welcome to oil
explore how the oil industry's greed and desire for profit is destroying the world
june 8, 2018
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being
regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those
woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and
enterprising citizen.
Henry David Thoreau
*articles*
*Construction planned to prepare Alaska’s Arctic refuge for oil drilling
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Processing drilling permits takes priority over protecting taxpayers from liability, GAO report says(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Taxpayers Still Shelling Out Billions Annually in Fossil Fuel Subsidies
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US EPA grants refiners biofuel credits to remedy Obama-era waiver denials
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Pennsylvania regulators suspend service again on troubled pipeline over safety issues(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Louisiana Judge Rules Bayou Bridge Pipeline's Coastal Use Permit Is Illegal
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Actors were paid to attend New Orleans city council meetings supporting power plant(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Exclusive: US official appeared to delay protections for endangered species at behest of oil group(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Massive oil spill ‘welcome boost’ to economy, says BP
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Shell foresaw climate dangers in 1988 and understood Big Oil’s big role
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Exclusive: EPA gives giant refiner a ‘hardship’ waiver from regulation
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The dark side of America's rise to oil superpower(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ROVER PIPELINE SPILLS ANOTHER 150,000 GALLONS OF DRILLING FLUID INTO OHIO WETLANDS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Exposed: Chevron Has a Secretive Drilling Site in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
(Excerpt BELOW)
*ON ITS HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY IN 1959, EDWARD TELLER WARNED THE OIL INDUSTRY ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING(article below)
oil funnies(at the end)
Construction planned to prepare Alaska’s Arctic refuge for oil drilling
Reuters - raw story
08 JUN 2018 AT 06:54 ET
The Trump administration said on Thursday it would spend $4 million on construction projects in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in preparation for oil drilling in the nation’s biggest wildlife park.
In an announcement that touted planned improvements to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service visitor facilities, the Department of the Interior said it has approved spending on projects for “Oil Exploration Readiness” in the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge.
The Trump administration is pushing for an oil lease sale in the refuge to be held as early as next year. The tax-overhaul bill passed by the U.S. Congress last December includes a provision mandating two oil lease sales, each offering at least 400,000 acres (161,874.26 hectares), within seven years.
The 19-million-acre (7.7 million-hectare) Arctic refuge, the largest in the U.S. national wildlife refuge system, contains some of the wildest territory in North America. There are no roads, established trails or buildings of any type within the refuge border, and no cell phone service, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
“This is a true wilderness Refuge,” the Arctic refuge website advises.
Political and business leaders in oil-dependent Alaska have tried for decades to pry open the refuge’s coastal plain, which is believed to hold potential for billions of barrels of oil. But the plain, between the Brooks Range mountains and the Arctic Ocean, is prized for its importance to caribou, polar bears and other wildlife. Oil development there had been banned until Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski led a move to insert a pro-drilling provision into the 2017 tax bill signed by President Donald Trump.
In Alaska, the development plan is largely embraced, but not universally so. Drilling opponents gathered outside of last week’s Anchorage and Fairbanks hearings about the proposed lease sales to protest the plan.
Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift, in an email, said the $4 million “will be used to support six projects designed to improve and construct existing outbuildings, facilities and research operations.”
That work will include improvements to facilities located outside the refuge, in the Inupiat village of Kaktovik and at Galbraith Lake along the Trans Alaska Pipeline corridor, she said in the email.
The $4 million appropriation for Arctic refuge projects is one of the largest single items in a total of $50 million in planned DOI construction spending.
“The President is a builder, he loves to build and he loves our public lands, so it is a natural fit that the Trump Administration is dedicating so much attention to rebuilding our aging Fish and Wildlife Service infrastructure,” Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement on Thursday.
A partnership of three companies is seeking to do seismic surveys in the refuge starting this winter. That plan, from SAExploration and two Alaska Native corporations, was panned by the U.S., Fish and Wildlife Service, the Washington Post reported last month.
There has been no decision on that application, Swift said on Thursday. “It was a draft application. The Department does not make decisions based upon early drafts,” she said by email.
In an announcement that touted planned improvements to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service visitor facilities, the Department of the Interior said it has approved spending on projects for “Oil Exploration Readiness” in the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge.
The Trump administration is pushing for an oil lease sale in the refuge to be held as early as next year. The tax-overhaul bill passed by the U.S. Congress last December includes a provision mandating two oil lease sales, each offering at least 400,000 acres (161,874.26 hectares), within seven years.
The 19-million-acre (7.7 million-hectare) Arctic refuge, the largest in the U.S. national wildlife refuge system, contains some of the wildest territory in North America. There are no roads, established trails or buildings of any type within the refuge border, and no cell phone service, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
“This is a true wilderness Refuge,” the Arctic refuge website advises.
Political and business leaders in oil-dependent Alaska have tried for decades to pry open the refuge’s coastal plain, which is believed to hold potential for billions of barrels of oil. But the plain, between the Brooks Range mountains and the Arctic Ocean, is prized for its importance to caribou, polar bears and other wildlife. Oil development there had been banned until Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski led a move to insert a pro-drilling provision into the 2017 tax bill signed by President Donald Trump.
In Alaska, the development plan is largely embraced, but not universally so. Drilling opponents gathered outside of last week’s Anchorage and Fairbanks hearings about the proposed lease sales to protest the plan.
Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift, in an email, said the $4 million “will be used to support six projects designed to improve and construct existing outbuildings, facilities and research operations.”
That work will include improvements to facilities located outside the refuge, in the Inupiat village of Kaktovik and at Galbraith Lake along the Trans Alaska Pipeline corridor, she said in the email.
The $4 million appropriation for Arctic refuge projects is one of the largest single items in a total of $50 million in planned DOI construction spending.
“The President is a builder, he loves to build and he loves our public lands, so it is a natural fit that the Trump Administration is dedicating so much attention to rebuilding our aging Fish and Wildlife Service infrastructure,” Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement on Thursday.
A partnership of three companies is seeking to do seismic surveys in the refuge starting this winter. That plan, from SAExploration and two Alaska Native corporations, was panned by the U.S., Fish and Wildlife Service, the Washington Post reported last month.
There has been no decision on that application, Swift said on Thursday. “It was a draft application. The Department does not make decisions based upon early drafts,” she said by email.
Processing drilling permits takes priority over protecting taxpayers from liability, GAO report says
U.S. taxpayers are being left on the hook for the costs of cleaning up after oil and gas companies.
MARK HAND - thinkprogress
JUN 6, 2018, 1:04 PM
The federal government’s oversight of oil and gas wells located on federal lands remains in disarray. According to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), U.S. taxpayers are often left to pay for the restoration of abandoned oil and gas well sites because companies improperly shut down their operations or are unable to cover the restoration costs.
The lack of attention to liability for oil and gas wells can be partly attributed to Congress failing to allocate sufficient funds to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Department of the Interior agency that oversees oil and gas drilling on millions of acres of federal lands, according to the report.
But in its report, the GAO also noted the BLM’s highest priority is processing new oil and gas drilling permits as quickly as possible, not enforcing corporate cleanup of drill sites. Taxpayers are then often forced to foot the bill for cleanup, a predicament that could have been avoided if the BLM had weeded out the financially struggling companies that would not have the financial resources to repair the damage they caused to the environment.
“BLM prioritizes processing drilling permits over well and bond adequacy reviews in part because the agency is required by statute to process drilling permits within 30 days of receiving a complete application,” the GAO explained in the report, released Tuesday.
The BLM’s responsibilities are immense. The agency manages millions of acres where oil and gas drilling occurs. In fiscal year 2016, oil and gas companies operated about 94,000 oil and gas wells on federal lands overseen by the BLM.
Once these wells stop production, they can become inactive. Inactive wells, which are non-producing wells, have the potential to create physical and environmental hazards if the companies fail to reclaim the well sites. Inactive wells that are not plugged, or not properly plugged, can leak methane or contaminate surface water and groundwater.
Reclamation helps ensure that the effects of oil and gas development on the land are not permanent. According to the BLM, the ultimate objective of reclamation is ecosystem restoration, including restoration of natural vegetation and wildlife habitats. In most cases, this means restoring the sites to a condition equal to that which existed before the land was disturbed by drilling operations.
Oil and gas companies are required to post bonds — effectively an insurance policy — when drilling on federal lands. The bonds ensure retired wells are cleaned up and do not pose a risk to lands and water when a company abandons them or goes bankrupt.
It’s not uncommon, however, for companies to shirk their clean-up responsibilities, whether operating on public or private lands. After high natural gas prices went bust in the late 2000s, companies abandoned thousands of coal-bed methane wells in Wyoming. Last year, two oil and gas companies walked away from more than 50 wells located on private property in southwest Colorado, leaving state taxpayers on the hook for the cost of cleaning up after the oil and gas companies.
Cleaning up the roughly 94,000 oil and gas wells on U.S. public lands managed by the BLM could cost a potential $6.1 billion, far exceeding the $162 million in reclamation bonds paid by oil and gas operators, according to a recent study released by the Center for Western Priorities, a nonprofit conservation and advocacy organization in the western United States.
According to the GAO report, federal rules and requirements are extremely lenient for companies that drill for oil and gas on public lands. For example, companies are not required to notify the BLM when they stop operations at an oil and gas well.
The GAO report was requested by three members of Congress — Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources; and Jared Polis (D-CO).
The lawmakers asked the GAO to research how the BLM manages its potential oil and gas well liabilities and how its costs and potential liabilities changed from 2010 through 2017.
The GAO noted that the costs and potential liabilities for the BLM — and U.S. taxpayers — “likely increased” from 2010 through 2017, the GAO said. The full extent of the increase is not known, though, because the BLM does not systematically track whether the companies that drilled the wells handled the cleanup or if they shirked their legal responsibilities, forcing U.S. taxpayers to pay the costs.
The BLM’s database does not collect information on costs incurred or on potential liabilities that might result from an increase in the number of orphaned wells. “Without systematically tracking such information, BLM does not have assurance that it has sufficient bonds or financial assurances to cover the costs of reclaiming orphaned wells,” the GAO said in its report.
Drilling for oil and gas on federal lands, however, is a big business. In fiscal year 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, wells on federal and Native American lands were responsible for providing 11 percent of the natural gas and 7 percent of the oil used in the United States.
The BLM administers its programs through its headquarters office in Washington, D.C. and 12 state offices. Most of the state offices are located in the western United States. At the end of FY’15, about 32 million acres of BLM-managed lands were leased for oil and gas operations. The agency also oversees oil and gas operations on 56 million acres of Native American lands.
Among its other recommendations, the GAO suggested the BLM develop a management plan that addresses resources needed for conducting well and bond adequacy reviews and reclaiming orphaned wells. In addition, upon revising its bond adequacy review policy, the BLM should ensure that the reviews of nationwide and statewide bonds reflect the overall risk presented by oil and gas companies.
The lack of attention to liability for oil and gas wells can be partly attributed to Congress failing to allocate sufficient funds to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Department of the Interior agency that oversees oil and gas drilling on millions of acres of federal lands, according to the report.
But in its report, the GAO also noted the BLM’s highest priority is processing new oil and gas drilling permits as quickly as possible, not enforcing corporate cleanup of drill sites. Taxpayers are then often forced to foot the bill for cleanup, a predicament that could have been avoided if the BLM had weeded out the financially struggling companies that would not have the financial resources to repair the damage they caused to the environment.
“BLM prioritizes processing drilling permits over well and bond adequacy reviews in part because the agency is required by statute to process drilling permits within 30 days of receiving a complete application,” the GAO explained in the report, released Tuesday.
The BLM’s responsibilities are immense. The agency manages millions of acres where oil and gas drilling occurs. In fiscal year 2016, oil and gas companies operated about 94,000 oil and gas wells on federal lands overseen by the BLM.
Once these wells stop production, they can become inactive. Inactive wells, which are non-producing wells, have the potential to create physical and environmental hazards if the companies fail to reclaim the well sites. Inactive wells that are not plugged, or not properly plugged, can leak methane or contaminate surface water and groundwater.
Reclamation helps ensure that the effects of oil and gas development on the land are not permanent. According to the BLM, the ultimate objective of reclamation is ecosystem restoration, including restoration of natural vegetation and wildlife habitats. In most cases, this means restoring the sites to a condition equal to that which existed before the land was disturbed by drilling operations.
Oil and gas companies are required to post bonds — effectively an insurance policy — when drilling on federal lands. The bonds ensure retired wells are cleaned up and do not pose a risk to lands and water when a company abandons them or goes bankrupt.
It’s not uncommon, however, for companies to shirk their clean-up responsibilities, whether operating on public or private lands. After high natural gas prices went bust in the late 2000s, companies abandoned thousands of coal-bed methane wells in Wyoming. Last year, two oil and gas companies walked away from more than 50 wells located on private property in southwest Colorado, leaving state taxpayers on the hook for the cost of cleaning up after the oil and gas companies.
Cleaning up the roughly 94,000 oil and gas wells on U.S. public lands managed by the BLM could cost a potential $6.1 billion, far exceeding the $162 million in reclamation bonds paid by oil and gas operators, according to a recent study released by the Center for Western Priorities, a nonprofit conservation and advocacy organization in the western United States.
According to the GAO report, federal rules and requirements are extremely lenient for companies that drill for oil and gas on public lands. For example, companies are not required to notify the BLM when they stop operations at an oil and gas well.
The GAO report was requested by three members of Congress — Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources; and Jared Polis (D-CO).
