Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

A swamp in Faulkner County, Arkansas -- an area despoiled by fracking and a recent Exxon tar sands spill.

There are few better examples of a “sacrifice zone” for ExxonMobil and the fossil fuel industry at-large than Faulkner County, Arkansas and the counties surrounding it.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Double-Dipper Dunn

Double-dipping is a “no go” in the real world of eating chips and salsa with a circle of friends but an everyday reality in the world of lobbyists and PR professionals.

Enter double-dipper Anita Dunn, former White House Communications Director for President Barack Obama who now runs the firm SKDKnickerbocker (Squier Knapp Dunn), a firm that ”brings unparalleled strategic communications experience to Fortune 500 companies, political groups and candidates, non-profits, and labor organizations.”

Dip one: TransCanada Corporation, which SKDK does public relations work for, as revealed in an Oct. 2012 New York Times investigation. TransCanada is the multinational corporation currently building the contentious southern half of theKeystone XL (KXL) tar sands pipeline, following the dictates of a March 2012 Obama Administration Executive Order. Within months, the fate of the border-crossing Alberta to Port Arthur, TX KXL export pipeline will also likely be decided by the U.S. State Department.

Dip two: Another SKDKnickerbocker client is the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the American Petroleum Institute trade association equivalent for the freight rail industry. Even without KXL – as covered previously on DeSmogBlog -tar sands crude can be moved to targeted markets via freight rail (coupled with pipeline capacity increases of other tubes and potential barging along Lake Superior).

Beneficiaries of tar sands transport via rail include AAR dues-paying member Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF), owned by major Obama donor Warren Buffett via his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway. Shell Oil – a major Alberta tar sands extractor - also pays AAR member dues, which indicates Big Oil understands the strategic importance of rail transport.

Dunn’s firm, in short, stands to gain from tar sands extraction with or without a KXL northern half, a classic case of double-dipping.

Keystone XL: Dunn’s Obama/Kerry Connections Portend a Dunn and Done Scenario

Dunn has maximized her White House insider access status since leaving the Administration in 2009 and starting SKDK.

“Dunn regularly attends closed-door political strategy briefings with top Obama aides; White House records show she has visited more than 100 times since leaving her communications job,” the Oct. 2012 New York Times piece explained. “She is now serving as a paid adviser to the Democratic National Committee.”

Dunn’s husband Robert “Bob” Bauer also maintains extremely close ties to the Obama Administration, serving as Obama’s personal and political attorney.

“Bauer also will play that role for Obama’s new political network, Organizing for America, and the Democratic National Committee, which is administering the network,” explained a Feb. 2009 article in Politico, “Bauer’s new, unmatched legal power.”

In Nov. 2009, Obama named Bauer White House Counsel, a job he left in June 2011 to return to his private practice at Perkins Coie, “focusing on serving as general counsel to the President’s reelection campaign, general counsel to the Democratic National Committee and personal lawyer to President Obama,” according to the Perkins Coie website.

SKDK’s Bill Knapp, described by the New York Observer‘s Ben Smith (now Editor-in-Chief of BuzzFeed) as “one of the Democratic Party’s most sought-after operatives” helped develop the media strategy and advertising” for Kerry for President 2004 that culminated with a defeat to George W. Bush, while Bauer worked as legal Counsel for Kerry’s campaign. Furthermore, Dunn served as Communications Director from 1987-1990 for then-U.S. Sen. Kerry. The Kerry-lead State Department has the final say on whether the KXL north proposal becomes a reality.

As icing on the cake, numerous TransCanada lobbyists have passed through the government-industry revolving door, entering both executive-level agencies and President Obama’s inner-circle.

Brandon Pollak, served as Deputy National Director of Grassroots Fundraising for the Kerry for President 2004 campaign. Broderick Johnson went from lobbying for TransCanada to becoming Obama’s senior campaign advisor for his 2012 race against Republican Mitt Romney.

With all of these lobbyists using their ties to the White House and State Department, it looks as if the KXL decision is already a checkmate, Dunn and done scenario.

If KXL Fails, There’s Always Rail, Barge, Increased Pipeline Capacity Supplements

Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

TransCanada, the multinational corporation hoping to build the controversial northern half of the Keystone XL pipeline, spent over $280,000 on lobbying the U.S. government in the first quarter (Q1) of 2013, according to lobbying disclosure records.

