Hillary Clinton's TransCanada Pipeline Connection is Just Part of the Story
Environmentalists already concerned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department she oversees is leaning towards approval of a proposed pipeline from Canada to Texas have a new reason to worry.
His name is Paul Elliott. Back during those heady Democratic presidential primary days in 2008, Elliott was Clinton's national deputy director. Now he's the top lobbyist for TransCanada, the company that wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline to carry oil sands from Alberta to refineries in Texas. Several watchdog groups, including Corporate Ethics International, this week submitted a Freedom of Information Act request asking for all communications between the State Department and Elliott.
The State Department, in turn, has come out to set the record straight with a statement that the agency is considering the permit application on its merits. "The Department is not, and will not, be influenced by prior relationships that current government officials have had."
Perhaps so. But the lobbyist connection, plus Clinton's comments at an event in October where she said the agency was inclined to approve TransCanada's Keystone XL project even though the environmental analysis was ongoing, is reason enough to question the approval process and her objectivity.
Of course, this latest revelation is only a tiny piece of a much bigger problem. The Obama administration is in a precarious position. The administration wants folks to believe it's trying to promote a new clean energy economy. It also realizes, like we all should, that we rely on oil. Even with more renewable energy projects coming online every month, our energy appetite will only be satiated with oil. So, where do we get it?
We don't have enough domestically produced oil to support our habit, and no one really wants to depend even more they we already are on other less-friendly countries for fossil fuels. That means turning to our No.1 source of oil: Canada. Yup, folks, the U.S. gets most of its oil from Canada, followed by Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.
The proposed pipeline will likely be approved because a bet on Canadian oil sands is safer than one on other sources, not because of Clinton's conflict of interest. But just to be sure that pipeline goes through, expect heavy lobbying from the oil industry here. I've already seen rumblings via blog posts on Exxon's Perspectives site and releases from the American Petroleum Institute in support of Canadian oil sands. Exxon and API are clearly operating out of the same playbook with both touting the ever-popular job creation argument in these post recession times. Expect more like this in 2011.
Photo from Wikicommons
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