The lawmakers asked the GAO to research how the BLM manages its potential oil and gas well liabilities and how its costs and potential liabilities changed from 2010 through 2017.
The GAO noted that the costs and potential liabilities for the BLM — and U.S. taxpayers — “likely increased” from 2010 through 2017, the GAO said. The full extent of the increase is not known, though, because the BLM does not systematically track whether the companies that drilled the wells handled the cleanup or if they shirked their legal responsibilities, forcing U.S. taxpayers to pay the costs.
The BLM’s database does not collect information on costs incurred or on potential liabilities that might result from an increase in the number of orphaned wells. “Without systematically tracking such information, BLM does not have assurance that it has sufficient bonds or financial assurances to cover the costs of reclaiming orphaned wells,” the GAO said in its report.
Drilling for oil and gas on federal lands, however, is a big business. In fiscal year 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, wells on federal and Native American lands were responsible for providing 11 percent of the natural gas and 7 percent of the oil used in the United States.
The BLM administers its programs through its headquarters office in Washington, D.C. and 12 state offices. Most of the state offices are located in the western United States. At the end of FY’15, about 32 million acres of BLM-managed lands were leased for oil and gas operations. The agency also oversees oil and gas operations on 56 million acres of Native American lands.
Among its other recommendations, the GAO suggested the BLM develop a management plan that addresses resources needed for conducting well and bond adequacy reviews and reclaiming orphaned wells. In addition, upon revising its bond adequacy review policy, the BLM should ensure that the reviews of nationwide and statewide bonds reflect the overall risk presented by oil and gas companies.
Taxpayers Still Shelling Out Billions Annually in Fossil Fuel Subsidies
Lorraine Chow - ecowatch
Jun. 04, 2018 01:30PM EST
The world's richest countries continue to subsidize at least $100 billion a year in subsidies for the production and use of coal, oil and gas, despite repeated pledges to phase out fossil fuels by 2025.
The Group of Seven, or G7, consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the U.S. The group, as well as the larger G20, agreed as early as 2009 to phase out fossil fuels in order to combat climate change.
But a new report from Britain's Overseas Development Institute (ODI) reveals that on average per year in 2015 and 2016, the G7 governments supplied at least $81 billion in fiscal support and $20 billion in public finance, for both production and consumption of oil, gas and coal at home and overseas.
"With less than seven years to meet their 2025 phase-out deadline, G7 governments continue to provide substantial support the production and use of oil, gas and coal," the authors stated.
The study, co-authored by Oil Change International, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Natural Resources Defense Council, was issued Monday ahead of the G7 summit in Canada.
"Governments often say they have no public resources to support the clean energy transition," the study's lead author Shelagh Whitley told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "What we're trying to do is highlight that those resources are there (but) it is being used inefficiently."
For the study, each G7 member was rated on the following measures: transparency; pledges and commitments; ending support for fossil fuel exploration; ending support for coal mining; ending support for oil and gas production; ending support for fossil fuel-based power; and ending support for fossil fuel use.
France ranked the highest overall, with 63 out of 100 points. While the country is lagging behind in its support for fossil fuel use, France earned the top spot for making early progress in ending fossil fuel exploration and production and ending coal mining, the researchers determined. Germany (62 points) and Canada (54 points) rounded out the top three in the dubious list.
Unsurprisingly—due to President Donald Trump's intention to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement and his administration's unrelenting push of fossil fuels—the U.S. was ranked lowest on the list, scoring only 42 out of 100 points.
The report showed that the U.S. spent $26 billion a year supporting fossil fuels and scored the worst in ending support for coal mining, a pet project of President Trump.
"Despite their numerous commitments, not only have G7 governments taken limited action to address fossil fuel subsidies but they have also failed to put in place any mechanisms to define and document the full extent of their support to oil, gas and coal, or to hold themselves accountable for achieving these pledges," the authors said.
The researchers urged the governments to establish concrete plans to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 as promised, Reuters reported.
"What should be a low-hanging fruit in terms of moving public resources away from fossil fuels is not happening, or where it is happening, it's not happening fast enough," Whitley told the news service.
The Group of Seven, or G7, consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the U.S. The group, as well as the larger G20, agreed as early as 2009 to phase out fossil fuels in order to combat climate change.
But a new report from Britain's Overseas Development Institute (ODI) reveals that on average per year in 2015 and 2016, the G7 governments supplied at least $81 billion in fiscal support and $20 billion in public finance, for both production and consumption of oil, gas and coal at home and overseas.
"With less than seven years to meet their 2025 phase-out deadline, G7 governments continue to provide substantial support the production and use of oil, gas and coal," the authors stated.
The study, co-authored by Oil Change International, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Natural Resources Defense Council, was issued Monday ahead of the G7 summit in Canada.
"Governments often say they have no public resources to support the clean energy transition," the study's lead author Shelagh Whitley told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "What we're trying to do is highlight that those resources are there (but) it is being used inefficiently."
For the study, each G7 member was rated on the following measures: transparency; pledges and commitments; ending support for fossil fuel exploration; ending support for coal mining; ending support for oil and gas production; ending support for fossil fuel-based power; and ending support for fossil fuel use.
France ranked the highest overall, with 63 out of 100 points. While the country is lagging behind in its support for fossil fuel use, France earned the top spot for making early progress in ending fossil fuel exploration and production and ending coal mining, the researchers determined. Germany (62 points) and Canada (54 points) rounded out the top three in the dubious list.
Unsurprisingly—due to President Donald Trump's intention to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement and his administration's unrelenting push of fossil fuels—the U.S. was ranked lowest on the list, scoring only 42 out of 100 points.
The report showed that the U.S. spent $26 billion a year supporting fossil fuels and scored the worst in ending support for coal mining, a pet project of President Trump.
"Despite their numerous commitments, not only have G7 governments taken limited action to address fossil fuel subsidies but they have also failed to put in place any mechanisms to define and document the full extent of their support to oil, gas and coal, or to hold themselves accountable for achieving these pledges," the authors said.
The researchers urged the governments to establish concrete plans to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 as promised, Reuters reported.
"What should be a low-hanging fruit in terms of moving public resources away from fossil fuels is not happening, or where it is happening, it's not happening fast enough," Whitley told the news service.
obeying their oil masters!!!!
US EPA grants refiners biofuel credits to remedy Obama-era waiver denials
Reuters - raw story
31 MAY 2018 AT 12:50 ET
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded tens of millions of dollars worth of biofuel blending credits for this year to refiners HollyFrontier and Sinclair Oil after they argued the agency had wrongly denied them waivers from the country’s biofuels law as far back as 2014, according to two sources and public filings.
The release of the Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs, marks the first reported instance of the EPA issuing tradable credits from previous years into the present market. It is likely to add fuel to an already fiery dispute between Big Oil and Big Corn over the future of America’s biofuel policy by opening the door to similar challenges from other refiners in the future.
The EPA’s move may put even more pressure on credit prices, which have plummeted to five-year lows amid the agency’s expansion of the small refinery waiver program. Credits fell to 20 cents each in early trading, down from 25 cents on Wednesday, on the Reuters report, traders said.
The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard requires refiners to blend specific volumes of biofuels like corn-based ethanol into the fuel supply each year and prove compliance by acquiring RINs that can be either earned or purchased. The law has helped farmers by creating a 15-billion-gallon market for ethanol, but refining companies have complained it costs them a fortune.
At issue is the EPA’s responsibility to release small refineries from the regulation if they can prove complying would cause them “disproportionate economic hardship.”
The agency has historically been closed-fisted with the exemptions but has awarded an unusually high number under the administration of President Donald Trump. It now appears to be taking measures to compensate for denials made by the agency during the administration of President Barack Obama.
The EPA decided to give HollyFrontier nearly $34 million worth of credits for this year to reverse a denial for a waiver for one of its Wyoming plants dating back to 2015 and undisclosed millions more to Sinclair for two of its facilities in the same state for 2014 and 2015, according to the filings and sources, who asked not to be named.
Both companies had challenged EPA’s denials in a federal appellate court in Colorado in 2016. That court in August 2017 ruled EPA had erred in denying Sinclair’s applications for exemptions by being too strict in its definition of disproportionate economic hardship and remanded the case back to EPA to come up with a remedy.
The HollyFrontier case had been put on hold during the Sinclair proceedings and was also remanded back to EPA at the agency’s request, according to the filings and sources.
“In the first quarter of 2018, the EPA allowed us to generate new 2018 vintage RINs to replace the RINs previously submitted to meet the Cheyenne Refinery’s 2015 RVO,” HollyFrontier disclosed in its most recent quarterly filing, valuing the RINs at $33.8 million.
The sources said Sinclair was also given RINs for this year as a remedy, though it was unclear how many or what their value was in dollars. The company is private and does not disclose its financial data.
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
HollyFrontier’s President and Chief Executive Officer George J. Damiris defended the waivers, saying that by granting them, EPA is following the law and underscoring their importance to small refineries.
“Small refineries are the lifeblood of local communities – they provide good paying jobs, support the local tax base, and help ensure our nation’s energy independence,” Damiris said in an emailed statement.
Susan Schoolfield, a spokeswoman for Sinclair, did not respond immediately to request for comment.
Blending credits have a two-year life cycle, meaning that the companies’ 2014 and 2015 credits came due for delivery to EPA in 2016 and 2017. The 2018 RINs could be used to prove compliance with the RFS as late as 2020.
‘MATERIAL ADVANTAGE’
The EPA’s decision to give the RINs to Sinclair and HollyFrontier as a remedy for errant waiver denials in the past, could open the door to similar challenges by other refiners, according to legal experts interviewed by Reuters.
The EPA’s decision not to disclose the release of the RINs into the notoriously opaque credit market could also open up questions about the agency’s handling of market-sensitive information, according to Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston.
“What the EPA did was issue a security and potentially conveyed a material advantage to these refiners without notifying the market,” he said.
The EPA is already facing at least two legal challenges and a wave of criticism over its handling of biofuels policy from corn farmers and their legislative backers who say the agency is undercutting a program Trump had vowed to protect.
The RFS was adopted more than a decade ago as a way to boost farmers, cut petroleum imports and reduce air pollution.
Caught between two key constituencies, Trump has been attempting to find ways to cut regulatory costs for merchant refiners like PBF Energy and Valero Energy Corp without angering farmers in the nation’s heartland, but has struggled to find solutions acceptable to both sides.
The release of the Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs, marks the first reported instance of the EPA issuing tradable credits from previous years into the present market. It is likely to add fuel to an already fiery dispute between Big Oil and Big Corn over the future of America’s biofuel policy by opening the door to similar challenges from other refiners in the future.
The EPA’s move may put even more pressure on credit prices, which have plummeted to five-year lows amid the agency’s expansion of the small refinery waiver program. Credits fell to 20 cents each in early trading, down from 25 cents on Wednesday, on the Reuters report, traders said.
The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard requires refiners to blend specific volumes of biofuels like corn-based ethanol into the fuel supply each year and prove compliance by acquiring RINs that can be either earned or purchased. The law has helped farmers by creating a 15-billion-gallon market for ethanol, but refining companies have complained it costs them a fortune.
At issue is the EPA’s responsibility to release small refineries from the regulation if they can prove complying would cause them “disproportionate economic hardship.”
The agency has historically been closed-fisted with the exemptions but has awarded an unusually high number under the administration of President Donald Trump. It now appears to be taking measures to compensate for denials made by the agency during the administration of President Barack Obama.
The EPA decided to give HollyFrontier nearly $34 million worth of credits for this year to reverse a denial for a waiver for one of its Wyoming plants dating back to 2015 and undisclosed millions more to Sinclair for two of its facilities in the same state for 2014 and 2015, according to the filings and sources, who asked not to be named.
Both companies had challenged EPA’s denials in a federal appellate court in Colorado in 2016. That court in August 2017 ruled EPA had erred in denying Sinclair’s applications for exemptions by being too strict in its definition of disproportionate economic hardship and remanded the case back to EPA to come up with a remedy.
The HollyFrontier case had been put on hold during the Sinclair proceedings and was also remanded back to EPA at the agency’s request, according to the filings and sources.
“In the first quarter of 2018, the EPA allowed us to generate new 2018 vintage RINs to replace the RINs previously submitted to meet the Cheyenne Refinery’s 2015 RVO,” HollyFrontier disclosed in its most recent quarterly filing, valuing the RINs at $33.8 million.
The sources said Sinclair was also given RINs for this year as a remedy, though it was unclear how many or what their value was in dollars. The company is private and does not disclose its financial data.
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
HollyFrontier’s President and Chief Executive Officer George J. Damiris defended the waivers, saying that by granting them, EPA is following the law and underscoring their importance to small refineries.
“Small refineries are the lifeblood of local communities – they provide good paying jobs, support the local tax base, and help ensure our nation’s energy independence,” Damiris said in an emailed statement.
Susan Schoolfield, a spokeswoman for Sinclair, did not respond immediately to request for comment.
Blending credits have a two-year life cycle, meaning that the companies’ 2014 and 2015 credits came due for delivery to EPA in 2016 and 2017. The 2018 RINs could be used to prove compliance with the RFS as late as 2020.
‘MATERIAL ADVANTAGE’
The EPA’s decision to give the RINs to Sinclair and HollyFrontier as a remedy for errant waiver denials in the past, could open the door to similar challenges by other refiners, according to legal experts interviewed by Reuters.
The EPA’s decision not to disclose the release of the RINs into the notoriously opaque credit market could also open up questions about the agency’s handling of market-sensitive information, according to Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston.