In addition to the $250,000 paid to Paul Elliott - TransCanada’s infamous in-house lobbyist and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s national deputy campaign manager during her 2008 run for president – three outside firms lobbied on TransCanada’s behalf to promote KXL.

The outside firms: Bryan Cave LLP, which reported $20,000 in earnings from TransCanda in Q1; McKenna, Long & Aldridge, which was paid $10,000 by TransCanada during Q1; and Van Ness Feldman, which TransCanada paid an amount under $5,000, falling under the mandatory reporting ceiling.

$280,000 is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to TransCanada’s $446 million first quarter profits.

The southern half of Keystone XL is currently under construction due to a March 2012 Obama Adminstration Executive Order. The northern half is still in the proposal phase. It would carry Alberta tar sands dilbit to the Gulf Coast refineries in Port Arthur, Texas, where much of it would be exported to the global market.

As seen in an earlier investigation conducted by DeSmogBlog, many of TransCanada’s lobbyists for KXL have direct ties to the Obama administration. The U.S. State Department has been tasked with the final decision on the pipeline’s cross-border northern section, a risky conduit between the carbon intensive Alberta tar sands and further global climate disruption.

Bryan Cave

The two Bryan Cave lobbyists on the KXL file are Brandon Pollak and David Russell. Pollak formerly served as Deputy National Director of Grassroots Fundraising for John Kerry’s 2004 run for President. Kerry now serves as the head of the U.S. Department of State, the body assigned to make the final call on KXL.

Bryan Cave signed termination papers with TransCanada on April 26 and will no longer be lobbying on behalf of KXL beyond the recently-ended quarter.

“Professionals from Bryan Cave were engaged for a period of time, but we recently determined that we did not need the same level of support from them,” TransCanada Shawn Howard said of the termination decision. “As a result, they updated their disclosure of clients and activities, in keeping with U.S. rules and regulations.”

McKenna, Long & Aldridge

The two hired guns tasked to lobby on behalf of KXL and CAPP at McKenna are Alex McGee and Andrew Shaw.

Alex McGee formerly served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and liaison to Congress on behalf of Secretary of Energy under President George W. Bush, Spencer Abraham. His biography on the McKenna website explains that “McGee was also a strategic player in the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005,” a bill that made the chemicals found within hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) fluid a “trade secret” and made exemptions to the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act for fracking via the “Halliburton Loophole.” He also worked on the Bush-Cheney 2000 Presidential Campaign and staffed Bush’s Presidential Inauguration Committee.

Andrew Shaw also passed through the revolving door as a paralegal at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under both President Obama and former President George W. Bush.

McKenna, Long & Aldridge also lobbies for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), describing its duty on the disclosure form as lobbyists on “U.S. energy or environmental legislation or policies with implications in regard to oil sands production and development in Canada.”

Van Ness Feldman

Van Ness Feldman KXL lobbyists include J. Curtis Moffatt, Tom Roberts,Jonathan Simon and Lisa Epifani.

In Q3 and Q4 of 2012, Moffatt also lobbied on behalf of pipeline giant Kinder Morgan. Roberts served as Legislative Director of the EPA under former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton from 1990-1995, getting his gig at Van Ness in 1998. He joined Moffatt in lobbying on behalf of Kinder Morgan in Q3 and Q4 of 2012.

Epifani formerly worked alongside McKenna’s McGee as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs for the DOE under President George W. Bush, also serving as his Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy for the White House Economic Council before that. She joined Moffatt and Roberts in lobbying for Kinder Morgan in Q3 and Q4.

“Keystone Kops”

The revolving door between the agencies designated to make a good-faith science-based policy decision on the merits of the northern half of the KXL and the firms lobbying on behalf of TransCanada spins with rapidity.

“Keystone Kops“ were fictional incompetent and corrupt policemen featured in silent film comedies in the early 20th century. As demonstrated over and over again by the Obama Administration’s ”State Department Oil Services” — aka the “police” asssigned to make a decision on the pipeline’s future — the decision over Keystone XL seems merely a 21st Century version of these legendary silent films.

An independent study co-published by the Faulkner County Citizens Advisory Group and Global Community Monitor reveals that, in the aftermath of ExxonMobil’s Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill of over 500,000 gallons of diluted bitumen (dilbit) into Mayflower, AR, air quality in the area surrounding the spill has been affected by high levels of cancer-causing chemicals.

