welcome to oil
explore how the resource industry's greed and desire for profit is destroying the world
oct 18, 2020
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*
*EXXONMOBIL MISLED THE PUBLIC ABOUT THE CLIMATE CRISIS. NOW THEY'RE TRYING TO SILENCE CRITICS(ARTICLE BELOW)
*GOP PROPOSES LETTING FOSSIL FUEL FIRMS SUE SICK WORKERS SEEKING COMPENSATION
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Routine gas flaring is wasteful, polluting and undermeasured
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Over 5,600 fossil fuel companies have taken at least $3bn in US Covid-19 aid
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*GROUPS BUILT ON FOSSIL FUEL FUNDING URGE STATES TO REOPEN AMID PANDEMIC
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Big Oil taking $1.9 billion in CARES Act tax breaks aimed at helping small businesses in ‘Stealth bailout’: report(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Revealed: US fossil fuel companies handed at least $50m in coronavirus aid
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*When oil became waste: a week of turmoil for crude, and more pain to come
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Oil prices dip below zero as producers forced to pay to dispose of excess
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ACTIVISTS CELEBRATE ‘TREMENDOUS VICTORY’ AS FEDERAL COURT DEALS ANOTHER BLOW TO KEYSTONE XL(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Enbridge seeks permits to build Great Lakes oil tunnel
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Coronavirus is killing Texans — and the oil crisis is killing their economy
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Oil rig closures rising as prices hit 18-year lows
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Fossil fuels for power at turning point as renewables surged in 2019: data
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*First they cut the safety rules on oil rigs. Then they covered up objections to cutting the rules(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Oil and gas industry rewards US lawmakers who oppose environmental protections – study(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Oil and gas firms 'have had far worse climate impact than thought'
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Revealed: big oil's profits since 1990 total nearly $2tn
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*10 US oil refineries exceeding limits for cancer-causing benzene, report finds
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Republicans Are Re-Opening The Energy Market To Underhanded Dealing
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP ADMINISTRATION APPROVES KEYSTONE PIPELINE ON US LAND
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Davos financiers pump $1.4 trillion into fossil fuels: Greenpeace
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Fossil Fuel Knocks the Wind Out of Renewable Energy Movement in Ohio
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*COAL GIANT PROVIDED SECRET FINANCING TO GROUP CHALLENGING CLIMATE LAWSUITS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ALEC Behind Ohio Bill Criminalizing Protests Against Fossil Fuel Infrastructure
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Fossil fuel groups ‘destroying’ climate talks: NGOs
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump Quietly Provides Offshore Drilling Industry Sweetheart Giveaway
(ARTICLE BELOW)
COAL KNEW, TOO
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*How Big Oil exploited a loophole in the law to bilk the United States out of billions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Our Tax System Rewards Polluters
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*World's top three asset managers oversee $300bn fossil fuel investments
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The dark side of America's rise to oil superpower(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ON ITS HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY IN 1959, EDWARD TELLER WARNED THE OIL INDUSTRY ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING(article below)
oil funnies(at the end)
ExxonMobil misled the public about the climate crisis. Now they're trying to silence critics
Newly leaked documents reported by Bloomberg News show that ExxonMobil’s climate dishonesty is even worse than we thought
GEOFFREY SUPRAN AND NAOMI ORESKES
THE GUARDIAN
Fri 16 Oct 2020 08.42 EDT
In 2017, we published the first peer-reviewed analysis of ExxonMobil’s 40-year history of climate change communications. We found that the company and its parents, Exxon and Mobil, misled the public about climate change and its severity. Central to this conclusion was the contrast between what Exxon and ExxonMobil scientists said in internal reports and scientific articles versus what Exxon, Mobil, and ExxonMobil told the public in non-peer-reviewed publications and in “advertorials” – paid advertisements dressed up to look like opinion pieces – in The New York Times.
Newly leaked documents, reported recently by Bloomberg News, show that ExxonMobil’s climate dishonesty is even worse than we thought. While the company privately has an internal “plan for surging carbon emissions…by as much as the output of the entire nation of Greece,” according to Bloomberg, ExxonMobil executives “shield their carbon forecasts from investors.” In other words, ExxonMobil drew up plans to expand fossil fuel production, internally calculated how much this would increase their carbon dioxide emissions, then failed to disclose those estimates to investors. Indeed, the company has never publicly disclosed its emissions forecasts. In response to the Bloomberg report, ExxonMobil claimed that the leaked documents were not up-to-date, but declined to provide “any details on the new projections,” according to Bloomberg.
ExxonMobil has launched a new attack on our research, penned by ExxonMobil Vice President Vijay Swarup in the academic journal where we published our original study. In fact, ExxonMobil, in trying to dismiss our findings, has inadvertently made them stronger. They have done so in three ways, which we summarize today in a peer-reviewed rebuttal.
First, ExxonMobil has not challenged any of our findings about the 187 documents analyzed in our original study. They do not deny that Exxon, Mobil, and ExxonMobil all had early knowledge that their products have the potential to cause dangerous global warming. Nor do they deny that Exxon, Mobil, and ExxonMobil all promoted doubt about climate science and its implications in order to delay action.
Second, ExxonMobil accused us of analyzing “less than 3%” of their advertorials. This is misleading: less than 4% of their advertorials concerned climate change; most were irrelevant. Nevertheless, we have expanded our research program to include advertorials of which we were originally unaware, and found that – spoiler alert – “the results strengthen our original finding.”
Third, ExxonMobil claims that our original publication “obscur[ed] the separateness” of Exxon and Mobil prior to their 1999 merger. This is incorrect and misleading: when Exxon and Mobil merged, ExxonMobil inherited legal and moral responsibility for both. Moreover, as we summarize in today’s rebuttal, additional work we have done in response to ExxonMobil’s complaints “further demonstrates that both Exxon and Mobil separately misled the public, and continued to do so once they merged to become ExxonMobil Corp.”
All told, “we can now conclude with even greater confidence that Exxon, Mobil, and ExxonMobil Corp have all, variously, misled the public.”
Unable to disprove our findings, ExxonMobil’s critique has resorted to quoting a non-peer-reviewed report commissioned and paid for by the company. Instead of subjecting their positions to the independent scrutiny of academic peer-review, as we (and all scientists) do, ExxonMobil found a backdoor, so that they could then claim that our work has been refuted.
These Big Tobacco-style tactics – doubt-mongering, character assassination, intellectual hitjobs, and undisclosed conflicts of interest – are precisely the sort of product-defense maneuvers that ExxonMobil perfected while attacking climate science and climate scientists. The only difference now is that they are coming after the social sciences, too.
But it’s hardly the first time. When we published our study, ExxonMobil immediately responded with a straw man, a falsehood, cherry picking, and ad hominem attacks. Last year, they sent a now-leaked memo to Members of European Parliament in an attempt to discredit one of us (Geoffrey Supran) who had been invited to testify to that parliament as an expert witness about the company’s history of climate denial. And for the past three years, ExxonMobil has run a social media campaign accusing us of publishing “manufactured” science at the behest of “a political campaign.” It has been viewed millions of times.
With ExxonMobil so evidently offering its critiques in bad faith, we hesitated whether to engage at all. They don’t need to win this debate, they just need to make it seem like there is one. Personally, we don’t care what ExxonMobil says about us. But their attempts to smear our research do matter, because – in the face of mounting lawsuits, surging public protests and crumbling market value – ExxonMobil is swinging for a way to discredit the work that demonstrates what they have done.
Alas, it is a swing and a miss. ExxonMobil’s reaction to our work is nothing more than a case in point of the deceptive behavior we described in our original study. ExxonMobil is now misleading the public about its history of misleading the public. Indeed, as Bloomberg’s new report reveals, the company is hiding climate information, too.
Newly leaked documents, reported recently by Bloomberg News, show that ExxonMobil’s climate dishonesty is even worse than we thought. While the company privately has an internal “plan for surging carbon emissions…by as much as the output of the entire nation of Greece,” according to Bloomberg, ExxonMobil executives “shield their carbon forecasts from investors.” In other words, ExxonMobil drew up plans to expand fossil fuel production, internally calculated how much this would increase their carbon dioxide emissions, then failed to disclose those estimates to investors. Indeed, the company has never publicly disclosed its emissions forecasts. In response to the Bloomberg report, ExxonMobil claimed that the leaked documents were not up-to-date, but declined to provide “any details on the new projections,” according to Bloomberg.
ExxonMobil has launched a new attack on our research, penned by ExxonMobil Vice President Vijay Swarup in the academic journal where we published our original study. In fact, ExxonMobil, in trying to dismiss our findings, has inadvertently made them stronger. They have done so in three ways, which we summarize today in a peer-reviewed rebuttal.
First, ExxonMobil has not challenged any of our findings about the 187 documents analyzed in our original study. They do not deny that Exxon, Mobil, and ExxonMobil all had early knowledge that their products have the potential to cause dangerous global warming. Nor do they deny that Exxon, Mobil, and ExxonMobil all promoted doubt about climate science and its implications in order to delay action.
Second, ExxonMobil accused us of analyzing “less than 3%” of their advertorials. This is misleading: less than 4% of their advertorials concerned climate change; most were irrelevant. Nevertheless, we have expanded our research program to include advertorials of which we were originally unaware, and found that – spoiler alert – “the results strengthen our original finding.”
Third, ExxonMobil claims that our original publication “obscur[ed] the separateness” of Exxon and Mobil prior to their 1999 merger. This is incorrect and misleading: when Exxon and Mobil merged, ExxonMobil inherited legal and moral responsibility for both. Moreover, as we summarize in today’s rebuttal, additional work we have done in response to ExxonMobil’s complaints “further demonstrates that both Exxon and Mobil separately misled the public, and continued to do so once they merged to become ExxonMobil Corp.”
All told, “we can now conclude with even greater confidence that Exxon, Mobil, and ExxonMobil Corp have all, variously, misled the public.”
Unable to disprove our findings, ExxonMobil’s critique has resorted to quoting a non-peer-reviewed report commissioned and paid for by the company. Instead of subjecting their positions to the independent scrutiny of academic peer-review, as we (and all scientists) do, ExxonMobil found a backdoor, so that they could then claim that our work has been refuted.
These Big Tobacco-style tactics – doubt-mongering, character assassination, intellectual hitjobs, and undisclosed conflicts of interest – are precisely the sort of product-defense maneuvers that ExxonMobil perfected while attacking climate science and climate scientists. The only difference now is that they are coming after the social sciences, too.
But it’s hardly the first time. When we published our study, ExxonMobil immediately responded with a straw man, a falsehood, cherry picking, and ad hominem attacks. Last year, they sent a now-leaked memo to Members of European Parliament in an attempt to discredit one of us (Geoffrey Supran) who had been invited to testify to that parliament as an expert witness about the company’s history of climate denial. And for the past three years, ExxonMobil has run a social media campaign accusing us of publishing “manufactured” science at the behest of “a political campaign.” It has been viewed millions of times.
With ExxonMobil so evidently offering its critiques in bad faith, we hesitated whether to engage at all. They don’t need to win this debate, they just need to make it seem like there is one. Personally, we don’t care what ExxonMobil says about us. But their attempts to smear our research do matter, because – in the face of mounting lawsuits, surging public protests and crumbling market value – ExxonMobil is swinging for a way to discredit the work that demonstrates what they have done.
Alas, it is a swing and a miss. ExxonMobil’s reaction to our work is nothing more than a case in point of the deceptive behavior we described in our original study. ExxonMobil is now misleading the public about its history of misleading the public. Indeed, as Bloomberg’s new report reveals, the company is hiding climate information, too.
GOP Proposes Letting Fossil Fuel Firms Sue Sick Workers Seeking Compensation
BY Alexis Goldstein, Truthout
PUBLISHED August 5, 2020
Fossil fuel firms have long argued that addressing climate change will kill jobs — but the main entities killing oil and gas jobs lately have been fossil fuel firms.
Rather than save jobs, oil firms have lined executive pockets just before declaring bankruptcy, and announced layoffs rather than cut into shareholder profits. Some oil workers are even dying on the job — and instead of increasing safety and transparency, oil companies have pushed Congress to make it impossible for workers and families to sue if they get sick due to unsafe conditions.
We have seen this pattern before with the coal industry, which has long fought efforts to fund benefits to workers who contracted “black lung” in mines. Now, it’s oil and gas firms that are putting profits ahead of the lives of their own workers.
For years, one of the main selling points that oil firms used to lure investors was the amount of dividends they pay to shareholders. Exxon is a case in point: It has raised its dividend 37 years in a row, paying out more than $14 billion in cash dividend payments to its shareholders in 2019. But facing a $2.63 billion loss in the second quarter, Exxon decided to lay off workers rather than cut its shareholder dividend. For workers who manage to survive the layoffs, Exxon will be ending its employer match to workers’ retirement savings plans — a common benefit at major corporations where the firm matches any contributions a worker makes to their 401(k).
This comes despite the implicit support Exxon has received from the Federal Reserve. The Fed has been leveraging $75 billion in public money provided by the CARES Act 10-to-1, allowing them to purchase up to $750 million in corporate bonds and exchange-traded funds through two new programs. The Fed has purchased nearly $300 million in debt from energy and utility companies — drawing scrutiny from 70 environmental and economic justice groups, who’ve asked the Fed to end these purchases.
The Fed’s purchases include $9 million worth of Exxon’s corporate bonds. But the central bank won’t be telling Exxon to save workers’ jobs: Congress and the Fed both failed to create any binding requirements that companies benefiting from these programs retain their workers.
Many oil producers have struggled with a decade of bad bets that were compounded by the spring plunge in oil prices. But that hasn’t stopped them from pushing money out the door to their executives right before they collapse. Last week, the oil and gas drilling firm Noble Corp, which employs 1,600 workers, filed for bankruptcy. Only weeks prior, Noble Corp decided to pay all of its executives their full bonus for 2020, including a $4.2 million pay package for its CEO.
Noble Corp is hardly the first oil and gas firm to make sure its executives got their bonuses just before the company crumbled. Chesapeake Energy, struggling with $9 billion in debt amid crashing oil prices, decided in May to pre-pay 21 executives $25 million in bonuses to ensure they stayed motivated. By the end of June, they were bankrupt. Further, both Whiting Petroleum and Extraction Oil & Gas gave their executives millions in bonuses a mere week before going bankrupt — Whiting Petroleum executives nabbed $14.6 million in cash bonuses and Extraction executives pocketed $6.7 million.
The response of fossil fuel firms and the Trump administration alike to the potentially lethal working conditions for oil and gas workers has been to bury the data and prevent workers from suing. Fossil fuel giants like ConocoPhillips and Exxon lobbied Congress to grant them legal immunity should their workers get sick, as documented by Friends of the Earth. The liability shield proposed by Senate Republicans even allows firms to sue their own workers should they try and seek recompense if they get sick.
This comes as reporting indicates offshore oil rigs may be hotbeds for the virus. On April 8, the Coast Guard reported that at least 26 workers on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico had tested positive for COVID-19. Since then, the count has gone dark as the Trump administration refused to disclose new case numbers.
But the problem appears bleak based on numbers coming out of Mexico where 202 employees and five contractors have died of coronavirus at the state-owned oil producer Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) — the highest coronavirus death rate of any company in the world, according to Bloomberg. Pemex has been disclosing coronavirus deaths on a daily basis. By contrast, ExxonMobil has declined to report any information at all about the death of its workers due to coronavirus.
Fossil fuel firms are sacrificing their workers’ jobs and safety for profits. The sector can’t blame the pandemic for its troubles, as its troubles predate coronavirus.
By rewarding executives just before bankruptcy, slashing jobs to please investors and pushing for immunity even if they endanger their workers, these firms are proving themselves to be the real job killers. With the Fed’s ongoing purchase of fossil fuel firms’ debt, the public itself is an unwilling enabler of the sector’s approach of pursuing profits, no matter the cost.
Rather than save jobs, oil firms have lined executive pockets just before declaring bankruptcy, and announced layoffs rather than cut into shareholder profits. Some oil workers are even dying on the job — and instead of increasing safety and transparency, oil companies have pushed Congress to make it impossible for workers and families to sue if they get sick due to unsafe conditions.
We have seen this pattern before with the coal industry, which has long fought efforts to fund benefits to workers who contracted “black lung” in mines. Now, it’s oil and gas firms that are putting profits ahead of the lives of their own workers.
For years, one of the main selling points that oil firms used to lure investors was the amount of dividends they pay to shareholders. Exxon is a case in point: It has raised its dividend 37 years in a row, paying out more than $14 billion in cash dividend payments to its shareholders in 2019. But facing a $2.63 billion loss in the second quarter, Exxon decided to lay off workers rather than cut its shareholder dividend. For workers who manage to survive the layoffs, Exxon will be ending its employer match to workers’ retirement savings plans — a common benefit at major corporations where the firm matches any contributions a worker makes to their 401(k).
This comes despite the implicit support Exxon has received from the Federal Reserve. The Fed has been leveraging $75 billion in public money provided by the CARES Act 10-to-1, allowing them to purchase up to $750 million in corporate bonds and exchange-traded funds through two new programs. The Fed has purchased nearly $300 million in debt from energy and utility companies — drawing scrutiny from 70 environmental and economic justice groups, who’ve asked the Fed to end these purchases.
The Fed’s purchases include $9 million worth of Exxon’s corporate bonds. But the central bank won’t be telling Exxon to save workers’ jobs: Congress and the Fed both failed to create any binding requirements that companies benefiting from these programs retain their workers.
Many oil producers have struggled with a decade of bad bets that were compounded by the spring plunge in oil prices. But that hasn’t stopped them from pushing money out the door to their executives right before they collapse. Last week, the oil and gas drilling firm Noble Corp, which employs 1,600 workers, filed for bankruptcy. Only weeks prior, Noble Corp decided to pay all of its executives their full bonus for 2020, including a $4.2 million pay package for its CEO.
Noble Corp is hardly the first oil and gas firm to make sure its executives got their bonuses just before the company crumbled. Chesapeake Energy, struggling with $9 billion in debt amid crashing oil prices, decided in May to pre-pay 21 executives $25 million in bonuses to ensure they stayed motivated. By the end of June, they were bankrupt. Further, both Whiting Petroleum and Extraction Oil & Gas gave their executives millions in bonuses a mere week before going bankrupt — Whiting Petroleum executives nabbed $14.6 million in cash bonuses and Extraction executives pocketed $6.7 million.
The response of fossil fuel firms and the Trump administration alike to the potentially lethal working conditions for oil and gas workers has been to bury the data and prevent workers from suing. Fossil fuel giants like ConocoPhillips and Exxon lobbied Congress to grant them legal immunity should their workers get sick, as documented by Friends of the Earth. The liability shield proposed by Senate Republicans even allows firms to sue their own workers should they try and seek recompense if they get sick.
This comes as reporting indicates offshore oil rigs may be hotbeds for the virus. On April 8, the Coast Guard reported that at least 26 workers on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico had tested positive for COVID-19. Since then, the count has gone dark as the Trump administration refused to disclose new case numbers.
But the problem appears bleak based on numbers coming out of Mexico where 202 employees and five contractors have died of coronavirus at the state-owned oil producer Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) — the highest coronavirus death rate of any company in the world, according to Bloomberg. Pemex has been disclosing coronavirus deaths on a daily basis. By contrast, ExxonMobil has declined to report any information at all about the death of its workers due to coronavirus.
Fossil fuel firms are sacrificing their workers’ jobs and safety for profits. The sector can’t blame the pandemic for its troubles, as its troubles predate coronavirus.
By rewarding executives just before bankruptcy, slashing jobs to please investors and pushing for immunity even if they endanger their workers, these firms are proving themselves to be the real job killers. With the Fed’s ongoing purchase of fossil fuel firms’ debt, the public itself is an unwilling enabler of the sector’s approach of pursuing profits, no matter the cost.
Routine gas flaring is wasteful, polluting and undermeasured
the conversation
July 29, 2020 8.18am EDT
If you’ve driven through an area where companies extract oil and gas from shale formations, you’ve probably seen flames dancing at the tops of vertical pipes. That’s flaring – the mostly uncontrolled practice of burning off a byproduct of oil and gas production. Over the past 10 years, the U.S. shale oil and gas boom has made this country one of the world’s top five flaring nations, just behind Russia, Iran and Iraq.
It’s a dubious distinction. Routine flaring gives the industry a black eye.
I am an atmospheric scientist studying trace gases – chemicals that make up a small fraction of Earth’s atmosphere, but can have significant effects on the environment and human health. In several recent studies with graduate and undergraduate students, I have shown how routine flaring is inaccurately assessed and creates a sizable source of air pollution.
Due to a rapid oil price drop in the spring of 2020, new oil exploration has plummeted and production is running at reduced levels. But the industry can rapidly resume activities as demand and prices recover. And so will flaring.
Regulatory agencies, under pressure from environmental groups and parts of the industry, are finally considering rules to curb flaring. But can this wasteful and polluting practice be stopped?
Economic expediency
Each operating shale oil well produces variable amounts of “associated” or “casinghead” gas, a raw gas mixture of highly volatile hydrocarbons, mostly methane. Producers often don’t want this gas unless it can be collected through an existing network of pipelines.
Even when that’s possible, they may decide to dispose of the gas anyway because the cost of collecting and moving it can initially be higher than the value of the gas. This is where flaring comes in.
Routine flaring is common in the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota, the Eagle Ford shale in south-central Texas and the Permian Basin in northwest Texas and New Mexico. Texas has flared about as much gas annually as all of its residential users consume. In the Permian Basin alone, about US$750 million worth of gas was wasted in 2018, without any public benefit.
At the same time, gas flaring contributes approximately 1% of man-made atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions globally. That is when flares combust hydrocarbons efficiently, converting them to carbon dioxide. In contrast, when flares burn poorly or go out, they pollute the air with more harmful gases.
Our studies in two regions of the Eagle Ford shale in Texas showed that flares may be the dominant source of nitrogen oxides, or NOx in these rural areas. NOx emissions contribute to acid rain, ozone and smog formation, and can irritate the eyes, nose, throat and lungs.
We found that at the sites we studied, industrial combustion sources such as flares produced about 10 times more NOx than cars in the area. Although a single flare may be a relatively small source, the large number of flares and high variability of NOx production per flare can cause large-scale atmospheric impacts visible from space.
Unauthorized venting may explain high flaring volumes
Almost all flares are open combustion sources. They can be detected from space as bright, fixed-location heat radiation sources. Scientists have developed algorithms to catalog this radiant heat and relate it to the reported volume of gas flared globally.
With the help of undergraduate students, sociologist Kate Willyard and I evaluated data from the satellite-based Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer, or VIIRS. We calculated flaring volumes in the two Texas shale oil production regions, both on a per-wellpad and per-county basis. We then compared it to a database from the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas production, for the years 2012-2015, and found large discrepancies between the two datasets.
In total, the volumes reported in the state database were only around half of what the satellite observed. Another, less detailed bulk analysis by the research firm S&P Global found similar discrepancies for shale regions in New Mexico and North Dakota.
These large differences may be explained by reporting errors and by several flare operations that are simply exempted from volume reporting. But we suspect that there is an even more systemic, mundane explanation: venting – the direct release of raw gas to the atmosphere.
Venting gas is allowed only for a small set of operations in the industry if it can be done safely. It is usually prohibited because it emits hydrocarbons, including air toxics such as benzene that can cause cancer, birth defects or other serious health problems.
But venting mainly emits methane, which contributes to global warming and atmospheric ozone formation. Venting from flare stacks is illegal, since the flare is considered a waste treatment facility, but the practice apparently has increased over time.
Recent, higher-resolution satellite measurements of atmospheric methane over the Permian basin reveal that its emissions must be significantly higher than what is routinely reported to the Environmental Protection Agency, exceeding 3% of production instead of the more typically assumed 1-2%. Extra methane illegally vented through flare stacks would end up in the Texas Railroad Commission’s database, but satellites looking for heat radiation from combustion would not detect it.
That heat radiation is converted into flaring volumes, using total reported volumes to agencies nationwide. But if a much smaller volume is actually flared, with some of the gas not combusted but vented, the satellite data would overestimate flaring. This is a problem because scientists and the World Bank’s zero flaring initiative employ these satellite-based flaring estimates.
Investors say flaring can be avoided
For a decade conservation groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund have called on regulators to address the shale industry’s methane emissions and the rapid increase in flaring. The Obama administration adopted a new rule in 2016 to curb methane leaks and reduce flaring on public and Indian lands. Now the Trump administration is trying to undo this action, albeit with limited success.
Meanwhile, a new study commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund and involving investors concludes that there are feasible and cost-effective ways for oil and gas companies to minimize flaring even without much regulation. Nevertheless, given that much of the industry has already spent a decade without widely employing such best-practice measures, I expect that oil and gas companies are likely to keep wasting and polluting for the foreseeable future unless government agencies impose tighter regulations.
It’s a dubious distinction. Routine flaring gives the industry a black eye.
I am an atmospheric scientist studying trace gases – chemicals that make up a small fraction of Earth’s atmosphere, but can have significant effects on the environment and human health. In several recent studies with graduate and undergraduate students, I have shown how routine flaring is inaccurately assessed and creates a sizable source of air pollution.
Due to a rapid oil price drop in the spring of 2020, new oil exploration has plummeted and production is running at reduced levels. But the industry can rapidly resume activities as demand and prices recover. And so will flaring.
Regulatory agencies, under pressure from environmental groups and parts of the industry, are finally considering rules to curb flaring. But can this wasteful and polluting practice be stopped?
Economic expediency
Each operating shale oil well produces variable amounts of “associated” or “casinghead” gas, a raw gas mixture of highly volatile hydrocarbons, mostly methane. Producers often don’t want this gas unless it can be collected through an existing network of pipelines.
Even when that’s possible, they may decide to dispose of the gas anyway because the cost of collecting and moving it can initially be higher than the value of the gas. This is where flaring comes in.
Routine flaring is common in the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota, the Eagle Ford shale in south-central Texas and the Permian Basin in northwest Texas and New Mexico. Texas has flared about as much gas annually as all of its residential users consume. In the Permian Basin alone, about US$750 million worth of gas was wasted in 2018, without any public benefit.
At the same time, gas flaring contributes approximately 1% of man-made atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions globally. That is when flares combust hydrocarbons efficiently, converting them to carbon dioxide. In contrast, when flares burn poorly or go out, they pollute the air with more harmful gases.
Our studies in two regions of the Eagle Ford shale in Texas showed that flares may be the dominant source of nitrogen oxides, or NOx in these rural areas. NOx emissions contribute to acid rain, ozone and smog formation, and can irritate the eyes, nose, throat and lungs.
We found that at the sites we studied, industrial combustion sources such as flares produced about 10 times more NOx than cars in the area. Although a single flare may be a relatively small source, the large number of flares and high variability of NOx production per flare can cause large-scale atmospheric impacts visible from space.
Unauthorized venting may explain high flaring volumes
Almost all flares are open combustion sources. They can be detected from space as bright, fixed-location heat radiation sources. Scientists have developed algorithms to catalog this radiant heat and relate it to the reported volume of gas flared globally.
With the help of undergraduate students, sociologist Kate Willyard and I evaluated data from the satellite-based Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer, or VIIRS. We calculated flaring volumes in the two Texas shale oil production regions, both on a per-wellpad and per-county basis. We then compared it to a database from the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas production, for the years 2012-2015, and found large discrepancies between the two datasets.
In total, the volumes reported in the state database were only around half of what the satellite observed. Another, less detailed bulk analysis by the research firm S&P Global found similar discrepancies for shale regions in New Mexico and North Dakota.
These large differences may be explained by reporting errors and by several flare operations that are simply exempted from volume reporting. But we suspect that there is an even more systemic, mundane explanation: venting – the direct release of raw gas to the atmosphere.
Venting gas is allowed only for a small set of operations in the industry if it can be done safely. It is usually prohibited because it emits hydrocarbons, including air toxics such as benzene that can cause cancer, birth defects or other serious health problems.
