welcome to oil
explore how the oil industry's greed and desire for profit is destroying the world
february 16, 2019
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*
*Large Natural Gas Producer to Pay West Virginia Plaintiffs $53.5 Million to Settle Royalty Dispute
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*World’s top energy companies booked enormous profits last year thanks to higher oil prices
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*SOUTH CAROLINA SPENT $9 BILLION TO DIG A HOLE IN THE GROUND AND THEN FILL IT BACK IN
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Energy Company Accused of Environmental Racism with Plans to Build Pipeline In Virginia’s Historical Black Community(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Coast Guard orders clean-up of massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill that has been leaking for 14 years
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Landowners Fight the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Court
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Century-Old West Virginia Leases Yield Paltry Gas Royalties. A Suit Could Cut Others’ Payouts to a Trickle, Too.
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Drilling overwhelms agency protecting America’s lands
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Voters in three US states reject initiatives to curb fossil fuel use
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*New York sues Exxon for misleading investors on climate change risk
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Another West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Declines to Step Aside in Another Natural Gas Case
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Energy Board Rushes Giant Alaska Project
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Another Court Ruling Against a West Virginia Pipeline, Then Another Effort to Change the Rules
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*States Allow For-Profit Pipeline Companies to Seize Private Property
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US Says Conserving Oil Is No Longer An Economic Imperative
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Colorado’s oil and gas industry goes after reporters and signature gatherers in new fracking fight(ARTICLE BELOW)
*WORLD’S BIGGEST OIL EXPORTER IS BETTING $2 BILLION ON ELECTRIC CARS
SAUDIS BUY MAJOR STAKE IN TESLA.(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The dark side of America's rise to oil superpower(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ROVER PIPELINE SPILLS ANOTHER 150,000 GALLONS OF DRILLING FLUID INTO OHIO WETLANDS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Exposed: Chevron Has a Secretive Drilling Site in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
(Excerpt BELOW)
*ON ITS HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY IN 1959, EDWARD TELLER WARNED THE OIL INDUSTRY ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING(article below)
oil funnies(at the end)
Large Natural Gas Producer to Pay West Virginia Plaintiffs $53.5 Million to Settle Royalty Dispute
As our investigation detailed, EQT Corp. had been accused of deducting a variety of unacceptable charges from
natural gas royalty checks. The company says it wants to “turn over a new leaf” in its relationship with the state’s residents.
by Kate Mishkin and Ken Ward Jr., The Charleston Gazette-Mail - pro publica
Feb. 13, 9 p.m. EST
The second-largest natural gas producer in West Virginia will pay $53.5 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged the company was cheating thousands of state residents and businesses by shorting them on gas royalty payments, according to terms of the deal unsealed in court this week.
Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp. agreed to pay the money to end a federal class-action lawsuit, brought on behalf of about 9,000 people, which alleged that EQT wrongly deducted a variety of unacceptable charges from peoples’ royalty checks.
The deal is the latest in a series of settlements in cases that accused natural gas companies of engaging in such maneuvers to pocket a larger share of the profits from the boom in natural gas production in West Virginia.
This lawsuit was among the royalty cases highlighted last year in a joint examination by the Charleston Gazette-Mail and ProPublica that showed how West Virginia’s natural gas producers avoid paying royalties promised to thousands of residents and businesses. The plaintiffs said EQT was improperly deducting transporting and processing costs from their royalty payments. EQT said its royalty payment calculations were correct and fair.
A trial was scheduled to begin in November but was canceled after the parties reached the tentative settlement. Details of the settlement were unsealed Wednesday.
Under the settlement agreement, EQT Production Co. will pay the $53.5 million into a settlement fund. The company will also stop deducting those post-production costs from royalty payments.
“This was an opportunity to turn over a new leaf in our relationship with our West Virginia leaseholders and this mutually beneficial agreement demonstrates our renewed commitment to the state of West Virginia,” EQT’s CEO, Robert McNally, said in a prepared statement.
EQT is working to earn the trust of West Virginians and community leaders, he said.
Marvin Masters, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the settlement “encouraging” after six years of litigation. (Masters is among a group of investors who bought the Charleston Gazette-Mail last year.)
Funds will be distributed to people who leased the rights to natural gas beneath their land in West Virginia to EQT between Dec. 8, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2017. EQT will also pay up to $2 million in administrative fees to distribute the settlement.
Settlement payments will be calculated based on such factors as the amount of gas produced and sold from each well, as well as how much was deducted from royalty payments. The number of people who submit claims could also affect settlement payments. Each member of the class that submits a claim will receive a minimum payment of at least $200. The settlement allows lawyers to collect up to one-third of the settlement, or roughly $18 million, subject to approval from the court.
The settlement is pending before U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in the Northern District of West Virginia. The judge gave it preliminary approval on Monday, which begins a process for public notice of the terms and a fairness hearing July 11 in Wheeling, West Virginia. Payments would not be made until that process is complete.
Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp. agreed to pay the money to end a federal class-action lawsuit, brought on behalf of about 9,000 people, which alleged that EQT wrongly deducted a variety of unacceptable charges from peoples’ royalty checks.
The deal is the latest in a series of settlements in cases that accused natural gas companies of engaging in such maneuvers to pocket a larger share of the profits from the boom in natural gas production in West Virginia.
This lawsuit was among the royalty cases highlighted last year in a joint examination by the Charleston Gazette-Mail and ProPublica that showed how West Virginia’s natural gas producers avoid paying royalties promised to thousands of residents and businesses. The plaintiffs said EQT was improperly deducting transporting and processing costs from their royalty payments. EQT said its royalty payment calculations were correct and fair.
A trial was scheduled to begin in November but was canceled after the parties reached the tentative settlement. Details of the settlement were unsealed Wednesday.
Under the settlement agreement, EQT Production Co. will pay the $53.5 million into a settlement fund. The company will also stop deducting those post-production costs from royalty payments.
“This was an opportunity to turn over a new leaf in our relationship with our West Virginia leaseholders and this mutually beneficial agreement demonstrates our renewed commitment to the state of West Virginia,” EQT’s CEO, Robert McNally, said in a prepared statement.
EQT is working to earn the trust of West Virginians and community leaders, he said.
Marvin Masters, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the settlement “encouraging” after six years of litigation. (Masters is among a group of investors who bought the Charleston Gazette-Mail last year.)
Funds will be distributed to people who leased the rights to natural gas beneath their land in West Virginia to EQT between Dec. 8, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2017. EQT will also pay up to $2 million in administrative fees to distribute the settlement.
Settlement payments will be calculated based on such factors as the amount of gas produced and sold from each well, as well as how much was deducted from royalty payments. The number of people who submit claims could also affect settlement payments. Each member of the class that submits a claim will receive a minimum payment of at least $200. The settlement allows lawyers to collect up to one-third of the settlement, or roughly $18 million, subject to approval from the court.
The settlement is pending before U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in the Northern District of West Virginia. The judge gave it preliminary approval on Monday, which begins a process for public notice of the terms and a fairness hearing July 11 in Wheeling, West Virginia. Payments would not be made until that process is complete.
World’s top energy companies booked enormous profits last year thanks to higher oil prices
Agence France-Presse - raw story
10 FEB 2019 AT 08:39 ET
The world’s top energy companies booked enormous profits last year thanks to higher oil prices and keeping a tight lid on spending, even if that risked limiting their medium-term production capacity.
