Benghazi Bimbo Susan Rice Has Ties To Iran
Where do these millions of dollars pour in from?
You should take a look at her financial disclosure form. It’s like reading War and Peace. She has an endless number of investments in companies throughout the world. But one of her soft spots is companies that do investments with Iranian companies, especially those that buy Iran’s billions of barrels in crude oil.
So the next time Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vows to annihilate Israel with a nuclear bomb, you can thank Susan Rice.
Rice Has Up to $600K Stake in Keystone Company
Approving pipeline could be one of new secretary of state's first duties
AP
Potential secretary of state candidate Susan Rice owns up to $600,000 of stock in the Canadian company pushing to build the Keystone XL Pipeline, according to her financial disclosure reports.
OnEarth reports that Rice, Obama’s preferred candidate to succeed Hillary Clinton, owns millions of dollars of stock in oil companies, including TransCanada, the company behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.
TransCanada is currently awaiting approval from the State Department on whether it can build the pipeline, which would stretch from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The project is reviled by environmentalists and would likely be Rice’s first major decision as Secretary of State, should she be confirmed.
OnEarth reports:
The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Rice owns stock valued between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada, the company seeking a federal permit to transport tar sands crude 1,700 miles to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, crossing fragile Midwest ecosystems and the largest freshwater aquifer in North America.
Beyond that, according to financial disclosure reports, about a third of Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th parallel — including companies with poor environmental and safety records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine. That includes Enbridge, which spilled more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 – the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history.
Rice also has smaller stakes in several other big Canadian energy firms, as well as the country’s transportation companies and coal-fired utilities. Another 20 percent or so of her personal wealth is derived from investments in five Canadian banks. These are some of the institutions that provide loans and financial backing to TransCanada and its competitors for tar sands extraction and major infrastructure projects, such as Keystone XL and Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would stretch 700 miles from Alberta to the Canadian coast.
In 2010, for instance, when Rice and her husband held at least $1.5 million in Royal Bank of Canada, the institution was labeled Canada’s most environmentally irresponsible company by the Rainforest Action Network for its support of tar sands development. Public pressure from environmentalists and Canada’s First Nations tribes convinced the bank to stop funding tar sands projects earlier this year.
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If Susan E. Rice becomes Secretary
of State, she might have to recuse herself from one of the first and
most controversial decisions she would face: the Keystone XL oil
pipeline permit.
The reason: Rice and her husband are major shareholders in the pipeline company as well as a variety of Canadian companies that are involved in exploiting the oil sands region of Alberta, which would feed the Keystone XL and benefit from a new outlet.
SPECIAL REPORT | Three journalists traveled the proposed pipeline route. Learn more about their journey.
The couple owns $300,000 to $600,000 of stock in TransCanada,
the pipeline firm, and they own stakes of more than $1.25 million each
in four Canadian companies — Imperial, Encana, Enbridge and Cenovus —
that have been active in the oil sands region of northern Alberta.
Enbridge is also the company whose pipeline ruptured and spilled crude
into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan last year.
Rice and her husband also own shares of major Canadian banks that are expected to provide financing for the Keystone XL project. They own between $50,000 and $100,000 of shares in Suncor, another oil sands company, and more than $1.25 million of shares in Transalta, the Alberta’s electric power producer.
Rice, who is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and considered the leading candidate to become President Obama’s nominee for State, listed the holdings in her most recent disclosure statement, covering the 2011 calendar year. The information was highlighted in an article published on the Web site of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s OnEarth magazine. The NRDC is opposed to the construction of the $7 billion pipeline.
“We oppose the Keystone XL,” said NRDC associate director of communications Bob Deans. “It would send some of the dirtiest oil on the planet through the breadbasket of America to be shipped overseas from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not in our national interest: it’s a profit scheme for big oil.”
There is nothing inappropriate about the investments, and Rice’s connections to Canada go back 20 years, when she was working in the Toronto office of the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm and her husband, Ian Cameron, was a television producer there for the Canadian Broadcasting Co. Cameron, who like Rice graduated from Stanford University, is from Canada.
Rice and Cameron are well off. They were worth between $23.5 million and $43.5 million in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (Those figures were also highlighted on the OnEarth Web site.)
In a statement, Rice’s spokeswoman, Erin Pelton said “Ambassador Rice is in full compliance with all financial disclosure requirements related to her service in the U.S. government and is committed to continuing to meet these obligations.”
