The company behind the Keystone XL project is engaged in a “perpetual campaign” that would involve putting “intelligent” pressure on opponents and mobilising public support for an entirely Canadian alternative, bypassing Barack Obama and pipeline opposition in the US.
Hours before a Senate vote to force US approval of the Keystone pipeline, the industry playbook to squash opposition to the alternative has been exposed in documents made available to the Guardian.
Strategy documents drafted by the public relations giant Edelman for TransCanada Corporation – which is behind both Keystone and the proposed alternative – offer a rare inside glimpse of the extensive public relations, lobbying, and online and on-the-ground efforts undertaken for pipeline projects. The plans call, among other things, for mobilising 35,000 supporters.
The documents were prepared for Energy East, a project designed to serve as an entirely Canadian alternative to Keystone that is the biggest tar sands pipeline proposed to date.
TransCanada confirmed it was working with Edelman on the campaign and had already put in place the advertising, online hub and mass mobilisation efforts. The pipeline company said it did not work with Edelman on Keystone.
Edelman’s response was brief. “We do not talk about the work we do for clients,” a spokesman wrote in an email.
The Keystone battle comes to a head on Tuesday when senators will directly challenge Obama and hold a vote to approve the pipeline project.
TransCanada, frustrated by the controversy over Keystone, is already pushing to convert and expand existing pipelines and construct an alternate 2,860-mile route across six provinces and four time zones to New Brunswick. The company sought approval for the project from the Canadian authorities last month.
The strategy for Energy East was dictated by the “new realities of designing, building and operating a major pipeline project in North America”, the documents say.
“It is critical to play offence … We are running a perpetual campaign,” they say.
In the five strategy documents, made available to the Guardian by the campaign group Greenpeace, representatives from Edelman’s offices in Calgary propose an exhaustive strategy to push through the Energy East project including mobilisation of third-party supporters and opposition research against pipeline opponents.
The documents contain only a fleeting reference to climate change – even though the world’s top scientists have found that most of the world’s fossil fuels must stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic global warming.
The battle plan drawn up by Edelman for Energy East calls for a budget for the recruitment of 35,000 activists in 2014 alone.
It also involves 40 paid Edelman staff working out of the public relations firm’s offices in Washington DC.
Nine TransCanada employees will also work on the campaign, according to the documents.
The digital hub of the campaign, a microsite about Energy East, has already been launched.
Edelman says in the documents that the strategy was forged in the battles over Keystone XL and other US energy projects.
“In North America pipelines have become proxies for the broader, contentious debate around climate change and oil sands development,” the documents say.
The Alberta tar sands are the world’s third-largest known carbon store. The United Nations climate science panel, the IPCC, has said that most of the world’s fossil fuels must stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Energy East is the longest pipeline proposed to date and also the highest capacity; if built, it would pump up to 1.1m barrels a day.
In the wake of the Keystone XL opposition and a pipeline spill in 2010 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, oil industry projects now face “permanent, persuasive, nimble and well-funded opposition groups”, in Edelman’s words.
But the documents say the oil industry and public relations firms have developed an effective strategy to beat back those opponents through online organising.
Industry mobilised a million activists and generated more than 500,000 pro-Keystone comments during the public comment period, one of the documents says.
“It’s not just associations or advocacy groups building these programs in support of the industry. Companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and Halliburton (and many more) have all made key investments in building permanent advocacy assets and programs to support their lobbying, outreach and policy efforts,” the documents say. “TransCanada will be in good company.”
“This approach strives to neutralize risk before it is leveled, respond directly to issues or attacks as they arise, and apply pressure – intelligently – on opponents, as appropriate,” the documents say.
The documents say Edelman and TransCanada should “work with third parties to pressure Energy East opponents”.
They advise: “Add layers of difficulty for our opponents, distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources,” and warn: “We cannot allow our opponents to have a free pass. They will use every piece of information they can find to attack TransCanada and this project.”