The five “supermajors” — US firms Chevron and ExxonMobil, Britain’s BP, Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell and Total of France – earned nearly $80 billion in net profits last year.
They all boosted their bottom line, with some hitting levels not seen since a plunge in crude prices from their perch above $100 per barrel in 2014.
Higher oil prices didn’t hurt, of course, although the fourth quarter was marked by strong volatility.
Overall, the price of Brent crude was $71 per barrel last year, compared with $54 in 2017.
But that’s not the whole story.
The supermajors have also maintained the financial discipline — cost-cutting and reducing investments — that they adopted following the 2014 crash in crude prices.
They tightened their belts enough to become profitable even when oil prices were low. And when crude prices rise again, their profits surge.
“Total’s job is to be profitable and to lower the break-even point no matter what the price of oil is,” said chief executive Patrick Pouyanne this past week.
“We’re going to maintain discipline, there’s volatility” in the market, he added.
The rollercoaster that crude prices have been on in recent months, due in large part to geopolitical uncertainty as the United States and China face off in trade dispute with major repercussions for the global economy, means that the supermajors can’t rest on their laurels.
BP chief Bob Dudley expects, like his fellow oil chiefs, oil prices “to remain volatile, with many uncertainties, including how markets respond to evolving sentiment around ongoing trade discussions” as well as a crisis situation in Venezuela.
Under-investment
The investments will thus remain limited.
While investments in exploration and production rose seven percent last year to $382 billion, according to IFP Energies Nouvelles research group, they are still 40 percent below their 2014 peak.
Moreover, they remain concentrated in North America where they are targeted at exploiting shale oil and gas.
IFP Energies Nouvelles expects a modest increase of three to eight percent in investment spending this year.
The oil services sector — made up of firms contracted to carry out lots of the exploration and production work — were hit hard as the supermajors cut back and tightened financial discipline.
While the number of tenders for work has increased, the “market recovery is slow”, said Gael Bodenes, chief executive of Bourbon which offers marine services for offshore oil and gas projects.
But this restraint in investment also poses a risk over the medium term as oil installations need regular injections of cash to continue producing and new ones need to be brought online to replace fields that are exhausted.
“Each year the world needs to replace 3 million barrels per day of supply lost from mature fields while also meeting robust demand growth. That is the equivalent of replacing one North Sea each year,” the International Energy Agency warned.
While some supermajors are still increasing production, sometimes considerably, that is the result of investments launched years ago, not of a recent effort.
The long lead time to build new oil and gas installations means the effects of low investment now may not be felt in terms of supply shortfalls for several years.
“This industry has invested little for four years”, since the collapse of crude prices, said Total chief Pouyanne.
“One day we’ll see that the capacity not launched risks being missed on the market” if US shale production fails to fill the gap.
He said this could happen sometime between 2021 and 2023.
The five “supermajors” — US firms Chevron and ExxonMobil, Britain’s BP, Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell and Total of France – earned nearly $80 billion in net profits last year.
They all boosted their bottom line, with some hitting levels not seen since a plunge in crude prices from their perch above $100 per barrel in 2014.
Higher oil prices didn’t hurt, of course, although the fourth quarter was marked by strong volatility.
Overall, the price of Brent crude was $71 per barrel last year, compared with $54 in 2017.
But that’s not the whole story.
The supermajors have also maintained the financial discipline — cost-cutting and reducing investments — that they adopted following the 2014 crash in crude prices.
They tightened their belts enough to become profitable even when oil prices were low. And when crude prices rise again, their profits surge.
“Total’s job is to be profitable and to lower the break-even point no matter what the price of oil is,” said chief executive Patrick Pouyanne this past week.
“We’re going to maintain discipline, there’s volatility” in the market, he added.
The rollercoaster that crude prices have been on in recent months, due in large part to geopolitical uncertainty as the United States and China face off in trade dispute with major repercussions for the global economy, means that the supermajors can’t rest on their laurels.
BP chief Bob Dudley expects, like his fellow oil chiefs, oil prices “to remain volatile, with many uncertainties, including how markets respond to evolving sentiment around ongoing trade discussions” as well as a crisis situation in Venezuela.
Under-investment
The investments will thus remain limited.
While investments in exploration and production rose seven percent last year to $382 billion, according to IFP Energies Nouvelles research group, they are still 40 percent below their 2014 peak.
Moreover, they remain concentrated in North America where they are targeted at exploiting shale oil and gas.
IFP Energies Nouvelles expects a modest increase of three to eight percent in investment spending this year.
The oil services sector — made up of firms contracted to carry out lots of the exploration and production work — were hit hard as the supermajors cut back and tightened financial discipline.
While the number of tenders for work has increased, the “market recovery is slow”, said Gael Bodenes, chief executive of Bourbon which offers marine services for offshore oil and gas projects.
But this restraint in investment also poses a risk over the medium term as oil installations need regular injections of cash to continue producing and new ones need to be brought online to replace fields that are exhausted.
“Each year the world needs to replace 3 million barrels per day of supply lost from mature fields while also meeting robust demand growth. That is the equivalent of replacing one North Sea each year,” the International Energy Agency warned.
While some supermajors are still increasing production, sometimes considerably, that is the result of investments launched years ago, not of a recent effort.
The long lead time to build new oil and gas installations means the effects of low investment now may not be felt in terms of supply shortfalls for several years.
“This industry has invested little for four years”, since the collapse of crude prices, said Total chief Pouyanne.
“One day we’ll see that the capacity not launched risks being missed on the market” if US shale production fails to fill the gap.
He said this could happen sometime between 2021 and 2023.
SOUTH CAROLINA SPENT $9 BILLION TO DIG A HOLE IN THE GROUND AND THEN FILL IT BACK IN
Akela Lacy - the intercept
February 6, 2019, 3:00 a.m
V.C. Summer Nuclear Station’s unit two’s turbine, right, and containment unit, center, are shown under construction near Jenkinsville, S.C., on Sept. 21, 2016. Photo: Chuck Burton/AP
THE OBJECTION RAISED most frequently when it comes to a Green New Deal is its cost. It’s preposterous; it’s too expensive; we just can’t afford it.
But before scoffing at the prospect of the wealthiest nation in the history of the world funding such a project, it’s worth taking a look at what one of the country’s poorest states was recently able to spend.
South Carolina, in a bid to expand its generation of nuclear power in recent years, dropped $9 billion on a single project — and has nothing to show for it.
The boondoggle, which was covered widely in the Palmetto State press but got little attention nationally, sheds light on just how much money is genuinely available for an industrial-level energy transformation, if only the political will were there.
There are no firm figures tied to a Green New Deal, but former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s proposed version of the project would have cost between $700 billion and $1 trillion. The new plan, being crafted with the help of progressive groups like the Sunrise Movement and pushed to the top of the House legislative agenda by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives, promises more substantial change on a much shorter schedule. In addition to moving the U.S. to 100 percent renewable energy in 10 years, upgrading all residential and industrial buildings for energy efficiency, and eliminating greenhouse gases from manufacturing and agriculture, it includes a jobs guarantee and a recognition of the rights of tribal nations. Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey are planning to introduce legislation for the plan this week, Axios reported.
