TransCanada, the oil company that hopes to build the Keystone XL Pipeline, has stepped up its online public relations efforts to counter what observers say is a hostile mainstream press and well-organized environmentalist opposition.
A spokesman for the company took to its website last week to directly rebut claims about the pipeline, which is awaiting approval by the State Department, made by billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer.
Steyer "made numerous misleading and factually untrue statements about Keystone XL Pipeline, which were published in the Washington Post," wrote communications consultant Matthew John.
"We respect that Mr. Steyer has concerns about the project, however many of his claims are simply untrue," John said.
Steyer flexed his political muscle in the special election for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, turning the Keystone Pipeline into a litmus test. His group, the NextGen Committee, has dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a strident environmentalist.
Markey supporters demonstrated against the pipeline at a Wednesday campaign event with President Barack Obama.
NextGen did not return a request for comment.
The blog post signaled a more aggressive push by TransCanada to rebut the most vociferous critics of the Keystone pipeline project. The pipeline’s construction has become a heated debate between environmentalists and supporters of the project, who say it would create jobs and help shore up North American energy independence.
"One of the issues we have had since the fall of 2010 is trying to rebut what our opponents are saying with respect to Keystone and to correct any factual inaccuracies," TransCanada spokesman James Millar told National Journal Wednesday.
"This takes resources, and we have been dwarfed by the content the activists have and are posting online with respect to Keystone XL," Millar added. "[Hiring John] gives us the ability to develop that factual content and to post it on our KXL microsite and our blog, leveraging Twitter for awareness."
Patrick Ruffini, president of the digital advocacy firm Engage, said new media provide an avenue for companies like TransCanada to tap wellsprings of support that aren’t generally reached through traditional PR strategies.
"Based on our own monitoring, there is an enormous amount of latent energy on social media in favor of Keystone, and that's reflected in the strong majority of Americans who want to see it built," Ruffini in an email.
"If Keystone supporters make their voices heard, they can win in the social space," he predicted.
TransCanada previously limited its push for Keystone approval to talks with the State Department, National Journal reported. Soren Dayton, a consultant with Prism Public Affairs, said that gave opponents of the pipeline a head start on the messaging front.
The company "realized that the opponents of Keystone XL had defined the debate, although the message didn't penetrate beyond the activist class."
Ruffini says a hostile mainstream press fuels the need for companies backing public policies that are perceived as politically right-of-center to look for other channels to promote their message.
"Companies like TransCanada absolutely need to have a social media strategy, or else they risk losing the PR war in the biased mainstream press," he said.
Koch Industries employed that strategy after it became a target of attacks not just by left-wing blogs and activists, but also in the mainstream press.
The company launched a blog, KochFacts, to rebut what it says are misleading or outright false attacks on the company.
After an article in the New Yorker attacked the company and its libertarian owners, Charles and David Koch, KochFacts ran a point-by-point rebuttal of the piece.
In addition to calling out what it says is dishonesty by Keystone opponents, TransCanada has shifted some its messaging points to appeal to larger swaths of the public, Dayton said.
"They have redoubled their efforts and focused on arguments to neutralize the activists, even among those sympathetic to those arguments, by focusing on arguments like the impact of spillage from rail transit," he told the Washington Free Beacon.