Trumps Interior Pick Consulted for a Company With No Customers

Source: Bloomberg

Trumps Interior Pick Consulted for a Company With No Customers

by Ari Natter

?January? ?17?, ?2017? ?1?:?01? ?PM

➞ Ryan Zinke was paid to make connections for struggling firm

➞ After Zinke joined QS Energy it got contract for Keystone

President-elect Donald Trumps pick to head the Interior Department earned $85,000 from a company that has a stock price of 8 cents, an accumulated deficit of more than $100 million and no customers.

Before he was elected to Congress from Montana, Ryan Zinke was a board member and consultant for Save the World Air, according to disclosure forms released by the Office of Government Ethics this month. The company, founded in 1998 and now called QS Energy Inc., is marketing a system that it says will boost the flow of oil in pipelines.

According to a Security and Exchange Commission filing,* Zinke, a former Navy Seal, was paid $5,000 a month to arrange introductions and meetings, including with state officials. His efforts appeared to pay off: After he joined the company, TransCanada Corp. agreed to pay the company for letting it test its equipment on the U.S. portion of the Keystone pipeline, resulting in QS Energys first revenue from that product, according to another SEC filing. ... But, in the end, those tests failed to generate a sale.

"He was a good friend of the company, and I hope he remains a friend of the company," Steve Bonser, a spokesman for QS Energy, said. Bonser said the company has yet to find a customer for its AOT technology, which aims to boost pipeline flow by cutting the viscosity of crude oil. The company did not make any sales of its AOT technology during Zinkes time there, SEC filings show, and Bonser said the company has yet to find a customer for it.

* https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103795/000101968713000952/stwa_10k-ex10105.htm

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-17/trump-s-interior-pick-consulted-for-a-company-with-no-customers