But venting mainly emits methane, which contributes to global warming and atmospheric ozone formation. Venting from flare stacks is illegal, since the flare is considered a waste treatment facility, but the practice apparently has increased over time.
Recent, higher-resolution satellite measurements of atmospheric methane over the Permian basin reveal that its emissions must be significantly higher than what is routinely reported to the Environmental Protection Agency, exceeding 3% of production instead of the more typically assumed 1-2%. Extra methane illegally vented through flare stacks would end up in the Texas Railroad Commission’s database, but satellites looking for heat radiation from combustion would not detect it.
That heat radiation is converted into flaring volumes, using total reported volumes to agencies nationwide. But if a much smaller volume is actually flared, with some of the gas not combusted but vented, the satellite data would overestimate flaring. This is a problem because scientists and the World Bank’s zero flaring initiative employ these satellite-based flaring estimates.
Investors say flaring can be avoided
For a decade conservation groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund have called on regulators to address the shale industry’s methane emissions and the rapid increase in flaring. The Obama administration adopted a new rule in 2016 to curb methane leaks and reduce flaring on public and Indian lands. Now the Trump administration is trying to undo this action, albeit with limited success.
Meanwhile, a new study commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund and involving investors concludes that there are feasible and cost-effective ways for oil and gas companies to minimize flaring even without much regulation. Nevertheless, given that much of the industry has already spent a decade without widely employing such best-practice measures, I expect that oil and gas companies are likely to keep wasting and polluting for the foreseeable future unless government agencies impose tighter regulations.
bailing out the polluters!!!
Fossil fuels
Over 5,600 fossil fuel companies have taken at least $3bn in US Covid-19 aid
Businesses include oil and gas drillers and coal mine operators, an analysis by Documented and the Guardian finds
Emily Holden in Washington
the guardian
Tue 7 Jul 2020 06.00 EDT
More than 5,600 companies in the fossil fuel industry have taken a minimum of $3bn in coronavirus aid from the US federal government, according to an analysis by Documented and the Guardian of newly released data.
The businesses include oil and gas drillers and coal mine operators, as well as refiners, pipeline companies and firms that provide services to the industry.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) on Monday released the data under pressure for further transparency, including from journalism outlets that had sued demanding the public records.
The $3bn figure is probably far less than the companies actually received. The SBA did not disclose the specific amounts of loans and instead listed ranges. On the high end, fossil fuel companies could have received up to $6.7bn. At least 475 fossil fuel companies received at least $2m, according to the data the SBA released that it collected from banks.
This analysis only includes loans over $150,000, because the SBA did not disclose which companies received smaller loans.
Fossil fuel companies are not restricted from taking the forgivable Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, designed to be used to keep paying employees and to cover recurring bills during the pandemic. But environmental advocates say that investing billions in an industry that is polluting the planet and causing the climate crisis is short-sighted and a bad use of public money.
“Federal aid should be going to help small businesses and frontline workers struggling as the result of the pandemic, not the corporate polluters whose struggles are a result of longstanding failing business practices,” said Melinda Pierce, Sierra Club legislative director.
The Guardian attempted to contact all of the companies named in this story for comment and did not receive responses by deadline.
Several of the companies receiving loans of at least $5m reported having 500 employees, which is the upper end of what the government considers to be a small business. One was the Navajo Transitional Energy Company, which owns four mines including the one on Navajo nation territory that supplies coal to the large Four Corners coal plant. The plant is run by Arizona Public Service Co, which will close it in 2031 when its coal contract expires.
The eastern Ohio coal company CCU Coal and Construction, which reported having 148 employees, also took at least $5m. Last year, the company announced plans to cut half of its staff, or 205 jobs, because American Electric Power is closing a plant it provides coal to in Conesville.
The Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, which is owned by customers and not investors, also got at least $5m. It announced earlier this year that it would pull the plug on a long-delayed coal-power project in Kansas.
The list of recipients getting at least $5m also included oil drillers. Four were listed as top 10 drilling rig operators in Texas late last year: Independence Contract Drilling, Latshaw Drilling Company, NorAm Drilling Company and Scandrill.
Jesse Coleman, a researcher for Documented, said: “We should not be wasting taxpayer dollars on an industry that’s in a tailspin of its own making, especially when it seems intent on bringing the whole planet down with it.”
A separate review by the watchdog Accountable.US and the Guardian found that millions of dollars in coronavirus aid has also gone to companies with histories of significant environmental violations.
Pacific Ethanol, a California company that makes a biofuel that is blended into gasoline, took $9.9m. Multiple Pacific Ethanol facilities have been cited for breaking water and air pollution laws year after year, racking up $2.6m in environmental fines over the last five years, according to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) database.
In 2017, the Sierra Club sued the company, arguing its bioethanol plant in Pekin, Illinois, had “brazenly and consistently violated its water-pollution permit for years”, releasing hot and polluted wastewater into the Illinois River.
Rob Weinstock, an environment lawyer who worked on the Illinois case against Pacific Ethanol, said the company repeatedly failed to correct problems with its Pekin plant and stalled regulators by requesting permission to conduct a study on the effects of releasing hotter water into the river and then delaying that study.
Paul Koehler, Pacific Ethanol’s spokesman, contested the EPA data showing the company has been fined $2.6m, saying it has been fined less than half that amount and that many of the penalties were for problems it self-reported.
He said the company produces low-carbon renewable fuel and aims to lower emissions. Many environmental advocates argue, however, that growing corn to produce ethanol to blend into gasoline damages the environment and still results in air pollution.
Koehler said most of the company’s violations over the last five years were in California and were from equipment failures that Pacific Ethanol self-reported while trying to fix.
A second company, Perma-Fix Environmental Services, a waste management company, took a $5.7m loan. It was fined $390,000 in the last five years, according to the EPA database. Perma-Fix in May saw revenues increase 112% to $24.9m, compared to the same period last year. That equaled about $1.2m for stockholders.
A third company, the chemical manufacturer LSB Industries, received $10m. LSB Industries incurred $236,000 in federal environmental fines since 2015, according to EPA. In 2014, the company and its subsidiaries paid $725,000 in penalties to settle alleged federal and state air quality violations at 10 nitric acid plants in four states, Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas.
In total, at least nine companies that were fined for environmental violations in the last five years have been awarded $35m. Those numbers are based on filings from publicly-traded companies in regulatory filings. The full total is probably far higher.
There is no restriction against companies with environmental violations taking PPP loans, but accountability experts say the government should be thoroughly screening them before disbursing aid.
“This all boils down to a question of financial responsibility,” said Chris Saeger, director of strategic initiatives at Accountable.US.
“If you have proved yourself to be bad with money, if you have proved yourself to cost your shareholders and cost your company money through environmental violations, then you’re probably not going to be responsible to us taxpayers.”
The businesses include oil and gas drillers and coal mine operators, as well as refiners, pipeline companies and firms that provide services to the industry.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) on Monday released the data under pressure for further transparency, including from journalism outlets that had sued demanding the public records.
The $3bn figure is probably far less than the companies actually received. The SBA did not disclose the specific amounts of loans and instead listed ranges. On the high end, fossil fuel companies could have received up to $6.7bn. At least 475 fossil fuel companies received at least $2m, according to the data the SBA released that it collected from banks.
This analysis only includes loans over $150,000, because the SBA did not disclose which companies received smaller loans.
Fossil fuel companies are not restricted from taking the forgivable Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, designed to be used to keep paying employees and to cover recurring bills during the pandemic. But environmental advocates say that investing billions in an industry that is polluting the planet and causing the climate crisis is short-sighted and a bad use of public money.
“Federal aid should be going to help small businesses and frontline workers struggling as the result of the pandemic, not the corporate polluters whose struggles are a result of longstanding failing business practices,” said Melinda Pierce, Sierra Club legislative director.
The Guardian attempted to contact all of the companies named in this story for comment and did not receive responses by deadline.
Several of the companies receiving loans of at least $5m reported having 500 employees, which is the upper end of what the government considers to be a small business. One was the Navajo Transitional Energy Company, which owns four mines including the one on Navajo nation territory that supplies coal to the large Four Corners coal plant. The plant is run by Arizona Public Service Co, which will close it in 2031 when its coal contract expires.
The eastern Ohio coal company CCU Coal and Construction, which reported having 148 employees, also took at least $5m. Last year, the company announced plans to cut half of its staff, or 205 jobs, because American Electric Power is closing a plant it provides coal to in Conesville.
The Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, which is owned by customers and not investors, also got at least $5m. It announced earlier this year that it would pull the plug on a long-delayed coal-power project in Kansas.
The list of recipients getting at least $5m also included oil drillers. Four were listed as top 10 drilling rig operators in Texas late last year: Independence Contract Drilling, Latshaw Drilling Company, NorAm Drilling Company and Scandrill.
Jesse Coleman, a researcher for Documented, said: “We should not be wasting taxpayer dollars on an industry that’s in a tailspin of its own making, especially when it seems intent on bringing the whole planet down with it.”
A separate review by the watchdog Accountable.US and the Guardian found that millions of dollars in coronavirus aid has also gone to companies with histories of significant environmental violations.
Pacific Ethanol, a California company that makes a biofuel that is blended into gasoline, took $9.9m. Multiple Pacific Ethanol facilities have been cited for breaking water and air pollution laws year after year, racking up $2.6m in environmental fines over the last five years, according to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) database.
In 2017, the Sierra Club sued the company, arguing its bioethanol plant in Pekin, Illinois, had “brazenly and consistently violated its water-pollution permit for years”, releasing hot and polluted wastewater into the Illinois River.
Rob Weinstock, an environment lawyer who worked on the Illinois case against Pacific Ethanol, said the company repeatedly failed to correct problems with its Pekin plant and stalled regulators by requesting permission to conduct a study on the effects of releasing hotter water into the river and then delaying that study.
Paul Koehler, Pacific Ethanol’s spokesman, contested the EPA data showing the company has been fined $2.6m, saying it has been fined less than half that amount and that many of the penalties were for problems it self-reported.
He said the company produces low-carbon renewable fuel and aims to lower emissions. Many environmental advocates argue, however, that growing corn to produce ethanol to blend into gasoline damages the environment and still results in air pollution.
Koehler said most of the company’s violations over the last five years were in California and were from equipment failures that Pacific Ethanol self-reported while trying to fix.
A second company, Perma-Fix Environmental Services, a waste management company, took a $5.7m loan. It was fined $390,000 in the last five years, according to the EPA database. Perma-Fix in May saw revenues increase 112% to $24.9m, compared to the same period last year. That equaled about $1.2m for stockholders.
A third company, the chemical manufacturer LSB Industries, received $10m. LSB Industries incurred $236,000 in federal environmental fines since 2015, according to EPA. In 2014, the company and its subsidiaries paid $725,000 in penalties to settle alleged federal and state air quality violations at 10 nitric acid plants in four states, Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas.
In total, at least nine companies that were fined for environmental violations in the last five years have been awarded $35m. Those numbers are based on filings from publicly-traded companies in regulatory filings. The full total is probably far higher.
There is no restriction against companies with environmental violations taking PPP loans, but accountability experts say the government should be thoroughly screening them before disbursing aid.
“This all boils down to a question of financial responsibility,” said Chris Saeger, director of strategic initiatives at Accountable.US.
“If you have proved yourself to be bad with money, if you have proved yourself to cost your shareholders and cost your company money through environmental violations, then you’re probably not going to be responsible to us taxpayers.”
the backers of the astro-turf idiots!!!
Groups built on fossil fuel funding urge states to reopen amid pandemic
ExxonMobil, Koch and Mercer family are past funders of critics of stay-at-home orders as fossil fuel industry struggles amid lockdowns
Emily Holden
the guardian
Thu 21 May 2020 09.53 EDT
ExxonMobil refinery in Baytown, Texas. Photograph: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
Dozens of individuals and groups urging states to reopen amid the Covid-19 pandemic have historical financial ties to coal and oil and gas companies and conservative billionaires who have invested in climate disinformation.
Past funders of the current critics of stay-at-home orders include the bankrupt coal company Murray Energy and oil giant ExxonMobil, as well as Koch and Mercer family foundations, according to DeSmog, a group that tracks the money behind anti-climate-action campaigns.
Some of the contributions tallied are recent and others are at least five years old or older. ExxonMobil, for example, had broken ties with two of the groups in this story by 2006. There is no evidence that these companies and foundations are funding ongoing campaigns to reopen businesses.
But Brendan DeMelle, executive director of DeSmog, said the “information echo chamber” of interests downplaying both the climate crisis and the pandemic would not be what it is today without fossil fuel funding.
“While we don’t have direct evidence of specific grant money going for Covid denial, none of these operations would exist without their support over the years,” DeMelle said.
Donations to not-for-profit thinktanks are nearly impossible to track in real time because of a lag in reporting. It could take years to reveal which interests are currently funneling money to the groups helping to organize and expand shutdown protests. Even then, much of the funds could be hidden, donated anonymously through third-party not-for-profits, DeMelle said.
But DeSmog’s research shows many of the calls to end stay-at-home orders are coming from people associated with a wide-ranging network of organizations that together seek to limit the power of government and thwart intervention in business. That web of thinktanks was built years ago on contributions from the fossil fuel industry and conservative philanthropists.
Now, the fossil fuel industry is struggling amid government lockdowns aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus, and allowing people to move freely and return to work would help the sector by boosting energy demand.
As Donald Trump has advocated for a quicker reopening, often against the recommendations of his expert advisers, Republican voters’ views on how to handle the coronavirus have shifted substantially.
Just 43% say it is more important for the government to address the spread of the virus than the economy, down from 65% about a month ago.
Trump’s calls for a quicker return to regular life have grown in popularity as they have been echoed throughout conservative media, often backed by thinktanks connected to the oil and coal industries.
In Wisconsin, where people have protested against a stay-at-home order, the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) filed an amicus brief with the state supreme court challenging the authority of the governor and the health department to continue to require people to stay home without sign-off from the Republican-controlled legislature. The court last week struck down the state’s order, calling it a “vast seizure of power”.
Charles Koch, the 20th-richest billionaire in the world, runs Koch Industries, which is involved in oil operations and energy-intensive industries. He and his late brother, David, have funded a network of conservative thinktanks.
Phil Kerpen, a Koch political operative, has argued that lockdowns are “unscientific”, and “medieval” and don’t save lives. Kerpen is president of American Commitment, a group that through 2016 has received at least $6.9m from Freedom Partners, which is partially funded by the Kochs, according to DeSmog. He was previously vice-president of AFP.
An AFP spokesman said the group has been “unambiguous” in its position that “the choice between full shutdown and immediately opening everything is a false choice”, and that it is working with officials and businesses to develop standards to “safely reopen the economy without jeopardizing public health”.
“Past grants do not define our position on reopening the economy – to suggest otherwise is disingenuous,” the AFP spokesman said. “None of the grants referenced have anything to do with stay-at-home orders and some of them were made many years ago.”
The Washington Post has reported that the Convention of States, a project launched in 2015 with money from the family foundation of the billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer, has helped to coordinate activism against the stay-at-home orders around the country.
The conservative thinktank the Manhattan Institute – which over the years has taken at least $1m from ExxonMobil through 2018, according to the environment group Greenpeace USA, as well as $3.2m from Koch foundations and $2.2m from the Mercer Family Foundation – has published commentary questioning the value of shutdowns.
Brian Riedl, writing in the Manhattan Institute publication City Journal, called the shutdowns
unsustainable, saying just a few months “will cost the government and the economy trillions of dollars”.
An ExxonMobil spokesman, Casey Norton, noted the company had not contributed to most of the groups in this story for years and said it was not pushing to lift stay-at-home orders.
“We continually evaluate our memberships and participation in organizations, and we do not contribute to organizations if we are not actively involved,” Norton said.
“As for return to work, our focus right now is on ensuring the safety and health of our entire workforce and to do our part to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus in the community.”
The Daily Caller, a news organization that has received $3.5m through 2017 from Koch foundations through its non-profit, has run articles suggesting Democrats want to kill the economy to keep Trump from getting re-elected.
“The mainstream media, which works for the Democrat party, wanted us shut down more, and for longer,” said opinion contributor Ron Hart.
Often, funding by the fossil fuel industry is less obvious and more difficult to follow. Bits and pieces of financial connections are revealed in regulatory and court filings, but many are hidden behind dark money groups.
One shutdown critic, author Alex Epstein, runs the for-profit thinktank the Center for Industrial Progress. Epstein has said his clients include the president of the Kentucky Coal Association and thecoaltruth.com, a project DeSmog links to employees of Alliance Coal.
Epstein in a podcast compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu and said “the purpose of the government is not to extend people’s lives. It’s to leave us free to live our lives as we judge best.”
Epstein told the Guardian his clients pay him “solely to advise them on *their* messaging”, and that “none of them have any influence on what I say publicly, on this or any other issue”.
Other critics of reopening are connected with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Council for Capital Formation and the Heartland Institute.
Chris Horner, a former fellow at CEI, in an op-ed in the Washington Times in March warned that “the current ‘coronavirus economy’ could become legally mandated, with no recovery permitted but only worsening, in the name of climate change”. Horner received funding from the coal company Alpha Natural Resources, according to a bankruptcy filing.
Joel Zinberg, of CEI, and Richard Rahn – who is chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth and board member of ACCF – have also criticized stay-at-home orders. Rahn has called Covid-19 the “Chinese Communist party virus”.
CEI received $2.1m from ExxonMobil through 2005 and has taken $200,000 from Murray Energy more recently. ACCF has gotten $1.8m from ExxonMobil through 2015 and $600,000 from Koch groups through 2015.
ACCF as an organization “has taken no position on the stay-at-home orders or any prospective timeline for reopening the economy”, said the group’s CEO, Mark Bloomfield.
The Heartland Institute, which denies the severity of anthropogenic climate change, has received $6.7m through 2017 from the Mercer Family Foundation, as well as $130,000 from coal company Murray Energy. The group received $25,000 from a Koch foundation for one specific project and got money from ExxonMobil until 2006.
A Heartland spokesman, Jim Lakely, has argued “leftists” are “stoking Covid-19 panic” and has called lockdown orders unconstitutional.
“What’s the time limit on being labeled ‘Koch-funded’ or ‘Exxon-funded’? A decade? Two? Also, who cares?” Lakely said. He did not respond to questions about Mercer funding.
Past funders of the current critics of stay-at-home orders include the bankrupt coal company Murray Energy and oil giant ExxonMobil, as well as Koch and Mercer family foundations, according to DeSmog, a group that tracks the money behind anti-climate-action campaigns.
Some of the contributions tallied are recent and others are at least five years old or older. ExxonMobil, for example, had broken ties with two of the groups in this story by 2006. There is no evidence that these companies and foundations are funding ongoing campaigns to reopen businesses.
But Brendan DeMelle, executive director of DeSmog, said the “information echo chamber” of interests downplaying both the climate crisis and the pandemic would not be what it is today without fossil fuel funding.
“While we don’t have direct evidence of specific grant money going for Covid denial, none of these operations would exist without their support over the years,” DeMelle said.
Donations to not-for-profit thinktanks are nearly impossible to track in real time because of a lag in reporting. It could take years to reveal which interests are currently funneling money to the groups helping to organize and expand shutdown protests. Even then, much of the funds could be hidden, donated anonymously through third-party not-for-profits, DeMelle said.
But DeSmog’s research shows many of the calls to end stay-at-home orders are coming from people associated with a wide-ranging network of organizations that together seek to limit the power of government and thwart intervention in business. That web of thinktanks was built years ago on contributions from the fossil fuel industry and conservative philanthropists.
Now, the fossil fuel industry is struggling amid government lockdowns aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus, and allowing people to move freely and return to work would help the sector by boosting energy demand.
As Donald Trump has advocated for a quicker reopening, often against the recommendations of his expert advisers, Republican voters’ views on how to handle the coronavirus have shifted substantially.
Just 43% say it is more important for the government to address the spread of the virus than the economy, down from 65% about a month ago.
Trump’s calls for a quicker return to regular life have grown in popularity as they have been echoed throughout conservative media, often backed by thinktanks connected to the oil and coal industries.
In Wisconsin, where people have protested against a stay-at-home order, the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) filed an amicus brief with the state supreme court challenging the authority of the governor and the health department to continue to require people to stay home without sign-off from the Republican-controlled legislature. The court last week struck down the state’s order, calling it a “vast seizure of power”.
Charles Koch, the 20th-richest billionaire in the world, runs Koch Industries, which is involved in oil operations and energy-intensive industries. He and his late brother, David, have funded a network of conservative thinktanks.
Phil Kerpen, a Koch political operative, has argued that lockdowns are “unscientific”, and “medieval” and don’t save lives. Kerpen is president of American Commitment, a group that through 2016 has received at least $6.9m from Freedom Partners, which is partially funded by the Kochs, according to DeSmog. He was previously vice-president of AFP.
An AFP spokesman said the group has been “unambiguous” in its position that “the choice between full shutdown and immediately opening everything is a false choice”, and that it is working with officials and businesses to develop standards to “safely reopen the economy without jeopardizing public health”.
“Past grants do not define our position on reopening the economy – to suggest otherwise is disingenuous,” the AFP spokesman said. “None of the grants referenced have anything to do with stay-at-home orders and some of them were made many years ago.”
The Washington Post has reported that the Convention of States, a project launched in 2015 with money from the family foundation of the billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer, has helped to coordinate activism against the stay-at-home orders around the country.
The conservative thinktank the Manhattan Institute – which over the years has taken at least $1m from ExxonMobil through 2018, according to the environment group Greenpeace USA, as well as $3.2m from Koch foundations and $2.2m from the Mercer Family Foundation – has published commentary questioning the value of shutdowns.
Brian Riedl, writing in the Manhattan Institute publication City Journal, called the shutdowns
unsustainable, saying just a few months “will cost the government and the economy trillions of dollars”.
An ExxonMobil spokesman, Casey Norton, noted the company had not contributed to most of the groups in this story for years and said it was not pushing to lift stay-at-home orders.
“We continually evaluate our memberships and participation in organizations, and we do not contribute to organizations if we are not actively involved,” Norton said.
“As for return to work, our focus right now is on ensuring the safety and health of our entire workforce and to do our part to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus in the community.”
The Daily Caller, a news organization that has received $3.5m through 2017 from Koch foundations through its non-profit, has run articles suggesting Democrats want to kill the economy to keep Trump from getting re-elected.
“The mainstream media, which works for the Democrat party, wanted us shut down more, and for longer,” said opinion contributor Ron Hart.
Often, funding by the fossil fuel industry is less obvious and more difficult to follow. Bits and pieces of financial connections are revealed in regulatory and court filings, but many are hidden behind dark money groups.
One shutdown critic, author Alex Epstein, runs the for-profit thinktank the Center for Industrial Progress. Epstein has said his clients include the president of the Kentucky Coal Association and thecoaltruth.com, a project DeSmog links to employees of Alliance Coal.
Epstein in a podcast compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu and said “the purpose of the government is not to extend people’s lives. It’s to leave us free to live our lives as we judge best.”
Epstein told the Guardian his clients pay him “solely to advise them on *their* messaging”, and that “none of them have any influence on what I say publicly, on this or any other issue”.
Other critics of reopening are connected with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Council for Capital Formation and the Heartland Institute.
Chris Horner, a former fellow at CEI, in an op-ed in the Washington Times in March warned that “the current ‘coronavirus economy’ could become legally mandated, with no recovery permitted but only worsening, in the name of climate change”. Horner received funding from the coal company Alpha Natural Resources, according to a bankruptcy filing.
Joel Zinberg, of CEI, and Richard Rahn – who is chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth and board member of ACCF – have also criticized stay-at-home orders. Rahn has called Covid-19 the “Chinese Communist party virus”.
CEI received $2.1m from ExxonMobil through 2005 and has taken $200,000 from Murray Energy more recently. ACCF has gotten $1.8m from ExxonMobil through 2015 and $600,000 from Koch groups through 2015.
ACCF as an organization “has taken no position on the stay-at-home orders or any prospective timeline for reopening the economy”, said the group’s CEO, Mark Bloomfield.
The Heartland Institute, which denies the severity of anthropogenic climate change, has received $6.7m through 2017 from the Mercer Family Foundation, as well as $130,000 from coal company Murray Energy. The group received $25,000 from a Koch foundation for one specific project and got money from ExxonMobil until 2006.
A Heartland spokesman, Jim Lakely, has argued “leftists” are “stoking Covid-19 panic” and has called lockdown orders unconstitutional.
“What’s the time limit on being labeled ‘Koch-funded’ or ‘Exxon-funded’? A decade? Two? Also, who cares?” Lakely said. He did not respond to questions about Mercer funding.
Big Oil taking $1.9 billion in CARES Act tax breaks aimed at helping small businesses in ‘Stealth bailout’: report
May 17, 2020
By Common Dreams- Commentary
- raw story
Sen. Bernie Sanders was among critics outraged that the fossil fuel industry is using tax breaks in the CARES Act meant to help businesses keep workers employed to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes—and then delivering that money to executives.
“Good thing President Trump is looking out for the real victims of the coronavirus: fossil fuel executives,” Sanders tweeted sarcastically Friday.
Reporting Friday from Bloomberg News showed that “$1.9 billion in CARES Act tax benefits are being claimed by at least 37 oil companies, service firms, and contractors”—what watchdog group Documented senior researcher Jesse Coleman described as a “stealth bailout” of the climate-killing industry.
“In the name of ‘small business,’ we’re shoveling out billions of dollars to big corporations and rich guys,” Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told Bloomberg.
Bloomberg used the example of how Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. manipulated the bailout to explain the tax scheme:
As it headed toward bankruptcy, Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. took advantage of a little-noticed provision in the stimulus bill Congress passed in March to get a $9.7 million tax refund. Then, it asked a bankruptcy judge to authorize the same amount as bonuses to nine executives.
According to Bloomberg’s reporting, Diamond’s refund pales in comparison to some of its larger competitors, “including $55 million for Denver-based Antero Midstream Corp., $41.2 million for supplier Oil States International Inc. and $96 million for Oklahoma-based producer Devon Energy Corp.”
The fossil fuel industry was already in financial trouble before the outbreak, which has effectively crippled Big Oil’s ability to make money—even with the generous subsidies given by the federal government. Access to bailout tax break funding is helping fossil fuel companies prosper, along with other climate-destroying industries like mining companies, which have also reaped millions from coronavirus relief legislation.
“The Trump administration’s favor factory hasn’t stopped with a global pandemic,” Accountable.US spokesperson Jayson O’Neill said in a statement Friday. “As millions of jobs disappear week after week, the Trump administration is prioritizing aid for wealthy, well-connected corporations before small businesses.”
“Good thing President Trump is looking out for the real victims of the coronavirus: fossil fuel executives,” Sanders tweeted sarcastically Friday.
Reporting Friday from Bloomberg News showed that “$1.9 billion in CARES Act tax benefits are being claimed by at least 37 oil companies, service firms, and contractors”—what watchdog group Documented senior researcher Jesse Coleman described as a “stealth bailout” of the climate-killing industry.
“In the name of ‘small business,’ we’re shoveling out billions of dollars to big corporations and rich guys,” Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told Bloomberg.
Bloomberg used the example of how Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. manipulated the bailout to explain the tax scheme:
As it headed toward bankruptcy, Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. took advantage of a little-noticed provision in the stimulus bill Congress passed in March to get a $9.7 million tax refund. Then, it asked a bankruptcy judge to authorize the same amount as bonuses to nine executives.
According to Bloomberg’s reporting, Diamond’s refund pales in comparison to some of its larger competitors, “including $55 million for Denver-based Antero Midstream Corp., $41.2 million for supplier Oil States International Inc. and $96 million for Oklahoma-based producer Devon Energy Corp.”
The fossil fuel industry was already in financial trouble before the outbreak, which has effectively crippled Big Oil’s ability to make money—even with the generous subsidies given by the federal government. Access to bailout tax break funding is helping fossil fuel companies prosper, along with other climate-destroying industries like mining companies, which have also reaped millions from coronavirus relief legislation.
