Sep 27 2011
Emails Reveal State Department Collusion with TransCanada Over Keystone XL Pipeline
Over 300 Canadians demonstrated on Monday against their government’s support of oilsands as a fossil fuel source, bringing further attention to the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline slated for the US. Dozens were arrested on Parliament Hill in Ottawa at the action, described by a Greenpeace campaigner as a demand for a “clean-energy economy.” Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth, has uncovered over two dozen emails between TransCanada, the company intent on building the pipeline and the US State Department. Emails dating back to June 2009 show TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliott attempted to influence the State Department’s ostensibly impartial decision on whether to grant a permit for the Keystone XL project. The planned pipeline will allow the transportation of oil from the tar sands of Canada to the US Gulf Coast. Elliott, formerly Hillary Clinton’s national deputy campaign manager in 2008, helped arrange meetings between the Canadian company and State Department officials. Those officials went so far as to advise TransCanada on how to respond to criticism likely to arise in the draft environmental impact report. Damon Moglen of Friends of the Earth says, “What these e-mails indicate is that there was a process in which State Department officials were actively coaching and advising TransCanada on not only how to respond to the EIS process itself, but how to put pressure on the State Department that would move this process forward as quickly as possible.” While the decision on the 1700 mile long pipeline will not come until later this year, there is some indication that the Obama administration has hoped final approval could be delayed until after the 2012 elections. State Department officials asked Elliott in a 2010 email what the impact would be to TransCanada if , “the State Department were to withhold approving a presidential permit for a period of up to two years.”
GUEST: Kim Huynh, Federal Dirty Fuels Campaigner with Friends of the Earth
Find out more at www.foe.org.
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