Environmentalists today sued the State Department in a bid to pry loose records of its communications with three lobbying firms that represented interests in favor of the now-stalled Keystone XL oil pipeline.

The lawsuit from Friends of the Earth, represented by Earthjustice, seeks to prod State into answering a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request the group filed last year to procure records of its ties to two firms lobbying for TransCanada Corp., the company behind the Canada-to-U.S. pipeline, and another team representing the Alberta government (E&E Daily, Oct. 6, 2011). The FOIA filing came in response to research compiled by the green website "DeSmog Blog," which made headlines this week for posting documents from the conservative Heartland Institute that climate scientist Peter Gleick later admitted to leaking.

Today's legal challenge builds on a long-running green campaign to spotlight ties between a lobbyist for TransCanada -- which is vowing to press ahead with its 1,700-mile, $7 billion pipeline despite last month's White House rejection -- and the 2008 presidential campaign of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Those charges of partiality within State during its environmental review of Keystone XL were partly behind a Democratic request for the department's independent inspector general to audit the process. That IG inquiry cleared State of improper behavior but recommended changes in its internal decisionmaking that are being implemented, the department says (E&ENews PM, Feb. 9).

In a statement on the lawsuit, Damon Moglen, climate and energy project director at Friends of the Earth, said that the likelihood of TransCanada's continued support for the XL project lent continuing relevance to its FOIA search.

"Despite the administration's recent rejection of the Keystone XL permit, TransCanada is forging full-speed ahead on a new permit application, and pro-pipeline lobbyists are keeping the pressure on the State Department to approve this controversial and misguided pipeline," Moglen said.

A third FOIA request from Friends of the Earth, filed to seek copies of the contract State reached with a third-party environmental contractor linked to TransCanada, was officially denied earlier this month (E&E Daily, Feb. 9).