Roughly four weeks after the spill took place, many basic details are still unknown to the public, according to recent reporting by InsideClimate News. Questions include what exactly caused the spill, how big was the spill exactly, and how long did it take for emergency responders to react to the spill, to name a few.

But one thing is certain according to the new study: For the residents of Mayflower, quality of life has been changed forever.

The chemicals found in the samples include benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, n-hexane, and xylenes. Breathing in both ethylbenzene and benzene can cause cancer and reproductive effects, while breathing in n-hexane can damage the nervous system and usher in numbness in the extremities, muscular weakness, blurred vision, headaches, and fatigue.

All of these chemicals are hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), “regulated under the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act amendments as the most toxic of all known airborne chemicals,” as explained in the press release summarzing the study.

As covered here on DeSmog, the spill clean-up in Mayflower has more closely resembled PR image clean-up than on-the-ground clean-up, both because of the firm the AR Attorney General has hired to do spill clean-up assessment and because of the ongoing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) no-fly zone being run on behalf of the FAA by Exxon’s “Aviation Advisor,” Tom Suhrhoff.

Given the revalations in this latest study, Exxon has proven it has much to cover up, with this study only scratching the surface of the ecological harms of the pipeline spill.

“The spill and response has been a disservice to the community,” said Global Community Monitor’s Ruth Breech. “People are obviously suffering and experiencing health symptoms from chemical exposure related to the oil spill. State and Federal need to step up immediately to document and prevent any further health issues associated with the Exxon oil spill. Agencies need to share information in a manner to ensure informed decision making and enable access to necessary resources such as medical treatment for chemical exposure.”

With a decision looming on the future of the prospective TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands pipeline by the Obama Administration, Mayflower is yet another sordid case study of the hazards that accompany tar sands pipelines wherever they meander.

Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Arkansas’ Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has contracted out the “independent analysis of the cleanup” of the ExxonMobil Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill to Witt O’Brien’s, a firm with a history of oil spill cover-ups, a DeSmogBlog investigation reveals.

At his April 10 press conference about the Mayflower spill response, AG McDaniel confirmed that Exxon had turned over 12,500 pages of documents to his office resulting from a subpoena related to Exxon’s response to the March 29 Pegasus disaster. A 22-foot gash in the 65-year-old pipeline spewed over 500,000 gallons of tar sands dilbit through the streets of Mayflower, AR.

McDaniel also provided the media with a presser explaining that his office had“retained the assistance of Witt O’Brien’s, a firm whose experts will immediately begin an independent analysis of the cleanup process.”

Witt O’Brien’s describes itself as a “global leader in preparedness, crisis management and disaster response and recovery with the depth of experience and capability to provide services across the crisis and disaster life cycle.”

But the firm’s actual performance record isn’t quite so glowing. O’Brien’s has had its hands in the botched clean-up efforts of almost every high-profile oil spill disaster in recent U.S. history, including the Exxon Valdez spill, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, the Enbridge tar sands pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River, and Hurricane Sandy.

Most troubling of all, Witt O’Brien’s won a “$300k+ contract to develop a Canadian-US compliant Oil Spill Emergency Response Plan for TransCanada’s Keystone Oil Pipeline Project” in Aug. 2008.

Thus, if the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline inevitably suffered a major spill, Witt O’Brien’s would presumably handle the cleanup. That should worry everyone along the proposed KXL route.

From OOPS, Inc. to Witt O’Brien’s

In Dec. 2012, Witt Associates merged with O’Brien’s Response Management to form Witt O’Brien’s. The merger at-large is owned by Seacor Holdings.

O’Brien’s was formed in the early 1980s by Jim O’Brien – a former U.S. Coast Guard officer – as O’Brien Oil Pollution Service, otherwise known by OOPS, Inc. That’s not a joke, it was their actual name.

OOPs, Inc. was acquired by Seacor Holdings Inc. under the auspices of Seacor Environmental Services division in 1997, later renamed The O’Brien’s Group (TOG). TOG was later re-named O’Brien’s Response Management Inc. in Oct. 2008.

Importantly, in Dec. 2009, O’Brien’s acquired a powerful public relations spin machine wing, as its former website explains:

In December of 2009, O’Brien’s completed the successful acquisition of PIER (Public Information Emergency Response) Systems Inc., a crisis communications company that has developed the PIER software application, an all-in-one, web-based solution for communications management, public relations, media monitoring, employee notification, and business continuity.

