State Department Keystone XL Study Done by Oil Industry-Connected Firm with Big Tobacco, Fracking Ties

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On March 1, the U.S. State Department published its long-awaited Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the TransCanada Keystone XL (KXL) tar sands pipeline.ย 

The KXL is slated to bring tar sands crude – also known asย dilutedย bitumen or โ€œdilbitโ€ – from Alberta, Canada to Port Arthur, TX. From Port Arthur, it will be refined and exported to the global market.ย 

Flying in the face of the slew of scientific studies both on the harms of burning tar sands and on the KXL itself, State determined that laying down the pipeline is environmentallyย sound.ย 

Unmentioned by State: the study was contracted out to firms with tar sands extraction clientele, as revealed byย InsideClimate News.ย 

โ€œEnSys Energy has worked with ExxonMobil, BP and Koch Industries, which own oil sands production facilities and refineries in the Midwest that process heavy Canadian crude oil. Imperial Oil, one of Canada’s largest oil sands producers, is a subsidiary of Exxon,โ€ย InsideClimate News explained. โ€œICF International works with pipeline and oil companies but doesn’t list specific clients on itsย website.โ€

Writing forย Grist, Brad Johnson also revealed the name of a third contractor – Environmental Resources Management (ERM) Group – which TransCanada hired on behalf of the State Department to do the EIS.ย 

โ€(ERM) was paid an undisclosed amount under contract to TransCanada to write the statement, which is now an official government document,โ€ Johnson explained. โ€œThe statement estimates, and then dismisses, the pipelineโ€™s massive carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, because, it asserts, the mining and burning of the tar sands isย unstoppable.โ€

ERM, a probe into the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) Tobacco Archives reveals, has deep historical ties to Big Tobacco. Further, a key employee at ICF International – via familial ties – is tied to the future of whether hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€) for shale oil and gas becomes a reality in New York’s portion of the Marcellus Shale.ย ย ย 

TransCanada Utilizes Tobacco Playbook in Hiring ERMย Group

ERM Group – headquarted in the City of London – a square mile sub-section of London infamous for its role in serving as a tax shelter for multinational corporations – has aided the tobacco industry in pushing the โ€œTobaccoย Playbook.โ€

Many fossil fuel industry public relations flacks learned the tactics of mass manipulation by reading the โ€œtobacco playbook,โ€ meticulously documented in Naomi Oreskes’ and Erik Conway’s classic book, โ€œMerchants of Doubt.โ€

โ€œDoubt is our product,โ€ a tobacco industry document once laid out the playbook, โ€œsince it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing aย controversy.โ€

ERM has done studies on behalf of both R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, penning a report titled โ€œFundamentals of Environmental Managementโ€ for theย latter.

It was also a former member of the American Tort Reform Association, a group that fights to limit the tort law rights of citizens to sue for damages inflicted upon them by corporations and featured in the documentary film, โ€œHot Coffee.โ€

ERM: In-Service to Big Oil, like Bigย Tobacco

In the 2000 version of its website, ERM referred to climate change advocates as having anย โ€œagenda.โ€

โ€œ[T]he gloabl (sic)ย climate change agenda has very specific implications for the oil and gas industry,ย and factoring CO2 emissions into operations is a key concern,โ€ read ERM‘s website at the time.

The firm has also boasted of doing its studies in service to the oil and gas industry’s bottomย lines.

โ€œERM works around the world with the private sector assessing how their business is likely to be impacted by environmental and social issues, new regulations, consumer concerns, and supply chain issues and help companies develop appropriate policies and management systems to manage these business risks,โ€ its website proclaimed in 2000.ย 

This all sits, of course, in juxtaposition to the needs of the decaying ecosystem and increasingly severe and horrifying climate crisis.ย 

The ICF/New York Fracking Decisionย Connection

ICF Consulting is a thread tying the forthcoming fracking decision in New York by Democratic Party Gov. Andrew Cuomo to the Obama State Department decision on the Keystone XL.ย 

Though ICF doesn’t list its clients on its website, its vice president Karl Hauskerย is the husband of Kathleen (โ€œKatieโ€) McGinty, one of the members of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel.

McGinty formerly served as Vice President Al Gore’s top climate aide under the Clinton Administration, segueing from that position into one as chair of the Clinton Council on Environmental Quality from 1993-1998.ย From 2003-2008, she served as head of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection under Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, helping usher in the state’s ongoing frackingย boom.ย 

Named as a member of the industry-stacked Obama DOE fracking subcommittee in May 2011, McGinty now works as an Operating Partner alongside Rendell at Element Partners, a Philadelphia, PA-based firm that has capital investments in several firms operating in Pennsylvania’s portion of the Marcellus Shale. McGinty also serves on the Board of Directors of NRG Energy, an electricity-generating utilities corporation that owns natural gas-fired power plantsย around the U.S.

Tying it all together,ย Ernest Monizย is leaving his position on ICF‘s Board and his professorship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a major โ€œfrackademic,โ€ to serve as head of the Obama DOE.

In chess, moves of this sort are known as โ€œcheckโ€ andย โ€œcheckmate.โ€

The weeks and months ahead will demonstrate if the chess match is over with regards to the destiny of the Keystone XL pipeline and fracking in the Empireย State.ย 

Photo Credit: ShutterStock |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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