“What the EPA did was issue a security and potentially conveyed a material advantage to these refiners without notifying the market,” he said.
The EPA is already facing at least two legal challenges and a wave of criticism over its handling of biofuels policy from corn farmers and their legislative backers who say the agency is undercutting a program Trump had vowed to protect.
The RFS was adopted more than a decade ago as a way to boost farmers, cut petroleum imports and reduce air pollution.
Caught between two key constituencies, Trump has been attempting to find ways to cut regulatory costs for merchant refiners like PBF Energy and Valero Energy Corp without angering farmers in the nation’s heartland, but has struggled to find solutions acceptable to both sides.
Pennsylvania regulators suspend service again on troubled pipeline over safety issues
Pipeline project has been plagued by sinkholes and water contamination issues from the start.
MARK HAND - thinkprogress
MAY 24, 2018, 5:06 PM
Pennsylvania regulators ordered the owner of a natural gas liquids pipeline to suspend service on its existing pipeline and stop work on two proposed pipelines along the same route in Chester County, Pennsylvania where sinkholes appeared earlier this year.
An administrative law judge at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) issued her emergency order on Thursday in response to a petition filed by state Sen. Andrew Dinniman (D), who requested a halt to work on the pipeline project in West Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania, a part of Chester County that he represents.
Sunoco Pipeline LP, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, owns the existing Mariner East pipeline, an eight-inch-diameter pipeline built in the 1930s. The company also is building two additional natural gas liquids pipelines located along the same route. Mariner East 2 is a proposed 20-inch-diameter pipeline and Mariner East 2X is a proposed 16-inch-diameter pipeline.
The natural gas industry is finding the Marcellus and Utica shales in southwestern Pennsylvania rich with natural gas liquids. Wider-diameter pipelines are needed to get all of the natural gas liquids to terminals where they can then be shipped to overseas petrochemical plants.
“Sunoco has made deliberate managerial decisions to proceed in what appears to be a rushed manner in an apparent prioritization of profit over the best engineering practices available in our time that might best ensure public safety,” PUC Judge Elizabeth Barnes wrote in her order.
Given the accident history of construction on the two new Mariner East pipelines, such as sinkholes and spills, “there is a grave risk of rupture” on the existing Mariner East pipeline,” Barnes ruled. She also noted that water supplies have already been damaged in West Whiteland Township.
Controversy has also surrounded Sunoco’s hiring of a private security firm to conduct surveillance of landowners opposed to the pipeline crossing their land. Energy Transfer Partners’ other projects, most notably the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, have drawn similar scrutiny from regulators and pipeline opponents.
Last November, Energy Transfer Partners also faced a separate lawsuit from the State of Ohio against Rover Pipeline, operated and majority-owned by the pipeline company, for allegedly polluting state waterways as it constructs a 713-mile pipeline that would transport natural gas from southwest Pennsylvania across Ohio and into Michigan and Ontario, Canada.
The Mariner East pipeline shutdown comes less than a month after the PUC liftedan emergency order and allowed Sunoco to restart operations on the pipeline. The pipeline was shutdown in January after sinkholes appeared in Chester County, exposing the pipe’s bare steel. When it allowed operations to resume in early May, the PUC said construction of the two new pipelines posed no threat to the integrity of the existing Mariner East pipeline and that it was safe to resume operations.
Sunoco had not responded to a request for comment from ThinkProgress on the PUC’s order at the time this article was published.
Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the Grow America’s Infrastructure Now Coalition, a coalition of businesses, trade associations, and labor groups, said “this activist judge’s decision flies in the face of the extensive testing and review overseen by the Pennsylvania Utility Commission which led to the Commission’s unanimous decision to allow operations of Mariner East 1 to resume just three weeks ago.”
The “shocking development” further erodes regulatory certainty in Pennsylvania and risks the loss of billions of dollars in investment for new upstream, downstream, and midstream projects, Stevens said Thursday in a statement.
The judge’s order requires Sunoco to assess the condition of its old and new Mariner East pipelines, including the integrity of the pipe-wall thickness and welds on the old Mariner East pipeline.
The emergency order will remain in place until the conditions detailed in the order are met or until the PUC takes other action, commission spokesperson Nils Hagen-Frederiksen said in an email to ThinkProgress.
Parties wishing to dispute the order have seven days from the issuance of the order to file briefs with the PUC, and the commission has 30 days from the date of the order to act, Frederiksen said.
The order “provides much needed protection for the public from the dangers Sunoco has inflicted upon communities in Chester County and beyond,” Joseph Otis Minott, executive director and chief counsel of the Clean Air Council, a Philadelphia-based environmental group, said Thursday in a statement.
Minott said his group worked with Sen. Dinniman to secure “this great victory” on behalf of his constituents.
Dinniman, who lives about two miles from the pipeline construction, is a member of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee and the Joint Legislative Air and Water Pollution Control and Conservation Committee
In his petition, Dinniman said the construction of the two new pipelines through the township will continue to endanger private and public drinking water supplies and continue to risk sinkholes and other subsidence’s endangering homes.
The existing Mariner East pipeline delivers natural gas liquids extracted in the Marcellus Shale to the Marcus Hook terminal near Philadelphia. From the terminal, the natural gas liquids are exported by ship to a petrochemical plant in Norway.
An administrative law judge at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) issued her emergency order on Thursday in response to a petition filed by state Sen. Andrew Dinniman (D), who requested a halt to work on the pipeline project in West Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania, a part of Chester County that he represents.
Sunoco Pipeline LP, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, owns the existing Mariner East pipeline, an eight-inch-diameter pipeline built in the 1930s. The company also is building two additional natural gas liquids pipelines located along the same route. Mariner East 2 is a proposed 20-inch-diameter pipeline and Mariner East 2X is a proposed 16-inch-diameter pipeline.
The natural gas industry is finding the Marcellus and Utica shales in southwestern Pennsylvania rich with natural gas liquids. Wider-diameter pipelines are needed to get all of the natural gas liquids to terminals where they can then be shipped to overseas petrochemical plants.
“Sunoco has made deliberate managerial decisions to proceed in what appears to be a rushed manner in an apparent prioritization of profit over the best engineering practices available in our time that might best ensure public safety,” PUC Judge Elizabeth Barnes wrote in her order.
Given the accident history of construction on the two new Mariner East pipelines, such as sinkholes and spills, “there is a grave risk of rupture” on the existing Mariner East pipeline,” Barnes ruled. She also noted that water supplies have already been damaged in West Whiteland Township.
Controversy has also surrounded Sunoco’s hiring of a private security firm to conduct surveillance of landowners opposed to the pipeline crossing their land. Energy Transfer Partners’ other projects, most notably the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, have drawn similar scrutiny from regulators and pipeline opponents.
Last November, Energy Transfer Partners also faced a separate lawsuit from the State of Ohio against Rover Pipeline, operated and majority-owned by the pipeline company, for allegedly polluting state waterways as it constructs a 713-mile pipeline that would transport natural gas from southwest Pennsylvania across Ohio and into Michigan and Ontario, Canada.
The Mariner East pipeline shutdown comes less than a month after the PUC liftedan emergency order and allowed Sunoco to restart operations on the pipeline. The pipeline was shutdown in January after sinkholes appeared in Chester County, exposing the pipe’s bare steel. When it allowed operations to resume in early May, the PUC said construction of the two new pipelines posed no threat to the integrity of the existing Mariner East pipeline and that it was safe to resume operations.
Sunoco had not responded to a request for comment from ThinkProgress on the PUC’s order at the time this article was published.
Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the Grow America’s Infrastructure Now Coalition, a coalition of businesses, trade associations, and labor groups, said “this activist judge’s decision flies in the face of the extensive testing and review overseen by the Pennsylvania Utility Commission which led to the Commission’s unanimous decision to allow operations of Mariner East 1 to resume just three weeks ago.”
The “shocking development” further erodes regulatory certainty in Pennsylvania and risks the loss of billions of dollars in investment for new upstream, downstream, and midstream projects, Stevens said Thursday in a statement.
The judge’s order requires Sunoco to assess the condition of its old and new Mariner East pipelines, including the integrity of the pipe-wall thickness and welds on the old Mariner East pipeline.
The emergency order will remain in place until the conditions detailed in the order are met or until the PUC takes other action, commission spokesperson Nils Hagen-Frederiksen said in an email to ThinkProgress.
Parties wishing to dispute the order have seven days from the issuance of the order to file briefs with the PUC, and the commission has 30 days from the date of the order to act, Frederiksen said.
The order “provides much needed protection for the public from the dangers Sunoco has inflicted upon communities in Chester County and beyond,” Joseph Otis Minott, executive director and chief counsel of the Clean Air Council, a Philadelphia-based environmental group, said Thursday in a statement.
Minott said his group worked with Sen. Dinniman to secure “this great victory” on behalf of his constituents.
Dinniman, who lives about two miles from the pipeline construction, is a member of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee and the Joint Legislative Air and Water Pollution Control and Conservation Committee
In his petition, Dinniman said the construction of the two new pipelines through the township will continue to endanger private and public drinking water supplies and continue to risk sinkholes and other subsidence’s endangering homes.
The existing Mariner East pipeline delivers natural gas liquids extracted in the Marcellus Shale to the Marcus Hook terminal near Philadelphia. From the terminal, the natural gas liquids are exported by ship to a petrochemical plant in Norway.
Louisiana Judge Rules Bayou Bridge Pipeline's Coastal Use Permit Is Illegal
Tuesday, May 08, 2018
By Karen Savage, Bridge the Gulf | Report - truthout
A judge has ruled that the coastal use permit issued for nearly 18 miles of Energy Transfer Partners’ Bayou Bridge pipeline is illegal because the state did not require it to take into consideration impacts the project would have on St. James, a historic and predominately black community located at the tail end of the 163-mile project.
On Friday, District Judge Alvin Turner, Jr. ruled that the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (LDNR) failed to follow state guidelines when issuing a coastal use permit to Bayou Bridge Pipeine LLC, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners.
The pipeline is projected to carry nearly a million barrels of crude oil a day under the St. James community, which is already surrounded by tank farms and other oil and gas infrastructure.
"Here in St. James we are in desperate need for an evacuation plan that will allow us to get out of St. James fast when something spills or explodes," said Genevieve Butler, a St. James resident and plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources for not considering the needs of her community when it granted the pipeline permit.
If completed, the Bayou Bridge pipeline would run from Lake Charles to St. James Louisiana, cutting through 11 Louisiana parishes and crossing 700 bodies of water. It is part of a larger Energy Transfer Partners project slated to connect the controversial Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota to refineries in St. James Parish and nearby export terminals.
The suit was filed last year by Pastor Harry Joseph, Sr., Genevieve Butler, Humanitarian Enterprise of Loving People (H.E.L.P.), Gulf Restoration Network, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper and Bold Louisiana, to appeal the issuance of the coastal use permit.
"We're excited, the whole community's excited and we're going to push this - they've got to actually do it, they can't say they're trying, we need to have an actual evacuation route in place," said Pastor Harry Joseph from the St. James community.
In his ruling, Judge Turner said the LDNR’s issuance of ETP’s coastal use permit was in violation of Louisiana’s Coastal Use Guidelines, which require companies working in Louisiana’s environmentally sensitive coastal zone to obtain special coastal use permits.
Turner said the LDNR failed to require ETP to adhere to two strict guidelines created to minimize impacts to nearby communities. Instead, the DNR granted the permit based on a less stringent guideline, "thereby eliminating the increased protections which should have been afforded prior to issuing a permit to transport crude oil through the neighborhoods of St. James Parish and coastal areas."
He also said the Department failed to articulate any rational basis for not forcing ETP to adhere to the stricter guidelines during the permitting process.
Turner ordered the LDNR "to require Bayou Bridge Pipeline, LLC to develop effective environmental protection and emergency or contingency plans relative to evacuation in the event of a spill or other disaster."
ETP is required to obtain a coastal use permit for the nearly 18-mile stretch of the pipeline that is proposed to run through Louisiana’s sensitive coastal areas known as the Coastal Management Zone.
"District 5, the St James community, is Louisiana’s center for pipeline disasters -- their ditches run with oil. And yet the state has not given the people of St. James the tools to protect themselves from harm," said Scott Eustis with the Gulf Restoration Network. "This pipeline construction is filling drainage ditches from an African American community that already floods in heavy rain. DNR has ignored us, and ignored St James, but they can’t ignore this injustice any longer."
ETP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In addition to the coastal use permit, ETP was required to obtain permits from the Army Corp of Engineers (ACE) and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) prior to construction on the 163-mile project, which began in January.
This ruling does not affect those permits, but a similar suit filed against the US Army Corps of Engineers could.
In January, a group of environmental organizations filed suit against the Army Corps, alleging that it acted arbitrarily and capriciously when issuing its permit for the pipeline. The groups contend that the Corps violated the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by issuing the permit without an environmental impact statement.
In a ruling designed to "prevent further irreparable harm to Atchafalaya Basin," U.S. District Judge Shelley Dick in February temporarily stopped work in the Atchafalaya Basin until the resolution of that lawsuit. ETP appealed and in March, an appeals court allowed the company to resume work. Last week, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case. A final decision is expected in the coming weeks.
Last week, citizen monitors, who call themselves water protectors, say they observed several potential permit violations near the St. James community where sediment controls were absent or highly compromised. Sediment control is necessary to prevent dirt and rocks used during construction from entering nearby ditches, which can lead to blocked culverts and increased flooding.
