Anti-Pipeline Activists Decry State Department Emails

Friends of the Earth say TransCanada is too close with the State Department for the latter to determine the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline.

A ream of emails between the U.S. State Department and the lead lobbyist for TransCanada has anti-Keystone XL activists complaining that the two were far too intimate with one another for the department to make an impartial judgment on the pipeline's fate. The environmental group Friends of the Earth released the emails, which were obtained under access-to-information laws, to show what they say is collusion between TransCanada and a State Department official at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa. The State Department allegedly tried to get a much-sought-after invite for TransCanada officials to the U.S. embassy's annual 4th of July bash in Ottawa, while one email even includes a congratulatory "Go Paul!", in which the department official wishes TransCanada's chief lobbyist, Paul Elliot, success. Elliot had previously been an adviser to current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential bid. The State Department is now reviewing whether to grant permission to TransCanada to begin construction on the $7-billion pipeline, which would carry raw bitumen from Alberta's oil sands to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast.