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Divestment League Table: Only Seven UK Universities Committed to Investing in Renewables
Corrected 17/07/2019: The headline and content of this article were changed to reflect corrections to errors in the original data.
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ERM Group
State Department Keystone XL Contractor ERM Bribed Chinese Agency to Permit Project
Steve Horn | December 1, 2014
By Steve Horn • Monday, December 1, 2014 - 16:10
Environmental Resources Management (ERM Group), the consultancy selected by TransCanada to conduct the environmental review for Keystone XL's northern leg on behalf of the U.S. State Department, is no stranger to scandal.
Exhibit A: ERM once bribed a Chinese official to ram through major pieces of an industrial development project. ERM was tasked to push through the project in Hangzhou Bay, located near Shanghai.
Accepting the bribe landed Yan Shunjun, former deputy head of the Shanghai Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, an 11-year prison sentence.
Yan "allegedly took bribes of 864,000 yuan (126,501 U.S. dollars), 20,000 U.S. dollars and 4,000 euros from seven contractors," explained Xiuhuanet. "Yan was also accused of illegally setting up a channel to speed up environmental impact assessment processes, which are essential for companies wanting to build factories."
BP, one of the companies standing to gain if Keystone XL North receives a presidential permit from the Obama administration as a major Alberta tar sands producer, was also mired in the Chinese ERM Group scandal.
"Two firms on ERM's bluechip client list, BP and Sinopec, are big investors in a petrochemical complex on the site, but the Chinese authorities apparently saw no conflict of interest in awarding the environmental evaluation to ERM," explained London's Sunday Times.
In a sense, history has repeated itself.
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Steve Horn's blog
State Department's Keystone XL Contractor ERM Approved Project Now Melting Glaciers
Steve Horn | November 16, 2014
By Steve Horn • Sunday, November 16, 2014 - 16:00
A controversial government contractor once again finds itself in hot water, or in this case, melting glacier water.
TransCanada chose Environmental Resources Management Group (ERM) as one of its contractors to conduct the environmental impact statement for Keystone XL on behalf of the U.S. State Department. ERM Group also happens to have green-lighted a gold mining project in central Asia that is now melting glaciers.
ERM Group has a penchant for rubber-stamping projects that have had tragic environmental and public health legacies. For example, ERM formerly worked on behalf of the tobacco industry to pitch the safety of its deadly product.
A January 2014 study about Keystone XL's climate change impacts published in the journal Nature Climate Change paints a drastically different picture than ERM Group's Keystone XL tar sands study.
The Kumtor Gold Mine, owned by Centerra Gold/Cameco Corporation, was provided a stamp of approval from ERM Group in October 2012. Similar to the TransCanada arrangement with the State Department on Keystone XL, Centerra served as the funder of the report evaluating its own project.
"The mine sits at an altitude of 4,000 meters above sea level, in the Tien Shan mountain range and among some of Kyrgyzstan's - and the region's - most important glaciers," explained an October 28 story published in Asia Times.
"Centerra Gold has consistently dismissed as untrue that operations at Kumtor have had negative implications for the glaciers, which are reportedly melting with observable speed due to years of dumping rock tailings onto the ice sheet. The Canadian company has backed its position with expert evaluations from consultancies such as Environmental Resources Management."
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State Dept's Keystone XL Contractor, ERM Group, Also OK'd Controversial Pebble Mine in Alaska
Steve Horn | January 22, 2014
By Steve Horn • Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - 11:53
A DeSmogBlog investigation has revealed Environmental Resources Management Inc. (ERM Group) — the contractor performing the U.S. State Department's environmental review for the northern half of TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline — gave the greenlight to Alaska's controversial Pebble Mine proposal in June 2013.
The proposed Pebble Mine, located in Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska, contains mineable gold and copper. It's also a major hub for fishing and the seafood industry, leading the Center for American Progress to call the battle over Pebble Mine a "resource war."
"Bristol Bay…is home to the world's largest commercial sockeye salmon fishery," explains a November 2013 EarthWorks blog post. "The devastation caused by a massive open pit mine would linger in perpetuity affecting not just Bristol Bay, but the commercial fishing industry everywhere in the Pacific Northwest."
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This Graphic Says It All About Keystone XL Web of Deceit
Steve Horn | September 20, 2013
By Steve Horn • Friday, September 20, 2013 - 11:18
Friends of the Earth-U.S. (FOE) and 350.org have jointly unveiled an easily sharable graphic depicting the web of deceit surrounding the environmental review for the northern half of Transcanada's Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline.
The graphic's notorious star: Environmental Resources Management, Inc., better known as ERM Group. ERM Group was chosen by the State Department - more specifically by Transcanada for the State Department - to perform the review.
"[T]he process has a built-in conflict of interest, because the contractors who do EIS studies for the government are paid for by the applicant," a July investigative piece in Bloomberg explains.
The graphic serves as a summation of lots of the work done here on DeSmogBlog over the last six months. In so doing, it digs into conflicts of interest, lobbyist influence peddling and outright corruption occurring at the U.S. State Department pertaining to Keystone XL.
Check out the graphic below:
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Keystone XL Decision Delayed Again? Inspector General Pushes Report on ERM Scandals to January
Brendan DeMelle | August 23, 2013
By Brendan DeMelle • Friday, August 23, 2013 - 14:22
Did the Obama administration's decision on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline just get delayed again? Quite possibly, since the State Department Inspector General announced today that it has delayed until January the release of its review of the scandals surrounding Environmental Resources Management, Inc., the contractor chosen by TransCanada to perform State's Keystone XL environmental review.
Although the State Department was evasive about whether the IG's announcement signals a delay in the administration's decision, it would seem odd for President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to decide on the fate of the KXL export pipeline without waiting for the results of this critical report.
Bloomberg News and The Hill broke the news about the delay, and all signs point to the fact that State's "inquiry" has morphed into a thorough conflicts-of-interest investigation into ERM's financial ties to TransCanada and other scandals.
Ever since the March 2013 release of the State Department's environmental impact statement, critics have pointed to ERM Group's historical ties to Big Tobacco, its green-lighting of controversial projects in Peru and the Caspian Sea, and its declaration that a tar sands refinery in Delaware made the air "cleaner," among many other industry-friendly rulings.
Worst of all, perhaps - and potentially in violation of federal law - ERM Group lied on its State Department contract, claiming it had no business ties to TransCanada and the tar sands industry. The facts showed otherwise.
This latest development certainly raises the prospect of a further delay, if not another sign that the Keystone XL will be rejected by President Obama.
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Brendan DeMelle's blog
Mark Fiore Unveils "Keystone Clones" Cartoon on Keystone XL Corruption Ring
Steve Horn | August 15, 2013
By Steve Horn • Thursday, August 15, 2013 - 14:50
Mark Fiore - the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist satirist - has a new video out that in two-minutes pokes fun at the perverse conflicts of interest that've prevailed throughout debate over the prospective Keystone XL northern half.
It's these conflicts of interest that DeSmogBlog has focused on in the past several months since the March 2013 release of the sham U.S. State Department Keystone XL environmental review. Some of the conflicts of interest covered in Fiore's 2-minute video titled "Keystone Clones" now up on Moyers and Company's website include:
-Anita Dunn/Robert Bauer Scandal: Described as a "Power Couple" by Newsweek, Anita Dunn is President Barack Obama's former communications director and was a top-level communications advisor for Obama's 2008 run for president and Secretary of State John Kerry's 2004 run for president. Through her PR firm SKDKnickerbocker, she does communications work for TransCanada, owner of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Her husband Robert "Bob" Bauer is Obama's personal attorney, former White House Counsel under Obama, and served as the election law attorney for Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008 and 2012. Infamous in election law reform circles for his attempts to bend election law in such a way as to flood the electoral system with more money, Bauer's law firm Perkins Coie also has an attorney-client relationship with TransCanada.
-ERM Group Scandals: Obama's State Department chose a Big Oil-connected contractor named Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group) to do the environmental review for Keystone XL's northern half. ERM - which historically also did contract work for Big Tobacco - has rubber-stamped ecologically hazardous projects in the Caspian Sea-area, Peru, Delaware and now the Keystone XL.
Given this shady track record, it's unsurprising it also said the pipeline's northern half - if built - would have negligible climate change impacts.
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Keystone XL Influence Peddling Web Extends into PA Governor's Race Via Katie McGinty
Pennsylvania Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate and former head of the PA Department of Environmental Protection, Kathleen "Katie" McGinty, has hired powerful PR firm SKDKnickerbocker for her campaign's communications efforts.
SKDKnickerbocker - once known as Squier Knapp Dunn - is co-owned by President Barack Obama's former Communications Director Anita Dunn and a member of Obama's national media team for his 2008 run for President, Bill Knapp. Both Dunn and Knapp previously did PR for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's 2004 run for President, as well.
One of SKDKnickerbocker's key clients is TransCanada, owner of the Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline.
Another key SKDKnickerbocker client: Association of American Railroads, that industry's version of the American Petroleum Institute. Rail is an increasingly viable alternative to pipelines for bringing tar sands - and fracked oil - to market.
Both McGinty and Dunn also have key marital connections with skin in the game for the looming decision over the prospective northern half of Keystone XL: Karl Hausker and Robert "Bob" Bauer, respectively.
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Fracking's Myriad Ties to Flawed State Dept Keystone XL Environmental Review
Read time: 10 mins
Steve Horn | August 6, 2013
By Steve Horn • Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - 06:00
Most don't think of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") when pondering the future of TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline - but they should.
There are numerous ties between key members of the fracking industry and groups pushing for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. And these threads all lead back, one way or another, to Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group).
ERM Group did the official U.S. State Department's environmental review for Keystone XL pipeline. The review, published in March 2013, determined the pipeline will have negligible climate change impacts (the review dealt with the northern segment of the pipeline as the southern half, now known as the "Gulf Coast Pipeline," received an expedited Executive Order permit by President Barack Obama in March 2012).
ERM is also a paying member of the American Petroleum Institute (API), which has spent over $22 million lobbying on Keystone XL since June 2008.
In its bid to provide the environmental review for the Keystone XL pipeline, ERM overtly lied on its conflict-of-interest form, saying it has no current business ties to TransCanada. ERM has an ongoing consulting relationship with the company responsible for the Alaska South Central LNG Project, also known as Alaska Gas Pipeline Project. The company, South Central LNG, is co-owned by TransCanada.
On top of lying about its current business ties, ERM stated on the conflict-of-interest form it had no "direct or indirect relationship (financial, organizational, contractual or otherwise) with any business entity that could be affected in any way by the proposed work." In so doing, ERM may have broken federal law - 18 USC § 1001 - by making a false claim on a federal contract.
The State Department's Office of Inspector General has officially launched an inquiry into how and why State overlooked ERM's omission, allowing ERM to potentially commit a crime.
In addition to potentially fraudulent claims about its connection to TransCanada, ERM also has significant ties to major gas industry groups and major players supporting the fracking boom in the US.
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Controversial State Department Keystone XL Climate Study the Basis of David Petraeus' CUNY Seminar
Steve Horn | July 25, 2013
By Steve Horn • Thursday, July 25, 2013 - 05:00
Former CIA-head David Petraeus' City University of New York (CUNY) Macaulay Honors College seminar readings include several prominent Big Oil-funded "frackademia" studies, a recent DeSmogBlog investigation revealed.
Further digging into records obtained via New York's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) also reveals "a survey of the global economy to set the stage for the course" - as stated in an email from Petraeus to an unknown source due to redaction - utilizes the U.S. State Department's Keystone XL environmental review written by Environmental Resources Management (ERM Group) to argue that Transcanada's tar sands export pipeline deserves approval.
"[Redacted], atttached is a document that my Harvard researchers and I put together for the seminar I'll lead at Macaulay Honors College of CUNY," wrote Petraeus in the email. "It is intended to be a survey of the global economy to set the stage for the course…[It] will have considerable value, I think, for the undergrads in the course."
The "Global Economy" survey was penned on behalf of Petraeus by Vivek Chilukuri, one of Petraeus' researchers at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Public Policy, where Petraeus sits as a Non-Resident Fellow. Chilukuri serves as Editor-in-Chief for the Harvard Journal of Middle Eastern Politics & Policy, and worked for Obama for America before the 2008 election.
It was at the Harvard Kennedy School where all of Petraeus' troubles began. His biographer, Paula Broadwell, whom he had an affair with, met Petraeus while a Harvard graduate student, a scandal that ultimately drove him out of the CIA.
His CIA departure landed Petraeus his current gigs on Wall Street at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and as an adjunct professor at CUNY Honors College and University of Southern California - and coming full circle - back at Harvard, where the spool began to unravel.
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