‘State Department’ Keystone XL Report Actually Written By TransCanada Contractor

[ConsƦcons]

6 Mar 2013 - By Brad Johnson

‘State Department’ Keystone XL Report Actually Written By TransCanada
Contractor


The State Department’s “don’t worry” environmental impact statement for
the proposed Keystone XL tarsands pipeline, released late Friday
afternoon, was written not by government officials but by a private
company in the pay of the pipeline’s owner. The “sustainability
consultancy” Environmental Resources Management (ERM) was paid an
undisclosed amount under contract to TransCanada to write the statement,
which is now an official government document. The statement estimates,
and then dismisses, the pipeline’s massive carbon footprint and other
environmental impacts, because, it asserts, the mining and burning of
the tar sands is unstoppable.

The department’s contractor-written Draft Supplemental Environmental
Impact Statement even says the pipeline will be safe from the climate
impacts to which it will contribute.

The documents from the ERM-TransCanada agreement are on the State
Department’s website, but payment amounts and other clients and past
work of ERM are redacted. In the contract documents, ERM partner Steven
J. Koster certifies that his company has no conflicts of interest. He
also certifies that ERM has no business relationship with TransCanada or
“any business entity that could be affected in any way by the proposed
work” (notwithstanding the impact statement contract itself). In a cover
letter, Koster promises State Department NEPA Coordinator Genevieve
Walker that ERM understands “the need for an efficient and expedited
process to meet the demands of the desired project schedule.”

An investigation by Inside Climate News finds that ERM’s report draws
from work done by other oil industry contractors, Ensys Energy and ICF
International.

Because the impact statement was written by a TransCanada contractor,
not by State Department officials, it should come as no surprise that it
presents a worldview of a global economy inevitably dependent on dirty
fossil fuels that is entirely at odds with the expressed views of
Secretary of State John Kerry.

As Secretary of State John Kerry said six years ago, “we’re on an urgent
clock” to confront fossil-fueled climate change, which he compared to
the threat of nuclear weaponry as a “man-made” and “uncontrolled” weapon
with “the ability to change life as we know it on this Earth.” Kerry’s
recognition of the scientific necessity to keep global concentrations of
carbon dioxide below 450 ppm should preclude the possibility of building
a pipeline designed to pump 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide worth of tar
sands crude over decades.

According to TransCanada’s paid report, “production of WCSB and Bakken
crude oil will proceed with or without the proposed Project.”

As Kerry said last month, “We need to find the courage to leave a far
different legacy.”