Recruiting allies to deliver the pro-pipeline message is critical, Edelman says in the documents. “Third-party voices must also be identified, recruited and heard to build an echo chamber of aligned voices.”
Edelman also offers “detailed background research on key opposition groups” such as Council of Canadians, Equiterre, the David Suzuki Foundation, Avaaz and Ecology Ottawa.
The research would use public records, financial disclosures, legal databases and social media.
TransCanada said it had been working with Edelman for several months but had not adopted all of the recommendations in the documents. “We have moved forward with implementing certain components of the strategy,” spokesman Shawn Howard said. “Those include our paid media campaigns in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, our online components with the launch of our energyeastpipeline.com microsite in French and English, and our advocacy program, which allows those who support the project an opportunity to speak out and share their personal stories.”
Howard said TransCanada had recruited 2,500 supporters for its project in the last two weeks. He also defended the hardball approach to pipeline opponents.
“One of the lessons that we have learned on Keystone XL is the importance of holding opponents accountable for the claims they make. Just as our shareholders and the business community hold our organization accountable for our actions, we too feel a duty to ensure that well-organized global opponents are held to the standard of accountability and transparency,” he wrote. “We will not apologize for promoting the value of the industry … We are proud of this project.”
The campaign group Avaaz, one of the potential targets of the opposition research, called on Edelman to sever its connections with the campaign.
“Edelman’s cynical plan to smear citizens groups shows how low fossil fuel companies will stoop to protect their profits in the face of rising seas, melting ice caps and millions calling for climate action,” Alex Wilks, a campaign director in New York, wrote in an email. “Edelman must cancel its TransCanada contract and stop promoting one of the world’s dirtiest oil pipelines.”
The Council of Canadians, another targeted group, said the ambitious scale of the PR pitch suggested TransCanada was concerned about growing opposition to the project. “What this speaks to is that they are losing,” said Andrea Harden-Donaghue, climate campaigner for the council. “What these documents reveal is that they are bringing tea party activists into the equation in Canada combined with a heavy-handed advertising campaign. They are clearly spending a lot of time and thought on our efforts. I’d rather see them address the concerns that we are raising.”
Edelman, the world’s biggest privately held PR firm, has previously been drawn into controversies about its position on climate change. It declared on 7 August that it would no longer take on campaigns that deny global warming.
The declaration followed those by other top PR companies in response to a report in the Guardian.
However, Edelman pointedly did not rule out campaigns opposing environmental regulations or promoting the fossil fuel industry.
Greenpeace said the precise scope and scale of the work TransCanada has contracted with Edelman is unknown, although the campaign group noted that TransCanada has recently launched the advocacy micro-site described in these documents.
The development of an all-Canada alternative to the Keystone XL reflects growing industry frustration with the repeated delays of the US project.
TransCanada has been pushing to transport crude from Alberta to the refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast since 2008 – but has been blocked by legal challenges and grassroots opposition from Nebraska landowners and environmental activists who framed the project as a test of Obama’s environmental credentials.
Obama has repeatedly put off a decision on the pipeline. But the day of reckoning is now fast approaching after the Republican takeover of the Senate in mid-term elections.
The House of Representatives voted on Friday to approve the pipeline. The Senate is just one vote shy of the 60 needed to cut off debate and vote on the pipeline.
Neither chamber is believed to have enough votes to override a presidential veto – and the White House has indicated Obama will use his veto to stop Congress forcing approval.
Unlike Keystone the route of the Energy East pipeline falls entirely within Canada’s borders. But its purpose is similar: finding a route to get the vast carbon store of the Alberta tar sands to market.
In the case of Keystone XL, TransCanada is seeking to pump crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast where it can be processed in the Texas refinery town of Port Arthur and exported through the Gulf of Mexico.
In the case of Energy East, TransCanada will convert and expand existing natural gas pipelines to deliver the oil to Saint John, New Brunswick, where there are refineries, and from where it can be shipped to supertankers in the Gulf of Mexico.