"It's clear they are hurrying up construction in St. James Parish. They drove over fencing and culverts - the work is sloppy and demonstrates more than ever the vulnerability of St. James Parish in building this pipeline," said Sarah Howard of Louisiana Bucket Brigade, who was one of the monitors.
ETP and its subsidiaries have been plagued with violations. According to a recent report, the construction of the Mariner and Rover pipelines in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia has resulted in over 2.4 million gallons of spills, over 100 notices of violations and other non-compliance issues, and 6 stop work orders.
In February, ETP’s subsidiary, Sunoco Inc. was fined a record $12.6 million by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for violations incurred during the construction of the Mariner East 2 Pipeline. Last year ETP was fined millions for violations during construction of the Rover Pipeline.
"It seems like nearly every time you get news on this company, it's because Energy Transfer Partners has been a bad actor to a community somewhere. They have spilled, poisoned, destroyed, and injured their way across this country," said Cherri Foytlin, co-founder of the L’eau Est La Vie resistence camp, which has engaged in several non-violent direct actions against the pipeline.
"I have hope that this decision will bring the focus back to where it belongs, on the people who will suffer the biggest burden while receiving the smallest benefit should this destructive project be allowed to continue."
On Friday, District Judge Alvin Turner, Jr. ruled that the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (LDNR) failed to follow state guidelines when issuing a coastal use permit to Bayou Bridge Pipeine LLC, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners.
The pipeline is projected to carry nearly a million barrels of crude oil a day under the St. James community, which is already surrounded by tank farms and other oil and gas infrastructure.
"Here in St. James we are in desperate need for an evacuation plan that will allow us to get out of St. James fast when something spills or explodes," said Genevieve Butler, a St. James resident and plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources for not considering the needs of her community when it granted the pipeline permit.
If completed, the Bayou Bridge pipeline would run from Lake Charles to St. James Louisiana, cutting through 11 Louisiana parishes and crossing 700 bodies of water. It is part of a larger Energy Transfer Partners project slated to connect the controversial Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota to refineries in St. James Parish and nearby export terminals.
The suit was filed last year by Pastor Harry Joseph, Sr., Genevieve Butler, Humanitarian Enterprise of Loving People (H.E.L.P.), Gulf Restoration Network, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper and Bold Louisiana, to appeal the issuance of the coastal use permit.
"We're excited, the whole community's excited and we're going to push this - they've got to actually do it, they can't say they're trying, we need to have an actual evacuation route in place," said Pastor Harry Joseph from the St. James community.
In his ruling, Judge Turner said the LDNR’s issuance of ETP’s coastal use permit was in violation of Louisiana’s Coastal Use Guidelines, which require companies working in Louisiana’s environmentally sensitive coastal zone to obtain special coastal use permits.
Turner said the LDNR failed to require ETP to adhere to two strict guidelines created to minimize impacts to nearby communities. Instead, the DNR granted the permit based on a less stringent guideline, "thereby eliminating the increased protections which should have been afforded prior to issuing a permit to transport crude oil through the neighborhoods of St. James Parish and coastal areas."
He also said the Department failed to articulate any rational basis for not forcing ETP to adhere to the stricter guidelines during the permitting process.
Turner ordered the LDNR "to require Bayou Bridge Pipeline, LLC to develop effective environmental protection and emergency or contingency plans relative to evacuation in the event of a spill or other disaster."
ETP is required to obtain a coastal use permit for the nearly 18-mile stretch of the pipeline that is proposed to run through Louisiana’s sensitive coastal areas known as the Coastal Management Zone.
"District 5, the St James community, is Louisiana’s center for pipeline disasters -- their ditches run with oil. And yet the state has not given the people of St. James the tools to protect themselves from harm," said Scott Eustis with the Gulf Restoration Network. "This pipeline construction is filling drainage ditches from an African American community that already floods in heavy rain. DNR has ignored us, and ignored St James, but they can’t ignore this injustice any longer."
ETP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In addition to the coastal use permit, ETP was required to obtain permits from the Army Corp of Engineers (ACE) and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) prior to construction on the 163-mile project, which began in January.
This ruling does not affect those permits, but a similar suit filed against the US Army Corps of Engineers could.
In January, a group of environmental organizations filed suit against the Army Corps, alleging that it acted arbitrarily and capriciously when issuing its permit for the pipeline. The groups contend that the Corps violated the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by issuing the permit without an environmental impact statement.
In a ruling designed to "prevent further irreparable harm to Atchafalaya Basin," U.S. District Judge Shelley Dick in February temporarily stopped work in the Atchafalaya Basin until the resolution of that lawsuit. ETP appealed and in March, an appeals court allowed the company to resume work. Last week, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case. A final decision is expected in the coming weeks.
Last week, citizen monitors, who call themselves water protectors, say they observed several potential permit violations near the St. James community where sediment controls were absent or highly compromised. Sediment control is necessary to prevent dirt and rocks used during construction from entering nearby ditches, which can lead to blocked culverts and increased flooding.
"It's clear they are hurrying up construction in St. James Parish. They drove over fencing and culverts - the work is sloppy and demonstrates more than ever the vulnerability of St. James Parish in building this pipeline," said Sarah Howard of Louisiana Bucket Brigade, who was one of the monitors.
ETP and its subsidiaries have been plagued with violations. According to a recent report, the construction of the Mariner and Rover pipelines in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia has resulted in over 2.4 million gallons of spills, over 100 notices of violations and other non-compliance issues, and 6 stop work orders.
In February, ETP’s subsidiary, Sunoco Inc. was fined a record $12.6 million by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for violations incurred during the construction of the Mariner East 2 Pipeline. Last year ETP was fined millions for violations during construction of the Rover Pipeline.
"It seems like nearly every time you get news on this company, it's because Energy Transfer Partners has been a bad actor to a community somewhere. They have spilled, poisoned, destroyed, and injured their way across this country," said Cherri Foytlin, co-founder of the L’eau Est La Vie resistence camp, which has engaged in several non-violent direct actions against the pipeline.
"I have hope that this decision will bring the focus back to where it belongs, on the people who will suffer the biggest burden while receiving the smallest benefit should this destructive project be allowed to continue."
Actors were paid to attend New Orleans city council meetings supporting power plant
A report says performers were paid between $60 and $200 to support Entergy's efforts.
E.A. CRUNDEN - think progress
MAY 5, 2018, 2:11 PM
Some of the concerned citizens who turned up at city council meetings in New Orleans to support a proposed power plant were in fact paid actors, according to a new report.
The Lens New Orleans reported Friday that at least four people received payment for appearing at city council meetings last October and February. The meetings were held to survey public opinion on efforts by Entergy, an energy company that serves areas throughout the Deep South, to develop a new power plant in New Orleans East, located in the city’s Ninth Ward.
In March, the city council approved the power plant by a vote of 6-1, overruling the objections of opponents who say the plant is expensive and will pollute eastern New Orleans. A number of local residents spoke in favor of the power plant over the course of more than 22 meetings. But doubts are now being raised over just how authentic those voices were.
Roughly 50 people turned out to support a $210 million effort to build a power plant in the city during one October meeting, but several attendees told the Lens they were paid $60 to wear orange shirts and express support for the endeavor.
Actors with speaking roles who read pre-written statements were reportedly paid $200. One told the publication he recognized as many as 15 people in the audience as local performers.
“They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power,” said Keith Keough, who said that he was “not political” but needed the money.
The actors were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements barring them from discussing the agreement, but several agreed to speak with the Lens on condition of anonymity. Keough, who moved to North Carolina in the time period following the meetings, agreed to be named after a friend who recognized him at the gatherings encouraged him to come forward.
The staged performances seem to have been organized by two men, Garrett Wilkerson and Daniel Taylor, who are not believed to be from New Orleans. In a Facebook message, Wilkerson laid out the specifics of the job to one actor.
“The council already supports it, this is mostly just to show them that the citizens don’t have a problem with it,” Wilkerson said. “Free pizza and a round of drinks after it’s over, at which point pay will be dispersed in cash… I’m prepared to offer you a non speaking role for $60 plus bonus potential.”
Talking points offered to those with speaking roles included comparing New Orleans to a developing country and indicating the power plant might reduce crime. Actors were later paid for their efforts at a local Dave & Busters.
Officials for Entergy released a statement following the Lens’ report, saying the company played no role in hiring the actors.
“As we have stated previously, Entergy New Orleans did not pay anyone to attend the Council meetings or direct anyone to attend public meetings. Instead, we worked tirelessly to encourage our supporters to take time from their busy workday schedules to testify on behalf of this project. That scores of them did so in multiple settings is a testament to a tremendous level of support,” the statement read.
Entergy has argued the power plant is necessary to offset potential transmission failure across New Orleans. But the plant has been met with strong opposition from environmentalists, who worry it will exacerbate pollution in the Southern city.
Local residents have also questioned why pre-existing transmission lines operated by the company can’t be updated, something that would cost far less money. Activists and lawmakers are now concerned that paid actors may have played an outsized role in securing approval for the plant.
Councilwoman Stacy Head, the lone dissenting vote against the power plant, called the prospect of paid actors “morally reprehensible”.
“I think it had a phenomenal impact on public opinion,” she said. It is unclear whether hiring the actors would constitute a violation of the law.
A coalition of organizations opposing the power plant, including the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and the Sierra Club, have said they plan to ask the New Orleans City Council and other officials to examine whether or not the actors were in fact paid and to take legal action if necessary. A separate lawsuitbrought by the coalition in April also says the city council broke the law in failing to seriously consider alternatives to the plant.
Entergy has also come under fire for power outages across the city unrelated to the new power plant. Between June 1, 2016, and May 31, 2017, the company saidit has experienced roughly 2,600 outages. Of those, 1,500 happened during fair weather conditions with minimal interference from rain and wind.
The Lens New Orleans reported Friday that at least four people received payment for appearing at city council meetings last October and February. The meetings were held to survey public opinion on efforts by Entergy, an energy company that serves areas throughout the Deep South, to develop a new power plant in New Orleans East, located in the city’s Ninth Ward.
In March, the city council approved the power plant by a vote of 6-1, overruling the objections of opponents who say the plant is expensive and will pollute eastern New Orleans. A number of local residents spoke in favor of the power plant over the course of more than 22 meetings. But doubts are now being raised over just how authentic those voices were.
Roughly 50 people turned out to support a $210 million effort to build a power plant in the city during one October meeting, but several attendees told the Lens they were paid $60 to wear orange shirts and express support for the endeavor.
Actors with speaking roles who read pre-written statements were reportedly paid $200. One told the publication he recognized as many as 15 people in the audience as local performers.
“They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power,” said Keith Keough, who said that he was “not political” but needed the money.
The actors were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements barring them from discussing the agreement, but several agreed to speak with the Lens on condition of anonymity. Keough, who moved to North Carolina in the time period following the meetings, agreed to be named after a friend who recognized him at the gatherings encouraged him to come forward.
The staged performances seem to have been organized by two men, Garrett Wilkerson and Daniel Taylor, who are not believed to be from New Orleans. In a Facebook message, Wilkerson laid out the specifics of the job to one actor.
“The council already supports it, this is mostly just to show them that the citizens don’t have a problem with it,” Wilkerson said. “Free pizza and a round of drinks after it’s over, at which point pay will be dispersed in cash… I’m prepared to offer you a non speaking role for $60 plus bonus potential.”
Talking points offered to those with speaking roles included comparing New Orleans to a developing country and indicating the power plant might reduce crime. Actors were later paid for their efforts at a local Dave & Busters.
Officials for Entergy released a statement following the Lens’ report, saying the company played no role in hiring the actors.
“As we have stated previously, Entergy New Orleans did not pay anyone to attend the Council meetings or direct anyone to attend public meetings. Instead, we worked tirelessly to encourage our supporters to take time from their busy workday schedules to testify on behalf of this project. That scores of them did so in multiple settings is a testament to a tremendous level of support,” the statement read.
Entergy has argued the power plant is necessary to offset potential transmission failure across New Orleans. But the plant has been met with strong opposition from environmentalists, who worry it will exacerbate pollution in the Southern city.
Local residents have also questioned why pre-existing transmission lines operated by the company can’t be updated, something that would cost far less money. Activists and lawmakers are now concerned that paid actors may have played an outsized role in securing approval for the plant.
Councilwoman Stacy Head, the lone dissenting vote against the power plant, called the prospect of paid actors “morally reprehensible”.
“I think it had a phenomenal impact on public opinion,” she said. It is unclear whether hiring the actors would constitute a violation of the law.
A coalition of organizations opposing the power plant, including the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and the Sierra Club, have said they plan to ask the New Orleans City Council and other officials to examine whether or not the actors were in fact paid and to take legal action if necessary. A separate lawsuitbrought by the coalition in April also says the city council broke the law in failing to seriously consider alternatives to the plant.
Entergy has also come under fire for power outages across the city unrelated to the new power plant. Between June 1, 2016, and May 31, 2017, the company saidit has experienced roughly 2,600 outages. Of those, 1,500 happened during fair weather conditions with minimal interference from rain and wind.
Exclusive: US official appeared to delay protections for endangered species at behest of oil group
The energy friendly agenda inside Trump’s interior department is revealed in records obtained by the Guardian and the watchdog groups Documented and the Western Values Project
Jimmy Tobias
the guardian
Fri 20 Apr 2018 06.00 EDT
The Texas hornshell is a sleek green-grey mussel that once thrived in the Rio Grande watershed, its habitat stretching from southern New Mexico down into the arid Texas borderlands. Some of its habitat happens to overlap with rich deposits of oil and gas.
