Billionaire joins fight against Keystone XL – by Paul Koring (Globe and Mail – March 19, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

WASHINGTON — The Keystone XL pipeline faces a new, formidable and deep-pocketed foe: Tom Steyer, a California billionaire, has targeted the controversial Canadian project to funnel Alberta’s landlocked heavy crude to Texas refineries on the Gulf Coast.

For Mr. Steyer, Keystone “has become the defining issue in the climate change fight of our times,” said Chris Lehane, Mr. Steyer’s authorized spokesman. “He has plenty of resources and plays to win,” Mr. Lehane said in an interview after Mr. Steyer waded into the Democratic primary race in Massachusetts with a threat to skewer a pro-Keystone candidate. That race is to select the party’s candidate for the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry, an ardent environmentalist who, as secretary of state, will also play a key role in Keystone’s fate.

Massachusetts “is the next front where the Keystone fight will be engaged,” Mr. Lehane said, adding that for Mr. Steyer, the bigger battle over Keystone was worth “tens of millions” in spending on political action, public awareness and other unspecified efforts. “Keystone has enormous symbolic value” in the whole climate change struggle, Mr. Lehane said.

Mr. Steyer, 55, the founder of one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Farallon Capital, ended his active role as an asset manager last October to turn to full-time political activism – and climate change is, in his view, the gravest threat facing humanity.

Increasingly, Keystone XL is painted by its U.S. opponents as a thinly disguised Canadian scheme to ship Alberta’s carbon-laden crude – currently heavily discounted in price – to Gulf refineries where it can be exported. A coalition of environmental groups opposed to Keystone has picked up powerful political allies in recent days and, with the addition of Mr. Steyer, the war chest to wage a national campaign against the project in the decisive weeks ahead.

Monday’s surprise target was Steve Lynch, a Democratic congressman seeking the party’s nomination for the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by Mr. Kerry, who was named secretary of state by President Barack Obama after Hillary Clinton’s resignation.

Mr. Lynch, who backs Keystone, will learn “there’s a price to pay,” Mr. Lehane said.

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