The Pipeline Safety Trust (PST) claims its focus is on "ensuring the integrity" of America's oil and gas pipelines. But the Washington-based nonprofit—which has received $5 million in taxpayer funding for pipeline safety work since 2021—largely operates as a left-wing climate advocacy organization, endorsing Democratic legislation while siding against President Donald Trump on pipeline development and fighting many of his other energy priorities, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
After the Free Beacon asked the Department of Transportation about the grants it has awarded to the PST, the agency said it will investigate the group's financials to assess whether any grant funding was used illegally and, if so, how much went to pushing this extreme agenda. The agency added that it will refer the matter to its inspector general.
"The Department has a duty to protect American taxpayer dollars," a DOT spokesman said in a statement.
The PST's advocacy work appears to start at the top. Carl Weimer, the group's longtime executive director and current special adviser, once argued that the need for new pipelines "needs to be questioned" and helped craft a policy as a Washington county commissioner designed to "put a stop to future fossil fuel development." Beth Wallace, the president of the PST’s board of directors, characterized support for the Keystone XL pipeline as shameful and has called the Line 5 oil and gas pipeline in Michigan "unneeded."
Jeffrey Insko, the PST's board vice president, has similarly opposed the Line 5 project, saying that shutting it down would represent the "first major example of a conscious and deliberate undoing of the world that has brought us to the brink of planetary emergency." More concerningly, though, Insko has approvingly cited the radical 2021 treatise, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, once in an article he wrote titled, "How to Dream Beyond Oil," and another time in a public syllabus listing recommended readings.
In the treatise, Swedish professor Andreas Malm explicitly calls for eco-terrorism: "Damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed." The FBI issued an alert in 2023, warning that a film depiction of the treatise might inspire terror attacks on energy infrastructure.
The advocacy work puts a spotlight on the sizable funding the PST has received from the federal government and raises questions about whether it is appropriate for the government to subsidize such work. Since 2010, the Department of Transportation has awarded the group $5.5 million, which represents about 75 percent of the group's total reported revenue during that timespan.
While the grants given to the PST have historically been worth around $50,000 each, the group received a shot in the arm in 2021 when the Department of Transportation, under its then-secretary Pete Buttigieg, selected it for a $1 million annual technical assistance grant. The agency has subsequently awarded the PST that same $1 million grant every year to pursue activities like developing public awareness campaigns surrounding pipeline safety.
The Trump Department of Transportation renewed the grant in September, a surprising move considering the administration has supported pipeline development and has sought to reduce wasteful spending that doesn't align with its priorities.
But the agency said its hands were tied: the PIPES Act of 2020 requires that it provides a $1 million technical assistance grant to an eligible applicant every year.
"DOT is required by law to provide the Pipeline Safety Trust with $1 million in grant funding per year," the DOT spokesman said. "That same law mandates that these funds cannot be used for lobbying, litigation, or anti-pipeline advocacy. Reports about the Trust have called into question their spending."
"That’s why PHMSA [Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration] commissioned an audit to get to the bottom of the Trust’s activities," he continued. "The report raised major concerns about the Trust abusing taxpayer dollars to fund various anti-energy advocacy efforts, failing to provide proper documents, and not accreting cataloguing time cards."
For his part, Trump has been unapologetic about his support for pipelines, including many that the PST and its leaders have opposed.
"We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built!" Trump wrote in a February post on Truth Social. In addition, the Trump Department of Justice intervened in an ongoing lawsuit in September, attempting to block Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's (D.) revocation of the Line 5 pipeline's permits: "President Trump has made clear that the United States will not tolerate state overreach that interferes with American energy dominance," said acting assistant attorney general Adam Gustafson.
Trump is also pushing for the development of a proposed 807-mile gas pipeline in Alaska that he said will "be truly spectacular" during his state of the union address in March. Lois Epstein, a member of the PST's board of directors, authored an op-ed months later suggesting that federal and state officials have relied on an overly optimistic cost estimate of the project.
"Ensuring that pipelines are safe is a worthy endeavor, but it is clear that this organization has veered far off course from its supposed mission," Tom Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, told the Free Beacon. "There is a difference between advocating for safe pipelines and advocating for the elimination of them altogether. With a vice president touting books that advocate blowing up pipelines, the DOT has no business funding this activist organization."
According to the PST's most recent strategic plan, meanwhile, its role as a safety organization means that it must "work toward a rapid and just energy transition" to green energy sources like wind and solar. Fighting climate change, it adds, is a central pillar of its work. The document further emphasizes the importance of environmental justice and laments that pipeline projects nationwide have not properly considered justice, equity, or inclusion.
That plan seems to contextualize the bulk of the group's work. The PST, for example, opposed the Keystone XL oil pipeline expansion project and continues to oppose the existing Keystone infrastructure—in June, the group demanded the revocation of the pipeline's federal permit and expressed concern about its "continued operation."
It also recently opposed the development of a 303-mile West Virginia-to-Virginia gas pipeline project and the expansion of a gas pipeline in the Pacific Northwest, noting it would "exacerbate climate change" and its emissions would impact "environmental justice communities."
Proponents of those projects say they would boost energy supplies and lower household utility bills nationwide.
The PST was also a cheerleader for some of the Biden administration's most extreme climate policies, including its decision to pause permitting for all natural gas export facilities. And it has opposed the Trump administration's actions on pipeline safety, both in statements and in comments to media outlets. The group said a technical correction made in August addressing the internal pressure of pipelines would "leave communities across our country vulnerable to potentially devastating pipeline incidents."
"You hear of the phrase ‘the fox guarding the henhouse.' What we’re worrying about in this situation is the fox designing the henhouse," the PST executive director Bill Caram told ProPublica last month in response to a Trump administration rule streamlining how it provides waivers to pipeline projects.
In August, the PST endorsed legislation introduced by Democratic Sen. Ed Markey (Mass.) and Rep. Lori Trahan (Mass.) that would force federal regulators to consider the climate impacts of pipelines and plans for transitioning to "non-emitting alternatives." The bill would also allow private citizens to take legal action against the Department of Transportation if it fails to enforce pipeline safety.
Caram told the Free Beacon that the group is focused on pipeline safety and said it uses federal funds to bolster public education, support public participation at industry conferences, and host an annual conference. Caram added that pipeline safety is not a partisan issue and that the group only engages on specific projects "on the basis of safety."
"On Mountain Valley Pipeline, for example, we outlined specific safety concerns including landslide potential and pipeline coating deficiencies," he said. "[The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration] agreed and issued an enforcement action imposing additional requirements that addressed the concerns we raised."
Caram also defended Insko in a statement to the Free Beacon, saying that How to Blow Up a Pipeline has been widely assigned at universities and that its inclusion on Insko's syllabus is not an endorsement of its conclusions. "The Pipeline Safety Trust has stated clearly, many times, that we do not support destructive acts of any kind against pipelines," he said.