Amid a long-term decline in its range, the Obama administration in 2016 proposed to declare the mussel an endangered species. Upon taking office, however, the Trump administration changed tack.
A top interior department official, Vincent DeVito, appears to take credit for helping to delay federal protections for the species at the behest of fossil-fuel industry groups, one of several examples of his willingness to prioritize the needs of extractive industries with business before the government, according to public records obtained by the Guardian and Pacific Standard as well as Documented and the Western Values Project, both watchdog groups.
DeVito, a Boston energy lawyer and the former co-chair of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in Massachusetts, is a little-known figure in the US government. He is one of a host of political appointees hired by Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary whose department oversees well over 400m acres of public land and can determine the fate of species that inhabit them.
Yet DeVito is now emerging as a critical player. At a speech last summer to Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group backed by the Koch brothers, DeVito described his role at the department as “the office of energy dominance”. Officially, there is no such office, though “energy dominance” has become a slogan for the interior department’s fossil-fuel-first policy agenda.
“The war on American energy is over,” DeVito told the activists, according to a recording of the speech obtained by the Guardian. “And, matter-of-fact, if there is a war, we’re going to win it and we’re going full bore,” he said, before adding that the administration’s approach would be a “responsible” one.
Matters for the Texas hornshell case came to a head in June 2017, when the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), an industry trade group, met with interior department officials, including both Zinke and DeVito. Two weeks later an IPAA staffer emailed DeVito to ask that the species listing be delayed for six months, citing industry opposition.
“We really hope that you can intervene before this species gets listed next month,” Samantha McDonald, the IPAA’s government relations director, wrote to DeVito. In his reply, DeVito asked that McDonald keep him apprised of “what you may be hearing as this unfolds”.
Less than a month later, in August, the US Fish and Wildlife Service granted the delay that IPAA sought. McDonald again wrote DeVito, as well as the acting director of the fish and wildlife service, in an email with the subject line “THANK YOU!”
“On behalf of my members, I wanted to thank you for the 6-month delay on the Texas Hornshell,” she wrote, adding that it was “a good call”.
DeVito responded to McDonald that same day. “No problem,” he wrote.
Although the mussel was eventually granted protections in February 2018, former officials at the Department of the Interior (DoI) officials with knowledge of the department’s rules and procedures say DeVito’s apparent involvement in the listing process raises both ethical and legal questions.
“Listing decisions under the Endangered Species Act are meant to be entirely science- based decisions that result from – in some cases – years of review by experts in the field, not political appointees,” says Elizabeth Klein, a former associate deputy secretary at the DoI during the Obama years and now the deputy director of New York University’s state energy and environmental impact center.
“A delay in and of itself might not be the end of the world – but then again it very well could be for an imperiled species.”
Charles Randklev, a research scientist at Texas A&M’s Natural Resources Institute who has closely studied the hornshell, said the species is “standing on the brink”.
“We were all taken by surprise,” he said of the listing delay.
In a statement, the interior department press secretary, Heather Swift, said that DeVito “disagrees with [The Guardian’s] analysis of the emails”.
DeVito “maintains that he simply responded with an acknowledgement of receipt on the mussel email and maintains he had no role whatsoever in the listing”, Swift said.
Referencing comments by Zinke, she noted: “Political appointees are not at the department to manipulate data, they are here to make informed decisions and policy.”
DeVito’s penchant for “energy dominance” has played out in other ways as well. As chairman of the interior department’s royalty policy committee, he helps determine the royalty rates that energy companies must pay to drill and mine on federal lands and waters, effectively encouraging or disincentivizing them.
At his Americans for Prosperity speech, Devito described how he consulted closely with fossil fuel groups before recommending to Zinke in February that the interior department reduce royalty rates on offshore oil and gas drillers by a third, from 18.75% to 12.5%.
Ultimately, Zinke rejected that proposed reduction, but DeVito’s committee and its affiliated working groups labored to deliver on other industry desires as well, including drafting proposals to roll back regulations.
DeVito’s energy agenda also took him to West Virginia last year, where he helped coal interests obtain federal approval for a new mine near the habitat of Appalachia’s imperiled Big Sandy crayfish.
“Mining is the single biggest factor that has eliminated this species from a lot of its range,” said Roger Thoma, a senior research associate at the Midwest Biodiversity Institute who has surveyed the crayfish extensively.
In 2016, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) listed the Big Sandy crayfish as threatened, meaning new coal mines are required to consult with FWS before initiating projects that might prove harmful. One such project was the Berwind mine, an underground coal operation in the southern West Virginia owned by the company Ramaco Resources, several of whose board members are major Trump campaign contributors.
As the Fish and Wildlife Service deliberated through 2016 and early 2017 over how best Berwind and other mines might mitigate potential harm to the crayfish, the industry chafed at the wait. “That is a long time to have multi-million dollar mine project investments that would employ hundreds pending” due to uncertainty around crayfish protection standards, said West Virginia Coal Association vice-president Jason Bostic.
On June 14 and 15 last year, DeVito traveled to West Virginia and came to the industry’s aid. According to records, his trip was planned in part by the West Virginia Coal Association itself, which submitted a trip schedule to one of DeVito’s colleagues. The schedule included meetings with the coal association as well as both state and FWS regulators overseeing crayfish conservation in the region.
Four days after DeVito’s trip, the Fish and Wildlife service approved the Berwind mine’s protection plan for the crayfish. In his speech to Americans for Prosperity, DeVito highlighted his role in enabling the mine’s approval.
He loved fixing “small problems the best”, he told the crowd, “because if I go out to West Virginia and I rescue a coal project from bureaucratic entanglement, and then you see two days later the company in the field with guys going back to work, that is pretty rewarding.”
Conservationists, however, say the DoI’s decision to approve the Berwind mine’s crayfish protection plan was deeply flawed.
Such plans “are supposed to be these very thorough documents … about how mining operators will protect the species,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued in 2012 to have the Big Sandy crayfish listed under the Endangered Species Act. “This one is short, and doesn’t go into detail. It is woefully inadequate.”
Later DeVito went even further, and added his signature in red pen to a plan thatguides regulatory scrutiny of future mines operating in or near crayfish habitat. Former interior department officials familiar with FWS rules and regulations say that a lawyer and political appointee like DeVito has neither the scientific expertise nor the authority to approve such a science-based guidance.
“It a scientific integrity violation for a political appointee to essentially leapfrog the Fish and Wildlife Service’s process when you have an Endangered Species Act listing involved,” says Joel Clement, a long-time interior department scientist and now whistleblower who left the department after being pushed out of his post.
“It is absolutely inappropriate. As a senior advisor [DeVito] has no authority of position – so essentially that guidance was not worth the paper it was written on.” Nevertheless, the guidance DeVito signed appeared to remain in effect for nine months, until state and federal regulators updated and approved a more stringent version in late March.
In the end, DeVito’s trip to West Virginia helped feed a broader narrative that Donald Trump has promoted.
Less than two months after the trip, Trump arrived in West Virginia too, where he held a boisterous political rally.
“As president,” Trump said to his adoring crowd, “we are putting our coal miners back to work.”
Amid a long-term decline in its range, the Obama administration in 2016 proposed to declare the mussel an endangered species. Upon taking office, however, the Trump administration changed tack.
A top interior department official, Vincent DeVito, appears to take credit for helping to delay federal protections for the species at the behest of fossil-fuel industry groups, one of several examples of his willingness to prioritize the needs of extractive industries with business before the government, according to public records obtained by the Guardian and Pacific Standard as well as Documented and the Western Values Project, both watchdog groups.
DeVito, a Boston energy lawyer and the former co-chair of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in Massachusetts, is a little-known figure in the US government. He is one of a host of political appointees hired by Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary whose department oversees well over 400m acres of public land and can determine the fate of species that inhabit them.
Yet DeVito is now emerging as a critical player. At a speech last summer to Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group backed by the Koch brothers, DeVito described his role at the department as “the office of energy dominance”. Officially, there is no such office, though “energy dominance” has become a slogan for the interior department’s fossil-fuel-first policy agenda.
“The war on American energy is over,” DeVito told the activists, according to a recording of the speech obtained by the Guardian. “And, matter-of-fact, if there is a war, we’re going to win it and we’re going full bore,” he said, before adding that the administration’s approach would be a “responsible” one.
Matters for the Texas hornshell case came to a head in June 2017, when the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), an industry trade group, met with interior department officials, including both Zinke and DeVito. Two weeks later an IPAA staffer emailed DeVito to ask that the species listing be delayed for six months, citing industry opposition.
“We really hope that you can intervene before this species gets listed next month,” Samantha McDonald, the IPAA’s government relations director, wrote to DeVito. In his reply, DeVito asked that McDonald keep him apprised of “what you may be hearing as this unfolds”.
Less than a month later, in August, the US Fish and Wildlife Service granted the delay that IPAA sought. McDonald again wrote DeVito, as well as the acting director of the fish and wildlife service, in an email with the subject line “THANK YOU!”
“On behalf of my members, I wanted to thank you for the 6-month delay on the Texas Hornshell,” she wrote, adding that it was “a good call”.
DeVito responded to McDonald that same day. “No problem,” he wrote.
Although the mussel was eventually granted protections in February 2018, former officials at the Department of the Interior (DoI) officials with knowledge of the department’s rules and procedures say DeVito’s apparent involvement in the listing process raises both ethical and legal questions.
“Listing decisions under the Endangered Species Act are meant to be entirely science- based decisions that result from – in some cases – years of review by experts in the field, not political appointees,” says Elizabeth Klein, a former associate deputy secretary at the DoI during the Obama years and now the deputy director of New York University’s state energy and environmental impact center.
“A delay in and of itself might not be the end of the world – but then again it very well could be for an imperiled species.”
Charles Randklev, a research scientist at Texas A&M’s Natural Resources Institute who has closely studied the hornshell, said the species is “standing on the brink”.
“We were all taken by surprise,” he said of the listing delay.
In a statement, the interior department press secretary, Heather Swift, said that DeVito “disagrees with [The Guardian’s] analysis of the emails”.
DeVito “maintains that he simply responded with an acknowledgement of receipt on the mussel email and maintains he had no role whatsoever in the listing”, Swift said.
Referencing comments by Zinke, she noted: “Political appointees are not at the department to manipulate data, they are here to make informed decisions and policy.”
DeVito’s penchant for “energy dominance” has played out in other ways as well. As chairman of the interior department’s royalty policy committee, he helps determine the royalty rates that energy companies must pay to drill and mine on federal lands and waters, effectively encouraging or disincentivizing them.
At his Americans for Prosperity speech, Devito described how he consulted closely with fossil fuel groups before recommending to Zinke in February that the interior department reduce royalty rates on offshore oil and gas drillers by a third, from 18.75% to 12.5%.
Ultimately, Zinke rejected that proposed reduction, but DeVito’s committee and its affiliated working groups labored to deliver on other industry desires as well, including drafting proposals to roll back regulations.
DeVito’s energy agenda also took him to West Virginia last year, where he helped coal interests obtain federal approval for a new mine near the habitat of Appalachia’s imperiled Big Sandy crayfish.
“Mining is the single biggest factor that has eliminated this species from a lot of its range,” said Roger Thoma, a senior research associate at the Midwest Biodiversity Institute who has surveyed the crayfish extensively.
In 2016, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) listed the Big Sandy crayfish as threatened, meaning new coal mines are required to consult with FWS before initiating projects that might prove harmful. One such project was the Berwind mine, an underground coal operation in the southern West Virginia owned by the company Ramaco Resources, several of whose board members are major Trump campaign contributors.
As the Fish and Wildlife Service deliberated through 2016 and early 2017 over how best Berwind and other mines might mitigate potential harm to the crayfish, the industry chafed at the wait. “That is a long time to have multi-million dollar mine project investments that would employ hundreds pending” due to uncertainty around crayfish protection standards, said West Virginia Coal Association vice-president Jason Bostic.
On June 14 and 15 last year, DeVito traveled to West Virginia and came to the industry’s aid. According to records, his trip was planned in part by the West Virginia Coal Association itself, which submitted a trip schedule to one of DeVito’s colleagues. The schedule included meetings with the coal association as well as both state and FWS regulators overseeing crayfish conservation in the region.
Four days after DeVito’s trip, the Fish and Wildlife service approved the Berwind mine’s protection plan for the crayfish. In his speech to Americans for Prosperity, DeVito highlighted his role in enabling the mine’s approval.
He loved fixing “small problems the best”, he told the crowd, “because if I go out to West Virginia and I rescue a coal project from bureaucratic entanglement, and then you see two days later the company in the field with guys going back to work, that is pretty rewarding.”
Conservationists, however, say the DoI’s decision to approve the Berwind mine’s crayfish protection plan was deeply flawed.
Such plans “are supposed to be these very thorough documents … about how mining operators will protect the species,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued in 2012 to have the Big Sandy crayfish listed under the Endangered Species Act. “This one is short, and doesn’t go into detail. It is woefully inadequate.”
Later DeVito went even further, and added his signature in red pen to a plan thatguides regulatory scrutiny of future mines operating in or near crayfish habitat. Former interior department officials familiar with FWS rules and regulations say that a lawyer and political appointee like DeVito has neither the scientific expertise nor the authority to approve such a science-based guidance.
“It a scientific integrity violation for a political appointee to essentially leapfrog the Fish and Wildlife Service’s process when you have an Endangered Species Act listing involved,” says Joel Clement, a long-time interior department scientist and now whistleblower who left the department after being pushed out of his post.
