The Problematic Pipeline Approval Process

The State Department has announced that its Inspector General will be looking into the process for approval of the controversial pipeline.  There are certainly reasons to worry about the integrity of the process.  The State Department held public hearings, but turns out to have no plan for actually considering the comments; in the meantime, it has actually lost tens of thousands of written comments completely.  Not only that, but it has used a consultant that allegedly has close ties with the company proposing the pipeline.  Some procedural gaffes may be inevitably in anything this big, but it does begin to look like the pipeline proposal may be starting to spring a leak.

Keystone XL project