In South Carolina, lawmakers greenlighted a multibillion-dollar energy project and stuck utility customers with the tab. “In the private sector,” former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Gregory Jaczko told The Intercept, “you would never be able to justify this.”
The saga, and related nuclear project failures, calls into question the role of new nuclear energy production in the effort to decarbonize the economy. New plants, Jaczko said, take too long to build for the urgency of the climate crisis and simply aren’t cost effective, given advances in renewable energy. “I don’t see nuclear as a solution to climate change,” Jaczko said. “It’s too expensive, and would take too long if it could even be deployed. There are cheaper, better alternatives. And even better alternatives that are getting cheaper, faster.”
The Nuclear Boondoggle
It started in 2008. SCE&G and Santee Cooper announced plans to add two nuclear reactors to the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Jenkinsville, South Carolina, and contracted Westinghouse Electric Company, owned by Toshiba, to handle construction. The state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) approved the plan in early 2009, with construction slated to begin in 2012, and the first reactor set to begin operating in 2016.
In late 2011, SCE&G announced the project’s first delay in a quarterly report to the Office of Regulatory Staff, which represents utilities in front of the PSC, citing “module redesign, production issues, manpower issues and Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) issues.” The company estimated an 11-month setback and said its contractor, the Shaw Group, operating out of a facility in Louisiana, reported that the issues had been resolved. But SCE&G said they were still monitoring the situation “carefully” and considered “it to be a focus area for the project.” The Shaw facility would later face a federal probe over unrelated allegations that workers broke protocol and falsified records, which employees admitted to.
The company alerted more delays in mid-2013, citing manufacturing issues. Soon, Santee Cooper asked SCE&G to bring in another company to manage the project. Not long after that, both companies announced the project would cost $1.2 billion more than they’d expected. Again, they pushed back the project’s completion date.
Documents released as the project unraveled show that both SCE&G and Santee Cooper were well aware of shortcomings, mismanagement, and lack of oversight that eventually made the reactors impossible to complete, years before Westinghouse declared bankruptcy and both companies pulled out.
“They were allowed to charge the customers for all the money that they spent, plus a return,” Jaczko explained. “Even though they failed to deliver the project.”
Only 48 percent of South Carolinians know about the failed program, according to an October statewide poll surveying electric ratepayers.
“The utilities are incredibly powerful political lobbies in the state,” Jaczko said. “It’s now $2.3 billion that they’re gonna be able to get,” he said, and that doesn’t include the rate of return Dominion says it’s entitled to.
“It’s insane for a project that’s done nothing, and never will. And is just a giant hole in the ground,” he said. “Well, a filled-in hole now, at this point.”
Left With the Tab
Thanks to a state law passed in 2007, residents in South Carolina are footing the bill for a massive failed nuclear reactor program that cost a total of $9 billion. Analysts say that corporate mismanagement and poor oversight means residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program — which never produced a watt of energy — for the next 20 years or more.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has since called parts of the law, the Base Load Review Act, “constitutionally suspect,” and state senators have voted to overturn it — but that wouldn’t necessarily get ratepayers off the hook for paying for the failed project.
Both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commissionopened separate investigations into the failed project, and at least 19 lawsuits have been filed against one company involved.
The two South Carolina companies, South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper, a state-owned utility, spent $9 billion on a plan to build two nuclear reactors and eventually canceled it due to a series of cost miscalculations and corporate buyouts that left one construction company bankrupt and sent shockwaves all the way to Japanese tech giant Toshiba.
Dominion Energy, an energy giant in the region, has since bought out SCE&G’s parent company, SCANA Corp., for $7.9 billion — almost the entire cost of the failed project — pledged to partially refund ratepayers and cut electricity rates, which SCE&G hiked at least nine timesthroughout the project’s first eight years in order to pay for it.
When asked about the failed project, South Carolina Republican Rep. William Timmons laughed. He said ratepayers would still pay “a substantial portion” of the bill. “The SCANA portion, which is — approximately half has been substantially dealt with, with their restructuring and the purchase of Dominion,” he told The Intercept. “What’s left now is the Santee Cooper portion, and I think that’s still yet to be decided.”
“It is a major issue that the legislature’s dealing with,” Timmons said. The congressman didn’t have any updates on how or when the remainder of the bill would resolved.
After Dominion bought out SCANA and settled their portion of the bill, ratepayers are still responsible for about $2.3 billion. “For nothing, they get nothing,” Jaczko told The Intercept.
“They basically pay money up front for a project that never materialized, and now are still gonna be asked to pay for it. And that is a significant break from the way that traditional rate recovery used to work,” he said.
“It used to be that you didn’t start charging for a plant unless it was done and operating. Whether it was a nuclear plant, or a coal plant, or any other kind of thing.”
But because nuclear power involves heavier upfront capital costs and financing charges, Jaczko explained, states looking to revive nuclear power tried to bypass those extra costs by passing laws allowing companies to save money by recovering the cost of financing the projects during the period of construction.
“Even the law that was written in South Carolina envisioned the fact that the project could get canceled. But of course everybody promised that that wouldn’t happen,” Jaczko said.
Sen. Tim Scott told The Intercept that it was hard to pin the blame for the disastrous project on any one entity. “But certainly the Westinghouse bid coming back three times higher than their original estimation made the likelihood of success challenging. And then all the decisions that were made pending that being an accurate price all fell apart,” he said. He did not answer a question of whether ratepayers would have to pay $2.3 billion for nothing.
For conservatives and corporate-friendly Democrats, the idea of spending absurd amounts of money on a comprehensive national plan to wean the economy off dirty energy and create sustainable jobs is out of the question. It’s an idea much easier to swallow when its stated purpose is corporate profit, as in South Carolina. Or at the federal level, national defense. President Donald Trump signed into law last summer a $717 billion defense bill, up from $600 billion in 2016, and around $300 billionin 2000. In December the president tweeted that U.S. military spending was “Crazy!”
For scale, the national deficit for fiscal year 2019 is just shy of $1 trillion. Of the $4.4 trillion federal budget, military spending across agencies makes up close to $800 billion. The federal government spent about $1.1 trillion on health care in 2018. The latest government shutdown cost the U.S. an estimated $11 billion, the Congressional Budget Office reported. Trump requested $5.7 billion for a border wall, and Republicans in the House found it.
But $9 billion and zero nuclear reactors later, ratepayers in South Carolina have no say after their legislators played with the state’s resources and lost. If one state can throw away $9 billion on a project that never happened, legislators in Washington will have a difficult time claiming that they can’t find federal dollars to finance a plan that 81 percent of registered voters support.
“We can pay for a Green New Deal in the same way we pay for — whether it’s wars, or tax cuts, or any of the other great social programs that we have,” Greg Carlock told The Intercept. He’s a senior adviser at Data for Progress, where he authored a report outlining policy proposals for the Green New Deal. Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, Carlock says he disagrees with the argument that you have to tax the wealthy, or the middle class, to pay for a Green New Deal. Instead, he argues, Congress should just authorize new spending, like it does for everything else.
“There has been a really well-crafted narrative to bring up fears about deficit spending and the debt,” Carlock said. “I think that we, one, have to just break out of this fear that somehow this number that we call debt is a bad thing. Because it’s not the same kind of debt that a household has, or that a business has,” he said.