“It is absolutely inappropriate. As a senior advisor [DeVito] has no authority of position – so essentially that guidance was not worth the paper it was written on.” Nevertheless, the guidance DeVito signed appeared to remain in effect for nine months, until state and federal regulators updated and approved a more stringent version in late March.
In the end, DeVito’s trip to West Virginia helped feed a broader narrative that Donald Trump has promoted.
Less than two months after the trip, Trump arrived in West Virginia too, where he held a boisterous political rally.
“As president,” Trump said to his adoring crowd, “we are putting our coal miners back to work.”
Massive oil spill ‘welcome boost’ to economy, says BP
Newsweek - raw story
06 APR 2018 AT 08:33 ET
Coastal towns would enjoy an economic boon from a massive oil spill in the Great Australian Bight, BP claimed in newly revealed documents from a 2016 drilling bid.
The oil giant said any cleanup operation following a huge spill would bring a “welcome boost to local economies.” The claim was uncovered via a freedom of information request by the U.K.-based Climate Home News website.
Though it has since withdrawn the controversial plan to drill for oil in the Bight, BP also told the Australian regulatory authority that a diesel spill would be considered “socially acceptable” because “there are no unresolved stakeholder concerns.”
Opponents of the plan feared a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven people were killed and up to 68,000 square miles of coastline affected when a well failure sent 210,000,000 gallons of oil spewing into the gulf. The disaster devastated the area’s marine ecosystem, and scientists are still discovering high rates of toxicity, birth defects and population reduction in local marine life.
Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority identified a range of flaws in BP’s plan and returned the proposal demanding evidence to supporting the company's claims. The authority suggested BP remove its argument that “in most instances, the increased activity associated with cleanup operations will be a welcome boost to local economies.”
The documents detailed BP’s worst-case spill scenario, which it estimated would impact around 400 miles of coastline at 125 days post-slick, increasing to around 465 miles after 300 days.
The authority said there could be detrimental impacts to recreation, tourism and the fishing industry if the plan was allowed to go ahead. The proposal needed “significant modification” to comply with environmental laws, the authority concluded, arguing that BP “may underestimate the level of impact to large local and regional populations.”
The coastal town of Ceduna would be one such coastal town to benefit from the supposed economic boost following a huge oil spill. Mayor Allan Suter told ABC Newsthat BP’s theory was “an incredibly stupid thing to say—it certainly wouldn't have been a welcomed boost the local economy, we could have done very nicely thank you very much without it.”
A BP spokesperson claimed that “this material doesn’t represent the final views of BP or the regulator.” The spokesperson also said BP had no intention of reviving its interest in the area .
BP jettisoned its drilling plans in October 2016 after deciding the “plan would not be competitive for capital investment in the foreseeable future.” BP transferred two of its four leases to Norwegian energy company Statoil, which is still planning a project in the Bight. The company’s Australian manager, Jacques-Etienne Michel, told Climate Home News that Statoil “will only undertake drilling activity if we can do it safely.”
But Nathaniel Pelle, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “There is no way to drill for oil safely in the Bight.” She added that a spill could release over 10 million gallons of toxic material along a 465-mile stretch of coastline
The oil giant said any cleanup operation following a huge spill would bring a “welcome boost to local economies.” The claim was uncovered via a freedom of information request by the U.K.-based Climate Home News website.
Though it has since withdrawn the controversial plan to drill for oil in the Bight, BP also told the Australian regulatory authority that a diesel spill would be considered “socially acceptable” because “there are no unresolved stakeholder concerns.”
Opponents of the plan feared a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven people were killed and up to 68,000 square miles of coastline affected when a well failure sent 210,000,000 gallons of oil spewing into the gulf. The disaster devastated the area’s marine ecosystem, and scientists are still discovering high rates of toxicity, birth defects and population reduction in local marine life.
Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority identified a range of flaws in BP’s plan and returned the proposal demanding evidence to supporting the company's claims. The authority suggested BP remove its argument that “in most instances, the increased activity associated with cleanup operations will be a welcome boost to local economies.”
The documents detailed BP’s worst-case spill scenario, which it estimated would impact around 400 miles of coastline at 125 days post-slick, increasing to around 465 miles after 300 days.
The authority said there could be detrimental impacts to recreation, tourism and the fishing industry if the plan was allowed to go ahead. The proposal needed “significant modification” to comply with environmental laws, the authority concluded, arguing that BP “may underestimate the level of impact to large local and regional populations.”
The coastal town of Ceduna would be one such coastal town to benefit from the supposed economic boost following a huge oil spill. Mayor Allan Suter told ABC Newsthat BP’s theory was “an incredibly stupid thing to say—it certainly wouldn't have been a welcomed boost the local economy, we could have done very nicely thank you very much without it.”
A BP spokesperson claimed that “this material doesn’t represent the final views of BP or the regulator.” The spokesperson also said BP had no intention of reviving its interest in the area .
BP jettisoned its drilling plans in October 2016 after deciding the “plan would not be competitive for capital investment in the foreseeable future.” BP transferred two of its four leases to Norwegian energy company Statoil, which is still planning a project in the Bight. The company’s Australian manager, Jacques-Etienne Michel, told Climate Home News that Statoil “will only undertake drilling activity if we can do it safely.”
But Nathaniel Pelle, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “There is no way to drill for oil safely in the Bight.” She added that a spill could release over 10 million gallons of toxic material along a 465-mile stretch of coastline
Shell foresaw climate dangers in 1988 and understood Big Oil’s big role
By Steven Mufson and Chris Mooney - waashington post
April 5 at 4:28 PM
A Dutch journalist has uncovered Royal Dutch Shell documents as old as 1988 that showed the oil company understood the gravity of climate change, the company’s large contribution to it and how hard it would be to stop it.
The 1988 report titled “The Greenhouse Effect” calculated that the Shell group alone was contributing 4 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions through its oil, natural gas and coal products. “By the time global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation,” the report warned.
The report, written by members of Shell’s Greenhouse Effect Working Group, said that scientists believed that the effects would become detectable late in the 20th or early 21st century.
It was based on a 1986 study, although the document reveals that Shell had commissioned “greenhouse effect” reports as early as 1981.
The documents were found by Jelmer Mommers, a reporter with De Correspondent. They were posted on the Climate Files website, which is sponsored by the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental activist group.
Shell’s working group knew three decades ago that climate change was real and formidable, warning that it would affect living standards and food supplies and have social, economic and political consequences.
The working group also warned that rising sea levels could impair offshore installations, coastal facilities, harbors, refineries and depots.
The documents contrast with Shell’s public stance on climate change during the 1990s, when the company was a member of the Global Climate Coalition. The industry group raised doubts about the science of climate change and opposed the Kyoto Protocol, the global agreement reached in 1997 to fight climate change.
Shell withdrew from the industry group in 1998, with then-President Mark Moody-Stuart saying: “We recently met them, and it was concluded our differences of opinion were irreconcilable. We will not renew our subscription,” according to a contemporary press report.
The 1988 report estimated that in 1981, 44 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions came from oil, 38 percent from coal and 17 percent from natural gas.
“With fossil fuel combustion being a major source of CO2 in the atmosphere, a forward looking approach by the energy industry is clearly desirable, seeking to play its part with governments and others in the development of appropriate measures to tackle the problem,” the report said.
At the same time, however, the report said that “the likely time scale of possible change does not necessitate immediate remedial action.”
On Thursday, Shell issued a statement in response to the publication of the report.
“The Shell Group’s position on climate change has been a matter of public record for decades. We strongly support the Paris Agreement [on climate change] and the need for society to transition to a lower carbon future, while also extending the economic and social benefits of energy to everyone,” the company said. “Successfully navigating this dual challenge requires sound government policy and cultural change to drive low-carbon choices for businesses and consumers. It requires cooperation between all segments of society.”
The 1988 report titled “The Greenhouse Effect” calculated that the Shell group alone was contributing 4 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions through its oil, natural gas and coal products. “By the time global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation,” the report warned.
The report, written by members of Shell’s Greenhouse Effect Working Group, said that scientists believed that the effects would become detectable late in the 20th or early 21st century.
It was based on a 1986 study, although the document reveals that Shell had commissioned “greenhouse effect” reports as early as 1981.
The documents were found by Jelmer Mommers, a reporter with De Correspondent. They were posted on the Climate Files website, which is sponsored by the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental activist group.
Shell’s working group knew three decades ago that climate change was real and formidable, warning that it would affect living standards and food supplies and have social, economic and political consequences.
The working group also warned that rising sea levels could impair offshore installations, coastal facilities, harbors, refineries and depots.
The documents contrast with Shell’s public stance on climate change during the 1990s, when the company was a member of the Global Climate Coalition. The industry group raised doubts about the science of climate change and opposed the Kyoto Protocol, the global agreement reached in 1997 to fight climate change.
Shell withdrew from the industry group in 1998, with then-President Mark Moody-Stuart saying: “We recently met them, and it was concluded our differences of opinion were irreconcilable. We will not renew our subscription,” according to a contemporary press report.
The 1988 report estimated that in 1981, 44 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions came from oil, 38 percent from coal and 17 percent from natural gas.
“With fossil fuel combustion being a major source of CO2 in the atmosphere, a forward looking approach by the energy industry is clearly desirable, seeking to play its part with governments and others in the development of appropriate measures to tackle the problem,” the report said.
At the same time, however, the report said that “the likely time scale of possible change does not necessitate immediate remedial action.”
On Thursday, Shell issued a statement in response to the publication of the report.
“The Shell Group’s position on climate change has been a matter of public record for decades. We strongly support the Paris Agreement [on climate change] and the need for society to transition to a lower carbon future, while also extending the economic and social benefits of energy to everyone,” the company said. “Successfully navigating this dual challenge requires sound government policy and cultural change to drive low-carbon choices for businesses and consumers. It requires cooperation between all segments of society.”
Exclusive: EPA gives giant refiner a ‘hardship’ waiver from regulation
TUE, APR 3RD, 2018
By Jarrett Renshaw and Chris Prentice
REUTERS - politicus usa
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Environmental Protection Agency has exempted one of the nation’s largest oil refining companies, Andeavor , from complying with U.S. biofuels regulations – a waiver historically reserved for tiny operations in danger of going belly up, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The exemption, which applies to the three smallest of Andeavor’s ten refineries, marks the first evidence of the EPA freeing a highly profitable multi-billion dollar company from the costly mandates of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard. The law requires refiners to blend biofuels such as ethanol into gasoline or purchase credits from those who do such blending.
The decision, which has not been previously reported, raises the question of whether other big and profitable oil firms with small refineries – such as Exxon Mobil Corp , Chevron Corp and Phillips 66 – also have or could receive the waivers, which are granted by the EPA in secret.
Such waivers were designed for refineries producing less than 75,000 barrels per day that can demonstrate that they suffer a “disproportionate economic hardship” from the costs of RFS compliance.
The EPA exemption, granted about a month ago, could reduce Andeavor’s regulatory costs by more than $50 million this year, based on the number of biofuels credits that two brokers say the refiner recently sold into the market, along with previous disclosures by firms that own refineries of a similar size.
Biofuels credit prices tied to ethanol dropped by 6 cents, to 38 cents each, after Reuters reported Andeavor’s exemption, traders said. Andeavor shares jumped by more than 1 percent on the news, hitting a session high of $102.78.
The exemption releases the firm of its obligation to provide the EPA with biofuels credits proving compliance at the three refineries – two located in North Dakota and one in Utah – for the year 2016, which would have come due this year, the sources said. Andeavor is also asking EPA for a waiver for its 2017 obligations for the same refineries, but has not yet received a decision, the sources said.
Andeavor spokeswoman Destin Singleton declined to comment. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman did not immediately comment in response to Reuters inquiries on Monday and Tuesday.
As a matter of policy, the agency refuses to release any information on the waivers, or to name their recipients, citing concerns over disclosing private business information. The EPA denied a Freedom of Information Act request from Reuters seeking information on companies receiving the waivers.
Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Phillips 66 also own refineries small enough to meet the barrel-per-day standard, as does billionaire investor and Trump ally Carl Icahn – whose efforts last year to overhaul the biofuels program drew scrutiny from federal investigators.
Icahn, majority owner of refiner CVR Energy , had served as an advisor to Trump on regulatory issues during his push to reform biofuels regulations early last year, but he resigned amid allegations that the role gave him a conflict of interest.
Spokespeople for all four companies declined to comment on whether they had applied for or received any exemptions.
The lucrative waivers are typically only reported if a publicly-traded firm considers them to be material to their financial or operational performance, in which case they must disclose the information through Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
The RFS has long been a lightning rod of conflict between the corn lobby, which supports the policy as an engine for demand, and refiners who say it costs them a fortune.
The White House has sought to broker a deal between two of its key political constituencies in a series of meetings, but the effort has failed to yield policy changes acceptable to both sides.
Ethanol industry advocates argue exemptions for refiners undermine the intent of the law, originally designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce dependence on foreign oil and boost farm economies.
While the EPA’s motives in providing hardship waivers are unclear, the exemptions are one of the tools at the administration’s disposal to ease financial pressure on refiners without undertaking a reform of the RFS policy.
EPA chief Scott Pruitt, appointed by Trump, has repeatedly said the RFS is too costly to oil refiners and should be overhauled. But Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, told an agriculture conference in February that Trump “stands with corn farmers, biofuels farmers and the RFS,” according to a recording heard by Reuters.
White House spokeswoman Kelly Love did not respond to a question about whether the administration was expanding the use of the RFS waivers to help refiners. Bowman, of the EPA, also did not comment on the question.