“The Trump administration’s favor factory hasn’t stopped with a global pandemic,” Accountable.US spokesperson Jayson O’Neill said in a statement Friday. “As millions of jobs disappear week after week, the Trump administration is prioritizing aid for wealthy, well-connected corporations before small businesses.”
helping the criminal polluters!!!
Revealed: US fossil fuel companies handed at least $50m in coronavirus aid
Oil and mining firms – some with ties to Trump officials – taking advantage of funding meant for small businesses, review shows
Emily Holden in Washington - the guardian
Fri 1 May 2020 08.16 EDT
US fossil fuel companies have taken at least $50m in taxpayer money they likely won’t have to pay back, according to a review of coronavirus aid meant for struggling small businesses by the investigative research group Documented and the Guardian.
A total of $28m is going to three coal mining companies, including two with ties to Trump officials, bolstering a dying American industry and a fuel that scientists insist world leaders must shift away from to avoid the worst of the climate crisis.
The other $22m is being paid out to oil and gas services and equipment providers and other firms that work with drillers and coal miners.
Melinda Pierce, the legislative director for the Sierra Club, said: “The federal money Congress appropriated should be going to help small businesses and frontline workers struggling as a result of the pandemic, not the corporate polluters whose struggles are a result of failing business practices and existed long before Covid-19 entered the public lexicon.”
More than 40 Democratic lawmakers have argued that fossil fuel companies should not get any assistance under the coronavirus aid package.
Some Democrats have also warned the forgivable loans being made under Congress’ Paycheck Protection Program could be a transparency disaster.
Banks and lending institutions are distributing the money, so the government says it cannot track recipients in real time. The loans revealed have been made public only through news reports and securities filings by publicly-traded companies, although the Federal Reserve has committed to issuing monthly reports.
So far, it’s clear the program is not working as intended. The funds are aimed at helping small businesses to keep paying their employees and covering other recurring expenses during the economic downturn. But they have been exploited by large companies forced to return the money amid a public outcry, including the Los Angeles Lakers, Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
The industry aid comes as the Trump administration is reportedly considering a broader bailout for oil and gas corporations, which were already under pressure before the coronavirus and have watched oil prices nosedive because of a global price war and low demand for gasoline. The US government could make loans to oil and gas companies, essentially making taxpayers investors in the industry.
The Federal Reserve on Thursday also announced changes to its lending rules that could help indebted petroleum firms.
“The idea that oil workers are getting a paycheck is great,” said Jamie Henn, a spokesman for the Stop the Money Pipeline campaign who co-founded the environment group 350.org. “The worry is that the money’s going to the top and not going to filter down.”
The $50m already paid to fossil fuel companies is a small fraction of the the $2.1tn Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, known as the Cares Act. But the total assistance to the industry is likely much larger than can currently be tallied and will continue to grow.
Environmental advocates and oversight experts tracking the funds say it’s impossible to count how much of the money will assist fossil fuels, including because some firms provide services across multiple industries.
“All of this is voluntary disclosures by the companies,” said Jesse Coleman, a senior researcher with Documented. “No matter what, it’s going to be an incomplete picture of what’s going on.”
Coleman said in many cases the fossil fuel companies getting aid have made bad investments and “now they’re going to come crawling hat in hand and say: look at what the coronavirus did to us.”
Among the coronavirus aid recipients is Hallador Coal, an Indiana-based coal mining company that hired president Trump’s former environment chief Scott Pruitt as a lobbyist. Hallador is taking $10m to fund two months of payroll and other expenses.
Coal mining company Rhino Resources, which was formerly run by Trump’s Mine Safety and Health Administration head David Zatezalo, is receiving $10m. Coal firm Ramaco Resources is getting $8.4m.
The US coal industry has been in steep decline, driven out of the market by cheap natural gas and environmental concerns. Trump campaigned on putting coal miners back to work, and his agencies have unsuccessfully explored ways to bail out coal companies, which are seeing their lowest employment levels in modern history. The Trump administration has also rescinded nearly all of the environment and climate protections the fossil fuel industry has opposed.
Fossil fuel companies can also take advantage of tax benefits under the coronavirus legislation, including deferring payment of social security and medicare taxes.
The Missouri-based Peabody Energy coal company has said it will speed up collecting an alternative minimum tax refund of $24m to 2020 and defer $18m of owed taxes.
US taxpayers already subsidize the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20bn per year, according to conservative estimates.
The Center for International Environmental Law has accused the oil, gas and plastics industries of “exploiting the crisis by aggressively lobbying for massive bailouts and special privileges in a desperate attempt to revive an oil and gas industry already in decline”.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis argues that federal lending to the oil and gas sector would be “a complete waste of money,” because it wouldn’t fix the industry’s underlying financial problems.
Oil industry lobbyists have pushed for changes at the Federal Reserve to let companies with large amounts of debt use its Main Street Lending Program and borrow to pay off existing loans.
In an April 15 letter to the Federal Reserve, the oil trade group the Independent Petroleum Association of America asked for the new provisions, saying “oil and natural gas producers are not looking for a government handout; they are seeking a bridge to help survive this economic disruption.”
Environmental advocates say the move would disproportionately benefit small and mid-sized oil and gas companies, such as Occidental Petroleum, which has nearly $80bn in liabilities on its balance sheet.
Graham Steele, who directs the corporations and society initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, called the situation the “classic disaster scenario where an opportunistic administration and industry is taking advantage of a crisis.”
“And by the way, these are industries driving climate change. It’s both a bad financial proposition of the Fed and for taxpayers and a bad situation for the planet.”
A total of $28m is going to three coal mining companies, including two with ties to Trump officials, bolstering a dying American industry and a fuel that scientists insist world leaders must shift away from to avoid the worst of the climate crisis.
The other $22m is being paid out to oil and gas services and equipment providers and other firms that work with drillers and coal miners.
Melinda Pierce, the legislative director for the Sierra Club, said: “The federal money Congress appropriated should be going to help small businesses and frontline workers struggling as a result of the pandemic, not the corporate polluters whose struggles are a result of failing business practices and existed long before Covid-19 entered the public lexicon.”
More than 40 Democratic lawmakers have argued that fossil fuel companies should not get any assistance under the coronavirus aid package.
Some Democrats have also warned the forgivable loans being made under Congress’ Paycheck Protection Program could be a transparency disaster.
Banks and lending institutions are distributing the money, so the government says it cannot track recipients in real time. The loans revealed have been made public only through news reports and securities filings by publicly-traded companies, although the Federal Reserve has committed to issuing monthly reports.
So far, it’s clear the program is not working as intended. The funds are aimed at helping small businesses to keep paying their employees and covering other recurring expenses during the economic downturn. But they have been exploited by large companies forced to return the money amid a public outcry, including the Los Angeles Lakers, Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
The industry aid comes as the Trump administration is reportedly considering a broader bailout for oil and gas corporations, which were already under pressure before the coronavirus and have watched oil prices nosedive because of a global price war and low demand for gasoline. The US government could make loans to oil and gas companies, essentially making taxpayers investors in the industry.
The Federal Reserve on Thursday also announced changes to its lending rules that could help indebted petroleum firms.
“The idea that oil workers are getting a paycheck is great,” said Jamie Henn, a spokesman for the Stop the Money Pipeline campaign who co-founded the environment group 350.org. “The worry is that the money’s going to the top and not going to filter down.”
The $50m already paid to fossil fuel companies is a small fraction of the the $2.1tn Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, known as the Cares Act. But the total assistance to the industry is likely much larger than can currently be tallied and will continue to grow.
Environmental advocates and oversight experts tracking the funds say it’s impossible to count how much of the money will assist fossil fuels, including because some firms provide services across multiple industries.
“All of this is voluntary disclosures by the companies,” said Jesse Coleman, a senior researcher with Documented. “No matter what, it’s going to be an incomplete picture of what’s going on.”
Coleman said in many cases the fossil fuel companies getting aid have made bad investments and “now they’re going to come crawling hat in hand and say: look at what the coronavirus did to us.”
Among the coronavirus aid recipients is Hallador Coal, an Indiana-based coal mining company that hired president Trump’s former environment chief Scott Pruitt as a lobbyist. Hallador is taking $10m to fund two months of payroll and other expenses.
Coal mining company Rhino Resources, which was formerly run by Trump’s Mine Safety and Health Administration head David Zatezalo, is receiving $10m. Coal firm Ramaco Resources is getting $8.4m.
The US coal industry has been in steep decline, driven out of the market by cheap natural gas and environmental concerns. Trump campaigned on putting coal miners back to work, and his agencies have unsuccessfully explored ways to bail out coal companies, which are seeing their lowest employment levels in modern history. The Trump administration has also rescinded nearly all of the environment and climate protections the fossil fuel industry has opposed.
Fossil fuel companies can also take advantage of tax benefits under the coronavirus legislation, including deferring payment of social security and medicare taxes.
The Missouri-based Peabody Energy coal company has said it will speed up collecting an alternative minimum tax refund of $24m to 2020 and defer $18m of owed taxes.
US taxpayers already subsidize the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20bn per year, according to conservative estimates.
The Center for International Environmental Law has accused the oil, gas and plastics industries of “exploiting the crisis by aggressively lobbying for massive bailouts and special privileges in a desperate attempt to revive an oil and gas industry already in decline”.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis argues that federal lending to the oil and gas sector would be “a complete waste of money,” because it wouldn’t fix the industry’s underlying financial problems.
Oil industry lobbyists have pushed for changes at the Federal Reserve to let companies with large amounts of debt use its Main Street Lending Program and borrow to pay off existing loans.
In an April 15 letter to the Federal Reserve, the oil trade group the Independent Petroleum Association of America asked for the new provisions, saying “oil and natural gas producers are not looking for a government handout; they are seeking a bridge to help survive this economic disruption.”
Environmental advocates say the move would disproportionately benefit small and mid-sized oil and gas companies, such as Occidental Petroleum, which has nearly $80bn in liabilities on its balance sheet.
Graham Steele, who directs the corporations and society initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, called the situation the “classic disaster scenario where an opportunistic administration and industry is taking advantage of a crisis.”
“And by the way, these are industries driving climate change. It’s both a bad financial proposition of the Fed and for taxpayers and a bad situation for the planet.”
When oil became waste: a week of turmoil for crude, and more pain to come
David Gaffen - reuters
APRIL 25, 2020 / 10:04 PM
(Reuters) - The magnitude of how damaged the energy industry is came into full view on April 20 when the benchmark price of U.S. oil futures, which had never dropped below $10 a barrel in its nearly 40-year history, plunged to a previously unthinkable minus $38 a barrel.
In just a few months, the coronavirus pandemic has destroyed so much fuel demand as billions of people curtail travel that it has done what financial crashes, recessions and wars had failed to ever do - leave the United States with so much oil there was nowhere to put it.
While the unusual circumstance of negative oil prices may not be repeated, many in the industry say it is a harbinger for more bleak days ahead, and that years of overinvestment will not correct in a period of weeks or even months.
“What happened in the futures contract the other day indicated things are starting to get bad earlier than expected,” said Frederick Lawrence, vice president of economics and international affairs at the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
“People are getting notices from pipeline companies that say they can’t take their crude anymore. That means you’re shutting down the well yesterday.”
Evidence of the erosion of value for a product that has been a mainstay of global society since the late 19th century abounded across the world last week.
In Russia, one of the world’s top producers, the industry is considering resorting to burning its oil to take it off the market, sources told Reuters.
Norwegian oil giant Equinor slashed its quarterly dividend by two-thirds. Next week will bring earnings reports from the world’s largest oil companies including Exxon Mobil Corp, BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC. They are all expected to detail additional spending cuts, and investors will be watching closely for how those companies plan to manage dividends.
U.S. billionaire Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources Inc sent servicers out into fields in Oklahoma and North Dakota in the middle of the week to abruptly shut wells, and the company declared it could not make crude deliveries to customers due to poor economics.
Continental’s decision to declare force majeure - usually reserved for wars, accidents or natural disasters - came as a shock, bringing a sharp response from the leading refinery industry group. But some say there is a logic behind it, even if it may not pass muster in court.
“You sign contracts based on the average norms that a society has experienced over the last 100 years. If we have a new event that is not covered by those norms, it goes into force majeure. That’s what Harold Hamm and others are saying - that these are circumstances outside the norm,” said Anas Alhajji, an energy market expert based in Dallas.
Even the long-rumored decision by the White House to tell Chevron Corp last week it could no longer operate in Venezuela, where it has had a presence for nearly 100 years, met with a shrug.
“The global climate is terrible,” said one person close to a Western oil company in Venezuela. “The license almost didn’t matter anymore.”
The market is forcing the hands of all producers. Across the world, governments and companies are preparing to shut down output, and many have already begun.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies had already committed to record cuts of 10 million barrels of daily supply that have yet to take full effect. That commitment was not enough to prevent oil’s fall below zero.
Saudi Arabia has said it and other OPEC members are prepared to take further measures, but made no new commitments. It is a measure of the depth of demand destruction that even if OPEC stopped producing altogether, supply may still exceed demand.
More than 600,000 barrels per day in production cuts have already been announced in the United States, along with another 300,000 bpd of shut-ins in Canada. Brazil’s state-run Petrobras has reduced output by 200,000 bpd.
Azerbaijan, part of the group of nations known as OPEC+, is forcing a BP-led group to cut output for the first time ever. Oil majors in those countries have generally been excluded from government-imposed cuts.
“We have never done it before since they came to the country in 1994 and signed the contract of the century,” a senior Azeri official told Reuters.
That accommodation can no longer be made with the world running out of space to put oil. As of Thursday, energy researcher Kpler said onshore storage worldwide is now roughly 85% full.
Demand is expected to fall by 29 million bpd in April, the International Energy Agency estimated. Paris-based IEA expects consumption to pick up in May, but researchers cautioned that its expectation of a mere 12 million bpd fall in year-over-year demand may be too optimistic.
“I’m sure hearing the same numbers about demand destruction of 20 to 30 million barrels a day,” said Gene McGillian, analyst at Tradition Energy, who was working at the New York Mercantile Exchange when U.S. crude futures were launched in 1983. “Until we see some kind of alleviation of that, you have to wonder what is in store.”
In just a few months, the coronavirus pandemic has destroyed so much fuel demand as billions of people curtail travel that it has done what financial crashes, recessions and wars had failed to ever do - leave the United States with so much oil there was nowhere to put it.
While the unusual circumstance of negative oil prices may not be repeated, many in the industry say it is a harbinger for more bleak days ahead, and that years of overinvestment will not correct in a period of weeks or even months.
“What happened in the futures contract the other day indicated things are starting to get bad earlier than expected,” said Frederick Lawrence, vice president of economics and international affairs at the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
“People are getting notices from pipeline companies that say they can’t take their crude anymore. That means you’re shutting down the well yesterday.”
Evidence of the erosion of value for a product that has been a mainstay of global society since the late 19th century abounded across the world last week.
In Russia, one of the world’s top producers, the industry is considering resorting to burning its oil to take it off the market, sources told Reuters.
Norwegian oil giant Equinor slashed its quarterly dividend by two-thirds. Next week will bring earnings reports from the world’s largest oil companies including Exxon Mobil Corp, BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC. They are all expected to detail additional spending cuts, and investors will be watching closely for how those companies plan to manage dividends.
U.S. billionaire Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources Inc sent servicers out into fields in Oklahoma and North Dakota in the middle of the week to abruptly shut wells, and the company declared it could not make crude deliveries to customers due to poor economics.
Continental’s decision to declare force majeure - usually reserved for wars, accidents or natural disasters - came as a shock, bringing a sharp response from the leading refinery industry group. But some say there is a logic behind it, even if it may not pass muster in court.
“You sign contracts based on the average norms that a society has experienced over the last 100 years. If we have a new event that is not covered by those norms, it goes into force majeure. That’s what Harold Hamm and others are saying - that these are circumstances outside the norm,” said Anas Alhajji, an energy market expert based in Dallas.
Even the long-rumored decision by the White House to tell Chevron Corp last week it could no longer operate in Venezuela, where it has had a presence for nearly 100 years, met with a shrug.
“The global climate is terrible,” said one person close to a Western oil company in Venezuela. “The license almost didn’t matter anymore.”
The market is forcing the hands of all producers. Across the world, governments and companies are preparing to shut down output, and many have already begun.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies had already committed to record cuts of 10 million barrels of daily supply that have yet to take full effect. That commitment was not enough to prevent oil’s fall below zero.
Saudi Arabia has said it and other OPEC members are prepared to take further measures, but made no new commitments. It is a measure of the depth of demand destruction that even if OPEC stopped producing altogether, supply may still exceed demand.
More than 600,000 barrels per day in production cuts have already been announced in the United States, along with another 300,000 bpd of shut-ins in Canada. Brazil’s state-run Petrobras has reduced output by 200,000 bpd.
Azerbaijan, part of the group of nations known as OPEC+, is forcing a BP-led group to cut output for the first time ever. Oil majors in those countries have generally been excluded from government-imposed cuts.
“We have never done it before since they came to the country in 1994 and signed the contract of the century,” a senior Azeri official told Reuters.
That accommodation can no longer be made with the world running out of space to put oil. As of Thursday, energy researcher Kpler said onshore storage worldwide is now roughly 85% full.
Demand is expected to fall by 29 million bpd in April, the International Energy Agency estimated. Paris-based IEA expects consumption to pick up in May, but researchers cautioned that its expectation of a mere 12 million bpd fall in year-over-year demand may be too optimistic.
“I’m sure hearing the same numbers about demand destruction of 20 to 30 million barrels a day,” said Gene McGillian, analyst at Tradition Energy, who was working at the New York Mercantile Exchange when U.S. crude futures were launched in 1983. “Until we see some kind of alleviation of that, you have to wonder what is in store.”
Oil
Oil prices dip below zero as producers forced to pay to dispose of excess
US crude has negative value for first time in history as stockpiles overwhelm storage facilities
Jillian Ambrose and Martin Farrer
the guardian
Mon 20 Apr 2020 14.26 EDT
US oil prices turned negative for the first time on record on Monday as North America’s oil producers run out of space to store an unprecedented oversupply of crude left by the coronavirus crisis.
The price of US crude oil collapsed by 114% to -$38 per barrel in a matter of hours, forcing oil producers to pay buyers to take the glut of crude which they cannot store, as rising stockpiles of crude threaten to overwhelm oil storage facilities.
“The problem of the global supply-demand imbalance has started to really manifest itself in prices,” said Bjornar Tonhaugen, head of oil at research firm Rystad Energy. “As production continues relatively unscathed, storages are filling up by the day. The world is using less and less oil and producers now feel how this translates.”
The Guardian reported over the weekend that a record 160m barrels of oil was being stored in “supergiant” oil tankers outside the world’s largest shipping ports, including the US Gulf, following the deepest fall in oil demand in 25 years because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The last time floating storage reached levels close to this was in the depths of the financial crisis in 2009, when traders stored more than 100m barrels at sea before offloading stocks when the economy began to recover.
The price collapse in US oil market - known in the industry as the West Texas Intermediate price - accelerated because it is the last day oil producers can trade barrels that are scheduled for delivery next month, when oil storage is expected to reach capacity.
The US price for oil delivered in June, which will become the default oil price from tomorrow, is also falling due to the economic gloom caused by the coronavirus, but has managed to remain above $20 a barrel. On Monday the price for brent crude, the most widely used benchmark, fell 8% to $25.79.
Concerns over the economy, which directly affect oil demand, have been heightened by the growing standoff between the US president and state governors over whether the US can begin to lift restrictions on movement and businesses.
Global oil prices are expected to begin recovering over the second half of the year as tight restrictions on travel to help curb the spread of the virus are lifted, raising demand for fuels and oil.
The world’s largest oil-producing nations have agreed a deal to hold back between 10m to 20m barrels of oil a day from the global market from May, and many oil companies are likely to shut their wells as financial pressures mount.
Cailin Birch, global economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said: “US crude oil production has begun to fall in the last two weeks, and will continue to fall in the coming months as already heavily indebted shale firms scale back activity or are forced into bankruptcy or consolidation.”
Despite the historic production cuts, most analysts believe that oil prices will fail to reach the same price levels recorded at the beginning of the year before the outbreak. The global oil price, under the brent crude measure, reached highs of almost $69 a barrel in January before plummeting to less than $23 a barrel at the end of March.
The price of US crude oil collapsed by 114% to -$38 per barrel in a matter of hours, forcing oil producers to pay buyers to take the glut of crude which they cannot store, as rising stockpiles of crude threaten to overwhelm oil storage facilities.
“The problem of the global supply-demand imbalance has started to really manifest itself in prices,” said Bjornar Tonhaugen, head of oil at research firm Rystad Energy. “As production continues relatively unscathed, storages are filling up by the day. The world is using less and less oil and producers now feel how this translates.”
The Guardian reported over the weekend that a record 160m barrels of oil was being stored in “supergiant” oil tankers outside the world’s largest shipping ports, including the US Gulf, following the deepest fall in oil demand in 25 years because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The last time floating storage reached levels close to this was in the depths of the financial crisis in 2009, when traders stored more than 100m barrels at sea before offloading stocks when the economy began to recover.
The price collapse in US oil market - known in the industry as the West Texas Intermediate price - accelerated because it is the last day oil producers can trade barrels that are scheduled for delivery next month, when oil storage is expected to reach capacity.
The US price for oil delivered in June, which will become the default oil price from tomorrow, is also falling due to the economic gloom caused by the coronavirus, but has managed to remain above $20 a barrel. On Monday the price for brent crude, the most widely used benchmark, fell 8% to $25.79.
Concerns over the economy, which directly affect oil demand, have been heightened by the growing standoff between the US president and state governors over whether the US can begin to lift restrictions on movement and businesses.
Global oil prices are expected to begin recovering over the second half of the year as tight restrictions on travel to help curb the spread of the virus are lifted, raising demand for fuels and oil.
The world’s largest oil-producing nations have agreed a deal to hold back between 10m to 20m barrels of oil a day from the global market from May, and many oil companies are likely to shut their wells as financial pressures mount.
Cailin Birch, global economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said: “US crude oil production has begun to fall in the last two weeks, and will continue to fall in the coming months as already heavily indebted shale firms scale back activity or are forced into bankruptcy or consolidation.”
Despite the historic production cuts, most analysts believe that oil prices will fail to reach the same price levels recorded at the beginning of the year before the outbreak. The global oil price, under the brent crude measure, reached highs of almost $69 a barrel in January before plummeting to less than $23 a barrel at the end of March.
Activists celebrate ‘tremendous victory’ as Federal court deals another blow to Keystone XL
April 16, 2020
By Common Dreams
Indigenous rights groups and climate action campaigners credited their years-long effort to block the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline with securing the latest legal victory against TC Energy on Wednesday after a federal judge in Montana invalidated a water-crossing permit needed to build the pipeline.
Judge Brian Morris ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) issued the permit without conducting a thorough assessment of the harm the pipeline would cause to endangered species in waterways along the oil infrastructure’s planned route, which stretches 1,179 miles from Alberta, Canada to Nebraska.
Morris ordered a suspension of construction and the USACE was ordered to complete a formal analysis of the pipeline’s potential impact on endangered species. If completed, the pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day.
Groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and the National Resources Defense Council joined indigenous groups in applauding the victory in their case against the Army Corps and TC Energy.
“This is a tremendous victory for imperiled wildlife that rely on rivers, streams, and wetlands,” said Jared Margolis, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “This ruling makes it clear that the Trump administration can’t continue to push dirty fossil fuel pipelines while ignoring the devastating impacts they have on the environment.”
“We wish to recognize the tremendous work by our allies!” said Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network. “This decision vindicates what we have always known. We stand unified in this resistance, not only on the grounds of morality, but on the terms of our legal rights as well.”
The ruling is the latest victory for climate action groups in a series of ongoing litigation against the Keystone XL Pipeline. President Donald Trump issued permits for its construction within days of taking office in 2017, two years after President Barack Obama declined to grant permission for the project.
In 2018, Morris temporarily blocked construction, saying the Trump administration failed to legally justify the project, and last December he ruled that lawsuits against the pipeline could move forward.
Campaigners called on TC Energy to finally give up its effort to build the pipeline in light of its latest legal blow.
“Take a hint, TC Energy,” tweeted Sierra Club campaigner Ben Cushing.
Hearings on Trump’s attempt to unilaterally approve cross-border construction and on Indigenous tribes’ demand that the project be suspended in light of the coronavirus pandemic are planned for Thursday.
Despite the ongoing battle, 350.org called Wednesday’s decision “a critical victory for tribes, rural communities, and all supporters of climate justice who have been fighting Keystone XL for more than a decade.”
“The court has rightfully ruled against the Trump administration’s efforts to fast track this nasty pipeline at any cost,” said Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, North America director for 350.org. “We won’t allow fossil fuel corporations and backdoor politicians to violate the laws that protect people and the planet. We will challenge any attempt to put our health and well-being at risk.”
“We can only hope that our organization’s ongoing litigation will receive a comparable decision as well,” Goldtooth said of the continued fight. “In the meantime, we fight on in defense of the sacredness of Mother Earth!”
Judge Brian Morris ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) issued the permit without conducting a thorough assessment of the harm the pipeline would cause to endangered species in waterways along the oil infrastructure’s planned route, which stretches 1,179 miles from Alberta, Canada to Nebraska.
Morris ordered a suspension of construction and the USACE was ordered to complete a formal analysis of the pipeline’s potential impact on endangered species. If completed, the pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day.
Groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and the National Resources Defense Council joined indigenous groups in applauding the victory in their case against the Army Corps and TC Energy.
“This is a tremendous victory for imperiled wildlife that rely on rivers, streams, and wetlands,” said Jared Margolis, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “This ruling makes it clear that the Trump administration can’t continue to push dirty fossil fuel pipelines while ignoring the devastating impacts they have on the environment.”
“We wish to recognize the tremendous work by our allies!” said Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network. “This decision vindicates what we have always known. We stand unified in this resistance, not only on the grounds of morality, but on the terms of our legal rights as well.”
The ruling is the latest victory for climate action groups in a series of ongoing litigation against the Keystone XL Pipeline. President Donald Trump issued permits for its construction within days of taking office in 2017, two years after President Barack Obama declined to grant permission for the project.
In 2018, Morris temporarily blocked construction, saying the Trump administration failed to legally justify the project, and last December he ruled that lawsuits against the pipeline could move forward.
Campaigners called on TC Energy to finally give up its effort to build the pipeline in light of its latest legal blow.
“Take a hint, TC Energy,” tweeted Sierra Club campaigner Ben Cushing.
Hearings on Trump’s attempt to unilaterally approve cross-border construction and on Indigenous tribes’ demand that the project be suspended in light of the coronavirus pandemic are planned for Thursday.
Despite the ongoing battle, 350.org called Wednesday’s decision “a critical victory for tribes, rural communities, and all supporters of climate justice who have been fighting Keystone XL for more than a decade.”
“The court has rightfully ruled against the Trump administration’s efforts to fast track this nasty pipeline at any cost,” said Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, North America director for 350.org. “We won’t allow fossil fuel corporations and backdoor politicians to violate the laws that protect people and the planet. We will challenge any attempt to put our health and well-being at risk.”
“We can only hope that our organization’s ongoing litigation will receive a comparable decision as well,” Goldtooth said of the continued fight. “In the meantime, we fight on in defense of the sacredness of Mother Earth!”
pollute all waters for profit!!!
Enbridge seeks permits to build Great Lakes oil tunnel
By JOHN FLESHER - ap
4/8/2020
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Enbridge Inc. applied Wednesday for state and federal authorization to construct an oil pipeline tunnel beneath the Michigan waterway that connects two of the Great Lakes.
The Canadian company wants to build a roughly 4-mile-long (6.4-kilometer-long) tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac. It would replace the underwater segment of Line 5, a pipeline that runs between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario.
Enbridge submitted a joint application to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Approval from both is needed for the project to go forward.
“The Great Lakes Tunnel Project unequivocally is the most practical, long-term solution to delivering a secure energy supply to the region while enhancing environmental safeguards in the Straits,” said Amber Pastoor, the project manager.