Witt Associates, meanwhile, was founded by James Witt, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President Bill Clinton who also served Gov. Clinton in Arkansas as head of the state’s Office of Emergency Services. He started Witt Associates upon leaving his Clinton Administration post.

Oil and Gas Industry Ties Run Deep at Witt O’Brien’s

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Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Ernest J Moniz, Obama's candidate for Secretary of Energy, has many conflicts of interest due to energy industry ties.

Congress will review the Obama Administration’s nomination of Ernest Moniz for Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE) in hearings that start today, April 9.

Moniz has come under fire for his outspoken support of nuclear power, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for shale gas and the overarching “all-of-the-above” energy policy advocated by both President Barack Obama and his Republican opponent in the last election, Mitt Romney.

Watchdogs have also discovered that Moniz has worked as a long-time corporate consultant for BP. He has also received the “frackademic” label for his time spent at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At his MIT job, Moniz regularly accepted millions of dollars from the oil and gas industry to sponsor studies under the auspices of The MIT Energy Initiative, which has received over $145 million over its seven-year history from the oil and gas industry.

MIT’s “The Future of Natural Gas” report, covered by many mainstream media outlets without any effort to question who bankrolled it, was funded chiefly by the American Clean Skies Foundation, a front group for the shale gas industry’s number two domestic producer, Chesapeake Energy. That report concluded that gas is a “bridge fuel” for a renewable energy future and said that shale gas exports were in the best economic interests of the United States, which should “not erect barriers to natural gas imports and exports.”

As first revealed on DeSmogBlog, Moniz is also on the Board of Directors of ICF International, one of the three corporate consulting firms tasked to perform the Supplemental Environmental Impact Study (SEIS) for TransCanada’s Keystone XL (KXL) tar sands pipeline. KXL is slated to bring tar sands – also known as “diluted bitumen,” or “dilbit” - from Alberta to Port Arthur, TX, where it will be sold to the highest bidder on the global export market.

Moniz earned over $300,000 in financial compensation in his two years sitting on the Board at ICF, plus whatever money his 10,000+ shares of ICF stock have earned him.

Moniz’s American Petroleum Institute Ties to Shale Gas Export Advocacy

Another controversial oil and gas industry export plan exists for fracking.

Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Exxon is in control of a No-Fly Zone over the Mayflower, Arkansas Tarsands Spill.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had a “no fly zone” in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since April 1 at 2:12 PM and will be in place “until further notice,” according to the FAA website and it’s being overseen by ExxonMobil itself. In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon’s permission.

Mayflower is the site of the recent major March 29 ExxonMobil Pegagus tar sands pipeline spill, which belched out an estimated 5,000 barrels of tar sands diluted bitumen (“dilbit”) into the small town’s neighborhoods, causing theevacuation of 22 homes.

The rules of engagement for the no fly zone dictate that no aircraft can fly within 1,000 feet of the ground in the five-mile radius surrounding the ExxonMobil Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill. The area located within this radius includes the nearby Pine Village Airport.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette revealed that the FAA site noted earlier today that “only relief aircraft operations under direction of Tom Suhrhoff” were allowed within the designated no fly zone.

Suhrhoff is not an FAA employee: he works for ExxonMobil as an “Aviation Advisor“ and formerly worked as a U.S. Army pilot for 24 years, according to his LinkedIn page.

Lynn Lunsford, an FAA spokesman, told Dow Jones a no fly zone was issued because ”at least one” helicopter was needed to move clean-up crews around, as well as to spot oil that can’t be seen from the ground.

“The pilot of the helicopter needs to be able to move about freely without potential conflicts with other aircraft,” he told Dow Jones.

This also means press is prohibited from the area, though Lunsford told Dow Jonesthat the FAA “is in the process of amending the restriction to allow news media aircraft into the area.”

When will news media be allowed back into the designated no fly zone area? That portion of the question was either never asked by Dow Jones or never answered by Lunsford.

This comes one day after Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said his office would be opening an investigation into the incident. It also comes one day after federal pipeline regulators barred ExxonMobil from restarting the pipeline until it receives close inspection.

It appears the Pegasus spill is becoming the BP Gulf oil disaster take two, with the responsible polluter running every step of the show.

Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

The same consulting firm responsible for evaluating the Tar Sands Pipeline also worked on a troubled Peruvian project.

Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the State Department consulting firm that claims TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline proposal is safe and sound, previously provided a similarly rosy approval for the expansion of a Peruvian natural gas project that has since racked up a disastrous track record.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

The BTC Pipeline, called the "New Silk Road" but also a "Time Bomb," reveals many potential flaws of the KXL Pipeline.

Almost 11 years ago in June 2002, Environmental Resources Management (ERM) Group declared the controversial 1,300 mile-long Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline environmentally and socio-economically sound, a tube which brings oil and gas produced in the Caspian Sea to the export market.

On March 1, it said the same of the proposed 1,179 mile-long TransCanada Keystone XL (KXL) Pipeline on behalf of an Obama State Department that has the final say on whether the northern segment of the KXL pipeline becomes a reality. KXL would carry diluted bitumen or “dilbit” from the Alberta tar sands down to Port Arthur, Texas, after which it will be exported to the global market. 

ERM Group, a recent DeSmogBlog investigation revealed, has historical ties to Big Tobacco and its clients include ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Koch Industries. Mother Jones also revealed that ERM – the firm the State Dept. allowed TransCanada to choose on its behalf - has a key personnel tie to TransCanada.

Unexamined thus far in the KXL scandal is ERM’s past green-light report on the BTC Pipeline – hailed as the “Contract of the Century” – which has yet to be put into proper perspective.

ERM is a key player in what PLATFORM London describes as the “Carbon Web,” shorthand for “the network of relationships between oil and gas companies and the government departments, regulators, cultural institutions, banks and other institutions that surround them.”

In the short time it has been on-line, the geostrategically important BTC pipeline - coined the “New Silk Road” by The Financial Times - has proven environmentally volatile. A full review of the costs and consequences of ERM’s penchant for rubber-stamping troubling oil and gas infrastructure is in order.

Massive Pipeline, Massive Hype: Sound Familiar?

Like the Keystone XL, the BTC Pipeline – owned by a consortium of 11 oil and gas corporations, including BP, State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni and Total – was controversial and inspired a bout of activism in the attempt to defeat its construction.

Referred to as “BP’s Time Bomb” by CorpWatch, the BTC Pipeline was first proposed in 1992, began construction in May 2003 and opened for business two years later in May 2005. BTC carries oil and gas from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) Caspian Sea oil field, co-owned by Chevron, SOCAR, ExxonMobil, Devon Energy and others, which contains 5.4 billion recoverable barrels of oil.

Paralleling the prospective 36-inch diameter Keystone XL that would carry 830,000 barrels per day of tar sands bitumen through the U.S. heartland, the BTC serves as a 42-inch diameter export pipeline and moves 1 million barrels of oil per day to market.

Like today’s KXL proposal – which would only create 35 full-time jobs – the false promise of thousands of jobs also served as the dominant discourse for BTC Pipeline proponents. The reality, like KXL, was more dim. The Christian Science Monitor pointed out in 2005 that only 100 people were hired full-time in Georgia, the second destination for BTC.

“People were told that there would be 70,000 Georgians that were going to be employed because of this pipeline,” Ed Johnson, BP’s former project manager in Georgia told the St. Petersburg Times in 2005. “The (Georgian) government needed to sell the project to its own people so some of the benefits were overblown.”

Massive Ecological Costs and Consequences

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Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Protester at Valero HQ in DC. Activists committed acts of civil disobedience at the White House and other Tar Sands-related sites on March 21, 2013.

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 XL pipeline.

The skinny: the firm that 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 - also rubber-stamped the controversial and environmentally hazardous Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline in 2003, which carries oil and gas produced in the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan to Tbilisi, Georgia and eventually makes its way to Ceyhan, Turkey.

Andy Kroll summed it up, 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 tar sands.

Embarassed by this act of blatant corruption, the State Department redacted the “biographies” portion of its EIS, an overt attempted cover-up. 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 independent of.

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

Brad Johnson, writing for Grist, revealed that the State Department actually allowed TransCanada to hire a contractor on its behalf. TransCanda, of course, went to a go-to-guy who can “deliver the goods.”

“Delivering the goods,” 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-sided one.

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 was no evidence of conflict of interest or bias in the State Department’s review.

The Keystone XL will carry tar sands crude – also known as diluted bitumen or “dilbit” – 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 “gaining energy independence” charm offensive.

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

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