Authored by Connor Gibson, cross-posted with permission from PolluterWatch.org
For those who missed the deep investigative piece published by InsideClimate News last week documenting a half-century of Koch Industries involvement in the destructive tar sands of Alberta, Canada, it has finally closed the coffin on a vicious round of lies straight from Koch Industries.
Through its aggressive KochFacts PR website, Koch lawyers, lobbyists and communications advisors hammered InsideClimate for its initial reports on the Koch connection to tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline, specifically attacking the outlet’s publisher and calling the reporting “deceptive,” “untrue” and “utterly false,” among other claims that, ironically, are deceptive, untrue and utterly false.
A major indicator of InsideClimate’s diligence is the response from KochFacts this time around, which mentions nothing of InsideClimate’s damning new documentation of ongoing Koch operations in the tar sands, including the following points from the article:
• The company is one Canada’s largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters, with more than 130 crude oil customers.
• It is among the largest U.S. refiners of oil sands crude, responsible for about 25 percent of imports.
• It is one of the largest holders of mineral leases in Alberta, where most of Canada’s tar sands deposits are located.
• It has its name attached to hundreds of well sites across Alberta tracked by Canadian regulators.
• It owns pipelines in Minnesota and Wisconsin that import western Canadian crude to U.S. refineries and also distribute finished products to customers.
• It owns and operates a 675,000 barrel oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, a major tar sands export hub.
• And this year it kicked off a 10,000 barrel-a-day mining project in Alberta that could be the seed of a much larger project.
Zing! And since KochFacts says InsideClimate is simply driving “agenda-driven, dishonest journalism,” let’s see where exactly the outlet sourced this new round of information:
InsideClimate News has pieced together a rough picture of the company’s involvement in the industry, using published reports from the National Energy Board of Canada; documents and data extracted from the website of Canada’s Energy Resource Conservation Board; securities disclosures and filings of Koch businesses in Canada; court documents from an inheritance battle that pitted Charles and David Koch against their two other brothers; Canadian and U.S. media reports; company newsletters and press releases; and two books, one written by Charles Koch and the other the autobiography of a long-time Koch company director.
What say you now, Koch? Answer: not very much. The response from the Kochaganda machine this time around was delayed and notably underwhelming, recycling their previous talking points (which are dishonest) and ignoring all of InsideClimate’s newest revelations.
This is probably because of the rock-solid documentation of Koch’s historic and ongoing operations in the tar sands of Alberta. That and the fact that Koch lawyers directly told Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) that they have “no financial interest in the project whatsoever,” which I believe means they lied to a Congressman–expect them to split hairs over the definition of “financial interest” if Mr. Waxman follows up with Koch Industries, not that he hasn’t tried. Both Energy & Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Energy & Power Subcommittee chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) denied Waxman’s requests to bring Koch before Congress to speak about Keystone XL.
Wait, what’s that? Representatives Upton and Whitfield each received $52,500 and $16,000 respectively from Koch Industries since 2007 began? Democracy fail.
Also noteworthy: the almost $60 million that the billionaire Koch brothers have funneled to groups that deny climate science, notably Koch support for the anti-environmental American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and their million-dollar attack on California’s Global Warming Solutions Act and its provisions to cut back high-carbon fuels from–you guessed it–the tar sands.
Read the new InsideClimate report at InsideClimate News: Koch Brothers’ Activism Protects Their 50-Year Stake in Canadian Heavy Oils, as well as previous reports:
Stacy Feldman, “Koch Subsidiary Told Regulators It Has ‘Direct and Substantial Interest’ in Keystone XL,” October, 2011.
David Sassoon, “Koch Brothers Positioned To Be Big Winners If Keystone XL Pipeline Is Approved,” February, 2011.