Rice has not been nominated for the position of Secretary of State, although Obama has defended her qualifications for the job. If she did become secretary of state, Rice could also sell the shares or put them into a blind trust and try to retain her authority to issue or deny the pipeline permit.
At a time when Obama is fighting Republicans opposed to Rice, the financial disclosure form is likely to draw scrutiny from Democrats and environmental activists who have been among the president’s most reliable supporters.
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Secretary of State Candidate Has a Major Financial Stake in Canadian Tar Sands
Susan Rice, the candidate believed to be favored by
President Obama to become the next Secretary of State, holds significant
investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that
would stand to benefit from expansion of the North American tar sands
industry and construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline.
If confirmed by the Senate, one of Rice’s first duties likely would be
consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial
mega-project.
Rice's financial holdings could raise
questions about her status as a neutral decision maker. The current
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Rice owns stock valued between
$300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada, the company seeking a federal
permit to transport tar sands crude 1,700 miles to refineries on the
Texas Gulf Coast, crossing fragile Midwest ecosystems and the largest
freshwater aquifer in North America.
Beyond that, according to financial disclosure reports,
about a third of Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers,
pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th
parallel -- including companies with poor environmental and safety
records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at
least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil
producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine. That includes Enbridge, which spilled more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 -- the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history.
Rice
also has smaller stakes in several other big Canadian energy firms, as
well as the country’s transportation companies and coal-fired utilities.
Another 20 percent or so of her personal wealth is derived from
investments in five Canadian banks. These are some of the institutions
that provide loans and financial backing to TransCanada and its competitors for tar sands extraction and major infrastructure projects, such as Keystone XL and Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would stretch 700 miles from Alberta to the Canadian coast.
In
2010, for instance, when Rice and her husband held at least $1.5
million in Royal Bank of Canada, the institution was labeled Canada's most environmentally irresponsible company
by the Rainforest Action Network for its support of tar sands
development. Public pressure from environmentalists and Canada’s First
Nations tribes convinced the bank to stop funding tar sands projects adopt new standards regarding socially conscious lending.
“It’s
really amazing that they’re considering someone for Secretary of State
who has millions invested in these companies,” said Bill McKibben, a
writer and founder of the activist groups 350.org and Tar Sands Action,
which have organized protests against the Keystone XL project. “The
State Department has been rife with collusion with the Canadian pipeline
builders, and it’s really distressing to have any sense that that might
continue to go on.” Emails obtained by an environmental group last year
show what critics call a “cozy and complicitous relationship”
between State Department officials and a lobbyist for TransCanada, who
was also a former deputy campaign director for current Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 presidential bid. The agency also
assigned an environmental impact review of the Keystone project to a company with financial ties to TransCanada.
As
ambassador to the United Nations, Rice has not been directly involved
in the State Department’s Keystone XL review, which came to a head at
the end of 2011. After initially indicating it would likely approve
TransCanada’s application, the State Department ordered a review of alternate routes
to avoid putting critical water sources in Nebraska at risk. The move,
which officials said would likely push the approval process back to the
first three months of 2013, was an attempt to spare the Obama administration a politically risky decision just before an election year.
Greenlighting the pipeline would have hurt the president with environmental advocates -- more than 1,200 people were arrested
in anti-Keystone protests led by McKibben at the White House in Summer
2011. But denying it outright would have given Republicans an election
year attack line, saying Obama had cost the nation much-needed jobs
(although independent studies have shown
that TransCanada’s job creation claims for the pipeline are greatly
exaggerated). As it was, the president still received significant heat,
and Mitt Romney pledged to approve the pipeline on Day 1 if he had won the election.
Were
she to become Secretary of State, Rice would be in charge of the new
environmental review process and would be in a position to decide
whether to issue TransCanada a permit for sections of Keystone XL
stretching from Oklahoma to the Canadian border. (The pipeline’s
southernmost leg has already been approved and is under construction in
Texas -- with protesters perching in trees and chaining themselves to construction equipment in an attempt to stop it.)
Rice is reportedly Obama’s favorite to take the helm at the State Department next year. Clinton has said repeatedly that she plans to step down shortly after Obama’s second inauguration in January. In addition to Rice, reportedly the president's lead candidate for the job, U.S. Senator John Kerry had also reportedly made it onto the president’s short list. Kerry, whose net worth of at least $232 million makes him far wealthier than Rice, does not own shares
of TransCanada or Enbridge, the major tar sands pipeline companies,
although he does have stock in some other Canadian energy interests.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics,
Rice’s net worth sat somewhere between $23.5 million and $43.5 million
in 2009, the latest year for which the center has done a full analysis
of her finances. That makes her either the wealthiest person currently
serving in the executive branch or a close second to Clinton. (The
uncertainty surrounding these figures is due to the way officials are
required to disclose their investments; instead of declaring the
specific amount of stock they own, they are required by law only to
declare a range.)
