{"id":49408,"date":"2013-07-11T08:59:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T07:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/state-dept-contractor-erm-lied-about-transcanada-ties\/49408\/"},"modified":"2013-07-11T08:59:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T07:59:39","slug":"state-dept-contractor-erm-lied-about-transcanada-ties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/state-dept-contractor-erm-lied-about-transcanada-ties\/","title":{"rendered":"State Dept Contractor ERM Lied About TransCanada Ties"},"content":{"rendered":"

The contractor the Obama U.S. State Department hired for the\u00a0Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS)<\/a>of the northern half of TransCanada\u2019sKeystone XL<\/a>\u00a0(KXL) tar sands\u00a0export pipeline<\/a>\u00a0overtly lied on its\u00a0conflict-of-interest disclosure form that it signed and handed to State in June 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A major\u00a0research dossier unfurled today by\u00a0Friends of the Earth-U.S.\u00a0<\/em>(FOE-U.S.)\u00a0and\u00a0The Checks & Balances Project<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(CBP) shows that Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group)\u00a0played \u201cPinocchio\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in explaining its ties \u2014 or as they say, lack thereof \u2014 to Big Oil, tar sands and TransCanada in particular on its\u00a0conflict-of-interest form<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The two groups\u00a0dug deep and revealed State\u2019s contractor ERM and its subsidiary Oasis Environmental both have ongoing contractual relationships with the\u00a0Alaska Gas Project<\/a>\u00a0– now known as the\u00a0South Central LNG Project<\/a>\u00a0– co-owned by TransCanada, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP. Further, ERM\u2019s Socioeconomic Advisor Mark Jennings served as a \u201cConsultant to ExxonMobil Development Company for the Alaska Pipeline Project,\u00a0according to his now-scrubbed\u00a0LinkedIn\u00a0<\/em>profile<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ERM\u2019s own documents \u2014 FOE-U.S. and CBP further explain \u2014 also reveal the multinational firm has business ties with over a dozen companies active in the Alberta tar sands, including Exxon, Shell, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Total and Syncrude.<\/p>\n

On its conflict-of-interest form, ERM said it had no \u201cdirect or indirect relationship \u2026 with any business entity that could be affected in any way by the proposed work.\u201d Clearly, that\u2019s far from the case.<\/p>\n

In March, ERM Group \u2014 a\u00a0City of London<\/a>-based\u00a0dues-paying member of the American Petroleum Institute (API)<\/a>\u00a0with a history of rubber-stamping ecologically hazardous oil and gas infrastructure projects \u2014 said KXL\u2019s northern half\u00a0\u201dis unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development\u201d of the tar sands in its SEIS. Thus, it will also have little impact on climate change, according to ERM\u2019s SEIS, contracted out by TransCanada on behalf of the State Department.<\/p>\n

FOE-U.S. says these most recent developments further call the entire SEIS into question, and that doesn\u2019t include the fact that\u00a0State recently revealed it\u2019s clueless as to the exact route of the Keystone XL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning, the State Department\u2019s review of Keystone has been plagued by influence peddling and conflicts of interest,\u201d\u00a0said FOE-U.S.\u2019s\u00a0<\/a>Ross Hammond<\/a>\u00a0in a press statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThis is more serious: If ERM lied about its relationship with TransCanada, how can Secretary Kerry, President Obama or the American people believe anything the company says about the pipeline\u2019s environmental impact?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As\u00a0PLATFORM London<\/i>\u00a0explains,\u00a0ERM Group \u2014 also a\u00a0dues-paying member of fracking industry lobbying force Marcellus Shale Coalition up until Oct. 2011<\/a>\u00a0– is\u00a0part of the \u201cCarbon Web.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0That\u2019s<\/span>\u00a0shorthand for \u201cthe network of relationships between oil and gas companies and the government departments, regulators, cultural institutions, banks and other institutions that surround them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the state of play, both FOE-U.S. and CBP have called for State\u2019s Office of the Inspector General to conduct\u00a0a thorough investigation, examining how and why ERM was chosen. They\u2019ve also called for a complete halt in the KXL review process until that transpires.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecretary Kerry must halt this flawed review process and direct the State Department to conduct a full, unbiased review of the Keystone XL pipeline\u2019s impact,\u201d Gabe Elsner, director of CBP said in a press statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition, the State Department Inspector General should pursue a full investigation into how a contractor with clear conflicts of interest was allowed to write the U.S. government\u2019s assessment of Keystone XL and why the State Department failed to bring those conflicts of interest to light. Finally, the State Department should determine appropriate disciplinary actions for ERM to discourage contractors from lying to the federal government in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friends of the Earth U.S. has set up an\u00a0action page<\/a>\u00a0where concerned citizens can send letters to State Secretary John Kerry calling for an investigation into the many conflicts of interest scandals within the environmental review process.<\/p>\n

Steve Horn<\/strong>\u00a0is a Madison, WI-based freelance investigative journalist and Research Fellow at\u00a0DeSmogBlog<\/a>, where this piece originally appeared.<\/em><\/p>\n

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The contractor the Obama U.S. State Department hired for the\u00a0Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS)of the northern half of TransCanada\u2019sKeystone XL\u00a0(KXL) tar sands\u00a0export pipeline\u00a0overtly lied on its\u00a0conflict-of-interest disclosure form that it signed and handed to State in June 2012. A major\u00a0research dossier unfurled today by\u00a0Friends of the Earth-U.S.\u00a0(FOE-U.S.)\u00a0and\u00a0The Checks & Balances Project\u00a0(CBP) shows that Environmental Resources […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}