Line 5 each day carries 23 million gallons (87 million liters) of crude oil and natural gas liquids used for propane. It divides into two pipes beneath the straits, which links Lakes Michigan and Huron — an ecologically sensitive area and popular tourist destination.
Environmental contend Line 5 is vulnerable to leaks after lying on the bottom of the straits for 67 years. Enbridge says it is in good condition and is monitored closely but agreed to spend $500 million on a replacement that would be housed in a tunnel drilled through bedrock underneath the straits.
The Michigan Court of Claims last year upheld an agreement between the company and former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to construct the tunnel, rejecting a challenge from Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel.
Nessel has filed a separate lawsuit demanding the shutdown of the existing Line 5 as a public nuisance and environmental hazard.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also has spoken against the pipeline and tried unsuccessfully to negotiate an accelerated timeline for building the tunnel, which Enbridge plans to start next year and finish in 2024.
Michigan’s environment department will take 30 days to determine whether the application is complete, spokesman Scott Dean said Wednesday.
In view of stay-at-home policies resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, “we are adapting our processes to handle these and other permit requests in a way that protects public health, complies with the law, and allows meaningful public participation and input,” Dean said.
Arup, a London-based engineering and consulting firm, is designing the tunnel. A partnership between Livonia, Michigan-based Jay Dee Contractors and Japan-based Obayashi Corp. will handle construction.
Plans call for beginning work on the Lower Peninsula side of the straits and heading north, the company said, adding that the 25-acre (10-hectare) work site would maintain a 115-foot (35-meter) buffer from the Lake Michigan shoreline.
The north end of the tunnel boring will be on a 16-acre (6.5-hectare) parcel that Enbridge owns. The buffer space on that side of the straits will be at least 50 feet (15.2 meters), the company said.
The Canadian company wants to build a roughly 4-mile-long (6.4-kilometer-long) tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac. It would replace the underwater segment of Line 5, a pipeline that runs between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario.
Enbridge submitted a joint application to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Approval from both is needed for the project to go forward.
“The Great Lakes Tunnel Project unequivocally is the most practical, long-term solution to delivering a secure energy supply to the region while enhancing environmental safeguards in the Straits,” said Amber Pastoor, the project manager.
Line 5 each day carries 23 million gallons (87 million liters) of crude oil and natural gas liquids used for propane. It divides into two pipes beneath the straits, which links Lakes Michigan and Huron — an ecologically sensitive area and popular tourist destination.
Environmental contend Line 5 is vulnerable to leaks after lying on the bottom of the straits for 67 years. Enbridge says it is in good condition and is monitored closely but agreed to spend $500 million on a replacement that would be housed in a tunnel drilled through bedrock underneath the straits.
The Michigan Court of Claims last year upheld an agreement between the company and former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to construct the tunnel, rejecting a challenge from Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel.
Nessel has filed a separate lawsuit demanding the shutdown of the existing Line 5 as a public nuisance and environmental hazard.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also has spoken against the pipeline and tried unsuccessfully to negotiate an accelerated timeline for building the tunnel, which Enbridge plans to start next year and finish in 2024.
Michigan’s environment department will take 30 days to determine whether the application is complete, spokesman Scott Dean said Wednesday.
In view of stay-at-home policies resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, “we are adapting our processes to handle these and other permit requests in a way that protects public health, complies with the law, and allows meaningful public participation and input,” Dean said.
Arup, a London-based engineering and consulting firm, is designing the tunnel. A partnership between Livonia, Michigan-based Jay Dee Contractors and Japan-based Obayashi Corp. will handle construction.
Plans call for beginning work on the Lower Peninsula side of the straits and heading north, the company said, adding that the 25-acre (10-hectare) work site would maintain a 115-foot (35-meter) buffer from the Lake Michigan shoreline.
The north end of the tunnel boring will be on a 16-acre (6.5-hectare) parcel that Enbridge owns. The buffer space on that side of the straits will be at least 50 feet (15.2 meters), the company said.
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Coronavirus is killing Texans — and the oil crisis is killing their economy
April 5, 2020
By Sarah K. Burris - raw story
Over the past several weeks, Russia and Saudi Arabia have been in an oil war, sending oil prices to extremely low levels. Last week, President Donald Trump said that he spoke to Mohammad Bin Salman and that the two countries had come to an agreement, but Russia replied to the Trump tweet, saying that he had no idea what he was talking about. Still, Trump suggested that he may bail out the oil companies, who already get federal supplements.
It was enough to send the struggling stock market back to closing in the green on Thursday. It closed down again on Friday once it became clear the president didn’t know what he was talking about.
In the meantime, the U.S. oil and gas industry in Texas is struggling to keep up, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
“The prospects are uncertain, and even sizable oil production cuts would fall short of making up for the enormous drop in demand for fuels caused by coronavirus. Prices remain below $30, at levels where most Texas producers cannot make money,” the report explained.
The state is also suffering from jobless claims. The report cited unemployment claims rose by 259,652 in the state “during the two weeks ended March 28, non-seasonally adjusted Labor Department data released Thursday show.”
There is no discrimination in sector. Whether food service, transportation, manufacturing, oil and gas, and everything in between is experiencing jobless claims, the data showed. “Two major shale producers are asking Texas regulators to consider curtailing crude output for the first time since the 1970s.”
While Texas experienced a boom during the 2007-2008 recession, things aren’t the same this time around.
In Texas, “there’s no avoiding this one,” said chief economist James Gaines at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
“From his job at a Houston machine shop, Kenny Istre saw customers withdrawing orders and demanding discounts for drilling equipment at Taylor Oilfield Manufacturing Inc. even before U.S. crude prices plunged,” the report explained. “Prices were about $28 a barrel Friday, down about 54 percent from the year’s start.”
“This is like a double whammy,” said Kenny Istre, owner of a Houston machine shop. “They were canceling flights every day, and now people aren’t driving to work. The market is going to be flooded with oil.”
Read the full report at the Wall Street Journal.
It was enough to send the struggling stock market back to closing in the green on Thursday. It closed down again on Friday once it became clear the president didn’t know what he was talking about.
In the meantime, the U.S. oil and gas industry in Texas is struggling to keep up, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
“The prospects are uncertain, and even sizable oil production cuts would fall short of making up for the enormous drop in demand for fuels caused by coronavirus. Prices remain below $30, at levels where most Texas producers cannot make money,” the report explained.
The state is also suffering from jobless claims. The report cited unemployment claims rose by 259,652 in the state “during the two weeks ended March 28, non-seasonally adjusted Labor Department data released Thursday show.”
There is no discrimination in sector. Whether food service, transportation, manufacturing, oil and gas, and everything in between is experiencing jobless claims, the data showed. “Two major shale producers are asking Texas regulators to consider curtailing crude output for the first time since the 1970s.”
While Texas experienced a boom during the 2007-2008 recession, things aren’t the same this time around.
In Texas, “there’s no avoiding this one,” said chief economist James Gaines at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
“From his job at a Houston machine shop, Kenny Istre saw customers withdrawing orders and demanding discounts for drilling equipment at Taylor Oilfield Manufacturing Inc. even before U.S. crude prices plunged,” the report explained. “Prices were about $28 a barrel Friday, down about 54 percent from the year’s start.”
“This is like a double whammy,” said Kenny Istre, owner of a Houston machine shop. “They were canceling flights every day, and now people aren’t driving to work. The market is going to be flooded with oil.”
Read the full report at the Wall Street Journal.
Global oil producers have begun shutting down their oil rigs on the largest scale in 35 years as the coronavirus continues to drive market prices to their lowest level since 2002.
The shutdown of oil wells has already wiped out almost 1m barrels a day from global production, but the figure is expected to rise as producers run out of space to store their extra oil as the crisis continues.
In some landlocked markets in the US, where storage space is scarce and shipping costs are high, oil producers started oil well “shut-ins” late last week rather than pay buyers to take their barrels.
In Canada the price of a barrel of oil fell below the cost of shipping it to a refinery – $5 – making it more economic for producers to shut down their wells than plummet to “negative prices”.
The international oil price benchmark, Brent crude, has fallen to its lowest level in 18 years, at below $23 a barrel.
The latest price plunge came after Saudi Arabia denied it was in talks with Russia over a truce in the oil price war which earlier this month triggered the fastest oil price crash since 1991.
Saudi Arabia and Russia are preparing to pump record levels of oil into the global market as part of a bitter oil price war to win a stranglehold on the market, despite plummeting demand for energy during the Covid-19 economic crisis.
The US banking group Goldman Sachs said oil well shut-ins had reached at least 900,000 barrels of oil a day, but “the true number [is] likely higher and growing by the hour”.
“Given the cost of shutting down a well, a producer would be willing to pay someone to dispose of a barrel, implying negative pricing in landlocked areas,” the bank said in an investor note on Monday.
US oil producers shut 40 rigs last week alone, according to a review from engineering group Baker Hughes, the biggest one-week drop since the last oil market downturn battered the US shale industry in 2015. The weekly oil rig count is down 24% from the same week a year ago when 816 rigs were active in the US.
Jeffery Currie, the global head of commodities at Goldman Sachs, said the mothballed oil wells may fail to restart as quickly as the economy recovered from the “coronacrisis”, or at all, which could trigger “a very quick risk reversal towards oil shortages” and cause oil prices to more than double again by next year.
“Not only is this the largest economic shock of our lifetimes, but carbon-based industries like oil sit in the cross-hairs,” he said. “Accordingly, oil has been disproportionately hit.”
“This shock is extremely negative for oil prices and is sending landlocked crude prices into negative territory. Paradoxically, this will ultimately create an inflationary oil supply shock of historic proportions because so much oil production will be forced to be shut-in,” Currie added.
Goldman Sachs estimates that global oil demand has fallen 25% in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak and the price of Brent crude could fall to lows of $20 a barrel.
Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy said last week that oil prices could fall as low as $10 a barrel if the economic impact of the coronavirus dents global oil demand by 16m barrels of oil a day. The analysts said on Monday it may revise its oil demand forecasts lower from next month.
Saudi Arabia will begin pumping record levels of crude from April, which could lead to further price falls for global oil markets as demand for energy continues to fall.
The shutdown of oil wells has already wiped out almost 1m barrels a day from global production, but the figure is expected to rise as producers run out of space to store their extra oil as the crisis continues.
In some landlocked markets in the US, where storage space is scarce and shipping costs are high, oil producers started oil well “shut-ins” late last week rather than pay buyers to take their barrels.
In Canada the price of a barrel of oil fell below the cost of shipping it to a refinery – $5 – making it more economic for producers to shut down their wells than plummet to “negative prices”.
The international oil price benchmark, Brent crude, has fallen to its lowest level in 18 years, at below $23 a barrel.
The latest price plunge came after Saudi Arabia denied it was in talks with Russia over a truce in the oil price war which earlier this month triggered the fastest oil price crash since 1991.
Saudi Arabia and Russia are preparing to pump record levels of oil into the global market as part of a bitter oil price war to win a stranglehold on the market, despite plummeting demand for energy during the Covid-19 economic crisis.
The US banking group Goldman Sachs said oil well shut-ins had reached at least 900,000 barrels of oil a day, but “the true number [is] likely higher and growing by the hour”.
“Given the cost of shutting down a well, a producer would be willing to pay someone to dispose of a barrel, implying negative pricing in landlocked areas,” the bank said in an investor note on Monday.
US oil producers shut 40 rigs last week alone, according to a review from engineering group Baker Hughes, the biggest one-week drop since the last oil market downturn battered the US shale industry in 2015. The weekly oil rig count is down 24% from the same week a year ago when 816 rigs were active in the US.
Jeffery Currie, the global head of commodities at Goldman Sachs, said the mothballed oil wells may fail to restart as quickly as the economy recovered from the “coronacrisis”, or at all, which could trigger “a very quick risk reversal towards oil shortages” and cause oil prices to more than double again by next year.
“Not only is this the largest economic shock of our lifetimes, but carbon-based industries like oil sit in the cross-hairs,” he said. “Accordingly, oil has been disproportionately hit.”
“This shock is extremely negative for oil prices and is sending landlocked crude prices into negative territory. Paradoxically, this will ultimately create an inflationary oil supply shock of historic proportions because so much oil production will be forced to be shut-in,” Currie added.
Goldman Sachs estimates that global oil demand has fallen 25% in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak and the price of Brent crude could fall to lows of $20 a barrel.
Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy said last week that oil prices could fall as low as $10 a barrel if the economic impact of the coronavirus dents global oil demand by 16m barrels of oil a day. The analysts said on Monday it may revise its oil demand forecasts lower from next month.
Saudi Arabia will begin pumping record levels of crude from April, which could lead to further price falls for global oil markets as demand for energy continues to fall.
Oil rig closures rising as prices hit 18-year lows
Global producers running out of storage for surplus due to coronavirus crisis
Jillian Ambrose
the guardian
Mon 30 Mar 2020 10.04 EDT
Fossil fuels for power at turning point as renewables surged in 2019: data
Aaron Sheldrick - reuters
MARCH 3, 2020
TOKYO (Reuters) - The use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil for generating electricity fell in 2019 in the United States, the European Union and India, at the same time overall power output rose, a turning point for the global energy mix.
Those countries and regions are three of the top four largest producers of power from fossil fuels. The declines suggest the end of the fossil fuel era could be on the horizon, said Tomas Kaberger, an energy professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, who provided the power generation data to Reuters.
Kaberger, who is also the chair of the executive board for Japan’s Renewable Energy Institute and a member of the board at Swedish utility Vattenfall AB, provided data covering more than 70% of the world’s power generation that showed for most of 2019 the amount of power sourced from fossil fuels dropped by 156 terawatt hours (TWh) from the year before. That is equal to the entire power output of Argentina in 2018.
The data also indicates that renewable power generation increased at a faster rate than the overall growth in power output for the first time, rising by 297 TWh versus 233 TWh for overall output, Kaberger said.
“It is economics driving this as low-cost renewable electricity out competes against fossil and nuclear power plants,” said Kaberger.
With electric vehicle usage surging and their batteries being increasingly recharged by renewable electricity supplies the decline of fossil fuels is likely to accelerate, he said.
“New renewables are even cheaper than oil per unit of energy electricity generated and even fuels produced from electricity will outcompete against fossil fuels at increasing speed in transport, heating and industry,” he said.
“Peak oil demand is close,” Kaberger said.
Those countries and regions are three of the top four largest producers of power from fossil fuels. The declines suggest the end of the fossil fuel era could be on the horizon, said Tomas Kaberger, an energy professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, who provided the power generation data to Reuters.
Kaberger, who is also the chair of the executive board for Japan’s Renewable Energy Institute and a member of the board at Swedish utility Vattenfall AB, provided data covering more than 70% of the world’s power generation that showed for most of 2019 the amount of power sourced from fossil fuels dropped by 156 terawatt hours (TWh) from the year before. That is equal to the entire power output of Argentina in 2018.
The data also indicates that renewable power generation increased at a faster rate than the overall growth in power output for the first time, rising by 297 TWh versus 233 TWh for overall output, Kaberger said.
“It is economics driving this as low-cost renewable electricity out competes against fossil and nuclear power plants,” said Kaberger.
With electric vehicle usage surging and their batteries being increasingly recharged by renewable electricity supplies the decline of fossil fuels is likely to accelerate, he said.
“New renewables are even cheaper than oil per unit of energy electricity generated and even fuels produced from electricity will outcompete against fossil fuels at increasing speed in transport, heating and industry,” he said.
“Peak oil demand is close,” Kaberger said.
First they cut the safety rules on oil rigs. Then they covered up objections to cutting the rules
Mark Sumner
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday February 27, 2020 · 1:12 PM PST
Offshore oil rigs are among the most dangerous places to work. The roughnecks who work on the rigs are often dealing with heavy objects, high pressures, suspended weights, oil, grease, heat, water—everything that makes for a difficult work environment. Then they do it in an often isolated environment, frequently under the kind of pressure that comes from a tight schedule.
So safety rules on rigs are especially important, and especially strict. Except … not any more. Because Scott Angelle, a Louisiana state commissioner who Donald Trump put in charge of the entire Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, overhauled those rules to put profits ahead of safety. And when engineers on his staff pointed out the problems, he took action—to cover up their complaints.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, Angelle made changes that included reducing the need for oil companies to test critical safety gear. Even more frightening, Angelle changed rules that had been put in place following the BP disaster and required close supervision of the pressure at the well head. Instead Angelle, who the Journal describes as “a friend of the oil industry,” adopted wholesale new safety proposals that had come from the industry itself.
Angelle made these changes over the objections of the agency’s own engineering staff, who dutifully recorded their objections to the changes on memos that were prepared as part of the process of proposing those new measures. But Angelle wasn’t happy to see that his own engineers objected to the industry proposals.
And he addressed this in the most straightforward way: He called one of the engineers and had him delete the objections from the memos. The proposals were then sent along, with no indication that anyone at Angelle’s agency had objected to the eased safety regulations. Trump then championed the changes as lightening the burden of regulations on the oil industry, one of the “wins” he counted when listing the top accomplishments of his first three years in office.
Environmental groups have pointed out repeatedly that the weakened rules don’t just threaten well workers, but open up the possibility of exactly the kind of disaster that the post-BP rules were created to address. In fact, the new rules are little more than an absolute reversal back to the rules that were in place when the Deepwater Horizon exploded. One of the engineers within the safety agency was upset enough to send the Journal the original memos, showing the language that had been excised by Angelle.
Discovering that they had been caught in covering up their cover-up generated a predictable response: a complaint from an Angelle spokesperson about “leaked documents.” Because it’s never a crime if you hide all the evidence. Just look at Trump.
So safety rules on rigs are especially important, and especially strict. Except … not any more. Because Scott Angelle, a Louisiana state commissioner who Donald Trump put in charge of the entire Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, overhauled those rules to put profits ahead of safety. And when engineers on his staff pointed out the problems, he took action—to cover up their complaints.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, Angelle made changes that included reducing the need for oil companies to test critical safety gear. Even more frightening, Angelle changed rules that had been put in place following the BP disaster and required close supervision of the pressure at the well head. Instead Angelle, who the Journal describes as “a friend of the oil industry,” adopted wholesale new safety proposals that had come from the industry itself.
Angelle made these changes over the objections of the agency’s own engineering staff, who dutifully recorded their objections to the changes on memos that were prepared as part of the process of proposing those new measures. But Angelle wasn’t happy to see that his own engineers objected to the industry proposals.
And he addressed this in the most straightforward way: He called one of the engineers and had him delete the objections from the memos. The proposals were then sent along, with no indication that anyone at Angelle’s agency had objected to the eased safety regulations. Trump then championed the changes as lightening the burden of regulations on the oil industry, one of the “wins” he counted when listing the top accomplishments of his first three years in office.
Environmental groups have pointed out repeatedly that the weakened rules don’t just threaten well workers, but open up the possibility of exactly the kind of disaster that the post-BP rules were created to address. In fact, the new rules are little more than an absolute reversal back to the rules that were in place when the Deepwater Horizon exploded. One of the engineers within the safety agency was upset enough to send the Journal the original memos, showing the language that had been excised by Angelle.
Discovering that they had been caught in covering up their cover-up generated a predictable response: a complaint from an Angelle spokesperson about “leaked documents.” Because it’s never a crime if you hide all the evidence. Just look at Trump.
Oil and gas industry rewards US lawmakers who oppose environmental protections – study
Companies spent $84m on congressional campaigns in 2018, analysis of votes and political contributions shows
Emily Holden in Washington
the guardian
Mon 24 Feb 2020 15.00 EST
The oil and gas industry substantially rewards US legislators with campaign donations when they oppose environmental protections, according to a new analysis of congressional votes and political contributions.
Oil and gas companies spent $84m on congressional campaigns in 2018. Researchers found a correlation between an increase in anti-environment votes and an increase in contributions. They documented how lawmakers’ scores from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) dipped and then were followed by campaign funding from the industry.
On average, a 10% decrease in the LCV score in an election cycle was associated with an additional $1,700 in campaign money from the corporations the following cycle.
The peer-reviewed study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The authors also sought to determine whether campaign donations from industry might prompt legislators to vote against environment rules that oil and gas companies saw as a burden. But they concluded there was little or no relationship between campaign contributions in one election cycle and LCV scores in the following period.
“Legislators proved that they’re willing to vote against the environment consistently and then they’re rewarded later,” said co-author Matthew Goldberg, a postdoctoral associate with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “I suppose this is more of an advantage for oil and gas companies because they need to ensure that people are going to vote in their interest.
Goldberg said the findings should encourage people to “get the right people in office, because they’re not as susceptible to money changing their votes”.
The study analyzed data from 1990 to 2018. In 1990, 63% of oil and gas money went to Republicans, Goldberg noted. In 2018, 88% of the industry’s campaign donations were to the conservative party.
Oil and gas companies spent $84m on congressional campaigns in 2018. Researchers found a correlation between an increase in anti-environment votes and an increase in contributions. They documented how lawmakers’ scores from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) dipped and then were followed by campaign funding from the industry.
On average, a 10% decrease in the LCV score in an election cycle was associated with an additional $1,700 in campaign money from the corporations the following cycle.
The peer-reviewed study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The authors also sought to determine whether campaign donations from industry might prompt legislators to vote against environment rules that oil and gas companies saw as a burden. But they concluded there was little or no relationship between campaign contributions in one election cycle and LCV scores in the following period.
“Legislators proved that they’re willing to vote against the environment consistently and then they’re rewarded later,” said co-author Matthew Goldberg, a postdoctoral associate with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “I suppose this is more of an advantage for oil and gas companies because they need to ensure that people are going to vote in their interest.
Goldberg said the findings should encourage people to “get the right people in office, because they’re not as susceptible to money changing their votes”.
The study analyzed data from 1990 to 2018. In 1990, 63% of oil and gas money went to Republicans, Goldberg noted. In 2018, 88% of the industry’s campaign donations were to the conservative party.
epa has lied about methane emissions!!!
Oil and gas firms 'have had far worse climate impact than thought'
Study indicates human fossil methane emissions have been underestimated by up to 40%
Jonathan Watts
the guardian
Wed 19 Feb 2020 11.01 EST
The oil and gas industry has had a far worse impact on the climate than previously believed, according to a study indicating that human emissions of fossil methane have been underestimated by up to 40%.
Although the research will add to pressure on fossil fuel companies, scientists said there was cause for hope because it showed a big extra benefit could come from tighter regulation of the industry and a faster shift towards renewable energy.
Methane has a greenhouse effect that is about 80% more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and is responsible for at least 25% of global heating, according to the UN Environment Programme.
In the past two centuries, the amount of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled, though there has long been uncertainty about whether the source was biological – from agriculture, livestock or landfills – or from fossil fuels. There were also doubts about what share of fossil methane was naturally released and what share was from industry.
Earlier estimates were based on intermittent, bottom-up monitoring of oil and gas companies and comparisons with geological evidence from the end of the Pleistocene epoch, about 11,600 years ago.
For a more accurate comparison, a team at the University of Rochester in the US examined levels of methane in the pre-industrial era about 300 years ago. This was achieved by analysing air from that period trapped in glaciers in Greenland. The sample – made up of about a tonne of ice – was extracted with a Blue Ice Drill, capable of producing the world’s biggest ice cores.
The findings, published in Nature, suggest the share of naturally released fossil methane has been overestimated by “an order of magnitude”, which means that human activities are 25-40% more responsible for fossil methane in the atmosphere than thought.
This strengthens suspicions that fossil fuel companies are not fully accounting for their impact on the climate, particularly with regard to methane – a colourless, odourless gas that many plants routinely vent into the atmosphere.
An earlier study revealed methane emissions from US oil and gas plants were 60% higher than reported to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Accidents are also underreported. A single blowout at a natural gas well in Ohio in 2018 discharged more methane over three weeks than the oil and gas industries of France, Norway and the Netherlands released in an entire year. At the time, the company said it was unsure of the size of the leak. The immense scale was only revealed a year later when scientists analysed satellite data provided by the European Space Agency.
Fracking also appears to have worsened the problem. Atmospheric methane had started to flatten off at the turn of the century, but rose again after a surge in fracking activity in the US and elsewhere. The industry, however, continues to claim that the energy source can be used as a “bridge fuel” because it has lower carbon emissions than oil or coal, but this fails to account for leaks and flares of methane and other gases during extraction.
Growing calls for tighter controls will be strengthened by the new study. The lead author, Benjamin Hmiel, said the paper was cause for optimism because it showed that action on methane – which has a relatively short shelf life, persisting in the atmosphere for about nine years – could give a strong short-term boost to efforts to stabilise the climate.
“Placing stricter methane emission regulations on the fossil fuel industry will have the potential to reduce future global warming to a larger extent than previously thought,” Hmiel said. “Methane is important to study because if we make changes to our current methane emissions, it’s going to reflect more quickly.”
Other scientists who were not involved in the research concurred there were positive implications in the findings, but only if governments were able to rein in fossil fuel companies, which has not been the case until now.
“This indicates that the fossil fuel sector has a much more polluting impact beyond being responsible for the overwhelming majority of carbon dioxide emissions. This is worrying and overall bad news,” said Dr Joeri Rogelj, a climate change lecturer at the Grantham Institute.
The good news, Rogelj said, was that measures to prevent leaks, reduce flaring and switch to renewables would be more effective than expected. “What this study shows is that we can have a bigger impact on methane in the atmosphere than earlier thought. This allows us to set climate policy priorities right.”
Dave Reay, the executive director of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation, said one of the key messages from the study was that the old bottom-up method of measuring methane emissions was “woefully inadequate”.
“We knew fossil fuel extraction – including fracking – was a major part of global methane emissions, but this impressive study suggests it is a far bigger culprit in human-induced climate change than we had ever thought,” he said.
“If correct, gas, coal and oil extraction and distribution around the world are responsible for almost half of all human-induced methane emissions. Add to that all the carbon dioxide that is then emitted when the fossil fuels are burned, and you need look no further for the seat of the climate emergency fire.”
Although the research will add to pressure on fossil fuel companies, scientists said there was cause for hope because it showed a big extra benefit could come from tighter regulation of the industry and a faster shift towards renewable energy.
Methane has a greenhouse effect that is about 80% more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and is responsible for at least 25% of global heating, according to the UN Environment Programme.
In the past two centuries, the amount of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled, though there has long been uncertainty about whether the source was biological – from agriculture, livestock or landfills – or from fossil fuels. There were also doubts about what share of fossil methane was naturally released and what share was from industry.
Earlier estimates were based on intermittent, bottom-up monitoring of oil and gas companies and comparisons with geological evidence from the end of the Pleistocene epoch, about 11,600 years ago.
For a more accurate comparison, a team at the University of Rochester in the US examined levels of methane in the pre-industrial era about 300 years ago. This was achieved by analysing air from that period trapped in glaciers in Greenland. The sample – made up of about a tonne of ice – was extracted with a Blue Ice Drill, capable of producing the world’s biggest ice cores.
The findings, published in Nature, suggest the share of naturally released fossil methane has been overestimated by “an order of magnitude”, which means that human activities are 25-40% more responsible for fossil methane in the atmosphere than thought.
This strengthens suspicions that fossil fuel companies are not fully accounting for their impact on the climate, particularly with regard to methane – a colourless, odourless gas that many plants routinely vent into the atmosphere.
An earlier study revealed methane emissions from US oil and gas plants were 60% higher than reported to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Accidents are also underreported. A single blowout at a natural gas well in Ohio in 2018 discharged more methane over three weeks than the oil and gas industries of France, Norway and the Netherlands released in an entire year. At the time, the company said it was unsure of the size of the leak. The immense scale was only revealed a year later when scientists analysed satellite data provided by the European Space Agency.
Fracking also appears to have worsened the problem. Atmospheric methane had started to flatten off at the turn of the century, but rose again after a surge in fracking activity in the US and elsewhere. The industry, however, continues to claim that the energy source can be used as a “bridge fuel” because it has lower carbon emissions than oil or coal, but this fails to account for leaks and flares of methane and other gases during extraction.
Growing calls for tighter controls will be strengthened by the new study. The lead author, Benjamin Hmiel, said the paper was cause for optimism because it showed that action on methane – which has a relatively short shelf life, persisting in the atmosphere for about nine years – could give a strong short-term boost to efforts to stabilise the climate.
“Placing stricter methane emission regulations on the fossil fuel industry will have the potential to reduce future global warming to a larger extent than previously thought,” Hmiel said. “Methane is important to study because if we make changes to our current methane emissions, it’s going to reflect more quickly.”
Other scientists who were not involved in the research concurred there were positive implications in the findings, but only if governments were able to rein in fossil fuel companies, which has not been the case until now.
“This indicates that the fossil fuel sector has a much more polluting impact beyond being responsible for the overwhelming majority of carbon dioxide emissions. This is worrying and overall bad news,” said Dr Joeri Rogelj, a climate change lecturer at the Grantham Institute.
The good news, Rogelj said, was that measures to prevent leaks, reduce flaring and switch to renewables would be more effective than expected. “What this study shows is that we can have a bigger impact on methane in the atmosphere than earlier thought. This allows us to set climate policy priorities right.”
Dave Reay, the executive director of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation, said one of the key messages from the study was that the old bottom-up method of measuring methane emissions was “woefully inadequate”.
“We knew fossil fuel extraction – including fracking – was a major part of global methane emissions, but this impressive study suggests it is a far bigger culprit in human-induced climate change than we had ever thought,” he said.
“If correct, gas, coal and oil extraction and distribution around the world are responsible for almost half of all human-induced methane emissions. Add to that all the carbon dioxide that is then emitted when the fossil fuels are burned, and you need look no further for the seat of the climate emergency fire.”
Oil and gas companies
Revealed: big oil's profits since 1990 total nearly $2tn
BP, Shell, Chevron and Exxon accused of making huge profits while ‘passing the buck’ on climate change
Matthew Taylor
the guardian
Wed 12 Feb 2020 07.38 EST
A BP oil refinery in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. BP has made $332bn in profits since 1990. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP
BP, Shell, Chevron and Exxon have made almost $2tn in profits in the past three decades as their exploitation of oil, gas and coal reserves has driven the planet to the brink of climate breakdown, according to analysis for the Guardian.
The scale of their profits is revealed as experts say the fossil fuel boom is coming to an end, with big oil entering a “death knell” phase, according to one prominent Wall St commentator.
Analysis for the Guardian by Taxpayers for Common Sense in the US reveals that since 1990 – at which point the impact of fossil fuel extraction on the climate had been well known to industry leaders and politicians for years, experts say – the big four companies have accumulated $1.991tn in profits.
Critics say the findings highlight how a few corporations have generated extraordinary wealth by pursuing policies that were known to be driving the climate crisis.
The climate scientist Michael Mann said he was witnessing first-hand in Australia the environmental impact of fossil fuel extraction.
“Here in Sydney, where we’ve seen record drought, heat, bushfires and floods all in the short two months I’ve been here, this latest report provides a sobering reminder that we’re all paying the price – in the form of a planetary climate crisis – so that a few mega-corporations can continue to make record profits,” he said.
The analysis shows that Exxon was the most profitable of the big four over the past three decades, making a total of $775bn. Shell was second with $524bn, followed by Chevron on $360bn and BP on $332bn.
Autumn Hanna, of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said: “For decades, oil and gas companies have been pocketing trillion-dollar profits and padding their bottom line with tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. All while passing the buck on climate change.”
Mel Evans, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said the big oil companies knew the danger that their products posed to the climate well before it became common knowledge but pursued profits above the wider interests of the planet.
“Why did they continue to promote those products and dispute science they knew to be correct? Why are they still spending hundreds of billions of dollars on making the problem worse, drilling for new oil and gas we can’t possibly afford to burn?” Evans said.
“These figures provide the answer. Money is like rocket fuel: burn through enough of it and you can escape the pull of the Earth. But there’s nowhere else to go.”
Experts say the decades-long boom is coming to an end as clean energy replaces fossil fuels. Last week Jim Cramer, the influential host of the US investment show Mad Money, said he was “done with fossil fuels” because they had entered a “death knell phase”.
Oil companies have been the worst-performing investments in US stock markets over the past decade, after leading major stock market indices in previous decades. The market value of oil and gas companies now makes up only 4% of the S&P500 index, compared with about 28% in the 1980s.
“If you go back to 1990 you can really see that oil and gas companies once outperformed the market,” said Kathy Hipple, a financial analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
“But the market looks to the future and there has been a gradual awareness that fossil fuels are not going to be as big a part in the world economy. This doesn’t mean that [oil companies] will go away tomorrow, but the market won’t reward them for the profits of the past.”
Last year a Guardian investigation revealed that 20 fossil fuel giants including BP, Shell, Chevron and Exxon were directly linked to more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era.
The big four investor-owned corporations were found to be behind more than 10% of all carbon emissions since 1965.
The polluters project highlighted how many of the leading fossil fuel corporations had spent billions of pounds on lobbying governments and portraying themselves as environmentally responsible.
A study published last year found that the largest five market-listed oil and gas companies – the big four plus Total – spent nearly $200m each year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change.
The profit figures were calculated in today’s money by using the annual net income attributable to shareholders for each company while taking inflation rates into account. In absolute terms, without inflation, the combined profits since 1990 were a still considerable $1.6tn, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.
The profits of the world’s most profitable listed oil companies were dwarfed last year by the financial reports of the Saudi state-owned oil firm Aramco. It listed on the Saudi stock exchange after racking up profits of $111.1bn (£84.7bn) in 2018, which was more than double the profits of Apple and five times those reported by Shell.
Experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by industry leaders and politicians, particularly in the US, as far back as the mid-60s. Certainly by 1990 the facts were well known: two years earlier the Nasa scientist James Hansen had raised the alarm about the impact of fossil fuels during a landmark hearing at the US Congress. In 1992, world leaders came together at a summit in Rio to recognise the role carbon emissions were playing and to pledge coordinated action.
BP did not respond to a request for comment on the findings.
A spokesperson for Shell said: “Just as reliable, affordable energy has benefited us all, all of society has a role to play in tackling climate change. We’re working hard to develop lower-carbon energy options and meet demand for more and cleaner energy.”
ExxonMobil said it was helping address “the dual challenge of the world’s growing demand for energy and reducing emissions”.
Chevon said it was taking action to address climate change by “lowering the company’s carbon intensity, increasing the use of renewable energy and investing in breakthrough technologies.”
The scale of their profits is revealed as experts say the fossil fuel boom is coming to an end, with big oil entering a “death knell” phase, according to one prominent Wall St commentator.
Analysis for the Guardian by Taxpayers for Common Sense in the US reveals that since 1990 – at which point the impact of fossil fuel extraction on the climate had been well known to industry leaders and politicians for years, experts say – the big four companies have accumulated $1.991tn in profits.
Critics say the findings highlight how a few corporations have generated extraordinary wealth by pursuing policies that were known to be driving the climate crisis.
The climate scientist Michael Mann said he was witnessing first-hand in Australia the environmental impact of fossil fuel extraction.
“Here in Sydney, where we’ve seen record drought, heat, bushfires and floods all in the short two months I’ve been here, this latest report provides a sobering reminder that we’re all paying the price – in the form of a planetary climate crisis – so that a few mega-corporations can continue to make record profits,” he said.
The analysis shows that Exxon was the most profitable of the big four over the past three decades, making a total of $775bn. Shell was second with $524bn, followed by Chevron on $360bn and BP on $332bn.
Autumn Hanna, of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said: “For decades, oil and gas companies have been pocketing trillion-dollar profits and padding their bottom line with tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. All while passing the buck on climate change.”
Mel Evans, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said the big oil companies knew the danger that their products posed to the climate well before it became common knowledge but pursued profits above the wider interests of the planet.
“Why did they continue to promote those products and dispute science they knew to be correct? Why are they still spending hundreds of billions of dollars on making the problem worse, drilling for new oil and gas we can’t possibly afford to burn?” Evans said.
“These figures provide the answer. Money is like rocket fuel: burn through enough of it and you can escape the pull of the Earth. But there’s nowhere else to go.”
Experts say the decades-long boom is coming to an end as clean energy replaces fossil fuels. Last week Jim Cramer, the influential host of the US investment show Mad Money, said he was “done with fossil fuels” because they had entered a “death knell phase”.
Oil companies have been the worst-performing investments in US stock markets over the past decade, after leading major stock market indices in previous decades. The market value of oil and gas companies now makes up only 4% of the S&P500 index, compared with about 28% in the 1980s.
“If you go back to 1990 you can really see that oil and gas companies once outperformed the market,” said Kathy Hipple, a financial analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
“But the market looks to the future and there has been a gradual awareness that fossil fuels are not going to be as big a part in the world economy. This doesn’t mean that [oil companies] will go away tomorrow, but the market won’t reward them for the profits of the past.”
Last year a Guardian investigation revealed that 20 fossil fuel giants including BP, Shell, Chevron and Exxon were directly linked to more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era.
The big four investor-owned corporations were found to be behind more than 10% of all carbon emissions since 1965.
The polluters project highlighted how many of the leading fossil fuel corporations had spent billions of pounds on lobbying governments and portraying themselves as environmentally responsible.
A study published last year found that the largest five market-listed oil and gas companies – the big four plus Total – spent nearly $200m each year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change.
The profit figures were calculated in today’s money by using the annual net income attributable to shareholders for each company while taking inflation rates into account. In absolute terms, without inflation, the combined profits since 1990 were a still considerable $1.6tn, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.
The profits of the world’s most profitable listed oil companies were dwarfed last year by the financial reports of the Saudi state-owned oil firm Aramco. It listed on the Saudi stock exchange after racking up profits of $111.1bn (£84.7bn) in 2018, which was more than double the profits of Apple and five times those reported by Shell.
Experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by industry leaders and politicians, particularly in the US, as far back as the mid-60s. Certainly by 1990 the facts were well known: two years earlier the Nasa scientist James Hansen had raised the alarm about the impact of fossil fuels during a landmark hearing at the US Congress. In 1992, world leaders came together at a summit in Rio to recognise the role carbon emissions were playing and to pledge coordinated action.
BP did not respond to a request for comment on the findings.
A spokesperson for Shell said: “Just as reliable, affordable energy has benefited us all, all of society has a role to play in tackling climate change. We’re working hard to develop lower-carbon energy options and meet demand for more and cleaner energy.”
ExxonMobil said it was helping address “the dual challenge of the world’s growing demand for energy and reducing emissions”.
Chevon said it was taking action to address climate change by “lowering the company’s carbon intensity, increasing the use of renewable energy and investing in breakthrough technologies.”
10 US oil refineries exceeding limits for cancer-causing benzene, report finds
Studies have shown that populations living around refineries, often people of color and low-income, have worse asthma
Emily Holden in Washington
the guardian
Thu 6 Feb 2020 00.01 EST
At least 10 US oil refineries have been emitting cancer-causing benzene above the federal government’s limits, according to a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project.
The group reviewed a year of air monitoring data recorded at the fence lines of 114 refineries, as reported to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The facilities are not breaking the law, but they are required by EPA to analyze the causes of the emissions and try to reduce them.
Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said while some refineries have made improvements, others are still releasing benzene at harmful rates.
“Benzene comes with elevated cancer risk but also lots of non-cancer issues that are harder to quantify,” Schaeffer said. People can get sick from low levels in the long term or high levels in the short term.
Benzene is just one of multiple dangerous pollutants emitted by refineries – which turn oil into gasoline and other products. Studies have shown the populations living around refineries – often people of color and low-income families – to have worse asthma and other respiratory problems.
Benzene harms cell processes. It can keep bone marrow from producing enough red blood cells and can damage the immune system and increase the risk of infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Over the long term, benzene exposure causes other problems, including cancer, according to the Department of Human Health and Services.
The data is being collected and reported for the first time following a 2012 lawsuit by the Environmental Integrity Project and seven community and environment groups.
The highest-emitting refinery, the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in Pennsylvania, shut down in June after erupting in explosions and fires. It was polluting benzene at five times the government’s limit. Most of the other benzene polluters – six out of the top 10 – are in Texas.
The second-worst refinery is the Holly Frontier Navajo refinery in Artesia, New Mexico, where levels were more than three times the EPA’s “action level” of 9 micrograms per cubic meter, which requires companies to address the pollution.
The federal agency collects data from a number of air monitors around a plant. It takes the average for each station and then uses the highest of those numbers to determine a refinery’s benzene level.
The researchers found concerning spikes outside of the time range they analyzed as well. One monitor in June and July of 2018 detected benzene in a concentration of 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter at the distance of about three football fields from an elementary school.
The community within a mile of the Artesia refinery has 3,318 residents, 74% of whom are Hispanic and most of whom live below the poverty line. Schaeffer said the extremely high levels led to public pressure and action from the government.
Corey Williams, policy and research director at Air Alliance Houston, said in many cases people living near the refineries and other industrial facilities know they might be dangerous but haven’t always had proof.
“I think it’s something that a lot of people have come to accept as part of living in the energy capital of the world,” Williams said.
The group reviewed a year of air monitoring data recorded at the fence lines of 114 refineries, as reported to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The facilities are not breaking the law, but they are required by EPA to analyze the causes of the emissions and try to reduce them.
Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said while some refineries have made improvements, others are still releasing benzene at harmful rates.
“Benzene comes with elevated cancer risk but also lots of non-cancer issues that are harder to quantify,” Schaeffer said. People can get sick from low levels in the long term or high levels in the short term.
Benzene is just one of multiple dangerous pollutants emitted by refineries – which turn oil into gasoline and other products. Studies have shown the populations living around refineries – often people of color and low-income families – to have worse asthma and other respiratory problems.
Benzene harms cell processes. It can keep bone marrow from producing enough red blood cells and can damage the immune system and increase the risk of infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Over the long term, benzene exposure causes other problems, including cancer, according to the Department of Human Health and Services.
The data is being collected and reported for the first time following a 2012 lawsuit by the Environmental Integrity Project and seven community and environment groups.
The highest-emitting refinery, the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in Pennsylvania, shut down in June after erupting in explosions and fires. It was polluting benzene at five times the government’s limit. Most of the other benzene polluters – six out of the top 10 – are in Texas.
The second-worst refinery is the Holly Frontier Navajo refinery in Artesia, New Mexico, where levels were more than three times the EPA’s “action level” of 9 micrograms per cubic meter, which requires companies to address the pollution.
The federal agency collects data from a number of air monitors around a plant. It takes the average for each station and then uses the highest of those numbers to determine a refinery’s benzene level.
The researchers found concerning spikes outside of the time range they analyzed as well. One monitor in June and July of 2018 detected benzene in a concentration of 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter at the distance of about three football fields from an elementary school.
The community within a mile of the Artesia refinery has 3,318 residents, 74% of whom are Hispanic and most of whom live below the poverty line. Schaeffer said the extremely high levels led to public pressure and action from the government.
Corey Williams, policy and research director at Air Alliance Houston, said in many cases people living near the refineries and other industrial facilities know they might be dangerous but haven’t always had proof.
“I think it’s something that a lot of people have come to accept as part of living in the energy capital of the world,” Williams said.
Republicans Are Re-Opening The Energy Market To Underhanded Dealing
Get Ready for ‘Enron II,’ as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Keeps Weakening Its Own Power to Stop Manipulators
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
1/23/2020
Neil Chatterjee, head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is taking our nation back to pre-Enron days. That is when the commission was so weak it didn’t even explicitly prohibit manipulating energy markets.
Under Chatterjee, a former Mitch McConnell aide, the number of new investigations was 12 in fiscal 2019, compared with 24 the previous year. The commission reached just two settlement agreements for $14 million, a sixth or less of the annual average for penalties since 2007.
“Several recent actions seem to indicate that the commission may not be fully committed to finding, stopping, and punishing manipulative acts that can stifle competition and result in unjust and unreasonable prices,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) wrote. The letter to FERC commissioners was joined by four other Democratic senators.
Chatterjee, who previously lobbied for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, told senators annual averages vary and dropped in part because of FERC’s effectiveness. “Our focus and priority continues to be addressing market manipulation and protecting our markets,” he said.
FERC is pursuing three cases that total about $85 million in penalties, interest and compensation.
Out of the ashes of Enron, Former President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act. Enron, the Houston energy company, went bankrupt after cooking its books to hide billions of dollars in debt. Enron’s former CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, who was convicted of insider trading and other charges, was released from prison in 2018.
The Energy Policy Act allow up to $1 million a day in fines per violation. The Electric Power Supply Association and Energy Trading Institute have argued in court that the fines should be thrown out. They said the commission is taking too long to assess penalties.
In May, the commission stopped issuing public notices enacted in 2009 about alleged violations. “Potential adverse consequences … for investigative subjects are no longer justified,” it said.
FERC also eliminated its Division of Energy Market Oversight. The division oversaw our country’s natural gas and electric markets and related energy and financial markets.
Chatterjee’s predecessor as chairman, attorney Norman Bay, had been the commission’s director of enforcement. He resigned in January 2017 when Trump named then-commissioner Cheryl LaFleur acting chair.
Before FERC enacted market behavior rules there was no explicit prohibition or definition of market manipulation in FERC rules, regulations, orders or statutes.
In fiscal 2018, FERC opened 16 investigations into market manipulation, the most for any year in the past decade. It recovered almost $150 million in civil penalties and disrupting profits.
Under Chatterjee, a former Mitch McConnell aide, the number of new investigations was 12 in fiscal 2019, compared with 24 the previous year. The commission reached just two settlement agreements for $14 million, a sixth or less of the annual average for penalties since 2007.
“Several recent actions seem to indicate that the commission may not be fully committed to finding, stopping, and punishing manipulative acts that can stifle competition and result in unjust and unreasonable prices,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) wrote. The letter to FERC commissioners was joined by four other Democratic senators.
Chatterjee, who previously lobbied for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, told senators annual averages vary and dropped in part because of FERC’s effectiveness. “Our focus and priority continues to be addressing market manipulation and protecting our markets,” he said.
FERC is pursuing three cases that total about $85 million in penalties, interest and compensation.
Out of the ashes of Enron, Former President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act. Enron, the Houston energy company, went bankrupt after cooking its books to hide billions of dollars in debt. Enron’s former CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, who was convicted of insider trading and other charges, was released from prison in 2018.
The Energy Policy Act allow up to $1 million a day in fines per violation. The Electric Power Supply Association and Energy Trading Institute have argued in court that the fines should be thrown out. They said the commission is taking too long to assess penalties.
In May, the commission stopped issuing public notices enacted in 2009 about alleged violations. “Potential adverse consequences … for investigative subjects are no longer justified,” it said.
FERC also eliminated its Division of Energy Market Oversight. The division oversaw our country’s natural gas and electric markets and related energy and financial markets.
Chatterjee’s predecessor as chairman, attorney Norman Bay, had been the commission’s director of enforcement. He resigned in January 2017 when Trump named then-commissioner Cheryl LaFleur acting chair.
Before FERC enacted market behavior rules there was no explicit prohibition or definition of market manipulation in FERC rules, regulations, orders or statutes.
In fiscal 2018, FERC opened 16 investigations into market manipulation, the most for any year in the past decade. It recovered almost $150 million in civil penalties and disrupting profits.
Trump administration approves Keystone pipeline on US land
By MATTHEW BROWN - ap
1/22/2020
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Trump administration on Wednesday approved a right-of-way allowing the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline to be built across U.S. land, pushing the controversial $8 billion project closer to construction though court challenges still loom.
The approval signed by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and obtained by The Associated Press covers 46 miles (74 kilometers) of the pipeline’s route across land in Montana that’s controlled by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Casey Hammond, assistant secretary of the Interior Department.
Those segments of federal land are a small fraction of the pipeline’s 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) route, but the right-of-way was crucial for a project that’s obtained all the needed permits at the state and local levels.
The pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels (35 million gallons) of crude oil daily from western Canada to terminals on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Project sponsor TC Energy said in a court filing that it wants to begin construction on the U.S.-Canada border crossing in Montana in April. Opponents promised to challenge those plans in court.
First proposed in 2008, the pipeline has become emblematic of the tensions between economic development and curbing the fossil fuel emissions that are causing climate change. The Obama administration rejected it, but President Donald Trump revived it and has been a strong supporter.
The stretch approved Wednesday includes all federal land crossed by the line, Hammond said. Much of the rest of the route is across private land, for which TC Energy has been acquiring permissions to build on.
Environmentalists and Native American tribes along the pipeline route say burning the tar sands oil will make climate change worse, and that the pipeline could break and spill oil into waterways like Montana’s Missouri River. They have filed numerous lawsuits.
Hammond said Interior officials and other agencies have done a thorough review of the potential effects on the environment. He said TC Energy had provided detailed plans to respond to any spill.
“We’re comfortable with the analysis that’s been done,” Hammond said.
Another oil pipeline in TC Energy’s Keystone network in October spilled an estimated 383,000 gallons (1.4 million liters) of oil in eastern North Dakota. Critics say a damaging spill from Keystone XL is inevitable given the length of the line and the many rivers and other waterways it would cross beneath.
An attorney for environmental groups that have sued to overturn Trump’s permit for the line said they will ask the judge in the case to block the new approval.
“We have every confidence that the federal courts will set aside these approvals,” said Steve Volker, who represents the Indigenous Environmental Network.
Additional approvals from the Army Corps of Engineers are needed for the pipeline’s impact to Montana’s Fort Peck dam. Two utilities must approve power lines that would connect to the project’s pumping stations.
On Montana’s Fort Peck Reservation, where tribal members fear an oil spill getting into water supplies, state Sen. Frank Smith said Trump’s strong support for the project appeared to be pushing it through.
“All we can do is pray from here on in,” Smith said. “The president said it’s going through, and it’s going through.”
The Democratic lawmaker added that despite TC Energy’s pledge to operate safely, “there can still be human error” and another spill would happen.
TC Energy spokeswoman Sara Rabern said in a statement that the government approval marked an “important step as we advance towards building this important energy infrastructure project.”
In Phillips County, Montana, where the line would cross the Canada border into the U.S., officials want the tax revenue on the oil that would pass through, estimated at more than $1 million annually.
“It’s a no-brainer for us as far as how the community feels,” county commissioner John Carnahan said. “We’d go out there and help them if we could. It’s not only good for the county, it’s good for America.”
U.S. District Judge Brian Morris in Montana initially denied a request from environmentalists to block construction in December because no work was immediately planned. But he also has ruled against the project, including a 2018 decision that stalled the line and prompted Trump to issue a new presidential permit for it to cross the U.S.-Canada border.
In Nebraska, the state Supreme Court removed the last major obstacle for the project in August when it ruled in favor of state regulators who had approved a route for the pipeline in 2017.
TC Energy intends next month to begin mobilizing construction machinery to areas for worker camps and pipeline storage yards in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, according to its court filings. It also plans to start toppling trees along the route in parts of South Dakota.
The approval signed by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and obtained by The Associated Press covers 46 miles (74 kilometers) of the pipeline’s route across land in Montana that’s controlled by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Casey Hammond, assistant secretary of the Interior Department.
Those segments of federal land are a small fraction of the pipeline’s 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) route, but the right-of-way was crucial for a project that’s obtained all the needed permits at the state and local levels.
The pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels (35 million gallons) of crude oil daily from western Canada to terminals on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Project sponsor TC Energy said in a court filing that it wants to begin construction on the U.S.-Canada border crossing in Montana in April. Opponents promised to challenge those plans in court.
First proposed in 2008, the pipeline has become emblematic of the tensions between economic development and curbing the fossil fuel emissions that are causing climate change. The Obama administration rejected it, but President Donald Trump revived it and has been a strong supporter.
The stretch approved Wednesday includes all federal land crossed by the line, Hammond said. Much of the rest of the route is across private land, for which TC Energy has been acquiring permissions to build on.
Environmentalists and Native American tribes along the pipeline route say burning the tar sands oil will make climate change worse, and that the pipeline could break and spill oil into waterways like Montana’s Missouri River. They have filed numerous lawsuits.
Hammond said Interior officials and other agencies have done a thorough review of the potential effects on the environment. He said TC Energy had provided detailed plans to respond to any spill.
“We’re comfortable with the analysis that’s been done,” Hammond said.
Another oil pipeline in TC Energy’s Keystone network in October spilled an estimated 383,000 gallons (1.4 million liters) of oil in eastern North Dakota. Critics say a damaging spill from Keystone XL is inevitable given the length of the line and the many rivers and other waterways it would cross beneath.
An attorney for environmental groups that have sued to overturn Trump’s permit for the line said they will ask the judge in the case to block the new approval.
“We have every confidence that the federal courts will set aside these approvals,” said Steve Volker, who represents the Indigenous Environmental Network.
Additional approvals from the Army Corps of Engineers are needed for the pipeline’s impact to Montana’s Fort Peck dam. Two utilities must approve power lines that would connect to the project’s pumping stations.
On Montana’s Fort Peck Reservation, where tribal members fear an oil spill getting into water supplies, state Sen. Frank Smith said Trump’s strong support for the project appeared to be pushing it through.
“All we can do is pray from here on in,” Smith said. “The president said it’s going through, and it’s going through.”
The Democratic lawmaker added that despite TC Energy’s pledge to operate safely, “there can still be human error” and another spill would happen.
TC Energy spokeswoman Sara Rabern said in a statement that the government approval marked an “important step as we advance towards building this important energy infrastructure project.”
In Phillips County, Montana, where the line would cross the Canada border into the U.S., officials want the tax revenue on the oil that would pass through, estimated at more than $1 million annually.
“It’s a no-brainer for us as far as how the community feels,” county commissioner John Carnahan said. “We’d go out there and help them if we could. It’s not only good for the county, it’s good for America.”
U.S. District Judge Brian Morris in Montana initially denied a request from environmentalists to block construction in December because no work was immediately planned. But he also has ruled against the project, including a 2018 decision that stalled the line and prompted Trump to issue a new presidential permit for it to cross the U.S.-Canada border.
In Nebraska, the state Supreme Court removed the last major obstacle for the project in August when it ruled in favor of state regulators who had approved a route for the pipeline in 2017.
TC Energy intends next month to begin mobilizing construction machinery to areas for worker camps and pipeline storage yards in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, according to its court filings. It also plans to start toppling trees along the route in parts of South Dakota.
Davos financiers pump $1.4 trillion into fossil fuels: Greenpeace
January 21, 2020
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
Some of the world’s biggest banks, insurers and pension funds have collectively invested $1.4 trillion in fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal, Greenpeace said Tuesday at the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
With the climate emergency expected to be front and centre at the annual summit of the world’s business elite, the charity accused some institutions in attendance of failing to live up to the Forum’s goal of “improving the state of the world”.
Greenpeace analyzed the portfolios of 24 of the banks represented at Davos and found that they had financed the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $1.4 trillion since the landmark 2015 Paris deal.
That accord enjoins nations to limit global temperature rises to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) through a rapid and wide-ranging drawdown of planet-warming carbon emissions.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the world’s leading authority on the subject — says that for a better-than-even chance of reaching the safer Paris cap of 1.5C, oil and gas consumption would need to decline 37 percent and 25 percent respectively by 2030.
The IPCC says coal use must fall two thirds by 2030 and fall to virtually zero by mid-century to keep Earth on a 1.5-C path.
Yet carbon emissions are growing every year as global energy demand surges, and the International Energy Association said Monday that fossil fuel companies are still only investing 0.8 percent of their spending in renewables.
Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said financial institutions were complicit in climate change by funding the fuels that drive it.
“Banks, insurers and pension funds are as culpable for the climate emergency as the fossil fuel industry — specifically those that go to Davos,” Morgan told AFP.
“These Davos players say they support the Paris agreement but since its signing they’ve pumped $1.4 trillion into fossil fuels.”
The Greenpeace report found that just 10 banks had provided $1 trillion to fossil fuels since Paris. That same amount could pay to double the world’s solar power capacity.
It also identified three pension funds with at least $26 billion in fossil fuel holdings, and alleged that four of the world’s biggest insurance firms — AIG, Prudential, Sompo and Tokio marine — had no publicly disclosed policies to divest from fossil fuels.