Other public officials have been
criticized for pushing for the Keystone XL project while standing to
benefit financially. The nonprofit Sunlight Foundation watchdog group reported in December 2011
that four members of Congress who own shares in TransCanada had pressed
for the pipeline’s approval -- either by supporting bills that would
have forced the State Department to issue a permit or by writing to
Clinton or Obama, urging them to give the go-ahead. Rice’s ownership of
TransCanada stock was noted by the Sunlight Foundation but not considered a conflict of interest at the time, because she had no direct role in the approval process.
Neither Rice’s office nor the White House returned OnEarth’s calls for comment about her financial holdings.
It’s unclear when Rice began investing in Canadian energy and banks, but the Stanford University graduate and Rhodes Scholar worked for the prestigious McKinsey & Company consulting firm’s Toronto office from 1990 to 1993, marrying Canadian-born TV producer Ian Cameron
in 1992. She then joined the National Security Council under President
Bill Clinton. (Financial disclosure forms aren’t available for Rice’s
security council tenure; by law, they’re destroyed after six years.)
Rice later became President Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for
African affairs, then joined the nonprofit Brookings Institution think
tank during the George W. Bush administration. She advised both the
Kerry and Obama presidential campaigns on foreign policy.
According
to the reports she filed in May 2012, Rice and her husband have a
wide-ranging portfolio that includes more than 100 securities, such as
IBM, Monsanto, Apple, BP, and McDonald’s. Dan Auble, a researcher at
the Center for Responsive Politics
who studies the personal finances of public officials, said it’s not
unusual to see energy investments play a significant role in their
financial portfolios, as they do with Rice and her husband. (Auble said
the holdings of a public official’s spouse are included in financial
disclosure reports because they have the same potential to create a
conflict of interest.) In their case, however, nine of the 14 holdings
they claimed that top $500,000 are Canadian energy interests or banks.
If
Rice does get the Secretary of State job, federal ethics officials
could recommend that she sell her stock in TransCanada and related
companies before deciding on Keystone XL, Auble said. But that’s not a
sure thing.
Leading Keystone opponents say they
wouldn’t necessarily oppose Rice’s nomination -- but they would want
someone else in charge of deciding the pipeline’s fate. “It would be one
of the first decisions she would make, and she’s not qualified to make
an unbiased decision,” said Jane Kleeb, the executive director of Bold Nebraska, a group that has fought to block the Keystone XL pipeline.
“It’s one more clear sign that the State Department should not be handling this,” added McKibben (who is also an OnEarth contributing editor).
Both advocates believe the Environmental Protection Agency or the White
House Council on Environmental Quality would be more qualified to
assess the environmental impacts of Keystone XL. But an executive order
issued by President George W. Bush in April 2004 makes the Secretary of State responsible
for approving pipelines that cross the U.S. border. Kleeb suggested
that Obama could change that order to shift the decision-making
responsibility elsewhere.
Environmental advocates (including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which publishes OnEarth) have sought to block the Keystone XL pipeline
and further development of the Alberta tar sands fields due to their
climate impact and potential for pollution and dangerous oil spills.
Extracting bitumen -- a heavy, viscous black oil -- requires intensive
open-pit mining in the heart of Canada’s boreal forest. More dirty and
corrosive than conventional crude, bitumen requires extensive refining
to become useable fuel. The entire process uses vast amounts of energy
and water and creates three times the global warming pollution of
conventional fuel, while shipping the bitumen through pipelines means an additional risk of corrosion and leaks.
Despite
the environmental risks, tar sands development has become a major focus
of the Canadian government and pillar of the country’s economy, championed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose administration has denounced environmental advocates and First Nations tribes opposed to pipeline construction as extremists. Alberta's tar sands contain the world's third largest proven oil reserve,
but they’re landlocked and remote -- hence the desire for more
pipelines to provide Canadian energy companies with access to ports and
refineries.
According to her most recent financial disclosure reports,
along with her TransCanada investments, Rice and her husband own at
least $1.5 million worth of stock in Enbridge (Canada’s No. 3 oil
producer, according to Forbes), Cenovus (No. 7), and Encana (No.
