The partisan ruckus over a sprawling pipeline that would swell U.S. imports of Canadian oil sands crude is growing louder today, as environmentalists bolster a bid for disclosure of communications between industry lobbyists and the State Department that has made headlines around the continent.

The expansion of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by green groups last year and first reported by E&E Daily adds a Great White North twist to the drama over Keystone XL, the $7 billion Canada-to-U.S. pipeline now under final review at State. In adding three lobbying firms as well as XL backer TransCanada Corp. to the FOIA bid, conservationists cited research by DeSmogBlog, a site aimed at debunking climate skepticism that is steered by a PR firm with a broad client list -- including Royal Dutch Shell PLC.

At the heart of today's push is the same controversial charge that greens have levied all year long against the equally hot-button XL link: that industry lobbyists have compromised the pipeline review by using their ties to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The new request adds two firms lobbying for TransCanada, McKenna Long & Aldridge and Bryan Cave LLP, as well as Alberta provincial representatives at DLA Piper to a FOIA request once limited to TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliott (E&E Daily, Oct. 3).

"The extent of the contacts between these lobbyists and Secretary Clinton, or her political appointee-led staff, remains to be determined," DeSmogBlog managing editor Brendan DeMelle wrote in a memo that accompanied today's expanded FOIA.

"However, the presence of so many former Clinton associates on the lobbying roster for polluter clients on a high-profile controversy suggests a clash with the repeated campaign pledges of greater transparency and tougher dealings with lobbyists by Secretary Clinton's boss, President Obama."

DeSmogBlog's website describes its mission as "to clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change" and its leader is James Hoggan, whose eponymous communications firm has represented Shell, the British Columbia provincial government, and aluminum company Alcoa, among others.

The three firms at the heart of today's FOIA request maintain ties to Clinton that appear closer than Elliott's. Both DLA Piper partner James Blanchard, a former governor of Michigan, and McKenna Long & Aldridge partner Gordon Giffin served as U.S. ambassador to Canada during the Clinton administration and later took on high-level "bundler" fundraising posts during the secretary of state's 2008 White House campaign.

Giffin and another lobbyist at his firm, Maryscott Greenwood, appear on an email chain between Elliott and his U.S. embassy contact that was made public in this week's FOIA release.

Bryan Cave lobbyist Broderick Johnson, who departed the firm and its Keystone XL account earlier this year, is a former Clinton White House aide. Another of the firm's pipeline lobbyists named in DeSmogBlog's memo, Jeff Berman, served as chief of delegate selection for President Obama's 2008 campaign.

'We reject their accusations'

State this week began to publicly challenge green groups' push to discredit its decisionmaking on the XL line, which would carry more than 800,000 barrels per day of oil sands crude more than 1,700 miles through the United States if it wins Obama administration approval. State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters yesterday that the department had held more than two dozen meetings with stakeholders in the pipeline decision, including 10 with environmentalists and 11 with the oil and gas industry.

"It's obviously their First Amendment right to say what they'd like to say," Nuland said when asked to rebut the conservationists' claims of bias. "We reject their accusations."

The FOIA request for contacts between Elliott, a top delegate selection adviser for Clinton's 2008 presidential run, uncovered emails in which the lobbyist coordinated his message on Keystone XL and traded friendly quips with an energy aide at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.

Nuland said yesterday that the department has followed up on the contacts made by the U.S. embassy aide, Marja Verloop, and determined "that her relationship with the environmental organizations was equally close, and that she had very friendly relations with a broad cross-section of Canadian NGOs as well."

Yet that internal examination is unlikely to quiet the political firestorm over Keystone XL lobbying ahead of a hotly anticipated State public hearing on the pipeline set for tomorrow in downtown Washington, D.C. Environmental groups are planning actions to marshal pipeline critics who blast the higher emissions generated by oil sands crude and the safety risk posed by the XL line, a display that industry groups may well try to match.

"The State Department has a legal obligation to make its communications with these lobbyists public," said Earthjustice staff attorney Sarah Burt, who represented Friends of the Earth, Corporate Ethics International and the Center for International Environmental Law on last year's FOIA request.

"And we intend to do what we can to ensure the law is followed."

Click here to read DeSmogBlog's memo on the three Keystone XL lobbying firms' ties to Clinton that accompanied today's FOIA bid.