“The driver of inflation is not how many ones and zeros we’ve put out there,” Carlock said. “The driver of inflation is the availability of limited biophysical resources that that money is trying to go out and buy. And that’s why, when you think about this from a sustainability perspective, a Green New Deal that tries to improve the sustainability of our natural resources, is actually meant as a deflationary role.”
“The greatest threat to our economy and inflation is not the debt, it’s the climate crisis,” he added, “which will put an even greater strain on our resources. The whole point of a Green New Deal is to mitigate those threats, and it will be cheaper than the cost of future climate disasters.”
Investing in clean energy, sustainable jobs, and a basic standard of health care would actually save money in the long run — tens to hundreds of billions of dollars per year, according to a climate assessment released under the Trump administration this year. The argument that the money isn’t there just doesn’t hold up.
“Any politician whose first question about the Green New Deal is how to pay for it isn’t taking seriously the millions who will die if we fail to take action on the scale scientists say we need,” Stephen Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, said in a statement to The Intercept.
“What we are talking about is a putting millions of people to work so they can buy food for their families, etc. This is the greatest investment in the American economy in generations, and that kind of investment pays substantial dividends,” Hanlon said.
“We will pay for this the same way we paid for the WWII (sic) and the original New Deal: deciding it’s a priority as a nation and that we can’t afford not to take action.”
Meanwhile, a $28 billion nuclear project in Georgia is headed for a similar fate.
But before scoffing at the prospect of the wealthiest nation in the history of the world funding such a project, it’s worth taking a look at what one of the country’s poorest states was recently able to spend.
South Carolina, in a bid to expand its generation of nuclear power in recent years, dropped $9 billion on a single project — and has nothing to show for it.
The boondoggle, which was covered widely in the Palmetto State press but got little attention nationally, sheds light on just how much money is genuinely available for an industrial-level energy transformation, if only the political will were there.
There are no firm figures tied to a Green New Deal, but former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s proposed version of the project would have cost between $700 billion and $1 trillion. The new plan, being crafted with the help of progressive groups like the Sunrise Movement and pushed to the top of the House legislative agenda by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives, promises more substantial change on a much shorter schedule. In addition to moving the U.S. to 100 percent renewable energy in 10 years, upgrading all residential and industrial buildings for energy efficiency, and eliminating greenhouse gases from manufacturing and agriculture, it includes a jobs guarantee and a recognition of the rights of tribal nations. Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey are planning to introduce legislation for the plan this week, Axios reported.
In South Carolina, lawmakers greenlighted a multibillion-dollar energy project and stuck utility customers with the tab. “In the private sector,” former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Gregory Jaczko told The Intercept, “you would never be able to justify this.”
The saga, and related nuclear project failures, calls into question the role of new nuclear energy production in the effort to decarbonize the economy. New plants, Jaczko said, take too long to build for the urgency of the climate crisis and simply aren’t cost effective, given advances in renewable energy. “I don’t see nuclear as a solution to climate change,” Jaczko said. “It’s too expensive, and would take too long if it could even be deployed. There are cheaper, better alternatives. And even better alternatives that are getting cheaper, faster.”
The Nuclear Boondoggle
It started in 2008. SCE&G and Santee Cooper announced plans to add two nuclear reactors to the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Jenkinsville, South Carolina, and contracted Westinghouse Electric Company, owned by Toshiba, to handle construction. The state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) approved the plan in early 2009, with construction slated to begin in 2012, and the first reactor set to begin operating in 2016.
In late 2011, SCE&G announced the project’s first delay in a quarterly report to the Office of Regulatory Staff, which represents utilities in front of the PSC, citing “module redesign, production issues, manpower issues and Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) issues.” The company estimated an 11-month setback and said its contractor, the Shaw Group, operating out of a facility in Louisiana, reported that the issues had been resolved. But SCE&G said they were still monitoring the situation “carefully” and considered “it to be a focus area for the project.” The Shaw facility would later face a federal probe over unrelated allegations that workers broke protocol and falsified records, which employees admitted to.
The company alerted more delays in mid-2013, citing manufacturing issues. Soon, Santee Cooper asked SCE&G to bring in another company to manage the project. Not long after that, both companies announced the project would cost $1.2 billion more than they’d expected. Again, they pushed back the project’s completion date.
Documents released as the project unraveled show that both SCE&G and Santee Cooper were well aware of shortcomings, mismanagement, and lack of oversight that eventually made the reactors impossible to complete, years before Westinghouse declared bankruptcy and both companies pulled out.
“They were allowed to charge the customers for all the money that they spent, plus a return,” Jaczko explained. “Even though they failed to deliver the project.”
Only 48 percent of South Carolinians know about the failed program, according to an October statewide poll surveying electric ratepayers.
“The utilities are incredibly powerful political lobbies in the state,” Jaczko said. “It’s now $2.3 billion that they’re gonna be able to get,” he said, and that doesn’t include the rate of return Dominion says it’s entitled to.
“It’s insane for a project that’s done nothing, and never will. And is just a giant hole in the ground,” he said. “Well, a filled-in hole now, at this point.”
Left With the Tab
Thanks to a state law passed in 2007, residents in South Carolina are footing the bill for a massive failed nuclear reactor program that cost a total of $9 billion. Analysts say that corporate mismanagement and poor oversight means residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program — which never produced a watt of energy — for the next 20 years or more.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has since called parts of the law, the Base Load Review Act, “constitutionally suspect,” and state senators have voted to overturn it — but that wouldn’t necessarily get ratepayers off the hook for paying for the failed project.
Both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commissionopened separate investigations into the failed project, and at least 19 lawsuits have been filed against one company involved.
The two South Carolina companies, South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper, a state-owned utility, spent $9 billion on a plan to build two nuclear reactors and eventually canceled it due to a series of cost miscalculations and corporate buyouts that left one construction company bankrupt and sent shockwaves all the way to Japanese tech giant Toshiba.
Dominion Energy, an energy giant in the region, has since bought out SCE&G’s parent company, SCANA Corp., for $7.9 billion — almost the entire cost of the failed project — pledged to partially refund ratepayers and cut electricity rates, which SCE&G hiked at least nine timesthroughout the project’s first eight years in order to pay for it.
When asked about the failed project, South Carolina Republican Rep. William Timmons laughed. He said ratepayers would still pay “a substantial portion” of the bill. “The SCANA portion, which is — approximately half has been substantially dealt with, with their restructuring and the purchase of Dominion,” he told The Intercept. “What’s left now is the Santee Cooper portion, and I think that’s still yet to be decided.”
“It is a major issue that the legislature’s dealing with,” Timmons said. The congressman didn’t have any updates on how or when the remainder of the bill would resolved.
After Dominion bought out SCANA and settled their portion of the bill, ratepayers are still responsible for about $2.3 billion. “For nothing, they get nothing,” Jaczko told The Intercept.
“They basically pay money up front for a project that never materialized, and now are still gonna be asked to pay for it. And that is a significant break from the way that traditional rate recovery used to work,” he said.
“It used to be that you didn’t start charging for a plant unless it was done and operating. Whether it was a nuclear plant, or a coal plant, or any other kind of thing.”
But because nuclear power involves heavier upfront capital costs and financing charges, Jaczko explained, states looking to revive nuclear power tried to bypass those extra costs by passing laws allowing companies to save money by recovering the cost of financing the projects during the period of construction.