8), as well as at least $1.25 million in Imperial (No. 2), $50,000 to
$100,000 in Suncor (No. 1), and $15,000 to $50,000 in Canadian Natural
(No. 6). (TransCanada is ranked at No. 5 by Forbes.) The couple
has at least $1.25 million invested in Transalta, Alberta's largest
coal-fired electricity power producer, and at least $1.5 million in
Canadian Pacific Railway, which transports coal, oil, and gas and has been a major financial beneficiary of the North American energy boom.
On
the banking side, Rice has investments totaling at least $5 million and
up to $11.25 million in Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian
Imperial Bank of Commerce, Royal Bank of Canada, and Toronto Dominion. A
report by the Dutch consulting firm Profundo Economic Research says several of these same banks are largely responsible
for underwriting the expansion of Canada’s tar sands industry.
“Investment in tar sands infrastructure now surpasses that of
manufacturing across all of Canada,” according to the report.
Which
means that regardless of Keystone XL’s fate, Canadian companies will
continue to seek ways to pump bitumen from northern Canada to coastal
refineries and ports, where it can be shipped to Europe, China, and
other overseas markets. NRDC and other environmental groups have presented evidence that Enbridge is making plans
to reverse a pipeline that currently carries regular crude from the New
England coast to Montreal, and use it to ship tar sands oil in the
other direction instead.
Since it crosses the U.S.-Canadian border, that plan would also require State Department approval.
OnEarth editor-at-large Ted Genoways contributed to this report.
UPDATE 11/29/12:
Responding to the report about Rice's financial holdings, Susan
Casey-Lefkowitz, NRDC's director of international programs, said
Thursday: "What's most important is that she rid herself of her holdings
in TransCanada and other tar sands-related companies, and we're
confident she will do that." Casey-Lefkowitz said taking the Keystone XL
decision out of the State Department's hands, as other anti-pipeline
advocates have urged, wouldn't necessarily be a solution because
numerous federal agencies need to provide input on the process. "What's
most important is that we have a good, thorough review done,"
Casey-Lefkowitz said. The State Department's previous evaluation of the
project was inadequate, she said, because it didn't take into account
the potential climate impacts, pipeline safety issues, or harm to air
and water quality from refining tar sands oil.
Rice connected to Keystone pipeline company
Evan Vucci/AP -
UN Ambassador Susan Rice and her husband are major
shareholders in TransCanada, the company that’s trying to build the
Keystone XL pipeline.
The reason: Rice and her husband are major shareholders in the pipeline company as well as a variety of Canadian companies that are involved in exploiting the oil sands region of Alberta, which would feed the Keystone XL and benefit from a new outlet.
Comments
Rice and her husband also own shares of major Canadian banks that are expected to provide financing for the Keystone XL project. They own between $50,000 and $100,000 of shares in Suncor, another oil sands company, and more than $1.25 million of shares in Transalta, the Alberta’s electric power producer.
Rice, who is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and considered the leading candidate to become President Obama’s nominee for State, listed the holdings in her most recent disclosure statement, covering the 2011 calendar year. The information was highlighted in an article published on the Web site of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s OnEarth magazine. The NRDC is opposed to the construction of the $7 billion pipeline.
“We oppose the Keystone XL,” said NRDC associate director of communications Bob Deans. “It would send some of the dirtiest oil on the planet through the breadbasket of America to be shipped overseas from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not in our national interest: it’s a profit scheme for big oil.”
There is nothing inappropriate about the investments, and Rice’s connections to Canada go back 20 years, when she was working in the Toronto office of the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm and her husband, Ian Cameron, was a television producer there for the Canadian Broadcasting Co. Cameron, who like Rice graduated from Stanford University, is from Canada.
Rice and Cameron are well off. They were worth between $23.5 million and $43.5 million in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (Those figures were also highlighted on the OnEarth Web site.)
In a statement, Rice’s spokeswoman, Erin Pelton said “Ambassador Rice is in full compliance with all financial disclosure requirements related to her service in the U.S. government and is committed to continuing to meet these obligations.”
Rice has not been nominated for the position of Secretary of State, although Obama has defended her qualifications for the job. If she did become secretary of state, Rice could also sell the shares or put them into a blind trust and try to retain her authority to issue or deny the pipeline permit.
At a time when Obama is fighting Republicans opposed to Rice, the financial disclosure form is likely to draw scrutiny from Democrats and environmental activists who have been among the president’s most reliable supporters.