“The fossil fuel industry needs the finance sector but its not the same the other way around, so why are these bank, insurers and pensions propping up dirty energy?” asked Morgan, who will be participating in the four-day Davos forum.
Last year green groups issued the Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card, identifying a rise in funding for coal, oil and gas each year since Paris was signed.
“The massive scale at which global banks continue to pump billions of dollars into fossil fuels is flatly incompatible with a livable future,” said Alison Kirsh, climate and energy lead researcher at Rainforest Action Network.
With the climate emergency expected to be front and centre at the annual summit of the world’s business elite, the charity accused some institutions in attendance of failing to live up to the Forum’s goal of “improving the state of the world”.
Greenpeace analyzed the portfolios of 24 of the banks represented at Davos and found that they had financed the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $1.4 trillion since the landmark 2015 Paris deal.
That accord enjoins nations to limit global temperature rises to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) through a rapid and wide-ranging drawdown of planet-warming carbon emissions.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the world’s leading authority on the subject — says that for a better-than-even chance of reaching the safer Paris cap of 1.5C, oil and gas consumption would need to decline 37 percent and 25 percent respectively by 2030.
The IPCC says coal use must fall two thirds by 2030 and fall to virtually zero by mid-century to keep Earth on a 1.5-C path.
Yet carbon emissions are growing every year as global energy demand surges, and the International Energy Association said Monday that fossil fuel companies are still only investing 0.8 percent of their spending in renewables.
Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said financial institutions were complicit in climate change by funding the fuels that drive it.
“Banks, insurers and pension funds are as culpable for the climate emergency as the fossil fuel industry — specifically those that go to Davos,” Morgan told AFP.
“These Davos players say they support the Paris agreement but since its signing they’ve pumped $1.4 trillion into fossil fuels.”
The Greenpeace report found that just 10 banks had provided $1 trillion to fossil fuels since Paris. That same amount could pay to double the world’s solar power capacity.
It also identified three pension funds with at least $26 billion in fossil fuel holdings, and alleged that four of the world’s biggest insurance firms — AIG, Prudential, Sompo and Tokio marine — had no publicly disclosed policies to divest from fossil fuels.
“The fossil fuel industry needs the finance sector but its not the same the other way around, so why are these bank, insurers and pensions propping up dirty energy?” asked Morgan, who will be participating in the four-day Davos forum.
Last year green groups issued the Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card, identifying a rise in funding for coal, oil and gas each year since Paris was signed.
“The massive scale at which global banks continue to pump billions of dollars into fossil fuels is flatly incompatible with a livable future,” said Alison Kirsh, climate and energy lead researcher at Rainforest Action Network.
voters keep electing republicans!!!
Fossil Fuel Knocks the Wind Out of Renewable Energy Movement in Ohio
BY Sharon Zhang, Truthout
PUBLISHED December 27, 2019
With no shortage of wide-open land, Ohio is ripe for a transition to renewable energy, but instead the state has become a hotbed for corporate-driven attacks on wind energy. As a result of increasingly restrictive laws on renewables, the state was recently ranked second to last among U.S. states in its renewable energy generation, with only 2.3 percent of its energy generated through renewable sources.
A closer look at the workings of the anti-wind-energy movement in Ohio offers a glimpse of the dynamics that are also at work to suppress wind energy generation elsewhere throughout the country.
One of the most recent attacks on wind energy in Ohio came in July, when the Ohio state legislature passed a bill that essentially neutralized renewable energy standards and bailed out dying coal plants, all under the guise of maintaining a free market and helping ratepayers. The bill, HB 6, was called the “worst energy bill of the 21st century” by Vox and the worst clean energy rollback in the nation by Leah Stokes, writing for The Guardian. It sets a low renewable energy standard that most utilities have already met, and will end up costing ratepayers more in the long run.
“Ohio is a hotbed of attacks on renewable energy and has been for quite a few years,” says Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager at the Energy and Policy Institute. Following a bipartisan clean energy standard passed in the state legislature in 2008, fossil fuel producers, utilities like FirstEnergy and outside groups like ALEC lobbied to push back against renewables, according to Anderson; in the ensuing years, Republicans continually tried to repeal and succeeded in stalling the clean energy mandate.
A Midwestern Wind Battle
When it comes to renewable energies like solar and wind, Ohio has a lot to gain. Other states in the Midwest have been taking advantage of the wide-open land that Ohio also shares. From a climate and local health standpoint, according to a Harvard study published in October, the Midwest has the most to gain from renewables; and, according to a 2018 study done by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, increasing energy efficiency by 15 percent nationwide would save Ohio $1.6 billion in health impacts in one year.
Nevertheless, wind energy in particular has fierce rivals in the state. In 2014, state legislators snuck a rule into a budget bill that mandated what wind energy manufacturers say are among the strictest setback laws in the country; the American Wind Energy Association released a report in 2017 saying that the state had missed out on nearly $1.6 billion from already approved projects that were thrown into limbo or cancelled due to the setback law.
In November, Republican Bill Reineke introduced a bill into the state legislature that would require local townships to have final say on wind energy projects after approval from the state siting board. In a statement, the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund said that “Ohio House Bill 401 will make the future of wind energy in Ohio, which is already badly handicapped, even more uncertain” if it were passed.
The anti-wind efforts are a story largely told by two parties: local groups and travelling anti-wind grifters funded by nonrenewable energy interests. The Seneca Anti-Wind Union based in northern Ohio is a particularly large and vocal local coalition — it has an office, holds meetings that can draw hundreds, has the support of Vice President Mike Pence, and has a lawyer who represents and has received money from coal interests. The coalition posts on its Facebook page several times a day, spreading misinformation from people like Michael Shellenberger, who claims to be a climate expert so that he can write articles denouncing the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as alarmists.
A common refrain from anti-wind groups is that they are shut out of the development process, but Ohio law allows affected residents to intervene in and attend meetings on such projects. A 2018 study found that wind energy manufacturers’ engagement with the community was vital to the process — and that those individuals who did engage generally had a more positive view of the project.
Jeremy Firestone, lead author of that study and director of wind research at the University of Delaware, told Truthout that “one of the two strongest predictors of having a positive attitude [toward wind projects] was having the ability to influence the outcome, the other being having developers that are open and transparent.” Some of the communities Firestone studied had worked directly with the developers to modify the scale of a project to alleviate aesthetic issues.
Good faith community members do sometimes raise legitimate concerns with wind projects like turbine aesthetics, shadow flicker and noise. However, there is also a wealth of conspiratorial misinformation online about other side effects of living in proximity to wind farms — the anti-wind movement says living near wind turbines causes the scientifically debunked “wind turbine syndrome” that has symptoms ranging anywhere from cancer to weight gain.
It’s understandable how these views have taken hold in these communities — none of these spurious health concerns have been substantiated by scientific studies, yet it’s exceedingly easy to find information about them online. Anti-wind websites like Master Resource and National Wind Watch are funded, often in roundabout ways, by fossil fuel interests; Wind Watch doesn’t directly receive donations from these groups, but one of its leaders, Tom Stacy, has done consulting for pro-fossil fuel think tanks. Master Resource is run by the Institute for Energy Research, which has ties to multiple oil and gas interests, including Charles Koch.
Stacy has been active in supporting the renewable energy rollbacks and the Ohio legislature’s top anti-wind politician, Republican Sen. Bill Seitz, has said that Stacy has directly affected legislation like 2014’s setback law. Indeed, at the intersection of the fossil-fuel-funded anti-wind figures and the local anti-wind groups lie the legislators and other government officials that they’ve influenced. Seneca Anti-Wind has been able to turn local commissioner Mike Kerschner and Reineke, who represents Seneca county, against wind projects. Meanwhile, Sam Randazzo, who has lobbied against renewables, now sits at the head of the state’s public utilities commission.
Wind Efforts Across the Country
These issues don’t just exist in Ohio — the fossil fuel industry and local residents also converged to cancel an offshore wind project in Cape Cod, and people have stood up against projects in Minnesota. Republicans in North Carolina and Oklahoma have begun waging similar wars against wind energy, and President Donald Trump has painted wind energy as a symbol of what he describes as an elitist environmental movement.
The truth is that wind energy can bring significant financial benefits to often struggling rural communities. “It’s a nice way for the farmers and farming communities that are supportive to have stable incomes,” says Firestone. “[Wind energy] makes it easier to maintain family farms.” Just in Ohio, wind farms contribute millions of dollars to landowners each year, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
But misinformation, especially misinformation that’s spread online, is easily spread and difficult to challenge. Fortunately, in places like the Great Plains, wind energy is on the rise. Maybe such momentum will be contagious.
A closer look at the workings of the anti-wind-energy movement in Ohio offers a glimpse of the dynamics that are also at work to suppress wind energy generation elsewhere throughout the country.
One of the most recent attacks on wind energy in Ohio came in July, when the Ohio state legislature passed a bill that essentially neutralized renewable energy standards and bailed out dying coal plants, all under the guise of maintaining a free market and helping ratepayers. The bill, HB 6, was called the “worst energy bill of the 21st century” by Vox and the worst clean energy rollback in the nation by Leah Stokes, writing for The Guardian. It sets a low renewable energy standard that most utilities have already met, and will end up costing ratepayers more in the long run.
“Ohio is a hotbed of attacks on renewable energy and has been for quite a few years,” says Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager at the Energy and Policy Institute. Following a bipartisan clean energy standard passed in the state legislature in 2008, fossil fuel producers, utilities like FirstEnergy and outside groups like ALEC lobbied to push back against renewables, according to Anderson; in the ensuing years, Republicans continually tried to repeal and succeeded in stalling the clean energy mandate.
A Midwestern Wind Battle
When it comes to renewable energies like solar and wind, Ohio has a lot to gain. Other states in the Midwest have been taking advantage of the wide-open land that Ohio also shares. From a climate and local health standpoint, according to a Harvard study published in October, the Midwest has the most to gain from renewables; and, according to a 2018 study done by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, increasing energy efficiency by 15 percent nationwide would save Ohio $1.6 billion in health impacts in one year.
Nevertheless, wind energy in particular has fierce rivals in the state. In 2014, state legislators snuck a rule into a budget bill that mandated what wind energy manufacturers say are among the strictest setback laws in the country; the American Wind Energy Association released a report in 2017 saying that the state had missed out on nearly $1.6 billion from already approved projects that were thrown into limbo or cancelled due to the setback law.
In November, Republican Bill Reineke introduced a bill into the state legislature that would require local townships to have final say on wind energy projects after approval from the state siting board. In a statement, the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund said that “Ohio House Bill 401 will make the future of wind energy in Ohio, which is already badly handicapped, even more uncertain” if it were passed.
The anti-wind efforts are a story largely told by two parties: local groups and travelling anti-wind grifters funded by nonrenewable energy interests. The Seneca Anti-Wind Union based in northern Ohio is a particularly large and vocal local coalition — it has an office, holds meetings that can draw hundreds, has the support of Vice President Mike Pence, and has a lawyer who represents and has received money from coal interests. The coalition posts on its Facebook page several times a day, spreading misinformation from people like Michael Shellenberger, who claims to be a climate expert so that he can write articles denouncing the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as alarmists.
A common refrain from anti-wind groups is that they are shut out of the development process, but Ohio law allows affected residents to intervene in and attend meetings on such projects. A 2018 study found that wind energy manufacturers’ engagement with the community was vital to the process — and that those individuals who did engage generally had a more positive view of the project.
Jeremy Firestone, lead author of that study and director of wind research at the University of Delaware, told Truthout that “one of the two strongest predictors of having a positive attitude [toward wind projects] was having the ability to influence the outcome, the other being having developers that are open and transparent.” Some of the communities Firestone studied had worked directly with the developers to modify the scale of a project to alleviate aesthetic issues.
Good faith community members do sometimes raise legitimate concerns with wind projects like turbine aesthetics, shadow flicker and noise. However, there is also a wealth of conspiratorial misinformation online about other side effects of living in proximity to wind farms — the anti-wind movement says living near wind turbines causes the scientifically debunked “wind turbine syndrome” that has symptoms ranging anywhere from cancer to weight gain.
It’s understandable how these views have taken hold in these communities — none of these spurious health concerns have been substantiated by scientific studies, yet it’s exceedingly easy to find information about them online. Anti-wind websites like Master Resource and National Wind Watch are funded, often in roundabout ways, by fossil fuel interests; Wind Watch doesn’t directly receive donations from these groups, but one of its leaders, Tom Stacy, has done consulting for pro-fossil fuel think tanks. Master Resource is run by the Institute for Energy Research, which has ties to multiple oil and gas interests, including Charles Koch.
Stacy has been active in supporting the renewable energy rollbacks and the Ohio legislature’s top anti-wind politician, Republican Sen. Bill Seitz, has said that Stacy has directly affected legislation like 2014’s setback law. Indeed, at the intersection of the fossil-fuel-funded anti-wind figures and the local anti-wind groups lie the legislators and other government officials that they’ve influenced. Seneca Anti-Wind has been able to turn local commissioner Mike Kerschner and Reineke, who represents Seneca county, against wind projects. Meanwhile, Sam Randazzo, who has lobbied against renewables, now sits at the head of the state’s public utilities commission.
Wind Efforts Across the Country
These issues don’t just exist in Ohio — the fossil fuel industry and local residents also converged to cancel an offshore wind project in Cape Cod, and people have stood up against projects in Minnesota. Republicans in North Carolina and Oklahoma have begun waging similar wars against wind energy, and President Donald Trump has painted wind energy as a symbol of what he describes as an elitist environmental movement.
The truth is that wind energy can bring significant financial benefits to often struggling rural communities. “It’s a nice way for the farmers and farming communities that are supportive to have stable incomes,” says Firestone. “[Wind energy] makes it easier to maintain family farms.” Just in Ohio, wind farms contribute millions of dollars to landowners each year, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
But misinformation, especially misinformation that’s spread online, is easily spread and difficult to challenge. Fortunately, in places like the Great Plains, wind energy is on the rise. Maybe such momentum will be contagious.
COAL GIANT PROVIDED SECRET FINANCING TO GROUP CHALLENGING CLIMATE LAWSUITS
Lee Fang - the intercept
December 17 2019, 10:17 a.m.
IN 2018, a new group appeared seemingly out of nowhere and immediately took aim at the recent wave of lawsuits filed by state attorneys general designed to hold major fossil fuel companies responsible for allegedly misleading investors and customers about the true risk of carbon pollution.
“The global warming lobby has gone too far this time,” declared the innocuously named group, Government Accountability and Oversight, in a video posted on its website. GAO claimed that the lawsuits, which target Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil, and Chevron, among other corporations, represent a form of government overreach and that prosecutors are colluding with activist interest groups in an unethical manner.
GAO, which is run as a for-profit company and foundation, does not disclose its donors nor does it provide much information about its origins. But on Saturday, a bankruptcy court in southern Ohio released a filing revealing that the organization received three donations totaling $300,000 from Murray Energy, the largest privately held coal-mining company in the United States. The first payment was made on June 7, 2018, just one month after GAO announced its intention to “expose” the litigation effort against energy companies.
That a secretive group working to defend the fossil fuel industry is financed by Murray Energy may come as no surprise.
Bob Murray, the billionaire founder of Murray Energy, a prolific GOP donor, and early supporter of President Donald Trump, is an outspoken critic of environmental regulations and activist groups. Murray’s influence over the administration, including the push to unravel Environmental Protection Agency rules on carbon emissions and exit the Paris climate accords, is well documented. Even the current chief of the EPA, Andrew Wheeler, is a former lobbyist for Murray.
GAO and Murray Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has provided over $3.8 million in campaign contributions to a range of federal politicians over the last five years, according to the Federal Election Commission. That figure, however, appears to be only part of the story in terms of the company’s influence over the political debate.
In October, following a precipitous drop in coal demand, Murray’s company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, forcing the firm to disclose its recent history of payments to outside political entities. As part of the company’s restructuring process, it filed a statement of financial affairs, which lists creditors and liabilities, as well as a list of recent charitable donations and grants, which revealed the payments to GAO, among many other new revelations about the coal company’s hidden hand in the climate change debate.
Murray Energy showered donations to several think tanks focused on questioning the link between human activity and global warming, providing grants to groups such as the Heartland Institute, which once sponsored billboards comparing those who accept climate change to the Unabomber. The Ohio-based coal giant gave $30,000 to the Heartland Institute in March of last year, shortly after the group announced a campaign to save coal companies on the brink of closure, followed by another $100,00 in contributions in the months that followed.
Other think tanks listed in the filing as having received money from Murray Energy include the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a group that claimed “there is no scientific consensus though that global warming is man-caused”; the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which briefs lawmakers on how the science behind climate change is a “hoax“; the Cato Institute, the Charles Koch-founded think tank that has long sponsored prominent climate change deniers; and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which argues for the “many benefits” of increasing carbon emissions. (“Atmospheric carbon dioxide is the elixir of life,” one pamphlet reads. Emphasis in the original.)
The filing lists nearly a dozen similar payments to right-wing organizations that do not disclose donors. Murray Energy provided $130,000 to “Hardworking Ohioians Inc.,” a mysterious for-profit group, which revealed no information about its donors, tied closely to Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, and aired advertisements last year to maintain the Republican majority in the legislature. Another $50,000 was spent in support of FreedomWorks, a grassroots group that mobilizes public support for rolling back EPA regulations. Judicial Watch, a GOP-aligned investigative nonprofit, is also a beneficiary of Murray Energy money.
“The bankruptcy filing confirms what environmentalists have long suspected about Murray Energy’s connections to a network of special-interest groups that have worked to manufacture doubt about climate change and attack climate scientists and activists,” said David Anderson, communications and policy manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group.
Bankruptcy filings have provided a unique opportunity for the public to better understand the political agenda of powerful corporate interests, which typically shroud sensitive donations through nondisclosing entities. The sudden collapse earlier this year of Cloud Peak Energy, a Wyoming-based coal firm, revealed several donations to climate change denial groups. In 2015, The Intercept reported on another wave of coal bankruptcies, which revealed ties between coal firms to a subterranean network of groups dedicated to blocking environmental reform.
The bankruptcy of Alpha Natural Resources three years ago, for instance, showed secret payments to Chris Horner, a former lobbyist who had hounded climate scientists in an attempt to discredit their work. The disclosure was the first time Horner and his nonprofit, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, had been directly tied to the fossil fuel industry.
Horner is now onto new projects. Along with several other lawyers, he is a co-founder of Government Accountability and Oversight.
“The global warming lobby has gone too far this time,” declared the innocuously named group, Government Accountability and Oversight, in a video posted on its website. GAO claimed that the lawsuits, which target Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil, and Chevron, among other corporations, represent a form of government overreach and that prosecutors are colluding with activist interest groups in an unethical manner.
GAO, which is run as a for-profit company and foundation, does not disclose its donors nor does it provide much information about its origins. But on Saturday, a bankruptcy court in southern Ohio released a filing revealing that the organization received three donations totaling $300,000 from Murray Energy, the largest privately held coal-mining company in the United States. The first payment was made on June 7, 2018, just one month after GAO announced its intention to “expose” the litigation effort against energy companies.
That a secretive group working to defend the fossil fuel industry is financed by Murray Energy may come as no surprise.
Bob Murray, the billionaire founder of Murray Energy, a prolific GOP donor, and early supporter of President Donald Trump, is an outspoken critic of environmental regulations and activist groups. Murray’s influence over the administration, including the push to unravel Environmental Protection Agency rules on carbon emissions and exit the Paris climate accords, is well documented. Even the current chief of the EPA, Andrew Wheeler, is a former lobbyist for Murray.
GAO and Murray Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has provided over $3.8 million in campaign contributions to a range of federal politicians over the last five years, according to the Federal Election Commission. That figure, however, appears to be only part of the story in terms of the company’s influence over the political debate.
In October, following a precipitous drop in coal demand, Murray’s company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, forcing the firm to disclose its recent history of payments to outside political entities. As part of the company’s restructuring process, it filed a statement of financial affairs, which lists creditors and liabilities, as well as a list of recent charitable donations and grants, which revealed the payments to GAO, among many other new revelations about the coal company’s hidden hand in the climate change debate.
Murray Energy showered donations to several think tanks focused on questioning the link between human activity and global warming, providing grants to groups such as the Heartland Institute, which once sponsored billboards comparing those who accept climate change to the Unabomber. The Ohio-based coal giant gave $30,000 to the Heartland Institute in March of last year, shortly after the group announced a campaign to save coal companies on the brink of closure, followed by another $100,00 in contributions in the months that followed.
Other think tanks listed in the filing as having received money from Murray Energy include the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a group that claimed “there is no scientific consensus though that global warming is man-caused”; the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which briefs lawmakers on how the science behind climate change is a “hoax“; the Cato Institute, the Charles Koch-founded think tank that has long sponsored prominent climate change deniers; and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which argues for the “many benefits” of increasing carbon emissions. (“Atmospheric carbon dioxide is the elixir of life,” one pamphlet reads. Emphasis in the original.)
The filing lists nearly a dozen similar payments to right-wing organizations that do not disclose donors. Murray Energy provided $130,000 to “Hardworking Ohioians Inc.,” a mysterious for-profit group, which revealed no information about its donors, tied closely to Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, and aired advertisements last year to maintain the Republican majority in the legislature. Another $50,000 was spent in support of FreedomWorks, a grassroots group that mobilizes public support for rolling back EPA regulations. Judicial Watch, a GOP-aligned investigative nonprofit, is also a beneficiary of Murray Energy money.
“The bankruptcy filing confirms what environmentalists have long suspected about Murray Energy’s connections to a network of special-interest groups that have worked to manufacture doubt about climate change and attack climate scientists and activists,” said David Anderson, communications and policy manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group.
Bankruptcy filings have provided a unique opportunity for the public to better understand the political agenda of powerful corporate interests, which typically shroud sensitive donations through nondisclosing entities. The sudden collapse earlier this year of Cloud Peak Energy, a Wyoming-based coal firm, revealed several donations to climate change denial groups. In 2015, The Intercept reported on another wave of coal bankruptcies, which revealed ties between coal firms to a subterranean network of groups dedicated to blocking environmental reform.
The bankruptcy of Alpha Natural Resources three years ago, for instance, showed secret payments to Chris Horner, a former lobbyist who had hounded climate scientists in an attempt to discredit their work. The disclosure was the first time Horner and his nonprofit, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, had been directly tied to the fossil fuel industry.
Horner is now onto new projects. Along with several other lawyers, he is a co-founder of Government Accountability and Oversight.
they keep electing republicans to sell voters out!!!
ALEC Behind Ohio Bill Criminalizing Protests Against Fossil Fuel Infrastructure
BY Don Wiener, PR Watch
PUBLISHED December 14, 2019
When anti-protest legislation pushed by oil, gas and utility interests was introduced in the Ohio state Senate this year, it met a receptive audience and passed easily on a mostly party-line vote. It has since moved to the state House, where almost one-third of legislators are ALEC members, and will likely pass at the beginning of 2020.
The legislation, SB 33, is modeled after an ALEC proposal, and its corporate backers are big contributors to the Republican party and legislators in Ohio.
ALEC is the corporate bill mill where state legislators and corporations meet behind closed doors to write and advocate for legislation on the environment, criminal justice, health care, and most of the other domestic issues that affect us.
The bill, the “Critical Infrastructure Protection Act,” being pushed by ALEC around the country makes it a felony for protestors to trespass on energy company property, such as pipelines, refineries, and power plants.
Prompted by the well-publicized stand-off at the Dakota Access crude oil pipeline in 2016, the industry’s full-court press is working. Ten states, using ALEC’s template bill, have enacted increased criminal penalties through legislation very much like SB 33.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has extensively reported on the controversy surrounding this type of legislation, including an article last month on Wisconsin’s bill, signed by the new Democratic Governor, Tony Evers.
According to the legislature’s Office of Research and Drafting, the Ohio bill “adds a new prohibition under the offense of ‘criminal trespass’ that expressly prohibits a person, without privilege to do so, from knowingly entering or remaining on a ‘critical infrastructure facility.'”
While the offense for an individual protester is a misdemeanor – or a third-degree felony for destroying or tampering with “critical infrastructure” property – the bill would hit any organization found to be “complicit” in the violation with a fine ten times the maximum allowable fine for the protester.
Roxanne Groff, a former county commissioner in Ohio and spokesperson for the Buckeye Environmental Network, testified before the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee that,
This bill was created to impose fear upon citizens who have become increasingly aware and vocal about the threats to their health, and their wellbeing as a result of the oil and gas industries’ assault on the land and people of this state by extraction of oil and gas, injection of toxic radioactive waste from this extraction and the infrastructure build outs of pipelines and gas compressor stations….
ALEC’s Grip on the Ohio Legislature
In the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the anti-protest bill was heard, four of the 10 Senators – including the chair, John Ecklund (R) – are ALEC members.
But ALEC’s influence over the bill’s prospects doesn’t stop there.
SB 33, which passed the Ohio Senate 24-8 in May, was introduced by ALEC member Frank Hoagland (R), chair of the state Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, and all 18 ALEC members in the Senate voted for it.
Indeed, the scope of ALEC’s influence in the Ohio Legislature is profound.
Eleven of the 13 state Senate committees are chaired by ALEC members.
And three of the top four state Senate GOP leaders are ALEC members – Senate President Larry Obhof, President Pro Tempore Bob Peterson, and Majority Leader Matt Huffman.
The bill is now pending in the House Public Utilities Committee, where the vice-chair and another five of the committee’s 14 GOP members are ALEC members.
When the bill gets voted out of committee in the 2020 legislative session, it will be welcomed by three of the four top House leaders who are also ALEC members – Speaker Pro Tempore, Jim Butler, and the Majority Leader, Bill Seitz, who sits on ALEC’s board.
Indeed, 23 of 61 of the Ohio state House members belong to ALEC.
Altogether, 41 of the state’s 85 GOP legislative members and five of the top eight Republican House and Senate leaders are ALEC members.
CMD lists the Ohio legislative members at alecexposed.org.
Corporate Interests Backing the Bill
Rob Eshenbaugh, a lobbyist with Capitol Advocates in Columbus, led the charge on the anti-protest bill in committee on behalf of a long list of fossil fuel, utility, chemical, transportation, and water corporations and trade associations.
A number of the SB 33 “supporters” listed in Eshenbaugh’s testimony are ALEC members, including Columbia Gas of Ohio, CSX Transportation, Dominion Energy Ohio, Duke Energy, and Marathon Petroleum Company
Eshenbaugh was previously a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, and his lobbying firm represents two other ALEC corporate backers, Caterpillar, Inc. and PhRMA, the drug industry’s trade association.
A CMD analysis of Ohio’s campaign finance records shows that Marathon Petroleum has donated $24,000 to Senate President Obhoff since 2010. It also gave $25,000 to Republican party committees. Duke Energy has paid almost $10,000 for GOP golf outings and has donated $28,000 to Senate Majority Leader Huffman during his career. Utility giant Exelon, another ALEC member, has given GOP party committees $12,500 since 2010.
The legislation, SB 33, is modeled after an ALEC proposal, and its corporate backers are big contributors to the Republican party and legislators in Ohio.
ALEC is the corporate bill mill where state legislators and corporations meet behind closed doors to write and advocate for legislation on the environment, criminal justice, health care, and most of the other domestic issues that affect us.
The bill, the “Critical Infrastructure Protection Act,” being pushed by ALEC around the country makes it a felony for protestors to trespass on energy company property, such as pipelines, refineries, and power plants.
Prompted by the well-publicized stand-off at the Dakota Access crude oil pipeline in 2016, the industry’s full-court press is working. Ten states, using ALEC’s template bill, have enacted increased criminal penalties through legislation very much like SB 33.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has extensively reported on the controversy surrounding this type of legislation, including an article last month on Wisconsin’s bill, signed by the new Democratic Governor, Tony Evers.
According to the legislature’s Office of Research and Drafting, the Ohio bill “adds a new prohibition under the offense of ‘criminal trespass’ that expressly prohibits a person, without privilege to do so, from knowingly entering or remaining on a ‘critical infrastructure facility.'”
