Tar Sands Pipeline Stalled or Not, Oil Money Will Flow

Call the oil and gas industry what you want, but don't call them cheap. At least not when it comes to US members of Congress. In the wake of the Obama Adminstration's decision to delay ruling on the proposed tar sands pipeline from Canada, the industry shows no signs on skimping on campaign contributions as the US campaign season puts it foot on the gas pedal.

Today, the MapLight Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, research organization that reveals money's influence on politics, released an analysis looking at the relationship between oil and gas industry giving and the voting behavior of US House members. Some key findings:

• Of the 118 House members who have the Oil & Gas Industry amongst their top 10 contributing industry groups, only two representatives ( Edward Markey and Charles Bass) voted against the deadline on the Keystone pipeline decision imposed in HR 1938.
• Amongst the 195 House members who have the Oil & Gas industry amongst their top 20 contributing interest groups, only 10 voted against the deadline imposed in HR 1938.

HR 1938 was a House bill pushed last summer that would have directed the President to expedite the consideration and approval of the construction and operation of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Though that effort failed in the Senate, it was revived during the end of year payroll tax cut fight, and a form of it ultimately was signed by President Obama. This gives Obama until February 21st of this year to make a final decision.

Suzanne Goldenberg, environment correspondent for The Guardian, also reported on Maplight's finding, casting the upcoming deadline in further political context:

Obama has until 21 February to make a decision on whether to approve the pipeline, under a compromise tax measure approved late last year. America's top oil lobbyist warned last week that the president would face "huge political consequences" if he did not sign off on the project to pump tar sands crude across the American heartland to refineries on the Texas coast.

The Canadian government is also on the offensive, with an attack this week on "jet-setting celebrities" opposed to tar sands pipelines. At the same time, TransCanada executives have embarked on a letter-writing campaign.

Meanwhile, north of the border, the oil services and pipeline building corporation Enbridge is trying to press its government to approve the Northern Gateway pipeline -- also intended to move tar sands (aka. 'the world's dirtiest fossil fuel') out of Alberta. That case, as the Globe and Mail reports, just got more difficult as another Enbridge pipeline, this one a natural gas pipeline in the United States, reported a "possible" leak on Tuesday, the same day public hearings opened for Northern Gateway.

U.S. pipeline regulators told Enbridge about the possible leak. A subsequent helicopter over-flight discovered a metre-wide patch of bubbles over the company's Stingray pipeline, which can carry 560-million cubic feet a day of natural gas from offshore wells in the Gulf of Mexico. The bubbles were found about 100 kilometres from the Louisiana coast.

Despite leaks, politcal delays, and climate science the oil, the gas, and the money keep flowing. For a taste of those numbers, here's the full listing of Maplight's analysis:

METHODOLOGY: MapLight analysis of campaign contributions to current members of the U.S. House of Representatives from the Oil & Gas industry, July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2011. Campaign contribution figures and industry classification provided by OpenSecrets.org. Top 10 contributing industry groups calculated by MapLight. Contributions from political parties and from other candidates are not included in MapLight's "Top 10" lists.

A link to this data release can be found here.

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