Emails: How State Department Secretly Approved Expanding Piece of Enbridge’s “Keystone XL Clone”
DeSmogBlog has obtained dozens of emails that lend an inside view of how the U.S. State Department secretly handed Enbridge a permit to expand the capacity of its U.S.-Canada border-crossing Alberta Clipper pipeline, which carries tar sands diluted bitumen (“dilbit”) from Alberta to midwest markets.
The State Department submitted the emails into the record in the ongoing case filed against the Department by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. Collectively, the emails show that upper-level State Department officials hastened the review process on behalf of Enbridge for its proposed Alberta Clipper expansion plan, now rebranded Line 67, and did not inform the public about it until it published its final approval decision in the Federal Register in August 2014.
According to a March 17, 2014 memo initially marked “confidential,” Enbridge’s legal counsel at Steptoe & Johnson, David Coburn, began regular communications with the State Department on what the environmental groups have dubbed an “illegal scheme” beginning in at least January 2014.
Image Credit: U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota
Environmental groups have coined the approval process an “illegal scheme” because the State Department allowed Enbridge to usurp the conventionalpresidential permit process for cross-border pipelines, as well as the standard National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, which allows for public comments and public hearings of the sort seen for TransCanada’s KeystoneXL pipeline.
Further, the scheme is a complex one involving Enbridge’s choice to add pressure pump stations on both sides of the border to two pipelines, Enbridge Line 3 andEnbridge Line 67, to avoid fitting under the legal umbrella of a “cross-border” pipeline.
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