Keystone XL Scandal: Obama State Dept. Hid Contractor's TransCanada Ties

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Mother Jones has a breaking investigation out on another scandal pertaining to the Obama State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the TransCanada Keystone XLย pipeline.ย 

The skinny: the firm thatย DeSmogBlog revealed has historical ties to Big Tobacco and currently has a client list that includes Koch Industries, ConocoPhillips and BP, Environmental Resources Management (ERM) Group, also has a direct connection to TransCanada itself. ERM Group – DeSmog revealed –ย also rubber-stamped the controversial and environmentally hazardous Bakuโ€“Tbilisiโ€“Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline in 2003, which carries oil and gas produced in the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan toย Tbilisi, Georgia and eventually makes its way toย Ceyhan,ย Turkey.ย 

Andy Kroll summed up Mother Jones’ new discovery about ERM,ย writing,

ERM‘s second-in-command on the Keystone report, Andrew Bielakowski, had worked on three previous pipeline projects for TransCanada over seven years as an outside consultant. He also consulted on projects for ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips, three of the Big Five oil companies that could benefit from the Keystone XL project and increased extraction of heavy crude oil taken from the Canadian tarย sands.ย 

Embarassed by this act of blatant corruption, the State Department redacted the โ€œbiographiesโ€ portion of its EIS, an overt attempted cover-up.ย Mother Jones tracked down a non-redacted version, revealing the ties that bind the study to the corporation the EIS is technically supposed to stand independentย of.ย 

Bielakowski’s ties, coming full circle, are a logical next step in theย story.

Brad Johnson, writing forย Grist, revealed that the State Department actually allowed TransCanada to hire a contractorย on its behalf. TransCanda, of course, went to a go-to-guy who can โ€œdeliver theย goods.โ€

โ€œDelivering the goods,โ€ of course, has little to do with delivering good science and is yet another act of deploying the Tobacco Playbook: make a one-sided scientific debate a farcical two-sidedย one.ย 

Last time around the block, the State Department pulled the same trick, contracting the EIS out to Cardno Entrix, a contractor which lists TransCanada as one of its clients. Flying in the face of reality, a State Department Inspector General report concluded there wasย no evidence of conflict of interest or bias in the State Department’s review.ย 

The Keystone XL will carry tar sands crude – also known as diluted bitumen or โ€œdilbitโ€ – from the Alberta tar sands project down to refineries in Port Arthur, TX. From there, it will be shipped to the global market. The export pipeline facts on the ground fly in the face of Big Oil’s often-deployed โ€œgaining energy independenceโ€ charm offensive.ย ย 

A final decision by President Obama and Sec. of State John Kerry is expected on the Keystone XL Pipeline in the next few months.ย 

Photo Credit:ย ShutterStockย |ย Leonidย Ikan

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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