Saturday, August 24, 2013

Presidential Procrastination on Keystone Continues

The State Department's Office of Inspector General announced Friday it does not expect to release the results of an investigation into a possible conflict of interest in the department's Keystone XL pipeline review until January—a move that could delay a final decision on the project until next year.

Earlier this month, the OIG began an inquiry into allegations made by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups that Environmental Resources Management, a consulting firm hired to produce the draft environmental impact statement for the pipeline, had ties to TransCanada Corp. and the American Petroleum Institute, two organizations with a key stake in the project.

TransCanada Corp. is the company set to build Keystone, and the American Petroleum Institute is a trade association, which publicly supports the pipeline.

The conflict-of-interest inquiry and the State Department's review of the pipeline have been ongoing, and State has not yet said when it will make a final determination on Keystone XL. But Friday's announcement that the OIG investigation results won't be released until January makes it likely that a decision on the project will be pushed back to 2014.
The "conflict of interest" issue is total BS; all kinds of companies work together and separately; their only interest is in money.  If you applied the "Kevin Bacon" principal, I suspect you would find most companies 'have ties' to almost all other companies in 3-4 jumps, and less in cases of certain industrial complexes.  In particular, large environmental consulting firms like Environmental Resources Management 'have ties' as such to nearly all such petroleum companies.

Any stall will do.  Obama is stuck between two constituencies, labor unions on one hand who want the growth and  jobs for their workers, and the environmentalists who want absolutely no growth, no how, no way, especially if it helps move any carbon anywhere to market.

Found at Hot Air.

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