Posted on 02/05/2014 5:38:52 PM PST by Hojczyk
While the White House is still — still — adamantly insisting that their eventual Keystone XL pipeline decision (whenever that may be) will be absotively, posilutely not-at-all political after their former Energy Secretary Steven Chu openly conceded that “the decision on whether the construction should happen was a political one and not a scientific one,
Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he believes the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada should be built.
Salazar said at an energy conference in Houston Wednesday that the pipeline could be built safely, as long as conditions are imposed. Those conditions would require the pipeline operator to meet tough environmental standards and even pay for conservation programs along the pipeline route.
Salazar told The Associated Press that the pipeline could be a “win-win” project that benefits U.S. energy security while boosting conservation efforts in Montana, South Dakota and other affected states. Which pretty much puts both Chu and Salazar, if not quite explicitly, on par with the current Energy secretary. He hasn’t said so in quite so many words, but last week, Secretary Moniz rather conspicuously mentioned that we are already undergoing a major energy boom, and we really need to get up to speed on building the energy infrastructure to match it. Rail shipments of oil have increased by more than 8,000 percent since 2006 alone, and as the State Department mentioned in their recent report, not building the Keystone XL pipeline might actually have a worse net effect on carbon emissions than building it. Since, by President Obama’s own admission, the only reason for his holdup is the determination of whether or not the pipeline “will significantly impact carbon emissions,” well… what gives? Because claiming that the decision somehow isn’t “political” might have been reasonable about two or three years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Who is working for now?????........This guy hated oil for years
Ken Salazar, who spent most of his career as a public servant, first working for a Colorado governor and most recently for a U.S. president, has joined one of the nation’s top law firms as a partner.
Salazar will open a Denver office for WilmerHale, a firm he said he was attracted to out of the 20 or so companies that came calling because of the quality of its attorneys and its participation in advocating for social justice. Its clients have included South African civil rights leader Nelson Mandela.
“For me, to have come from the place that I came from and to have lived this life of dreams, this is now a professional capstone as a lawyer,” Salazar said.
The move marks a significant new chapter in a life that started in a San Luis Valley home with no electricity, where his parents stressed the importance of hard work and education to their eight children.
Salazar, 58, worked for former Democratic Gov. Roy Romer, first as his legal counsel and then as director of the Department of Natural Resources. He successfully ran for attorney general and U.S. senator before being tapped in 2008 to run the U.S. Department of the Interior by President-elect Barack Obama. Salazar left that post in April.
Salazar’s friends and fans are holding a welcome-home party at 5:30 p.m. Friday at the Wells Fargo Center, 1700 Lincoln St.
Earlier that day, WilmerHale representatives will be scouting Denver locations for its Rocky Mountain office.
“I get to come home,” said Salazar, who officially starts work Monday.
Republicans for months have debated whether Salazar might run for governor when he returned, although close friends said they were certain he would join a major law firm.
WilmerHale’s U.S. offices include Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. It also has offices in Beijing and in Europe.
In 2003, as Colorado attorney general, he worked with 21 other states to file a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court to support the University of Michigan’s affirmative-action admissions policies. Salazar learned when he was interviewing with WilmerHale of the firm’s key role in that case.
Salazar’s duties at his new firm fall into what he called “three buckets.” He is to provide legal, strategic and policy advice to national and international clients; use his experience in energy, environment and natural resources; and work on tribal issues.
Salazar has said that in his four years at the Interior he is most proud of improving the relationship the federal government has with American Indians, cleaning up the oil and gas program after former departments were plagued with scandal and nepotism, and broadening a clean-energy agenda.
As secretary, he established 10 new national parks and 10 new wildlife refuges. He also launched 23 utility-scale solar energy projects on public lands. Before 2009, there were hundreds of pending applications but no construction projects approved.
He has also dealt with several natural and environmental disasters, including the explosion of the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010.
Republicans and environmentalists criticized Salazar as roughly 53,000 gallons of crude poured into the sea a day for nearly three months. He issued a moratorium on new offshore drilling leases and launched an aggressive overhaul of safety standards for offshore oil and gas development.
BP hired WilmerHale to help it deal with investigations into the spill.
Asked if he thought he might be accused of cashing in on a tragedy, Salazar said many big law firms represent big companies.
“I said in 2010 I will put my boot on the neck of BP,” Salazar said. “I will be completely segregated from revenues that come in from BP. I am not going to represent BP, and I’m not going to make any money from BP now or ever.”
When asked how much money he is being paid as partner, Salazar said, “It’s a very good package.”
Salazar often tells the story of how his political career was mapped out on a napkin in the back office of his friend Paul Sandoval’s tamale shop in north Denver. Sandoval died last year of pancreatic cancer.
“Our friend Paul Sandoval is clapping right now, saying, ‘Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,’ “ he said, with a laugh.
Lynn Bartels: 303-954-5327, lbartels@denverpost.com
If we had an opposition party it would be making a big issue every single day of the President’s inability to make a decision on the pipeline. Instead the GOP is preoccupied with selling amnesty to its base.
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