While the offense for an individual protester is a misdemeanor – or a third-degree felony for destroying or tampering with “critical infrastructure” property – the bill would hit any organization found to be “complicit” in the violation with a fine ten times the maximum allowable fine for the protester.
Roxanne Groff, a former county commissioner in Ohio and spokesperson for the Buckeye Environmental Network, testified before the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee that,
This bill was created to impose fear upon citizens who have become increasingly aware and vocal about the threats to their health, and their wellbeing as a result of the oil and gas industries’ assault on the land and people of this state by extraction of oil and gas, injection of toxic radioactive waste from this extraction and the infrastructure build outs of pipelines and gas compressor stations….
ALEC’s Grip on the Ohio Legislature
In the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the anti-protest bill was heard, four of the 10 Senators – including the chair, John Ecklund (R) – are ALEC members.
But ALEC’s influence over the bill’s prospects doesn’t stop there.
SB 33, which passed the Ohio Senate 24-8 in May, was introduced by ALEC member Frank Hoagland (R), chair of the state Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, and all 18 ALEC members in the Senate voted for it.
Indeed, the scope of ALEC’s influence in the Ohio Legislature is profound.
Eleven of the 13 state Senate committees are chaired by ALEC members.
And three of the top four state Senate GOP leaders are ALEC members – Senate President Larry Obhof, President Pro Tempore Bob Peterson, and Majority Leader Matt Huffman.
The bill is now pending in the House Public Utilities Committee, where the vice-chair and another five of the committee’s 14 GOP members are ALEC members.
When the bill gets voted out of committee in the 2020 legislative session, it will be welcomed by three of the four top House leaders who are also ALEC members – Speaker Pro Tempore, Jim Butler, and the Majority Leader, Bill Seitz, who sits on ALEC’s board.
Indeed, 23 of 61 of the Ohio state House members belong to ALEC.
Altogether, 41 of the state’s 85 GOP legislative members and five of the top eight Republican House and Senate leaders are ALEC members.
CMD lists the Ohio legislative members at alecexposed.org.
Corporate Interests Backing the Bill
Rob Eshenbaugh, a lobbyist with Capitol Advocates in Columbus, led the charge on the anti-protest bill in committee on behalf of a long list of fossil fuel, utility, chemical, transportation, and water corporations and trade associations.
A number of the SB 33 “supporters” listed in Eshenbaugh’s testimony are ALEC members, including Columbia Gas of Ohio, CSX Transportation, Dominion Energy Ohio, Duke Energy, and Marathon Petroleum Company
Eshenbaugh was previously a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, and his lobbying firm represents two other ALEC corporate backers, Caterpillar, Inc. and PhRMA, the drug industry’s trade association.
A CMD analysis of Ohio’s campaign finance records shows that Marathon Petroleum has donated $24,000 to Senate President Obhoff since 2010. It also gave $25,000 to Republican party committees. Duke Energy has paid almost $10,000 for GOP golf outings and has donated $28,000 to Senate Majority Leader Huffman during his career. Utility giant Exelon, another ALEC member, has given GOP party committees $12,500 since 2010.
Fossil fuel groups ‘destroying’ climate talks: NGOs
December 7, 2019
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
Oil and gas groups were accused Saturday of seeking to influence climate talks in Madrid by paying millions in sponsorship and sending dozens of lobbyists to delay what scientists say is a necessary and rapid cut in fossil fuel use.
A day after tens of thousands marched in the Spanish capital demanding climate action, seven environmental groups raised concerns to AFP over the role of fossil fuel representatives at the COP25 summit.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations agreed to limit global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and as close to 1.5C as possible.
The UN’s top science panel says that 1.5C would require a radical drawdown in fossil fuel usage.
Delegates are gathered in Madrid negotiating how to implement the Paris pledges. The summit was moved at short notice after domestic unrest forced original host Chile to cancel.
Spanish energy giants Endesa and Iberdrola stepped in to sponsor the conference, which brings together more than 20,000 negotiators, scientists, NGOs and journalists from around the world.
AFP has been told that each company paid 2 million euros to be COP25 “Platinum” sponsors, affording them prominent branding and trade stalls at the event.
Endesa is one of Spain’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, producing just over 60 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent last year alone.
Iberdrola produced 24.6 million tonnes in 2018.
Neither group nor organisers confirmed the exact cost but their sponsorship of a conference designed to reach consensus on how to cut emissions drew allegations of “greenwashing” from observers.
“Bankrolling the global climate negotiations is a classic trick from the polluter’s playbook,” said Jean Su, energy director with the Center for Biological Diversity.
“For just a fraction of yearly profits, big polluters are able to wrap themselves in the branding of the COP and use this access to influence the negotiations,” added Sriram Madhusoodanan of the Corporate Accountability watchdog.
When COP25 opened on Monday, many Spaniards woke up to advertisements from Endesa splashed across the front pages of national newspapers.
An Endesa spokeswoman told AFP that it was “a marketing action” and denied greenwashing.
“Our objective is to always do better and we are accelerating our energy transition,” she said.
Iberdrola and the conference organisers did not respond to queries over sponsorship.
– ‘We respect UN rules’ –
Trade groups representing energy firms are entitled under UN rules to attend annual UNFCCC talks and inter-sessional meetings as observers.
They frequently host networking meetings or presentations and have the same status and access permits at negotiations as environmental charities.
While few oil and gas majors participate directly in UN talks, they are well represented in Madrid by the trade organisations they partner.
One such group is the International Emissions Trading Agency (IETA), which counts among its members energy giants such as BP and ENI.
It also represents Iberdrola and Endesa’s parent company Enel, and is holding a total of 74 side events during COP25.
According to an official participants list IETA has sent 141 people to Madrid — more than the entire European Union’s delegation, and larger than that of host Chile.
“IETA supports the UNFCCC’s goals and objectives for climate protection –- which are a core part of our mission,” CEO Dirk Forrister told AFP.
“We also respect UNFCCC’s rules and procedures, including its guidelines for observer participation.
“Our members observe UN climate negotiations, because they are serious about bringing business solutions to the climate challenge,” he added.
IPIECA, another trade group, has a smaller delegation in Madrid containing representatives from Chevron, ENI and Petrobras.
It did not respond to a comment request.
Unlike parallel UN processes, there is currently no protection in the UNFCCC against potential conflicts of interest between nations which need emissions slashed rapidly in order to survive, and the biggest emitters whose business plans are still heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
Thousands of energy reps have attended climate talks since 1990.
Hoda Baraka, of 350.org, said trade organisations representing big energy risked undermining climate action.
“We’re seeing yet again how the interests of dirty energy corporations are being put before the needs of vulnerable people and the planet,” she told AFP.
“It’s just common sense that those who are causing the climate crisis need to be kept far away from the political process meant to solve it.”
UN climate change secretary Patricia Espinosa said that “everyone” needed to be involved in transition away from fossil fuels.
“There is no way we will this transformation without the energy industry, including oil and gas,” she said Friday.
– ‘No group influences decisions’ –
The UN last year said “no particular interest group influences the decision-making process” at climate talks, adding that it takes the issue of conflict of interest “very seriously”.
Yet during annual mid-session climate talks in Germany in June, AFP obtained proof that hours of discussions on the subject were omitted from the final conference record.
A collection of 47 developing nations submitted a proposal to draw up provisions to protect against conflict of interest, observers said.
The proposal was opposed by the United States, Australia and the EU among others, yet no reference of it appeared in final discussion summaries.
Another trade group present at COP25 is the Edison Electrical Institute (EEI), which represents dozens of power firms in the US and around the world.
The EEI used to belong to the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a now-disbanded fossil fuel lobby group.
Internal GCC documents compiled by the Climate Investigations Centre showed this year how the group used UN talks to further its members’ agenda.
The documents detail how the GCC pushed to influencing policymakers, including in discussions with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to tone down the links between man-made emissions and global warming.
The GCC disbanded in 2002 after growing disputes among its members over how to respond to advances in climate science, yet organisations it represented are still present at UN talks.
This includes EEI, which has sent more than 200 delegates to negotiations since 1995.
– ‘Destroying our planet’ –
“We and our members understand that addressing the impacts of climate change in the areas of mitigation and adaptation requires a global response,” an EEI spokesman told AFP.
“EEI’s member companies are leading this clean energy transformation and are making real, substantive progress.”
Environmental groups including Oil Change International, Corporate Europe Observatory, the Observatorio de Multinacionales en America Latina, and Power Shift Africa all told AFP they considered oil and gas presence at COP25 as unacceptable.
“Our hard work and determination is easily overpowered by the vast resources of the biggest polluting corporations,” said Sarah Dobson, from the UK Youth Climate Coalition.
“These companies are destroying our planet and our right to fair climate negotiations free from their influence.”
A day after tens of thousands marched in the Spanish capital demanding climate action, seven environmental groups raised concerns to AFP over the role of fossil fuel representatives at the COP25 summit.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations agreed to limit global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and as close to 1.5C as possible.
The UN’s top science panel says that 1.5C would require a radical drawdown in fossil fuel usage.
Delegates are gathered in Madrid negotiating how to implement the Paris pledges. The summit was moved at short notice after domestic unrest forced original host Chile to cancel.
Spanish energy giants Endesa and Iberdrola stepped in to sponsor the conference, which brings together more than 20,000 negotiators, scientists, NGOs and journalists from around the world.
AFP has been told that each company paid 2 million euros to be COP25 “Platinum” sponsors, affording them prominent branding and trade stalls at the event.
Endesa is one of Spain’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, producing just over 60 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent last year alone.
Iberdrola produced 24.6 million tonnes in 2018.
Neither group nor organisers confirmed the exact cost but their sponsorship of a conference designed to reach consensus on how to cut emissions drew allegations of “greenwashing” from observers.
“Bankrolling the global climate negotiations is a classic trick from the polluter’s playbook,” said Jean Su, energy director with the Center for Biological Diversity.
“For just a fraction of yearly profits, big polluters are able to wrap themselves in the branding of the COP and use this access to influence the negotiations,” added Sriram Madhusoodanan of the Corporate Accountability watchdog.
When COP25 opened on Monday, many Spaniards woke up to advertisements from Endesa splashed across the front pages of national newspapers.
An Endesa spokeswoman told AFP that it was “a marketing action” and denied greenwashing.
“Our objective is to always do better and we are accelerating our energy transition,” she said.
Iberdrola and the conference organisers did not respond to queries over sponsorship.
– ‘We respect UN rules’ –
Trade groups representing energy firms are entitled under UN rules to attend annual UNFCCC talks and inter-sessional meetings as observers.
They frequently host networking meetings or presentations and have the same status and access permits at negotiations as environmental charities.
While few oil and gas majors participate directly in UN talks, they are well represented in Madrid by the trade organisations they partner.
One such group is the International Emissions Trading Agency (IETA), which counts among its members energy giants such as BP and ENI.
It also represents Iberdrola and Endesa’s parent company Enel, and is holding a total of 74 side events during COP25.
According to an official participants list IETA has sent 141 people to Madrid — more than the entire European Union’s delegation, and larger than that of host Chile.
“IETA supports the UNFCCC’s goals and objectives for climate protection –- which are a core part of our mission,” CEO Dirk Forrister told AFP.
“We also respect UNFCCC’s rules and procedures, including its guidelines for observer participation.
“Our members observe UN climate negotiations, because they are serious about bringing business solutions to the climate challenge,” he added.
IPIECA, another trade group, has a smaller delegation in Madrid containing representatives from Chevron, ENI and Petrobras.
It did not respond to a comment request.
Unlike parallel UN processes, there is currently no protection in the UNFCCC against potential conflicts of interest between nations which need emissions slashed rapidly in order to survive, and the biggest emitters whose business plans are still heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
Thousands of energy reps have attended climate talks since 1990.
Hoda Baraka, of 350.org, said trade organisations representing big energy risked undermining climate action.
“We’re seeing yet again how the interests of dirty energy corporations are being put before the needs of vulnerable people and the planet,” she told AFP.
“It’s just common sense that those who are causing the climate crisis need to be kept far away from the political process meant to solve it.”
UN climate change secretary Patricia Espinosa said that “everyone” needed to be involved in transition away from fossil fuels.
“There is no way we will this transformation without the energy industry, including oil and gas,” she said Friday.
– ‘No group influences decisions’ –
The UN last year said “no particular interest group influences the decision-making process” at climate talks, adding that it takes the issue of conflict of interest “very seriously”.
Yet during annual mid-session climate talks in Germany in June, AFP obtained proof that hours of discussions on the subject were omitted from the final conference record.
A collection of 47 developing nations submitted a proposal to draw up provisions to protect against conflict of interest, observers said.
The proposal was opposed by the United States, Australia and the EU among others, yet no reference of it appeared in final discussion summaries.
Another trade group present at COP25 is the Edison Electrical Institute (EEI), which represents dozens of power firms in the US and around the world.
The EEI used to belong to the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a now-disbanded fossil fuel lobby group.
Internal GCC documents compiled by the Climate Investigations Centre showed this year how the group used UN talks to further its members’ agenda.
The documents detail how the GCC pushed to influencing policymakers, including in discussions with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to tone down the links between man-made emissions and global warming.
The GCC disbanded in 2002 after growing disputes among its members over how to respond to advances in climate science, yet organisations it represented are still present at UN talks.
This includes EEI, which has sent more than 200 delegates to negotiations since 1995.
– ‘Destroying our planet’ –
“We and our members understand that addressing the impacts of climate change in the areas of mitigation and adaptation requires a global response,” an EEI spokesman told AFP.
“EEI’s member companies are leading this clean energy transformation and are making real, substantive progress.”
Environmental groups including Oil Change International, Corporate Europe Observatory, the Observatorio de Multinacionales en America Latina, and Power Shift Africa all told AFP they considered oil and gas presence at COP25 as unacceptable.
“Our hard work and determination is easily overpowered by the vast resources of the biggest polluting corporations,” said Sarah Dobson, from the UK Youth Climate Coalition.
“These companies are destroying our planet and our right to fair climate negotiations free from their influence.”
Trump Quietly Provides Offshore Drilling Industry Sweetheart Giveaway
BY Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams - truthout
PUBLISHED December 5, 2019
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was condemned Monday for a proposed policy shift on offshore drilling panned as a “sweetheart giveaway” for a former client.
The new extraction-encouraging proposal was announced last month in a report by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), two agencies within the Interior Department and occurred, according to transparency group Western Values Project, “under the cloud of impeachment.”
Bernhardt’s announcement followed longstanding fears that the former lobbyist would use his position in the federal government to serve the interests of the fossil fuel lobby above those of the American people and public lands. The recommendations laid out in the report pertain to royalties for offshore leasing and drilling.
“Federal officials,” as Louisiana’s Houma Today reported, “are offering oil and gas companies a discount on the fees they pay the government to drill in the Gulf of Mexico’s shallow waters.”
If enacted, the policy to “ensure maximum resource recovery” would benefit the oil and gas industry National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), on whose behalf Bernhardt previously lobbied, said Western Values Project.
Also noteworthy, said the advocacy group, is that the report was co-authored by BSEE Director Scott Angelle, who also has ties to the fossil fuel industry. Western Values Project said that, during the government shutdown, Angelle — who has NOIA’s stamp of approval for his current position — green-lit 53 permits for offshore drilling for companies that sit on the board of directors for NOIA.
“Since day one, Secretary Bernhardt has operated as though Interior was his own personal lobby shop by doling out favors for his former clients with impunity. This offshore royalty rate reduction deal is short selling our shared resources and ripping off taxpayers,” said Jayson O’Neill, deputy director of Western Values Project.
“With Trump’s own corruption dominating headlines,” he continued, “Bernhardt probably thought this sweetheart giveaway to his former oil and gas client would slip by unnoticed.”
Oil giants like Chevron and Shell are already taking advantage of a loophole in federal law to avoid paying at least $18 billion in royalties on oil and gas drilled in the Gulf since 1996, the New York Times reported in October, citing a report from the Government Accountability Office.
The possible policy shift sparked environmental worries from New Orleans-based advocacy group Healthy Gulf, which called the proposal “a recipe for disaster” in a tweet last month.
“This administration wants to lease areas of the Gulf for ‘high-risk, small-upside opportunities’ to smaller oil companies who don’t have the resources to handle spills,” the group said. “This proposal is as illogical as it is dangerous.”
The new extraction-encouraging proposal was announced last month in a report by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), two agencies within the Interior Department and occurred, according to transparency group Western Values Project, “under the cloud of impeachment.”
Bernhardt’s announcement followed longstanding fears that the former lobbyist would use his position in the federal government to serve the interests of the fossil fuel lobby above those of the American people and public lands. The recommendations laid out in the report pertain to royalties for offshore leasing and drilling.
“Federal officials,” as Louisiana’s Houma Today reported, “are offering oil and gas companies a discount on the fees they pay the government to drill in the Gulf of Mexico’s shallow waters.”
If enacted, the policy to “ensure maximum resource recovery” would benefit the oil and gas industry National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), on whose behalf Bernhardt previously lobbied, said Western Values Project.
Also noteworthy, said the advocacy group, is that the report was co-authored by BSEE Director Scott Angelle, who also has ties to the fossil fuel industry. Western Values Project said that, during the government shutdown, Angelle — who has NOIA’s stamp of approval for his current position — green-lit 53 permits for offshore drilling for companies that sit on the board of directors for NOIA.
“Since day one, Secretary Bernhardt has operated as though Interior was his own personal lobby shop by doling out favors for his former clients with impunity. This offshore royalty rate reduction deal is short selling our shared resources and ripping off taxpayers,” said Jayson O’Neill, deputy director of Western Values Project.
“With Trump’s own corruption dominating headlines,” he continued, “Bernhardt probably thought this sweetheart giveaway to his former oil and gas client would slip by unnoticed.”
Oil giants like Chevron and Shell are already taking advantage of a loophole in federal law to avoid paying at least $18 billion in royalties on oil and gas drilled in the Gulf since 1996, the New York Times reported in October, citing a report from the Government Accountability Office.
The possible policy shift sparked environmental worries from New Orleans-based advocacy group Healthy Gulf, which called the proposal “a recipe for disaster” in a tweet last month.
“This administration wants to lease areas of the Gulf for ‘high-risk, small-upside opportunities’ to smaller oil companies who don’t have the resources to handle spills,” the group said. “This proposal is as illogical as it is dangerous.”
Coal Knew, Too
A newly unearthed journal from 1966 shows the coal industry, like the oil industry, was long aware of the threat of climate change.
By Élan Young - huff post
11/22/2019 05:45 am ET
“Exxon knew.” Thanks to the work of activists and journalists, those two words have rocked the politics of climate change in recent years, as investigations revealed the extent to which giants like Exxon Mobil and Shell were aware of the danger of rising greenhouse gas emissions even as they undermined the work of scientists.
But the coal industry knew, too — as early as 1966, a newly unearthed journal shows.
In August, Chris Cherry, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, salvaged a large volume from a stack of vintage journals that a fellow faculty member was about to toss out. He was drawn to a 1966 copy of the industry publication Mining Congress Journal; his father-in-law had been in the industry and he thought it might be an interesting memento.
Cherry flipped it open to a passage from James R. Garvey, who was the president of Bituminous Coal Research Inc., a now-defunct coal mining and processing research organization.
“There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels,” wrote Garvey. “If the future rate of increase continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the earth will result.”
“Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London,” he continued.
Cherry was floored.
“It pretty well described a version of what we know today as climate change,” said Cherry. “Increases in average air temperatures, melting of polar ice caps, rising of sea levels. It’s all in there.”
In a discussion piece immediately following Garvey’s article, Peabody Coal combustion engineer James R. Jones noted that the coal industry was merely “buying time” before more air pollution regulations came into effect. “We are in favor of cleaning up our air,” he wrote. “Everyone can point to examples in his own community where something should be done. Our aim is to have control that does not precede the technical knowledge for compliance.”
Climate change is not Cherry’s area of study, but he was struck by how the tone of the articles differed from the way many fossil fuel companies talk about climate change today. Rather than engage in denial, the articles offered a fairly straightforward acknowledgment of the emerging science. (This reporter is also a writer for UT’s Tickle College of Engineering, where Cherry teaches.)
As Cherry did some of his own digging, he soon realized his discovery could be the first evidence that the coal industry was aware of the impending climate crisis more than half a century ago — a finding that could open mining companies to the type of litigation that the oil industry is now facing.
Decades Of Denial
While Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal company in the world and the largest producer of coal in the U.S., now acknowledges climate change on its website, it has been directly and indirectly involved in obfuscating climate science for decades. It funded dozens of trade, lobbying and front groups that peddled climate misinformation, as The Guardian reported in 2016.
As recently as 2015, Peabody Energy argued that carbon dioxide was a “benign gas essential for all life.”
“While the benefits of carbon dioxide are proven, the alleged risks of climate change are contrary to observed data, are based on admitted speculation, and lack adequate scientific basis,” the company wrote in a letter that year to the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
At the heart of big coal’s denial campaign was Fred Palmer, who served as Peabody’s senior vice president of government relations from 2001 to 2015. In 1997, Palmer founded the Greening Earth Society, a now-defunct industry front group that argued that burning fossil fuels was good for the planet. The group was based in the same office as the Western Fuels Association, a consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities that Palmer also ran.
“Every time you turn your car on and you burn fossil fuels and you put CO2 into the air, you’re doing the work of the Lord,” Palmer told a Danish documentary team in 1997. “That’s the ecological system we live in.”
Asked for comment, a Peabody spokesperson told HuffPost: “Peabody recognizes that climate change is occurring and that human activity, including the use of fossil fuels, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. We also recognize that coal is essential to affordable, reliable energy and will continue to play a significant role in the global energy mix for the foreseeable future. Peabody views technology as vital to advancing global climate change solutions, and the company supports advanced coal technologies to drive continuous improvement toward the ultimate goal of near-zero emissions from coal.”
Palmer, who did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, continues to carry the torch. He now works as an energy policy adviser to The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank whose climate denial is so severe that even Exxon Mobil abandoned funding it and its climate denial efforts a decade ago. In 2011, leaked memos showed that the institute paid contrarian scientists like Craig Idso, founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, $11,600 a month to promote carbon dioxide as beneficial to the environment.
The group sits at the heart of a broader right-wing misinformation network funded in large part by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, both Republican mega-donors who backed President Donald Trump and financed projects such as Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica, the data firm considered key to Trump’s 2016 win. Palmer’s daughter, Downey Magallanes, was a top policy adviser at Trump’s Interior Department before joining oil giant BP in September 2018.
All of this was taking place well after climate change had become a commonly understood idea in the scientific community. A 1965 report from President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee was the first from the White House to address climate change (and is likely what precipitated the Mining Congress Journal article). “The climate changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings,” it warned. In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to Congress about what was then known as the “greenhouse effect.” And in 1992, the United Nations established the Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty to begin addressing the problem.
But as this consensus emerged, so too did a wave of industry-funded climate denial via vast, shadowy networks of front groups, public relations campaigns and scientists for hire.
Pulling Back The Curtain
In 2015, journalists at InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University exposed internal Exxon Mobil documents showing that the company’s scientists had a deep understanding of climate change even as Exxon worked publicly to downplay that science.
Twenty state attorneys general launched an “Exxon Knew” campaign, which eventually led to communities across the country filing at least 14 legal challenges against Exxon and other fossil fuel companies. One lawsuit, from the New York state attorney general’s office, went to trial on Oct. 22 and focuses on how the company accounted for the costs of potential future regulations on climate change. The Massachusetts attorney general filed another suit on Oct. 24, this time claiming the company had engaged in deceptive advertising and misled investors about the systemic financial risks to its business posed by fossil fuel-driven climate change. Earlier this month, two of Hawaii’s biggest municipalities sued Exxon and other big oil companies to recoup the costs of adapting to rising seas and more violent storms.
Evidence of what fossil fuel companies knew about climate change and when is critical to the legal strategy of those seeking damages for carbon dioxide emissions. If fossil fuel companies were aware of their products’ harmful effects on the planet, they could be held liable for damages.
Legal liability boils down to four factors, said David Bookbinder, chief counsel for the Niskanen Center, which is representing counties in Colorado that have filed suit: one, whether the defendants knew that their products would cause climate change; two, what they told or did not tell the public about the consequences of using their products; three, the extent of injuries caused by climate change; and four, whether the defendants’ actions have led to a portion of those injuries. What the plaintiffs in these suits can prove remains to be seen.
What we do know is that coal, when burned, has by far the biggest climate footprint of any fossil fuel, producing more carbon dioxide per unit than oil or gas. In the U.S. alone, coal produced 65% of the power sector’s planet-warming emissions. The 1966 article in the Mining Congress Journal certainly raises questions about what the coal industry knew at the time.
Robert Brulle, a professor emeritus of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University, authored a recent paper that suggests the coal industry must have known quite a bit, given how prominently it positioned itself in the climate denial movement.
Brulle researched 12 major groups and coalitions that argued against mandatory regulation of carbon dioxide from 1989 to 2015 — which he calls the “climate change countermovement.” That countermovement included 2,000 different businesses, political or social groups, as well as other organizations, but Brulle found that 179 core organizations belonged to multiple coalitions. Coal companies and predominantly coal-burning utilities were the most prevalent. He describes oil and gas companies as “more of a marginal player” by comparison.
“The coal mining industry — the utilities that were burning it for electricity, along with the railroads who were hauling it — and manufacturing industries like steel were the first corporate forces to become climate deniers and try to block action on climate policy,” said Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center. “They fought the hardest because they had the biggest existential threat.”
Where Do We Go From Here?
In the aftermath of the 1973 oil embargo, Exxon and other oil giants leased large parcels of land for coal mining with the goal of manufacturing synthetic fuels and lowering U.S. dependence on the Middle East.
Some previously released documents show that Exxon’s scientists began advising that the world phase out coal as a fuel as early as 1979. In one scenario, the Exxon scientists concluded that non-fossil fuels would need to be substituted for coal beginning in the 1990s to keep carbon dioxide levels below atmospheric concentrations of 440 parts per million. In 1999, Exxon merged with Mobil, and by 2002, Exxon Mobil had dumped its coal assets.
Meanwhile, the coal industry tried to reinvent itself with the concept of “clean coal.” This as-yet-undelivered promise that carbon capture and other technological advances could lower coal’s environmental impact has been around for decades but resurged in the early 2000s as regulations seemed imminent.
The biggest proponent of this idea was the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal front group that spent $35 million on public relations campaigns in 2008 alone, seeking to influence the election. A year later, ACCCE was caught sending Congress fraudulent letters opposing federal climate legislation and pretending to be from veterans, women’s and civil rights groups. The incident led many members to leave the organization, but Peabody remains a member to this day.
“Its whole mission was to stop climate regulations but pretend that they were in favor of clean coal, which, of course, doesn’t exist,” said Davies.
Peabody Energy filed for bankruptcy protection in 2016, the same year carbon dioxide levels hit 400 parts per million. Eight other coal companies have filed for bankruptcy this year. Even as the Trump administration has promised a coal resurgence and rolled back Obama-era regulations, the industry’s profitability continues to experience a downward slide. If the slogan “Coal Knew” ever does take off, it’s unclear who’ll be left to sue.
But the coal industry knew, too — as early as 1966, a newly unearthed journal shows.
In August, Chris Cherry, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, salvaged a large volume from a stack of vintage journals that a fellow faculty member was about to toss out. He was drawn to a 1966 copy of the industry publication Mining Congress Journal; his father-in-law had been in the industry and he thought it might be an interesting memento.
Cherry flipped it open to a passage from James R. Garvey, who was the president of Bituminous Coal Research Inc., a now-defunct coal mining and processing research organization.
“There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels,” wrote Garvey. “If the future rate of increase continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the earth will result.”
“Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London,” he continued.
Cherry was floored.
“It pretty well described a version of what we know today as climate change,” said Cherry. “Increases in average air temperatures, melting of polar ice caps, rising of sea levels. It’s all in there.”