“Even the law that was written in South Carolina envisioned the fact that the project could get canceled. But of course everybody promised that that wouldn’t happen,” Jaczko said.
Sen. Tim Scott told The Intercept that it was hard to pin the blame for the disastrous project on any one entity. “But certainly the Westinghouse bid coming back three times higher than their original estimation made the likelihood of success challenging. And then all the decisions that were made pending that being an accurate price all fell apart,” he said. He did not answer a question of whether ratepayers would have to pay $2.3 billion for nothing.
For conservatives and corporate-friendly Democrats, the idea of spending absurd amounts of money on a comprehensive national plan to wean the economy off dirty energy and create sustainable jobs is out of the question. It’s an idea much easier to swallow when its stated purpose is corporate profit, as in South Carolina. Or at the federal level, national defense. President Donald Trump signed into law last summer a $717 billion defense bill, up from $600 billion in 2016, and around $300 billionin 2000. In December the president tweeted that U.S. military spending was “Crazy!”
For scale, the national deficit for fiscal year 2019 is just shy of $1 trillion. Of the $4.4 trillion federal budget, military spending across agencies makes up close to $800 billion. The federal government spent about $1.1 trillion on health care in 2018. The latest government shutdown cost the U.S. an estimated $11 billion, the Congressional Budget Office reported. Trump requested $5.7 billion for a border wall, and Republicans in the House found it.
But $9 billion and zero nuclear reactors later, ratepayers in South Carolina have no say after their legislators played with the state’s resources and lost. If one state can throw away $9 billion on a project that never happened, legislators in Washington will have a difficult time claiming that they can’t find federal dollars to finance a plan that 81 percent of registered voters support.
“We can pay for a Green New Deal in the same way we pay for — whether it’s wars, or tax cuts, or any of the other great social programs that we have,” Greg Carlock told The Intercept. He’s a senior adviser at Data for Progress, where he authored a report outlining policy proposals for the Green New Deal. Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, Carlock says he disagrees with the argument that you have to tax the wealthy, or the middle class, to pay for a Green New Deal. Instead, he argues, Congress should just authorize new spending, like it does for everything else.
“There has been a really well-crafted narrative to bring up fears about deficit spending and the debt,” Carlock said. “I think that we, one, have to just break out of this fear that somehow this number that we call debt is a bad thing. Because it’s not the same kind of debt that a household has, or that a business has,” he said.
“The driver of inflation is not how many ones and zeros we’ve put out there,” Carlock said. “The driver of inflation is the availability of limited biophysical resources that that money is trying to go out and buy. And that’s why, when you think about this from a sustainability perspective, a Green New Deal that tries to improve the sustainability of our natural resources, is actually meant as a deflationary role.”
“The greatest threat to our economy and inflation is not the debt, it’s the climate crisis,” he added, “which will put an even greater strain on our resources. The whole point of a Green New Deal is to mitigate those threats, and it will be cheaper than the cost of future climate disasters.”
Investing in clean energy, sustainable jobs, and a basic standard of health care would actually save money in the long run — tens to hundreds of billions of dollars per year, according to a climate assessment released under the Trump administration this year. The argument that the money isn’t there just doesn’t hold up.
“Any politician whose first question about the Green New Deal is how to pay for it isn’t taking seriously the millions who will die if we fail to take action on the scale scientists say we need,” Stephen Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, said in a statement to The Intercept.
“What we are talking about is a putting millions of people to work so they can buy food for their families, etc. This is the greatest investment in the American economy in generations, and that kind of investment pays substantial dividends,” Hanlon said.
“We will pay for this the same way we paid for the WWII (sic) and the original New Deal: deciding it’s a priority as a nation and that we can’t afford not to take action.”
Meanwhile, a $28 billion nuclear project in Georgia is headed for a similar fate.
Energy Company Accused of Environmental Racism with Plans to Build Pipeline In Virginia’s Historical Black Community
By Associated Press - atlanta black star
December 11, 2018
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A massive winter storm delayed a closely watched vote in Virginia on a natural gas pipeline compressor station that’s been the frequent target of protests.
A citizen panel that votes on air pollution permits was set to decide Monday whether Virginia’s most powerful corporation can build a natural gas compressor station in a historical African-American community. But the state on Sunday announced the meeting was being pushed back to Dec. 19 because of a winter storm that has made roads dangerous.
Dominion Energy needs the State Air Pollution Control Board to sign off on a permit to build a station in Buckingham County to pump gas through the planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
The upcoming vote has become a flashpoint in the yearslong fight over the pipeline and a political imbroglio for Gov. Ralph Northam, who has come under intense criticism for his recent removal of two board members ahead of the vote.
The proposed site is about an hour west of Richmond in Union Hill, a community founded by freed slaves.
Dominion, the lead developer of the pipeline and dominant force in Virginia politics, said it chose the location because it had sufficient acreage for sale and intersects with an existing pipeline. The proposed 600-mile (966-kilometer) Atlantic Coast Pipeline would carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia into Virginia and North Carolina.
Both Dominion and the Northam administration have said they’ve worked carefully to ensure the station will be as environmentally friendly as possible and won’t harm nearby residents.
“It is the strictest permit for a compressor station in the country,” said Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler.
But opposition has been fierce, both from groups that don’t want the pipeline built at all and by others who worry exhaust from the compressor station will hurt the low-income and elderly residents who live nearby.
Some opponents have accused Dominion of trying to take advantage of Union Hill’s black residents. Richard Walker, who says his great-grandfather bought a 25-acre homestead in Union Hill for $15 in 1885 as a freed slave, said Dominion is engaged in “environmental racism.”
He said Dominion recently duped the state NAACP into sending a letter to public officials saying it was satisfied with the progress Dominion was making with Union Hill residents. The NAACP quickly reversed course and reaffirmed its opposition to the compressor station after the letter was made public. NAACP president Kevin Chandler did not return a request for comment.
“The same exploitation that took place 100 years ago is still taking place,” said Walker, who currently lives in Richmond but has several elderly cousins who live in Union Hill.
Dominion has strongly denied the charge and has said it has deep respect for the community and wants to be a constructive partner. The company has recently offered to give more than $5 million to help improve Union Hill.
The air pollution board was supposed to decide the issue early last month, but delayed a vote amid concerns that state’s Department of Environmental Quality hadn’t properly considered environmental justice issues when endorsing the permit.
Shortly afterward, Northam removed two members of the board whose terms had expired this summer and named two replacements he later said won’t be voting on the compressor station permit. That leaves four members who can vote later this month, as one of the remaining five members has recused himself over a conflict of interest.
One of the board members Northam removed is Sam Bleicher. He previously abstained on voting for a permit for one of Dominion’s natural gas power stations in 2016, saying he thought new natural gas plants and pipelines were a serious mistake for the environment. But Bleicher said those views would not have affected his vote on the compressor station and should not have been cause for his removal.
“It’s a completely different situation,” he said. “It’s not about the pipeline, it’s about the location of the compressor station.”
Northam said he’d planned on naming replacements after the November vote and decided to move ahead anyway after the vote was delayed. He said he’s agnostic on how the board votes, and was not influenced by Bleicher’s past statements or by Dominion.
“As far as the pipeline … there’s not a lot of middle road on that issue,” Northam said in a recent radio interview. “I’ve tried to be as fair as I can.”