LAWSUIT OVER ‘HARDSHIP’ STANDARD
Andeavor’s waiver follows a successful lawsuit by another refiner, Sinclair Oil, last year challenging the strict standard the EPA has used under past administrations for determining financial hardship.
“The EPA’s interpretation takes the statutory language too far,” wrote Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. “A ‘hardship’ is something that makes one’s life hard or difficult – not just something that makes continued existence impossible.”
The lawsuit – along with a perception that the Trump administration might be more sympathetic to refiners – has sparked a big increase in applications from refining firms for he exemptions this year. More than 30 refineries have sought the waivers, according to sources familiar with the matter.
In a typical year, the EPA would receive about 12 to 15 requests for hardship exemptions and would grant about half of them, a former official familiar with the program told Reuters.
EXEMPTIONS SAVE REFINERS BIG BUCKS
Andeavor sold some 100 million of those credits to its competitors in recent weeks, according to two brokers in the biofuels credit market. The company otherwise would have needed to provide those credits to the EPA to prove compliance with the RFS.
Those credits would be worth about $58 million based on a Reuters calculation of average renewable fuel RIN prices this year.
In the past, other companies have said the exemptions they were granted saved them tens of millions of dollars, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Last year, for example, HollyFrontier disclosed a reduction of almost $58 million in its costs of credits for two refineries for 2016.
Such windfalls for oil firms come at the expense of the corn and ethanol industries, said Renewable Fuels Association Executive Vice President Geoff Cooper.
Refiners granted exemptions win in two ways: They no longer have to blend biofuels or buy credits to comply with the law, and they can sell any credits they had previously purchased to use for compliance.
The waivers, Cooper said in a post on the RFA web site, “are destroying demand for ethanol and corn.”
The exemption, which applies to the three smallest of Andeavor’s ten refineries, marks the first evidence of the EPA freeing a highly profitable multi-billion dollar company from the costly mandates of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard. The law requires refiners to blend biofuels such as ethanol into gasoline or purchase credits from those who do such blending.
The decision, which has not been previously reported, raises the question of whether other big and profitable oil firms with small refineries – such as Exxon Mobil Corp , Chevron Corp and Phillips 66 – also have or could receive the waivers, which are granted by the EPA in secret.
Such waivers were designed for refineries producing less than 75,000 barrels per day that can demonstrate that they suffer a “disproportionate economic hardship” from the costs of RFS compliance.
The EPA exemption, granted about a month ago, could reduce Andeavor’s regulatory costs by more than $50 million this year, based on the number of biofuels credits that two brokers say the refiner recently sold into the market, along with previous disclosures by firms that own refineries of a similar size.
Biofuels credit prices tied to ethanol dropped by 6 cents, to 38 cents each, after Reuters reported Andeavor’s exemption, traders said. Andeavor shares jumped by more than 1 percent on the news, hitting a session high of $102.78.
The exemption releases the firm of its obligation to provide the EPA with biofuels credits proving compliance at the three refineries – two located in North Dakota and one in Utah – for the year 2016, which would have come due this year, the sources said. Andeavor is also asking EPA for a waiver for its 2017 obligations for the same refineries, but has not yet received a decision, the sources said.
Andeavor spokeswoman Destin Singleton declined to comment. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman did not immediately comment in response to Reuters inquiries on Monday and Tuesday.
As a matter of policy, the agency refuses to release any information on the waivers, or to name their recipients, citing concerns over disclosing private business information. The EPA denied a Freedom of Information Act request from Reuters seeking information on companies receiving the waivers.
Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Phillips 66 also own refineries small enough to meet the barrel-per-day standard, as does billionaire investor and Trump ally Carl Icahn – whose efforts last year to overhaul the biofuels program drew scrutiny from federal investigators.
Icahn, majority owner of refiner CVR Energy , had served as an advisor to Trump on regulatory issues during his push to reform biofuels regulations early last year, but he resigned amid allegations that the role gave him a conflict of interest.
Spokespeople for all four companies declined to comment on whether they had applied for or received any exemptions.
The lucrative waivers are typically only reported if a publicly-traded firm considers them to be material to their financial or operational performance, in which case they must disclose the information through Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
The RFS has long been a lightning rod of conflict between the corn lobby, which supports the policy as an engine for demand, and refiners who say it costs them a fortune.
The White House has sought to broker a deal between two of its key political constituencies in a series of meetings, but the effort has failed to yield policy changes acceptable to both sides.
Ethanol industry advocates argue exemptions for refiners undermine the intent of the law, originally designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce dependence on foreign oil and boost farm economies.
While the EPA’s motives in providing hardship waivers are unclear, the exemptions are one of the tools at the administration’s disposal to ease financial pressure on refiners without undertaking a reform of the RFS policy.
EPA chief Scott Pruitt, appointed by Trump, has repeatedly said the RFS is too costly to oil refiners and should be overhauled. But Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, told an agriculture conference in February that Trump “stands with corn farmers, biofuels farmers and the RFS,” according to a recording heard by Reuters.
White House spokeswoman Kelly Love did not respond to a question about whether the administration was expanding the use of the RFS waivers to help refiners. Bowman, of the EPA, also did not comment on the question.
LAWSUIT OVER ‘HARDSHIP’ STANDARD
Andeavor’s waiver follows a successful lawsuit by another refiner, Sinclair Oil, last year challenging the strict standard the EPA has used under past administrations for determining financial hardship.
“The EPA’s interpretation takes the statutory language too far,” wrote Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. “A ‘hardship’ is something that makes one’s life hard or difficult – not just something that makes continued existence impossible.”
The lawsuit – along with a perception that the Trump administration might be more sympathetic to refiners – has sparked a big increase in applications from refining firms for he exemptions this year. More than 30 refineries have sought the waivers, according to sources familiar with the matter.
In a typical year, the EPA would receive about 12 to 15 requests for hardship exemptions and would grant about half of them, a former official familiar with the program told Reuters.
EXEMPTIONS SAVE REFINERS BIG BUCKS
Andeavor sold some 100 million of those credits to its competitors in recent weeks, according to two brokers in the biofuels credit market. The company otherwise would have needed to provide those credits to the EPA to prove compliance with the RFS.
Those credits would be worth about $58 million based on a Reuters calculation of average renewable fuel RIN prices this year.
In the past, other companies have said the exemptions they were granted saved them tens of millions of dollars, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Last year, for example, HollyFrontier disclosed a reduction of almost $58 million in its costs of credits for two refineries for 2016.
Such windfalls for oil firms come at the expense of the corn and ethanol industries, said Renewable Fuels Association Executive Vice President Geoff Cooper.
Refiners granted exemptions win in two ways: They no longer have to blend biofuels or buy credits to comply with the law, and they can sell any credits they had previously purchased to use for compliance.
The waivers, Cooper said in a post on the RFA web site, “are destroying demand for ethanol and corn.”
The dark side of America's rise to oil superpower
Bloomberg
Javier Blas
The last time U.S. drillers pumped 10 million barrels of crude a day, Richard Nixon was in the White House. The first oil crisis hadn’t yet scared Americans into buying Toyotas, and fracking was an experimental technique a handful of engineers were trying, with meager success, to popularize. It was 1970, and oil sold for $1.80 a barrel.
Almost five decades later, with oil hovering near $65 a barrel, daily U.S. crude output is about to hit the eight-digit mark again. It’s a significant milestone on the way to fulfilling a dream that a generation ago seemed far-fetched: By the end of the year, the U.S. may well be the world’s biggest oil producer. With that, America takes a big step toward energy independence.
The U.S. crowing from the top of a hill long occupied by Saudi Arabia or Russia would scramble geopolitics. A new world energy order could emerge. That shuffling will be good for America but not so much for the planet.
For one, the influence of one of the most powerful forces of the past half-century, the modern petrostate, would be diminished. No longer would “America First” diplomats need to tiptoe around oil-supplying nations such as Saudi Arabia. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries would find it tougher to agree on production guidelines, and lower prices could result, reopening old wounds in the cartel. That would take some muscle out of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy, while Russia’s oligarchs would find it more difficult to maintain the lifestyles to which they’ve become accustomed.
President Donald Trump, sensing an opportunity, is looking past independence to what he calls energy dominance. His administration plans to open vast ocean acreage to offshore exploration and for the first time in 40 years allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It may take years to tap, but the Alaska payoff alone is eye-popping—an estimated 11.8 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude.
It sounds good, but be careful what you wish for. The last three years have been the hottest since recordkeeping began in the 19th century, and there’s little room in Trump’s plan for energy sources that treat the planet kindly. Governors of coastal states have already pointed out that an offshore spill could devastate tourism—another trillion-dollar industry—not to mention wreck fragile littoral environments. Florida has already applied for a waiver from such drilling.
More supply could lower prices, in turn discouraging investments in renewables such as solar and wind. Those tend to spike when oil prices rise, so enthusiasm for nonpolluting, nonwarming energies of the future could wane.
For now, though, the petroleum train is chugging. And you can thank the resilience of the U.S. shale industry for it.
Shale’s triumph seemed impossible a few years ago. In late 2014, Saudi Arabia targeted rivals, including American drillers. Rather than cutting production to keep prices high, Saudi Arabia persuaded OPEC to open the taps, sending prices lower than $40 a barrel in December, down from more than $100 a barrel just four months previous. The Saudis were hoping to starve the shale revolution. At first, they seemed poised to succeed, like they had in the past. U.S. production fell from a peak of 9.6 million barrels a day to 8.5 million barrels a day. Bankruptcies riddled shale patches from Texas’ Permian Basin to the Bakken Formation in North Dakota, and tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Rather than declare defeat, shale companies dug in, slashing costs and borrowing like crazy to keep drilling. By late 2016 the Saudis blinked. They persuaded OPEC and the Russians to cut output. Slowly, steadily, West Texas Intermediate, the oil benchmark traded in New York, rose from $26 a barrel in February 2016 to where it lingers today.
What didn’t kill shale drillers made them stronger. The survivors have transformed themselves into leaner, faster versions that can thrive even at lower oil prices. Shale isn’t any longer just about grit, sweat, and luck. Technology is key. Geologists use smartphones to direct drilling, and companies are putting in longer and longer wells. At current prices, drillers can walk and chew gum at the same time—lifting production and profits simultaneously.
Fracking—blasting water and sand deep underground to free oil from shale rock — has improved, too. It’s what many call Shale 2.0. And it’s not just the risk-taking pioneers who dominated the first phase of the revolution, such as Trump friend Harold Hamm of Continental Resources Inc., who are benefiting from the surge. Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., and other major oil groups are joining the rush. U.S. shale is “seemingly on steroids,” says Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. in London. “The market remains enchanted by the ability of shale producers to adapt to lower prices and to continue to grow.”
The results are historic. In October, American net imports of crude and refined products dropped below 2.5 million barrels a day, the lowest since official data were first collected in 1973. A decade ago, U.S. net oil imports stood at more than 12 million barrels a day. “For the last 40 years, since the Arab oil embargo, we’ve had a mindset of energy scarcity,” says Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former Obama administration official. “As a result of the shale revolution, the U.S. has emerged as an energy superpower.”
For OPEC, the emergent superpower presents an unprecedented challenge. If the cartel cuts production, shale drillers can respond by boosting output, stealing market share from OPEC nations and undermining their effort to manipulate prices. The only solution for OPEC is to prolong the limits, as it’s doing now, and hope for the best. If cooperation between OPEC and Russia breaks down, it’s not impossible that OPEC breaks down, too.
If Shale 2.0 output keeps prices low, Russia would be a big loser. Moscow has used oil revenue to finance aggressive foreign intervention from Ukraine to Syria. The only solution is to continue cooperating with Saudi Arabia on keeping production low — not something the oligarchs relish.
With shale surging, U.S. imports of Saudi oil plunged to a 30-year low last year. The turnabout makes China and Japan far more dependent than the U.S. on the Middle East. It’s now possible for the U.S. to argue that other countries should help shoulder the burden of policing the shipping lanes leading to Middle Eastern and North African oil exporters.
Yet not all traffic lights are green for the U.S. It’s not immune from the ups and downs of the world market. When the price rises because of, say, political upheaval in the Middle East, it doesn’t matter where you are and how much you pump. The price rises in America, too.
There’s another problem: Shale 2.0 could hurt refiners. Shale oil is too good. For years, refiners spent billions of dollars on special equipment to process the dense, high-sulphur, low-quality crudes coming from Mexico, Venezuela, Canada and Saudi Arabia. The quality of shale oil is so high that it yields little diesel, the fuel that powers manufacturing.
Such limitations may be mere speed bumps. But U.S. dominance is far from a panacea. It won’t reverse climate change. It won’t lessen the political influence of fossil-fuel producers in Washington. Nor will it completely neutralize the political influence of erratic petrostates.
With demand rising despite the emergence of renewables and the development of electric vehicles, shale may struggle to keep pace with global consumption. There’s a chance the world will witness that rarest of market loop-de-loops — high oil prices as well as rising U.S. production.
Saudi Arabia and Russia could then remain formidable obstacles to U.S. energy independence. They would be crowing from the top of the hill even as they keep a wary eye on America’s shale drillers.
These are troubles that would have been an embarrassment of riches for Americans who had to wait in line to fill up in the 1970s, when the U.S. determining its own energy future was just a dream. Any celebration over this accomplishment ignores the evidence that such dependence on fossil fuels is no independence at all.