In a discussion piece immediately following Garvey’s article, Peabody Coal combustion engineer James R. Jones noted that the coal industry was merely “buying time” before more air pollution regulations came into effect. “We are in favor of cleaning up our air,” he wrote. “Everyone can point to examples in his own community where something should be done. Our aim is to have control that does not precede the technical knowledge for compliance.”
Climate change is not Cherry’s area of study, but he was struck by how the tone of the articles differed from the way many fossil fuel companies talk about climate change today. Rather than engage in denial, the articles offered a fairly straightforward acknowledgment of the emerging science. (This reporter is also a writer for UT’s Tickle College of Engineering, where Cherry teaches.)
As Cherry did some of his own digging, he soon realized his discovery could be the first evidence that the coal industry was aware of the impending climate crisis more than half a century ago — a finding that could open mining companies to the type of litigation that the oil industry is now facing.
Decades Of Denial
While Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal company in the world and the largest producer of coal in the U.S., now acknowledges climate change on its website, it has been directly and indirectly involved in obfuscating climate science for decades. It funded dozens of trade, lobbying and front groups that peddled climate misinformation, as The Guardian reported in 2016.
As recently as 2015, Peabody Energy argued that carbon dioxide was a “benign gas essential for all life.”
“While the benefits of carbon dioxide are proven, the alleged risks of climate change are contrary to observed data, are based on admitted speculation, and lack adequate scientific basis,” the company wrote in a letter that year to the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
At the heart of big coal’s denial campaign was Fred Palmer, who served as Peabody’s senior vice president of government relations from 2001 to 2015. In 1997, Palmer founded the Greening Earth Society, a now-defunct industry front group that argued that burning fossil fuels was good for the planet. The group was based in the same office as the Western Fuels Association, a consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities that Palmer also ran.
“Every time you turn your car on and you burn fossil fuels and you put CO2 into the air, you’re doing the work of the Lord,” Palmer told a Danish documentary team in 1997. “That’s the ecological system we live in.”
Asked for comment, a Peabody spokesperson told HuffPost: “Peabody recognizes that climate change is occurring and that human activity, including the use of fossil fuels, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. We also recognize that coal is essential to affordable, reliable energy and will continue to play a significant role in the global energy mix for the foreseeable future. Peabody views technology as vital to advancing global climate change solutions, and the company supports advanced coal technologies to drive continuous improvement toward the ultimate goal of near-zero emissions from coal.”
Palmer, who did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, continues to carry the torch. He now works as an energy policy adviser to The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank whose climate denial is so severe that even Exxon Mobil abandoned funding it and its climate denial efforts a decade ago. In 2011, leaked memos showed that the institute paid contrarian scientists like Craig Idso, founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, $11,600 a month to promote carbon dioxide as beneficial to the environment.
The group sits at the heart of a broader right-wing misinformation network funded in large part by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, both Republican mega-donors who backed President Donald Trump and financed projects such as Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica, the data firm considered key to Trump’s 2016 win. Palmer’s daughter, Downey Magallanes, was a top policy adviser at Trump’s Interior Department before joining oil giant BP in September 2018.
All of this was taking place well after climate change had become a commonly understood idea in the scientific community. A 1965 report from President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee was the first from the White House to address climate change (and is likely what precipitated the Mining Congress Journal article). “The climate changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings,” it warned. In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to Congress about what was then known as the “greenhouse effect.” And in 1992, the United Nations established the Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty to begin addressing the problem.
But as this consensus emerged, so too did a wave of industry-funded climate denial via vast, shadowy networks of front groups, public relations campaigns and scientists for hire.
Pulling Back The Curtain
In 2015, journalists at InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University exposed internal Exxon Mobil documents showing that the company’s scientists had a deep understanding of climate change even as Exxon worked publicly to downplay that science.
Twenty state attorneys general launched an “Exxon Knew” campaign, which eventually led to communities across the country filing at least 14 legal challenges against Exxon and other fossil fuel companies. One lawsuit, from the New York state attorney general’s office, went to trial on Oct. 22 and focuses on how the company accounted for the costs of potential future regulations on climate change. The Massachusetts attorney general filed another suit on Oct. 24, this time claiming the company had engaged in deceptive advertising and misled investors about the systemic financial risks to its business posed by fossil fuel-driven climate change. Earlier this month, two of Hawaii’s biggest municipalities sued Exxon and other big oil companies to recoup the costs of adapting to rising seas and more violent storms.
Evidence of what fossil fuel companies knew about climate change and when is critical to the legal strategy of those seeking damages for carbon dioxide emissions. If fossil fuel companies were aware of their products’ harmful effects on the planet, they could be held liable for damages.
Legal liability boils down to four factors, said David Bookbinder, chief counsel for the Niskanen Center, which is representing counties in Colorado that have filed suit: one, whether the defendants knew that their products would cause climate change; two, what they told or did not tell the public about the consequences of using their products; three, the extent of injuries caused by climate change; and four, whether the defendants’ actions have led to a portion of those injuries. What the plaintiffs in these suits can prove remains to be seen.
What we do know is that coal, when burned, has by far the biggest climate footprint of any fossil fuel, producing more carbon dioxide per unit than oil or gas. In the U.S. alone, coal produced 65% of the power sector’s planet-warming emissions. The 1966 article in the Mining Congress Journal certainly raises questions about what the coal industry knew at the time.
Robert Brulle, a professor emeritus of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University, authored a recent paper that suggests the coal industry must have known quite a bit, given how prominently it positioned itself in the climate denial movement.
Brulle researched 12 major groups and coalitions that argued against mandatory regulation of carbon dioxide from 1989 to 2015 — which he calls the “climate change countermovement.” That countermovement included 2,000 different businesses, political or social groups, as well as other organizations, but Brulle found that 179 core organizations belonged to multiple coalitions. Coal companies and predominantly coal-burning utilities were the most prevalent. He describes oil and gas companies as “more of a marginal player” by comparison.
“The coal mining industry — the utilities that were burning it for electricity, along with the railroads who were hauling it — and manufacturing industries like steel were the first corporate forces to become climate deniers and try to block action on climate policy,” said Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center. “They fought the hardest because they had the biggest existential threat.”
Where Do We Go From Here?
In the aftermath of the 1973 oil embargo, Exxon and other oil giants leased large parcels of land for coal mining with the goal of manufacturing synthetic fuels and lowering U.S. dependence on the Middle East.
Some previously released documents show that Exxon’s scientists began advising that the world phase out coal as a fuel as early as 1979. In one scenario, the Exxon scientists concluded that non-fossil fuels would need to be substituted for coal beginning in the 1990s to keep carbon dioxide levels below atmospheric concentrations of 440 parts per million. In 1999, Exxon merged with Mobil, and by 2002, Exxon Mobil had dumped its coal assets.
Meanwhile, the coal industry tried to reinvent itself with the concept of “clean coal.” This as-yet-undelivered promise that carbon capture and other technological advances could lower coal’s environmental impact has been around for decades but resurged in the early 2000s as regulations seemed imminent.
The biggest proponent of this idea was the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal front group that spent $35 million on public relations campaigns in 2008 alone, seeking to influence the election. A year later, ACCCE was caught sending Congress fraudulent letters opposing federal climate legislation and pretending to be from veterans, women’s and civil rights groups. The incident led many members to leave the organization, but Peabody remains a member to this day.
“Its whole mission was to stop climate regulations but pretend that they were in favor of clean coal, which, of course, doesn’t exist,” said Davies.
Peabody Energy filed for bankruptcy protection in 2016, the same year carbon dioxide levels hit 400 parts per million. Eight other coal companies have filed for bankruptcy this year. Even as the Trump administration has promised a coal resurgence and rolled back Obama-era regulations, the industry’s profitability continues to experience a downward slide. If the slogan “Coal Knew” ever does take off, it’s unclear who’ll be left to sue.
How Big Oil exploited a loophole in the law to bilk the United States out of billions
Jim Hightower / Creators Syndicate - alternet
October 30, 2019
When you’re undergoing a dental procedure, there’s one thing you never want to hear your dentist say: “Oops!”
It’s also alarming to hear that from a former senator 25 years after he passed a temporary subsidy for Big Oil. With world petroleum prices low at the time, Democratic Sen. J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana pushed through a special break in 1995, temporarily exempting the giants from paying federal royalty fees for the publicly owned crude they took from the Gulf of Mexico. The idea was to cut our dependence on the Arabian cartel by giving oil corporations a brief reprieve on royalties so they would drill here.
But — oops! — our lawmakers made a big (and costly) slip-up: They forgot to specify in the law that the exemption was temporary. Republicans and Democrats had agreed that when market prices recovered, the corporations were to resume payments to us taxpayers. “It was never the intent that everybody would get a free ride forever,” says an official who was involved in the original negotiations.
Sure enough, market prices had recovered by 2006. But “greed” is both the industry’s motto and its modus operandi, so the oil barons that had benefited from this public generosity in their time of need have thumbed their nose at the public ever since, essentially saying, “Tough luck, suckers! There’s no limit in the law, so we’re just gonna keep sucking up all the oil we can without paying a dime in royalties.”
This is no petty thievery. Chevron, Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP and even China’s state-run oil corporation are among the giants that have taken at least $18 billion from our nation’s treasury so far. And their haul increases every day that they’re allowed to pump up profits through this unintended loophole.
The only thing bigger than Big Oil’s avarice is its arrogance. The industry’s lobbying front group has warned Congress not to try plugging the loophole, declaring that such an attempt would be “engaging in a dangerous game of bait and switch.”
Big Oil’s greed knows no bounds either. For example, Exxon, which banked a whopping $290 billion in sales last year, makes money the old-fashioned way: lying, cheating, exploiting workers, extracting subsidies from taxpayers, dodging taxes, refusing to pay for its pollution and other forms of corporate finagling.
But mighty Exxon now finds itself in federal court, finally called to account for lying to its own shareholders, the public and government officials. At issue are the true financial and environmental costs of the damages that its oil and gas operations are inflicting upon Earth’s climate. The legal case points out that it is perversely profitable to pollute if you don’t have to include the costs of those damages on your corporate books.
Technically, the charge is that Exxon kept two sets of financial books: one secretly acknowledging internally that its pollution was devastating our climate and would eventually cost shareholders a fortune, the other a rosy public presentation hiding those costs in order to claim that its fossil fuel empire was more cost-effective than wind, solar and other clean energy sources.
This blatant deceit has defrauded shareholders about the actual value of their investment, diverted public policy from necessary conversion to nonpolluting fuels and accelerated the radical impacts of climate change.
While the lawsuit filed against Exxon will largely focus on arcane aspects of securities law, it is fundamentally about corporate morality. As environmental activist Lee Wasserman recently put it, the case is a chance “for society to free itself from the grasp of this lethal industry,” adding that “we’re victims of a small group of gargantuan companies that recklessly and deliberately ignored the implications of their own science and worked to deceive the public.”
Indeed, their recklessness continues. Even though Exxon now admits the damage its products are causing, Wasserman notes, the careless behemoth “plans to increase its oil output by 25 percent by 2025.”
Of course, any monetary fine the corporation might have to pay is only a tiny fraction of its yearly income, so that’s no deterrent. The real punishment is that Exxon and its executives are tagging themselves as the same morally repugnant profiteers those in the soulless tobacco industry have been. One force bigger than Big Oil is an infuriated public. To learn more and to fight for our environment, go to the Sierra Club.
It’s also alarming to hear that from a former senator 25 years after he passed a temporary subsidy for Big Oil. With world petroleum prices low at the time, Democratic Sen. J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana pushed through a special break in 1995, temporarily exempting the giants from paying federal royalty fees for the publicly owned crude they took from the Gulf of Mexico. The idea was to cut our dependence on the Arabian cartel by giving oil corporations a brief reprieve on royalties so they would drill here.
But — oops! — our lawmakers made a big (and costly) slip-up: They forgot to specify in the law that the exemption was temporary. Republicans and Democrats had agreed that when market prices recovered, the corporations were to resume payments to us taxpayers. “It was never the intent that everybody would get a free ride forever,” says an official who was involved in the original negotiations.
Sure enough, market prices had recovered by 2006. But “greed” is both the industry’s motto and its modus operandi, so the oil barons that had benefited from this public generosity in their time of need have thumbed their nose at the public ever since, essentially saying, “Tough luck, suckers! There’s no limit in the law, so we’re just gonna keep sucking up all the oil we can without paying a dime in royalties.”
This is no petty thievery. Chevron, Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP and even China’s state-run oil corporation are among the giants that have taken at least $18 billion from our nation’s treasury so far. And their haul increases every day that they’re allowed to pump up profits through this unintended loophole.
The only thing bigger than Big Oil’s avarice is its arrogance. The industry’s lobbying front group has warned Congress not to try plugging the loophole, declaring that such an attempt would be “engaging in a dangerous game of bait and switch.”
Big Oil’s greed knows no bounds either. For example, Exxon, which banked a whopping $290 billion in sales last year, makes money the old-fashioned way: lying, cheating, exploiting workers, extracting subsidies from taxpayers, dodging taxes, refusing to pay for its pollution and other forms of corporate finagling.
But mighty Exxon now finds itself in federal court, finally called to account for lying to its own shareholders, the public and government officials. At issue are the true financial and environmental costs of the damages that its oil and gas operations are inflicting upon Earth’s climate. The legal case points out that it is perversely profitable to pollute if you don’t have to include the costs of those damages on your corporate books.
Technically, the charge is that Exxon kept two sets of financial books: one secretly acknowledging internally that its pollution was devastating our climate and would eventually cost shareholders a fortune, the other a rosy public presentation hiding those costs in order to claim that its fossil fuel empire was more cost-effective than wind, solar and other clean energy sources.
This blatant deceit has defrauded shareholders about the actual value of their investment, diverted public policy from necessary conversion to nonpolluting fuels and accelerated the radical impacts of climate change.
While the lawsuit filed against Exxon will largely focus on arcane aspects of securities law, it is fundamentally about corporate morality. As environmental activist Lee Wasserman recently put it, the case is a chance “for society to free itself from the grasp of this lethal industry,” adding that “we’re victims of a small group of gargantuan companies that recklessly and deliberately ignored the implications of their own science and worked to deceive the public.”
Indeed, their recklessness continues. Even though Exxon now admits the damage its products are causing, Wasserman notes, the careless behemoth “plans to increase its oil output by 25 percent by 2025.”
Of course, any monetary fine the corporation might have to pay is only a tiny fraction of its yearly income, so that’s no deterrent. The real punishment is that Exxon and its executives are tagging themselves as the same morally repugnant profiteers those in the soulless tobacco industry have been. One force bigger than Big Oil is an infuriated public. To learn more and to fight for our environment, go to the Sierra Club.
Our Tax System Rewards Polluters
by Charlie Simmons | the smirking chimp
October 20, 2019 - 5:24am
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who sparked student protests across the globe, had this to tell the UN General Assembly in New York: “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.”
As a retired businessman and engineer, I can’t help but look at Greta with admiration. Yet I shudder to think that my generation has abdicated our duties to such an extent that we are leaving the mess of climate change on the shoulders of high schoolers.
Lawmakers and business leaders in my generation have a responsibility to act today to mend our planet before these young people have to inherit it. Some of the most straightforward, yet least discussed solutions, lie in our tax system.
Unfortunately, the man-made crisis of climate change is made worse by our man-made tax system. In 2018, many of the biggest fossil fuel companies paid zero dollars in taxes — and actually received billions in rebates.
These shocking facts, uncovered by the Institute on Taxation and Economy Policy, flew under the radar of mainstream media.
In total, ITEP found that at least 60 of the biggest American corporations didn’t pay a cent in federal taxes in 2018. Of those, 22 are power utilities and oil and gas corporations, including famous names such as Chevron,
Halliburton, and Occidental Petroleum — and that was only in 2018.
How is this possible?
In part, it’s because there are a mind-boggling number of tax incentives offered to fossil fuel companies. There are deductions for domestic fossil fuel production, tax credits for vague “intangible drilling costs,” and deferred federal tax payments.
In 2016, the Wall Street Journal estimated that these provisions amounted to $4.76 billion per year given out to fossil fuel companies from the federal government.
That was before GOP corporate tax cuts worsened the problem in 2017 by slashing the industry’s already low tax rate and offering a new deduction for capital expenditures — while simultaneously opening up half a million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to new drilling.
Companies like Chevron will tell you they’re committed to preventing climate change, pointing to their $100 million pledge to the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, an industry-led organization allegedly dedicated to fighting climate change.
This is a paltry amount compared to the $4.5 billion in profit they made in 2018 — or even to the $955 million they avoided in taxes thanks to the Republican tax cuts. Chevron received a $181 million rebate on Tax Day.
Essentially, American taxpayers lost $955 million, funded a $100 million PR stunt, and paid $81 million directly to the corporation to fund more drilling and exploration our planet literally cannot afford. Chevron’s not unique, either — Occidental did the same thing.
While the current administration lets fossil fuel companies raid America’s natural resources and its coffers, the rest of us can’t sit back and wait for change. Greta certainly isn’t, and she’s only 16.
Tax incentives should encourage better behavior from corporations, not pay polluters to profit from environmental degradation.
Forcing our elected officials and 2020 candidates to introduce incentives for fixing climate change — and remove those that accelerate it — should be on the top of the agenda. our economy and the health of our environment ultimately go hand-in-hand, and it’s long past time our tax system reflected that.
As a retired businessman and engineer, I can’t help but look at Greta with admiration. Yet I shudder to think that my generation has abdicated our duties to such an extent that we are leaving the mess of climate change on the shoulders of high schoolers.
Lawmakers and business leaders in my generation have a responsibility to act today to mend our planet before these young people have to inherit it. Some of the most straightforward, yet least discussed solutions, lie in our tax system.
Unfortunately, the man-made crisis of climate change is made worse by our man-made tax system. In 2018, many of the biggest fossil fuel companies paid zero dollars in taxes — and actually received billions in rebates.
These shocking facts, uncovered by the Institute on Taxation and Economy Policy, flew under the radar of mainstream media.
In total, ITEP found that at least 60 of the biggest American corporations didn’t pay a cent in federal taxes in 2018. Of those, 22 are power utilities and oil and gas corporations, including famous names such as Chevron,
Halliburton, and Occidental Petroleum — and that was only in 2018.
How is this possible?
In part, it’s because there are a mind-boggling number of tax incentives offered to fossil fuel companies. There are deductions for domestic fossil fuel production, tax credits for vague “intangible drilling costs,” and deferred federal tax payments.
In 2016, the Wall Street Journal estimated that these provisions amounted to $4.76 billion per year given out to fossil fuel companies from the federal government.
That was before GOP corporate tax cuts worsened the problem in 2017 by slashing the industry’s already low tax rate and offering a new deduction for capital expenditures — while simultaneously opening up half a million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to new drilling.
Companies like Chevron will tell you they’re committed to preventing climate change, pointing to their $100 million pledge to the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, an industry-led organization allegedly dedicated to fighting climate change.
This is a paltry amount compared to the $4.5 billion in profit they made in 2018 — or even to the $955 million they avoided in taxes thanks to the Republican tax cuts. Chevron received a $181 million rebate on Tax Day.
Essentially, American taxpayers lost $955 million, funded a $100 million PR stunt, and paid $81 million directly to the corporation to fund more drilling and exploration our planet literally cannot afford. Chevron’s not unique, either — Occidental did the same thing.
While the current administration lets fossil fuel companies raid America’s natural resources and its coffers, the rest of us can’t sit back and wait for change. Greta certainly isn’t, and she’s only 16.
Tax incentives should encourage better behavior from corporations, not pay polluters to profit from environmental degradation.
Forcing our elected officials and 2020 candidates to introduce incentives for fixing climate change — and remove those that accelerate it — should be on the top of the agenda. our economy and the health of our environment ultimately go hand-in-hand, and it’s long past time our tax system reflected that.
the polluters
destroying the earth for profit!!!
World's top three asset managers oversee $300bn fossil fuel investments
Data reveals crucial role of BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard in climate crisis
by Patrick Greenfield - the guardian
Sat 12 Oct 2019 07.00 EDT
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The world’s three largest money managers have built a combined $300bn fossil fuel investment portfolio using money from people’s private savings and pension contributions, the Guardian can reveal.
BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, which together oversee assets worth more than China’s entire GDP, have continued to grow billion-dollar stakes in some of the most carbon-intensive companies since the Paris agreement, financial data shows.
The two largest asset managers, BlackRock and Vanguard, have also routinely opposed motions at fossil fuel companies that would have forced directors to take more action on climate change, the analysis reveals.
The investment rise is driven by the success in the last decade of tracker funds that use algorithms to follow major stock exchange indices such as the FTSE 100 and S&P 500.
The Guardian has worked with the thinktank InfluenceMap and the business data specialists ProxyInsight to analyse the role played by asset managers in the financing and management of some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies.
Figures compiled by InfluenceMap show how Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street – known as the big three – have become crucial climate actors in the financial world. They are the largest money managers in the $74tn industry.
According to an analysis of the data, their effective thermal coal, oil and gas reserve holdings through the companies they manage have surged 34.8% since 2016.
This means they are now the largest investors in public oil, gas and coal companies, managing funds for large pension funds, university endowments and insurance companies.
While asset managers do not own the companies in which they invest, they often exercise shareholders rights on behalf of clients to vote on board members and company policy issues.
Disclosures for publicly available company reports show that from 2015 to 2019 Vanguard and BlackRock used their votes to frequently oppose efforts to improve climate-related financial disclosures.
The investigation by the Guardian has found:
BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street did not challenge the findings.
They told the Guardian they prioritised private engagements with company boards, where the climate crisis was regularly discussed. They said they had increased the size of their teams responsible for investment stewardship, opting to use their votes as a final resort.
Vanguard said it neither managed the companies in which it invested nor sought to influence their business strategy. “As a steward of lifetime savings for more than 20 million people around the world, and a practically permanent investor in more than 10,000 companies, Vanguard is concerned about the long-term impact of climate risk,” a spokesman said.
“While voting at shareholder meetings is important … it is only one part of the larger corporate governance process. We regularly engage with companies on our shareholders’ behalf and believe that engagement and broader advocacy, in addition to voting, can effect meaningful changes that generate long-term value for all shareholders.”
BlackRock said it “offers investors a wide range of environmentally sustainable investment options … [and] is also a leading investor in renewable power generation globally. Our award-winning climate research helps investors understand and mitigate the impact of climate change on their portfolios.”
State Street said: “If an investor wants to buy an ETF [exchange-traded fund] that tracks the FTSE 100, we would purchase the shares (proportionately) of all the companies in that FTSE 100 index in order to meet the objective of that strategy. That will today undoubtedly include energy companies.
“We do not proactively determine whether to exclude a particular company or sector since it would be inconsistent with the stated ETF objective. If an investor did want a strategy that considered climate issues or other ESG [environmental, social and governance] factors, that would be a different product with a different index; we can provide that too.”
Asset managers are increasingly finding themselves at the heart of social and environmental issues, and corporate governance experts have raised concerns about conflicts of interest in their business models.
Campaigners are demanding asset managers vote out company directors who are not deemed to be taking sufficient action.
In June, the London-based Legal & General, formerly a top 20 investor in ExxonMobil, announced it was selling a $300m stake in the company and would use remaining shares to vote against the chief executive, Darren Woods.
But environmental shareholder proposals face increasing challenges from the management of fossil fuel companies, which are being sustained by the American regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC declined to comment.
In April, ExxonMobil shareholders were denied a vote on whether the company should set targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by the SEC, which called the proposal an attempt to “micromanage” the company.
Data for the 2019 season of annual general meetings for shareholders, provided by Institutional Shareholder Services, shows that only a quarter of proposals made it to a vote at companies in the US, with 79 of the 105 motions either withdrawn or omitted.
BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, which together oversee assets worth more than China’s entire GDP, have continued to grow billion-dollar stakes in some of the most carbon-intensive companies since the Paris agreement, financial data shows.
The two largest asset managers, BlackRock and Vanguard, have also routinely opposed motions at fossil fuel companies that would have forced directors to take more action on climate change, the analysis reveals.
The investment rise is driven by the success in the last decade of tracker funds that use algorithms to follow major stock exchange indices such as the FTSE 100 and S&P 500.
The Guardian has worked with the thinktank InfluenceMap and the business data specialists ProxyInsight to analyse the role played by asset managers in the financing and management of some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies.
Figures compiled by InfluenceMap show how Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street – known as the big three – have become crucial climate actors in the financial world. They are the largest money managers in the $74tn industry.
According to an analysis of the data, their effective thermal coal, oil and gas reserve holdings through the companies they manage have surged 34.8% since 2016.
This means they are now the largest investors in public oil, gas and coal companies, managing funds for large pension funds, university endowments and insurance companies.
While asset managers do not own the companies in which they invest, they often exercise shareholders rights on behalf of clients to vote on board members and company policy issues.
Disclosures for publicly available company reports show that from 2015 to 2019 Vanguard and BlackRock used their votes to frequently oppose efforts to improve climate-related financial disclosures.
The investigation by the Guardian has found:
- Vanguard ($161.1bn), BlackRock ($87.3bn) and State Street ($38.3bn) oversee a combined $286.7bn of shares in oil, coal and gas companies through 1,712 funds. Their total combined portfolio is likely to be higher as the calculation excludes direct holdings and non-listed fund holdings.
- The potential CO2 emissions from the investments have increased from 10.593 gigatonnes (Gt) to 14.283Gt since the Paris agreement, equivalent to 38% of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions last year.
- BlackRock and Vanguard opposed or abstained on more than 80% of climate-related motions at FTSE 100 and S&P 500 fossil fuel companies between 2015 and 2019, according to data provided by ProxyInsight.
- The big three are among a number of asset managers that offer “climate-friendly” and “sustainable” investment funds that have substantial holdings in fossil fuel companies.
BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street did not challenge the findings.
They told the Guardian they prioritised private engagements with company boards, where the climate crisis was regularly discussed. They said they had increased the size of their teams responsible for investment stewardship, opting to use their votes as a final resort.
Vanguard said it neither managed the companies in which it invested nor sought to influence their business strategy. “As a steward of lifetime savings for more than 20 million people around the world, and a practically permanent investor in more than 10,000 companies, Vanguard is concerned about the long-term impact of climate risk,” a spokesman said.
“While voting at shareholder meetings is important … it is only one part of the larger corporate governance process. We regularly engage with companies on our shareholders’ behalf and believe that engagement and broader advocacy, in addition to voting, can effect meaningful changes that generate long-term value for all shareholders.”
BlackRock said it “offers investors a wide range of environmentally sustainable investment options … [and] is also a leading investor in renewable power generation globally. Our award-winning climate research helps investors understand and mitigate the impact of climate change on their portfolios.”
State Street said: “If an investor wants to buy an ETF [exchange-traded fund] that tracks the FTSE 100, we would purchase the shares (proportionately) of all the companies in that FTSE 100 index in order to meet the objective of that strategy. That will today undoubtedly include energy companies.
“We do not proactively determine whether to exclude a particular company or sector since it would be inconsistent with the stated ETF objective. If an investor did want a strategy that considered climate issues or other ESG [environmental, social and governance] factors, that would be a different product with a different index; we can provide that too.”
Asset managers are increasingly finding themselves at the heart of social and environmental issues, and corporate governance experts have raised concerns about conflicts of interest in their business models.
Campaigners are demanding asset managers vote out company directors who are not deemed to be taking sufficient action.
In June, the London-based Legal & General, formerly a top 20 investor in ExxonMobil, announced it was selling a $300m stake in the company and would use remaining shares to vote against the chief executive, Darren Woods.
But environmental shareholder proposals face increasing challenges from the management of fossil fuel companies, which are being sustained by the American regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC declined to comment.
In April, ExxonMobil shareholders were denied a vote on whether the company should set targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by the SEC, which called the proposal an attempt to “micromanage” the company.
Data for the 2019 season of annual general meetings for shareholders, provided by Institutional Shareholder Services, shows that only a quarter of proposals made it to a vote at companies in the US, with 79 of the 105 motions either withdrawn or omitted.
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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