But the move shocked some of the governor’s closest allies in the environmental community and enraged some supporters, who have said he owes the public a better explanation.
“It’s hurt and tarnished the governor’s reputation,” said Del. Mark Keam.
Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said the company doesn’t comment on board positions.
“The governor makes his own decisions about his appointments,” Ruby said.
A citizen panel that votes on air pollution permits was set to decide Monday whether Virginia’s most powerful corporation can build a natural gas compressor station in a historical African-American community. But the state on Sunday announced the meeting was being pushed back to Dec. 19 because of a winter storm that has made roads dangerous.
Dominion Energy needs the State Air Pollution Control Board to sign off on a permit to build a station in Buckingham County to pump gas through the planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
The upcoming vote has become a flashpoint in the yearslong fight over the pipeline and a political imbroglio for Gov. Ralph Northam, who has come under intense criticism for his recent removal of two board members ahead of the vote.
The proposed site is about an hour west of Richmond in Union Hill, a community founded by freed slaves.
Dominion, the lead developer of the pipeline and dominant force in Virginia politics, said it chose the location because it had sufficient acreage for sale and intersects with an existing pipeline. The proposed 600-mile (966-kilometer) Atlantic Coast Pipeline would carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia into Virginia and North Carolina.
Both Dominion and the Northam administration have said they’ve worked carefully to ensure the station will be as environmentally friendly as possible and won’t harm nearby residents.
“It is the strictest permit for a compressor station in the country,” said Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler.
But opposition has been fierce, both from groups that don’t want the pipeline built at all and by others who worry exhaust from the compressor station will hurt the low-income and elderly residents who live nearby.
Some opponents have accused Dominion of trying to take advantage of Union Hill’s black residents. Richard Walker, who says his great-grandfather bought a 25-acre homestead in Union Hill for $15 in 1885 as a freed slave, said Dominion is engaged in “environmental racism.”
He said Dominion recently duped the state NAACP into sending a letter to public officials saying it was satisfied with the progress Dominion was making with Union Hill residents. The NAACP quickly reversed course and reaffirmed its opposition to the compressor station after the letter was made public. NAACP president Kevin Chandler did not return a request for comment.
“The same exploitation that took place 100 years ago is still taking place,” said Walker, who currently lives in Richmond but has several elderly cousins who live in Union Hill.
Dominion has strongly denied the charge and has said it has deep respect for the community and wants to be a constructive partner. The company has recently offered to give more than $5 million to help improve Union Hill.
The air pollution board was supposed to decide the issue early last month, but delayed a vote amid concerns that state’s Department of Environmental Quality hadn’t properly considered environmental justice issues when endorsing the permit.
Shortly afterward, Northam removed two members of the board whose terms had expired this summer and named two replacements he later said won’t be voting on the compressor station permit. That leaves four members who can vote later this month, as one of the remaining five members has recused himself over a conflict of interest.
One of the board members Northam removed is Sam Bleicher. He previously abstained on voting for a permit for one of Dominion’s natural gas power stations in 2016, saying he thought new natural gas plants and pipelines were a serious mistake for the environment. But Bleicher said those views would not have affected his vote on the compressor station and should not have been cause for his removal.
“It’s a completely different situation,” he said. “It’s not about the pipeline, it’s about the location of the compressor station.”
Northam said he’d planned on naming replacements after the November vote and decided to move ahead anyway after the vote was delayed. He said he’s agnostic on how the board votes, and was not influenced by Bleicher’s past statements or by Dominion.
“As far as the pipeline … there’s not a lot of middle road on that issue,” Northam said in a recent radio interview. “I’ve tried to be as fair as I can.”
But the move shocked some of the governor’s closest allies in the environmental community and enraged some supporters, who have said he owes the public a better explanation.
“It’s hurt and tarnished the governor’s reputation,” said Del. Mark Keam.
Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said the company doesn’t comment on board positions.
“The governor makes his own decisions about his appointments,” Ruby said.
Coast Guard orders clean-up of massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill that has been leaking for 14 years
Taylor Energy will have to pay $40,000 per day until it complies.
E.A. CRUNDEN - thinkprogress
NOV 21, 2018, 10:40 AM
The Coast Guard has ordered the company responsible for an oil spill that has been leaking into the Gulf of Mexico for 14 years to clean up the environmental catastrophe or face a $40,000 per day fine.
The spill has largely gone unnoticed until recently but it is one of the largest spills ever in North America.
Taylor Energy Co. was ordered last month by the U.S. government to “institute a … system to capture, contain, or remove oil” in the Gulf of Mexico, where a former site operated by the company has been steadily leaking. The order was first publicized this week.
Taylor allowed a broken oil platform off the coast of southeast Louisiana to leak an estimated 10,500 gallons to 29,000 gallons of oil per day, five to 13 times larger than the government’s initial estimates.
“The worst-case estimate of the daily volume of release far exceeds previous estimates and is in the order of hundreds of barrels per day,” the Coast Guard told Taylor.
The Oct. 23 order commands Taylor to address the crisis and asserts that the company “must eliminate the surface sheen and avoid the deficiencies associated with prior containment systems,” or face a $40,000 per day fine.
Taylor slammed the decision in a statement. “The inflated volumes are completely inconsistent with the scientific record built over a decade by the world’s leading scientists, including those regularly relied upon by the government,” the company argued.
By contrast, Dustin Renaud, the communications director for the Gulf Restoration Network, said that the Coast Guard’s decision was overdue, according to the Times-Picayune. “The time to clean this up was 14 years ago,” he said.
Taylor’s oil spill has been a source of concern for some time. The site — Mississippi Canyon-20, which lies south of the Mississippi River delta — took a hit from Hurricane Ivan in 2004. The storm wrecked Taylor’s platform and triggered the massive spill, resulting in years of legal back-and-forth between the company and the Interior Department, which has contended that Taylor has an obligation to fix the oil wells at the site.
Taylor no longer produces oil and a trust account was established in 2008, which the government required in order to allow the company to decommission its wells. Nine of the 28 wells at the Mississippi delta site have been plugged and Taylor says it can’t reach the others without risking more spillage. The company now wants the rest of the $666 million trust to be returned to it, arguing it has done everything it can, but the Interior Department says Taylor needs to finish plugging the remaining wells.
A 2015 Associated Press investigation found that oil spill totals put forth by Taylor dramatically understated the actual extent of the leak. Reports from contractors hired by Taylor initially placed the total at around zero to 55 barrels of oil spilled per day, with each barrel consisting of approximately 42 gallons. But the spill has in fact generated between 1.5 million and 3.5 million barrels.
For comparison, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, considered the worst in U.S. history, spilled 4 million barrels and is still undergoing cleanup.
Reports of the extent of the spill have strengthened the government’s stance that the spill needs to be fully addressed by the company. With the recent Coast Guard order, Taylor will now have to address the disaster or pay up.
But environmental groups and activists say the spill poses an extreme risk to the area’s ecosystems and some argue the Coast Guard took far too long to act.
Researchers have had to wear respirators in order to study the extent of the spill’s damage, but neither Taylor nor the government actively shared information about the crisis for years.
The Coast Guard order comes in the midst of an ongoing push by the Trump administration to expand offshore drilling in virtually all federal waters. That move has generated broad bipartisan opposition from all coastal states, with many citing oil spills as a leading point of concern.
