly urging.  He needed to outline how this national project was not up for veto by anyone.  He should not have abandoned K-M to defend themselves at Court to protect the legal conduct of their business. 

Moreover, instead of playing small-minded politics, by shamelessly trying to blame the Conservatives, he should have worked out a deal with them in Parliament, for both to support additional enabling legislation on the project.  The Conservatives are fully in support.  He could have led the nation with both national parties working together to get it done, thereby giving sufficient confidence and predictability for the private sector to complete their enterprise.  

However, his anemic partisan behaviour didn't work, and the situation descended.   Then as a last gasp, Trudeau had to buy his way out of his blunders.  Now Canada is on the hook with public money to just keep the operation viable, without counting what additional billions are needed to actually build the additional capacity pipeline. 

In summary, if Trudeau had listened with respect to the esteemed Public Service, enlisted the help of the Conservatives, and had led in a strong direction when it really counted, he could have prevented this whole scenario and preserved what the private sector does best, without having to resort to a public bail-out.  The failure to keep "peace-order-and good government", means we all have to pay for the Trudeau style of leadership.

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Kinder Morgan says: We are one of the largest energy infrastructure companies in North America. We own an interest in or operate approximately 85,000 miles of pipelines and 152 terminals. Our pipelines transport natural gas, refined petroleum products, crude oil, carbon dioxide (CO2) and more. Our terminals store and handle petroleum products, chemicals and other products.

We are a market leader in each of our businesses – Natural Gas Pipelines, Products Pipelines, CO2, Terminals and Kinder Morgan Canada. We have an unparalleled, large footprint of diversified and strategically located assets that are core to North American energy infrastructure and help deliver needed energy products to high-demand markets. For example, Kinder Morgan is the:

Largest natural gas network with approximately 70,000 miles of natural gas pipelines. We are connected to every important U.S. natural gas resource play, including the Eagle Ford, Marcellus, Utica, Uinta, Haynesville, Fayetteville and Barnett. We move about 40 percent of the natural gas consumed in America.

Largest independent transporter of petroleum products, transporting about 2.1 million barrels of product per day. We move gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, crude, natural gas liquids and more.

Largest transporter of carbon dioxide (CO2), transporting about 1.3 billion cubic feet per day. Most of the CO2 is used in enhanced oil recovery projects in the Permian Basin of West Texas.

Largest independent terminal operator. Our liquids terminals store refined petroleum products, chemicals, ethanol and more, and have a capacity of 152 million barrels. Our dry bulk terminals store and handle such materials as coal, petroleum coke and steel, and we handle over 53 million tons per year. We also have a strong Jones Act shipping position with twelve vessels in service and four more to be delivered in 2017.

Only oilsands pipeline serving the West Coast. We currently transport 300,000 barrels per day to Vancouver/Washington State and our proposed expansion will increase that capacity to 890,000 barrels per day.

Our customers include major oil companies, energy producers and shippers, local distribution companies and businesses across many industries. In most of our businesses, we operate like a giant toll road and receive a fee for our services, generally avoiding commodity price risk. In our CO2 business, where exposure to commodity prices does exist, we employ a hedging strategy to partially mitigate that risk. For 2017, approximately 91 percent of our cash flows are fee-based and 97 percent of our cash flows are fee-based or hedged.

The revolutionary shale plays across the United States are creating a tremendous need for more energy infrastructure, which bodes well for us. We invest billions of dollars each year to grow the company by building new and expanding existing assets to help ensure that a variety of energy products get delivered into the marketplace.

Kinder Morgan strives for financial and operational excellence, and we are committed to being a good corporate citizen and conducting ourselves in an ethical and responsible manner. In addition to delivering value to our shareholders and meeting our customers' needs, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on integrity management and maintenance programs to operate our assets safely and to protect the public, our employees, contractors and the environment.

We pride ourselves on being a different kind of energy company. What makes us different? It starts at the top with Executive Chairman Rich Kinder, who earns a salary of $1 per year and does not receive a bonus, stock options or restricted stock grants. President and CEO Steve Kean also receives an annual salary of $1. We work hard to align managements’ and shareholders’ incentives by eliminating unnecessary expenses such as corporate aircraft, sports tickets and executive perks. In addition, we tie financial incentives for our employees directly to the performance of the company and their own personal performances.

Kinder Morgan has been conducting its business transparently long before it became a corporate buzz word. We are one of the only S&P 500 companies that publishes its annual budget on its web site, which enables investors and others to follow our progress throughout the year. We also post our operational performance on our website and continue to perform better than our industry peers relative to environmental, health and safety measures.

We do not have a Political Action Committee. Any political contributions made by executives or employees are made individually as private citizens with their own personal money.

Kinder Morgan has approximately 11,000 employees and is one of the largest energy infrastructure companies in North America.