Lawmakers request probe of Keystone permit review

More than a dozen Democrats on Wednesday called on the State Department’s Office of Inspector General to conduct a probe into how the agency has handled the permitting process for a proposed massive oil pipeline between the United States and Canada.

Three senators and 11 House members — led by Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) — wrote Deputy Inspector General Harold W. Geisel asking for scrutiny of how the State Department reviewed TransCanada’s permit application for its Keystone XL extension.

More on this Story

• Get the latest on PostPolitics
• Gay troops to file suit challenging DOMA
• OMB employees seek work-life balance via union
• Firms hesitate over clean-tech investments

View all Items in this Story

• Lawmakers seek probe of Keystone permit review
• GOP hopefuls offer diverse economic plans
• The Fix: Top 10 most bizarre political ads
• Minor tax issue takes uphill turn in Congress
• Obama moves to ease student loan burden
• Official: Military retirement plan not 'unaffordable'
• Medicare's poor-performing drug plans targeted
• In the Loop: The Hussein-Gaddafi nexus
• Activist group seeks probe of NIH deaths
• Congress struggles to fix gridlock as another deadline looms

Opponents of the project have criticized the process for several reasons, including that the private contractor State hired to help conduct the review did not disclose that it had previously worked on a TransCanada project.

— Juliet Eilperin