The spill has largely gone unnoticed until recently but it is one of the largest spills ever in North America.
Taylor Energy Co. was ordered last month by the U.S. government to “institute a … system to capture, contain, or remove oil” in the Gulf of Mexico, where a former site operated by the company has been steadily leaking. The order was first publicized this week.
Taylor allowed a broken oil platform off the coast of southeast Louisiana to leak an estimated 10,500 gallons to 29,000 gallons of oil per day, five to 13 times larger than the government’s initial estimates.
“The worst-case estimate of the daily volume of release far exceeds previous estimates and is in the order of hundreds of barrels per day,” the Coast Guard told Taylor.
The Oct. 23 order commands Taylor to address the crisis and asserts that the company “must eliminate the surface sheen and avoid the deficiencies associated with prior containment systems,” or face a $40,000 per day fine.
Taylor slammed the decision in a statement. “The inflated volumes are completely inconsistent with the scientific record built over a decade by the world’s leading scientists, including those regularly relied upon by the government,” the company argued.
By contrast, Dustin Renaud, the communications director for the Gulf Restoration Network, said that the Coast Guard’s decision was overdue, according to the Times-Picayune. “The time to clean this up was 14 years ago,” he said.
Taylor’s oil spill has been a source of concern for some time. The site — Mississippi Canyon-20, which lies south of the Mississippi River delta — took a hit from Hurricane Ivan in 2004. The storm wrecked Taylor’s platform and triggered the massive spill, resulting in years of legal back-and-forth between the company and the Interior Department, which has contended that Taylor has an obligation to fix the oil wells at the site.
Taylor no longer produces oil and a trust account was established in 2008, which the government required in order to allow the company to decommission its wells. Nine of the 28 wells at the Mississippi delta site have been plugged and Taylor says it can’t reach the others without risking more spillage. The company now wants the rest of the $666 million trust to be returned to it, arguing it has done everything it can, but the Interior Department says Taylor needs to finish plugging the remaining wells.
A 2015 Associated Press investigation found that oil spill totals put forth by Taylor dramatically understated the actual extent of the leak. Reports from contractors hired by Taylor initially placed the total at around zero to 55 barrels of oil spilled per day, with each barrel consisting of approximately 42 gallons. But the spill has in fact generated between 1.5 million and 3.5 million barrels.
For comparison, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, considered the worst in U.S. history, spilled 4 million barrels and is still undergoing cleanup.
Reports of the extent of the spill have strengthened the government’s stance that the spill needs to be fully addressed by the company. With the recent Coast Guard order, Taylor will now have to address the disaster or pay up.
But environmental groups and activists say the spill poses an extreme risk to the area’s ecosystems and some argue the Coast Guard took far too long to act.
Researchers have had to wear respirators in order to study the extent of the spill’s damage, but neither Taylor nor the government actively shared information about the crisis for years.
The Coast Guard order comes in the midst of an ongoing push by the Trump administration to expand offshore drilling in virtually all federal waters. That move has generated broad bipartisan opposition from all coastal states, with many citing oil spills as a leading point of concern.
Landowners Fight the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Court
BY
Mike Ludwig, Truthout
PUBLISHED
November 14, 2018
New Orleans – Under the United States Constitution, can private fossil fuel companies legally seize private property to build oil pipelines? Do private oil pipelines that threaten sensitive ecosystems provide a real service to the public, or do they simply pad the profit margins of fossil fuel companies and their wealthy investors?
On Friday, a state judge in rural Louisiana will consider these questions and more in a preliminary hearing on the most significant legal challenge to date against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, a 162-mile oil pipeline that bisects much of southern Louisiana and the sensitive Atchafalaya Basin, the nation’s largest river swamp.
Most of the pipeline has already been built, and it’s expected to connect Louisiana refineries and export facilities to the Dakota Access Pipeline that faced sustained Indigenous-led resistance at Standing Rock in 2016.
Across the country, states allow for-profit pipeline companies to seize private land under laws governing eminent domain, which is the government’s right to expropriate private property for public use in exchange for compensation. Many rural landowners lack the resources necessary to challenge wealthy oil and gas firms. A sweeping ruling against the Bayou Bridge’s attempt to expropriate private property in Louisiana could curb the fossil fuel industry’s ability to ram infrastructure projects through local communities nationwide. The Iowa Supreme Court recently heard a similar legal challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline that also threatens the industry’s power.
Energy Transfer Partners, Sunoco and Phillips 66, the three fossil fuel companies behind Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC, had expected construction to be completed by now. However, construction was halted in September by a preliminary legal agreement after a showdown on 38 acres of private property in the Atchafalaya’s thick swampland, where landowners allege that pipeline contractors trespassed on their property and began building a final segment of the pipeline without legal permission. In an email, a spokesperson for Energy Transfer Partners said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
Continuing the legacy of Standing Rock, water protectors who have been fighting the Bayou Bridge Pipeline for months showed up in August to protest construction on the private parcel of land where pipeline contractors were accused of trespassing. Organizer Cherri Foytlin carried with her a letter from landowner Theda Larson Wright stating that it was the activists who had permission to be on the property, not pipeline construction contractors. Workers had already built much of the pipeline easement after clearing trees and grinding them into mulch. Wright said she and other family members with deep roots in Louisiana inherited the property, which has been in the family for generations.
“Yes, I did give them permission,” Wright told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. “I asked Cherri Foytlin and everyone who is associated with her to be the eyes of my family.”
Still, Foytlin and other activists were arrested on the property during a series of actions aimed at disrupting pipeline construction. Local police and state parole officers employed to work on “private duty” by pipeline contractors arrested a total of 18 activists, according to Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans who is representing the activists and the landowners, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights. The activists were arrested on felony charges under a new state law that criminalizes civil disobedience at fossil fuel infrastructure sites.
“The law was changed by the oil and gas industry specifically to try to address protesters,” Quigley told reporters on Tuesday, adding that it currently remains unclear whether local prosecutors will pursue the charges in court.
After being sued by landowners and conservation groups for beginning construction without permission, Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC filed its own lawsuit for the right to “expropriate” private land under eminent domain. Quigley said most landowners do not have the resources to fight wealthy fossil fuel firms, and those that do challenge expropriation are typically seeking better compensation. The Bayou Bridge Pipeline runs through thousands of properties in Louisiana, but the company has only had to win expropriation judgments in eight cases, according to a pre-trial memo filed on behalf of the landowners. This is the first case where landowners are asserting their right to property under the US Constitution and challenging Louisiana laws and regulations that give oil and gas companies a “free pass” to take private land, according to Quigley.
“[Oil companies] have a lot more resources than these individuals; they [have] law firms in several cities working on this,” Quigley said. “This is really David vs. Goliath, and Goliath has been running the show, until now.”
In September, the Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case pitting Energy Transfer Partners against farmers and landowners who oppose the company’s plan to build the Dakota Access Pipeline on their land. At issue in both cases is whether such for-profit fossil fuel projects serve a necessary purpose for the public that justifies the seizure of private land. Unlike gas utility pipelines that bring fuel directly to consumers, for example, interstate oil pipelines primarily serve industrial extraction and processing facilities. The industry argues that oil infrastructure provides fuel for US consumers and pumps money in local economies. However, in both cases, environmental groups argue that fuel carried by the pipeline will be sold out of state or even overseas, all while threatening sensitive ecosystems with leaks and spills and exacerbating climate disruption.
