U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Launches Campaign To Lobby For Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline

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Last Friday, after applauding the Houseโ€™s vote to rush a decision on TransCanada Corpโ€™s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a new campaign to boost the controversial project. The Partnership to Fuel America is run out of the U.S. Chamberโ€™s Institute for 21st Century Energy, and seems positioned to be the U.S. Chamberโ€™s main influence channel to drum up support for Keystone XL. Supportive comments aside, itโ€™s also the first time the U.S. Chamber has so publicly and overtly aligned with the Canadian companyโ€™sย project.

The launch comes at a pivotal moment for Keystone XL. The Obama administration has the final say in approving the pipeline, and theyโ€™ve said the decision will be made by the end of the year. The new House legislation declared that the Obama administration must make the call by November 1st. A final environmental review of the prospective project is expected from the State Department in August. (To learn more about how tar sands pipelines like Keystone XL are a much greater risk than normal crude pipelines, see my earlier post.)

Which is all to say: the next couple months will determine whether or not Keystone XL is approved and built. Given the U.S. Chamberโ€™s long history of support for all things fossil fuel โ€“ and long history of fighting against any sort of pollution controls โ€“ itโ€™s no real surprise that the Chamber is throwing its considerable weight behind Keystone XL. But until now, the nationโ€™s largest lobbying group (which spends more money than the next five lobbying groups combined, and which receives the majority of its funding from 16 anonymous corporate donors) hadnโ€™t done more than release comments in support of the Keystone XL project. (Well, publicly, that is. Theyโ€™ve probably done quite a bit behind closedย doors.)

So what more do we know about the Partnership to Fuel America? According to the U.S. Chamberโ€™s Institute for 21st Century Energy, it will be โ€œcomprised of American businesses and industries that understand the need for more energy in the United States and believe that Canadaโ€™s significant resources can help achieve that goal.โ€ Their site makes numerous references to โ€œNorth American energy,โ€ but the only North American sources of energy listed are Canadaโ€™s tar sands, and every news item listed on the site is specifically about the Keystone XLย project.

Though you wonโ€™t find him anywhere on the official site, the โ€œpartnershipโ€ is being led by a gentleman named Matt Koch, who is vice president for Oil Sands and Arctic Issues at the U.S. Chamberโ€™s Institute for 21st Century Energy. And, no, I couldnโ€™t find any evidence that this is some long-lost Koch brother of the Koch Industries clan, but lately heโ€™s been earning his living off of fossil fuels just the same.

Before working for private industry, Matt Koch served in George W. Bushโ€™s White House, as an Associate Director of Cabinet Affairs, and also in the Department of Energy. Before settling into the capital, Koch served as Natural Resource Policy Director at the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations, securing the Lone Star Stateโ€™s oil interests inside theย Beltway.

Immediately before joining the U.S. Chamberโ€™s payroll, Koch was Director of Federal Relations at the American Petroleum Institute, and one of their chief lobbyists. According to the Institute for 21st Century Energy, Koch was โ€œAPIโ€™s chief advocate and issue manager for all downstream and refining-related issues affecting the oil and natural gas industry.โ€

Whatโ€™s more, he was โ€œresponsible for initiating and managing APIโ€™s ongoing, multifaceted oil sands strategy and campaign.โ€ Now heโ€™s running that very same strategy for the U.S. Chamber, and the big tar sands battle of the moment is the Keystone XL.

Itโ€™s worth noting that this Partnership to Fuel America launch โ€“ the overt and very public alignment between the U.S. Chamber and TransCanadaโ€™s Keystone project โ€“ comes at the very moment that both the Chamber and the Keystone XL are being acutely targeted by various activist campaigns. 350.org just launched the clever and timely โ€œU.S. Chamber of Secretsโ€ website as part of their ongoing campaign to expose the organization as a front group for fossil fuel corporations and other big polluters. (Check out their impressive infographic about the Chamber, which tells a pretty startling story.)

Meanwhile, a whole slew of activists are gearing up for the Tar Sands Action in late August, which is specifically targeting the Keystone XL pipeline, which organizers describe as โ€œa fifteen hundred mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on theย continent.โ€

But, now, thereโ€™s no need to speculate about a possible link between the U.S. Chamber and the Keystone XL project. That connection is now public and crystal clear. So it must be asked: why is the U.S. Chamber spending so much energy and resources supporting a project that will be built, operated, and profitted from by a Canadian company, one the U.S. Chamber isnโ€™t supposed to represent? Perhaps that answer lies in those other, more renowned Kochs, who stand to make a killing off of Keystone XL if itโ€™s completed, and who are known to have shady ties to the U.S. Chamber.

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Ben Jervey is a Senior Fellow for DeSmog and directs the KochvsClean.com project. He is a freelance writer, editor, and researcher, specializing in climate change and energy systems and policy. Ben is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School. He was the original Environment Editor for GOOD Magazine, and wrote a longstanding weekly column titled โ€œThe New Ideal: Building the clean energy economy of the 21st Century and avoiding the worst fates of climate change.โ€ He has also contributed regularly to National Geographic News, Grist, and OnEarth Magazine. He has published three booksโ€”on eco-friendly living in New York City, an Energy 101 primer, and, most recently, โ€œThe Electric Battery: Charging Forward to a Low Carbon Future.โ€ He graduated with a BA in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College, and earned a Masterโ€™s in Energy Regulation and Law at Vermont Law School. A bicycle enthusiast, Ben has ridden across the United States and through much ofย Europe.

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