Almost five decades later, with oil hovering near $65 a barrel, daily U.S. crude output is about to hit the eight-digit mark again. It’s a significant milestone on the way to fulfilling a dream that a generation ago seemed far-fetched: By the end of the year, the U.S. may well be the world’s biggest oil producer. With that, America takes a big step toward energy independence.
The U.S. crowing from the top of a hill long occupied by Saudi Arabia or Russia would scramble geopolitics. A new world energy order could emerge. That shuffling will be good for America but not so much for the planet.
For one, the influence of one of the most powerful forces of the past half-century, the modern petrostate, would be diminished. No longer would “America First” diplomats need to tiptoe around oil-supplying nations such as Saudi Arabia. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries would find it tougher to agree on production guidelines, and lower prices could result, reopening old wounds in the cartel. That would take some muscle out of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy, while Russia’s oligarchs would find it more difficult to maintain the lifestyles to which they’ve become accustomed.
President Donald Trump, sensing an opportunity, is looking past independence to what he calls energy dominance. His administration plans to open vast ocean acreage to offshore exploration and for the first time in 40 years allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It may take years to tap, but the Alaska payoff alone is eye-popping—an estimated 11.8 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude.
It sounds good, but be careful what you wish for. The last three years have been the hottest since recordkeeping began in the 19th century, and there’s little room in Trump’s plan for energy sources that treat the planet kindly. Governors of coastal states have already pointed out that an offshore spill could devastate tourism—another trillion-dollar industry—not to mention wreck fragile littoral environments. Florida has already applied for a waiver from such drilling.
More supply could lower prices, in turn discouraging investments in renewables such as solar and wind. Those tend to spike when oil prices rise, so enthusiasm for nonpolluting, nonwarming energies of the future could wane.
For now, though, the petroleum train is chugging. And you can thank the resilience of the U.S. shale industry for it.
Shale’s triumph seemed impossible a few years ago. In late 2014, Saudi Arabia targeted rivals, including American drillers. Rather than cutting production to keep prices high, Saudi Arabia persuaded OPEC to open the taps, sending prices lower than $40 a barrel in December, down from more than $100 a barrel just four months previous. The Saudis were hoping to starve the shale revolution. At first, they seemed poised to succeed, like they had in the past. U.S. production fell from a peak of 9.6 million barrels a day to 8.5 million barrels a day. Bankruptcies riddled shale patches from Texas’ Permian Basin to the Bakken Formation in North Dakota, and tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Rather than declare defeat, shale companies dug in, slashing costs and borrowing like crazy to keep drilling. By late 2016 the Saudis blinked. They persuaded OPEC and the Russians to cut output. Slowly, steadily, West Texas Intermediate, the oil benchmark traded in New York, rose from $26 a barrel in February 2016 to where it lingers today.
What didn’t kill shale drillers made them stronger. The survivors have transformed themselves into leaner, faster versions that can thrive even at lower oil prices. Shale isn’t any longer just about grit, sweat, and luck. Technology is key. Geologists use smartphones to direct drilling, and companies are putting in longer and longer wells. At current prices, drillers can walk and chew gum at the same time—lifting production and profits simultaneously.
Fracking—blasting water and sand deep underground to free oil from shale rock — has improved, too. It’s what many call Shale 2.0. And it’s not just the risk-taking pioneers who dominated the first phase of the revolution, such as Trump friend Harold Hamm of Continental Resources Inc., who are benefiting from the surge. Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., and other major oil groups are joining the rush. U.S. shale is “seemingly on steroids,” says Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. in London. “The market remains enchanted by the ability of shale producers to adapt to lower prices and to continue to grow.”
The results are historic. In October, American net imports of crude and refined products dropped below 2.5 million barrels a day, the lowest since official data were first collected in 1973. A decade ago, U.S. net oil imports stood at more than 12 million barrels a day. “For the last 40 years, since the Arab oil embargo, we’ve had a mindset of energy scarcity,” says Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former Obama administration official. “As a result of the shale revolution, the U.S. has emerged as an energy superpower.”
For OPEC, the emergent superpower presents an unprecedented challenge. If the cartel cuts production, shale drillers can respond by boosting output, stealing market share from OPEC nations and undermining their effort to manipulate prices. The only solution for OPEC is to prolong the limits, as it’s doing now, and hope for the best. If cooperation between OPEC and Russia breaks down, it’s not impossible that OPEC breaks down, too.
If Shale 2.0 output keeps prices low, Russia would be a big loser. Moscow has used oil revenue to finance aggressive foreign intervention from Ukraine to Syria. The only solution is to continue cooperating with Saudi Arabia on keeping production low — not something the oligarchs relish.
With shale surging, U.S. imports of Saudi oil plunged to a 30-year low last year. The turnabout makes China and Japan far more dependent than the U.S. on the Middle East. It’s now possible for the U.S. to argue that other countries should help shoulder the burden of policing the shipping lanes leading to Middle Eastern and North African oil exporters.
Yet not all traffic lights are green for the U.S. It’s not immune from the ups and downs of the world market. When the price rises because of, say, political upheaval in the Middle East, it doesn’t matter where you are and how much you pump. The price rises in America, too.
There’s another problem: Shale 2.0 could hurt refiners. Shale oil is too good. For years, refiners spent billions of dollars on special equipment to process the dense, high-sulphur, low-quality crudes coming from Mexico, Venezuela, Canada and Saudi Arabia. The quality of shale oil is so high that it yields little diesel, the fuel that powers manufacturing.
Such limitations may be mere speed bumps. But U.S. dominance is far from a panacea. It won’t reverse climate change. It won’t lessen the political influence of fossil-fuel producers in Washington. Nor will it completely neutralize the political influence of erratic petrostates.
With demand rising despite the emergence of renewables and the development of electric vehicles, shale may struggle to keep pace with global consumption. There’s a chance the world will witness that rarest of market loop-de-loops — high oil prices as well as rising U.S. production.
Saudi Arabia and Russia could then remain formidable obstacles to U.S. energy independence. They would be crowing from the top of the hill even as they keep a wary eye on America’s shale drillers.
These are troubles that would have been an embarrassment of riches for Americans who had to wait in line to fill up in the 1970s, when the U.S. determining its own energy future was just a dream. Any celebration over this accomplishment ignores the evidence that such dependence on fossil fuels is no independence at all.
they knew!!!
On its hundredth birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming
Somebody cut the cake – new documents reveal that American oil writ large was warned of global warming at its 100th birthday party.
Benjamin Franta
the guardian
Mon 1 Jan ‘18 06.00 EST
...The nuclear weapons physicist Edward Teller had, by 1959, become ostracized by the scientific community for betraying his colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer, but he retained the embrace of industry and government. Teller’s task that November fourth was to address the crowd on “energy patterns of the future,” and his words carried an unexpected warning:
Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would [...] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. [....] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. [....] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?
Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [....] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.
How, precisely, Mr. Dunlop and the rest of the audience reacted is unknown, but it’s hard to imagine this being welcome news. After his talk, Teller was asked to “summarize briefly the danger from increased carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere in this century.” The physicist, as if considering a numerical estimation problem, responded:
At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [about 360 parts per million, by Teller’s accounting], if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels. By that time, there will be a serious additional impediment for the radiation leaving the earth. Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5.
But when the temperature does rise by a few degrees over the whole globe, there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise. Well, I don’t know whether they will cover the Empire State Building or not, but anyone can calculate it by looking at the map and noting that the icecaps over Greenland and over Antarctica are perhaps five thousand feet thick.
And so, at its hundredth birthday party, American oil was warned of its civilization-destroying potential.
Talk about a buzzkill.
How did the petroleum industry respond? Eight years later, on a cold, clear day in March, Robert Dunlop walked the halls of the U.S. Congress. The 1967 oil embargo was weeks away, and the Senate was investigating the potential of electric vehicles. Dunlop, testifying now as the Chairman of the Board of the American Petroleum Institute, posed the question, “tomorrow’s car: electric or gasoline powered?” His preferred answer was the latter:
We in the petroleum industry are convinced that by the time a practical electric car can be mass-produced and marketed, it will not enjoy any meaningful advantage from an air pollution standpoint. Emissions from internal-combustion engines will have long since been controlled.
Dunlop went on to describe progress in controlling carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and hydrocarbon emissions from automobiles. Absent from his list? The pollutant he had been warned of years before: carbon dioxide.
We might surmise that the odorless gas simply passed under Robert Dunlop’s nose unnoticed. But less than a year later, the American Petroleum Institute quietly received a report on air pollution it had commissioned from the Stanford Research Institute, and its warning on carbon dioxide was direct:
Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000, and these could bring about climatic changes. [...] there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe. [...] pollutants which we generally ignore because they have little local effect, CO2 and submicron particles, may be the cause of serious world-wide environmental changes.
Thus, by 1968, American oil held in its hands yet another notice of its products’ world-altering side effects, one affirming that global warming was not just cause for research and concern, but a reality needing corrective action: “Past and present studies of CO2 are detailed,” the Stanford Research Institute advised. “What is lacking, however, is [...] work toward systems in which CO2 emissions would be brought under control.”
This early history illuminates the American petroleum industry’s long-running awareness of the planetary warming caused by its products. Teller’s warning, revealed in documentation I found while searching archives, is another brick in a growing wall of evidence.
In the closing days of those optimistic 1950s, Robert Dunlop may have been one of the first oilmen to be warned of the tragedy now looming before us. By the time he departed this world in 1995, the American Petroleum Institute he once led was denying the climate science it had been informed of decades before, attacking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and fighting climate policies wherever they arose.
This is a history of choices made, paths not taken, and the fall from grace of one of the greatest enterprises – oil, the “prime mover” – ever to tread the earth. Whether it’s also a history of redemption, however partial, remains to be seen.
American oil’s awareness of global warming – and its conspiracy of silence, deceit, and obstruction – goes further than any one company. It extends beyond (though includes) ExxonMobil. The industry is implicated to its core by the history of its largest representative, the American Petroleum Institute.
It is now too late to stop a great deal of change to our planet’s climate and its global payload of disease, destruction, and death. But we can fight to halt climate change as quickly as possible, and we can uncover the history of how we got here. There are lessons to be learned, and there is justice to be served.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would [...] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. [....] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. [....] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?
Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [....] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.
How, precisely, Mr. Dunlop and the rest of the audience reacted is unknown, but it’s hard to imagine this being welcome news. After his talk, Teller was asked to “summarize briefly the danger from increased carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere in this century.” The physicist, as if considering a numerical estimation problem, responded:
At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [about 360 parts per million, by Teller’s accounting], if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels. By that time, there will be a serious additional impediment for the radiation leaving the earth. Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5.
But when the temperature does rise by a few degrees over the whole globe, there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise. Well, I don’t know whether they will cover the Empire State Building or not, but anyone can calculate it by looking at the map and noting that the icecaps over Greenland and over Antarctica are perhaps five thousand feet thick.
And so, at its hundredth birthday party, American oil was warned of its civilization-destroying potential.
Talk about a buzzkill.
How did the petroleum industry respond? Eight years later, on a cold, clear day in March, Robert Dunlop walked the halls of the U.S. Congress. The 1967 oil embargo was weeks away, and the Senate was investigating the potential of electric vehicles. Dunlop, testifying now as the Chairman of the Board of the American Petroleum Institute, posed the question, “tomorrow’s car: electric or gasoline powered?” His preferred answer was the latter:
We in the petroleum industry are convinced that by the time a practical electric car can be mass-produced and marketed, it will not enjoy any meaningful advantage from an air pollution standpoint. Emissions from internal-combustion engines will have long since been controlled.
Dunlop went on to describe progress in controlling carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and hydrocarbon emissions from automobiles. Absent from his list? The pollutant he had been warned of years before: carbon dioxide.
We might surmise that the odorless gas simply passed under Robert Dunlop’s nose unnoticed. But less than a year later, the American Petroleum Institute quietly received a report on air pollution it had commissioned from the Stanford Research Institute, and its warning on carbon dioxide was direct:
Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000, and these could bring about climatic changes. [...] there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe. [...] pollutants which we generally ignore because they have little local effect, CO2 and submicron particles, may be the cause of serious world-wide environmental changes.
Thus, by 1968, American oil held in its hands yet another notice of its products’ world-altering side effects, one affirming that global warming was not just cause for research and concern, but a reality needing corrective action: “Past and present studies of CO2 are detailed,” the Stanford Research Institute advised. “What is lacking, however, is [...] work toward systems in which CO2 emissions would be brought under control.”
This early history illuminates the American petroleum industry’s long-running awareness of the planetary warming caused by its products. Teller’s warning, revealed in documentation I found while searching archives, is another brick in a growing wall of evidence.
In the closing days of those optimistic 1950s, Robert Dunlop may have been one of the first oilmen to be warned of the tragedy now looming before us. By the time he departed this world in 1995, the American Petroleum Institute he once led was denying the climate science it had been informed of decades before, attacking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and fighting climate policies wherever they arose.
This is a history of choices made, paths not taken, and the fall from grace of one of the greatest enterprises – oil, the “prime mover” – ever to tread the earth. Whether it’s also a history of redemption, however partial, remains to be seen.
American oil’s awareness of global warming – and its conspiracy of silence, deceit, and obstruction – goes further than any one company. It extends beyond (though includes) ExxonMobil. The industry is implicated to its core by the history of its largest representative, the American Petroleum Institute.
It is now too late to stop a great deal of change to our planet’s climate and its global payload of disease, destruction, and death. But we can fight to halt climate change as quickly as possible, and we can uncover the history of how we got here. There are lessons to be learned, and there is justice to be served.
oil funnies
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