“I don’t believe there should be any eminent domain for private gain,” said Peter Aaslestad, a landowner who is challenging the Bayou Bridge Pipeline construction along with Wright.
The pre-trial memo filed on Aaslestad’s behalf decries the lack of regulation of the oil and gas industry in Louisiana, where no state agency makes a formal determination as to whether a private oil company is fit to use expropriation powers typically afforded to public utilities, and whether the project itself serves “public and necessary purpose” that justifies the use of eminent domain. Instead, this determination is made in the courts, often after permits have been issued and construction has begun.
Energy Transfer Partners spokesperson Alexis Daniel told Truthout in an email that their opponents are “well aware” of the process for determining that a project such as the Bayou Bridge pipeline serves the public interest, but did not elaborate on what that process is, or respond to a follow-up email by the time this article was published.
Louisiana is politically dominated by the oil and gas industry, and the state court may side with the pipeline, now that state regulators have permitted the project and much of it is already in the ground. Quigley said that Bayou Bridge violated Louisiana laws governing eminent domain, but even if the court disagrees, Louisiana laws are themselves unconstitutional because they allow a private company to “exercise the power of the government to take property from people without governmental oversight.”
“If the landowners lose this case, which we hope we won’t, the idea would be to appeal that decision to the Louisiana Court of Appeals, then to the Louisiana Supreme Court, then to the US Supreme Court — which is very skeptical of private companies being given the authority to take private land,” Quigley said.
On Friday, a state judge in rural Louisiana will consider these questions and more in a preliminary hearing on the most significant legal challenge to date against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, a 162-mile oil pipeline that bisects much of southern Louisiana and the sensitive Atchafalaya Basin, the nation’s largest river swamp.
Most of the pipeline has already been built, and it’s expected to connect Louisiana refineries and export facilities to the Dakota Access Pipeline that faced sustained Indigenous-led resistance at Standing Rock in 2016.
Across the country, states allow for-profit pipeline companies to seize private land under laws governing eminent domain, which is the government’s right to expropriate private property for public use in exchange for compensation. Many rural landowners lack the resources necessary to challenge wealthy oil and gas firms. A sweeping ruling against the Bayou Bridge’s attempt to expropriate private property in Louisiana could curb the fossil fuel industry’s ability to ram infrastructure projects through local communities nationwide. The Iowa Supreme Court recently heard a similar legal challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline that also threatens the industry’s power.
Energy Transfer Partners, Sunoco and Phillips 66, the three fossil fuel companies behind Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC, had expected construction to be completed by now. However, construction was halted in September by a preliminary legal agreement after a showdown on 38 acres of private property in the Atchafalaya’s thick swampland, where landowners allege that pipeline contractors trespassed on their property and began building a final segment of the pipeline without legal permission. In an email, a spokesperson for Energy Transfer Partners said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
Continuing the legacy of Standing Rock, water protectors who have been fighting the Bayou Bridge Pipeline for months showed up in August to protest construction on the private parcel of land where pipeline contractors were accused of trespassing. Organizer Cherri Foytlin carried with her a letter from landowner Theda Larson Wright stating that it was the activists who had permission to be on the property, not pipeline construction contractors. Workers had already built much of the pipeline easement after clearing trees and grinding them into mulch. Wright said she and other family members with deep roots in Louisiana inherited the property, which has been in the family for generations.
“Yes, I did give them permission,” Wright told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. “I asked Cherri Foytlin and everyone who is associated with her to be the eyes of my family.”
Still, Foytlin and other activists were arrested on the property during a series of actions aimed at disrupting pipeline construction. Local police and state parole officers employed to work on “private duty” by pipeline contractors arrested a total of 18 activists, according to Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans who is representing the activists and the landowners, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights. The activists were arrested on felony charges under a new state law that criminalizes civil disobedience at fossil fuel infrastructure sites.
“The law was changed by the oil and gas industry specifically to try to address protesters,” Quigley told reporters on Tuesday, adding that it currently remains unclear whether local prosecutors will pursue the charges in court.
After being sued by landowners and conservation groups for beginning construction without permission, Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC filed its own lawsuit for the right to “expropriate” private land under eminent domain. Quigley said most landowners do not have the resources to fight wealthy fossil fuel firms, and those that do challenge expropriation are typically seeking better compensation. The Bayou Bridge Pipeline runs through thousands of properties in Louisiana, but the company has only had to win expropriation judgments in eight cases, according to a pre-trial memo filed on behalf of the landowners. This is the first case where landowners are asserting their right to property under the US Constitution and challenging Louisiana laws and regulations that give oil and gas companies a “free pass” to take private land, according to Quigley.
“[Oil companies] have a lot more resources than these individuals; they [have] law firms in several cities working on this,” Quigley said. “This is really David vs. Goliath, and Goliath has been running the show, until now.”
In September, the Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case pitting Energy Transfer Partners against farmers and landowners who oppose the company’s plan to build the Dakota Access Pipeline on their land. At issue in both cases is whether such for-profit fossil fuel projects serve a necessary purpose for the public that justifies the seizure of private land. Unlike gas utility pipelines that bring fuel directly to consumers, for example, interstate oil pipelines primarily serve industrial extraction and processing facilities. The industry argues that oil infrastructure provides fuel for US consumers and pumps money in local economies. However, in both cases, environmental groups argue that fuel carried by the pipeline will be sold out of state or even overseas, all while threatening sensitive ecosystems with leaks and spills and exacerbating climate disruption.
“I don’t believe there should be any eminent domain for private gain,” said Peter Aaslestad, a landowner who is challenging the Bayou Bridge Pipeline construction along with Wright.
The pre-trial memo filed on Aaslestad’s behalf decries the lack of regulation of the oil and gas industry in Louisiana, where no state agency makes a formal determination as to whether a private oil company is fit to use expropriation powers typically afforded to public utilities, and whether the project itself serves “public and necessary purpose” that justifies the use of eminent domain. Instead, this determination is made in the courts, often after permits have been issued and construction has begun.
Energy Transfer Partners spokesperson Alexis Daniel told Truthout in an email that their opponents are “well aware” of the process for determining that a project such as the Bayou Bridge pipeline serves the public interest, but did not elaborate on what that process is, or respond to a follow-up email by the time this article was published.
Louisiana is politically dominated by the oil and gas industry, and the state court may side with the pipeline, now that state regulators have permitted the project and much of it is already in the ground. Quigley said that Bayou Bridge violated Louisiana laws governing eminent domain, but even if the court disagrees, Louisiana laws are themselves unconstitutional because they allow a private company to “exercise the power of the government to take property from people without governmental oversight.”
“If the landowners lose this case, which we hope we won’t, the idea would be to appeal that decision to the Louisiana Court of Appeals, then to the Louisiana Supreme Court, then to the US Supreme Court — which is very skeptical of private companies being given the authority to take private land,” Quigley said.
Century-Old West Virginia Leases Yield Paltry Gas Royalties. A Suit Could Cut Others’ Payouts to a Trickle, Too.
Energy giant EQT is challenging a 36-year-old law that gives residents a bigger share of natural gas profits at a time when the industry is flourishing.
by Ken Ward Jr., The Charleston Gazette - pro publica
Mail Nov. 14, 5 a.m. EST
Linda Stimmell gets upset every time EQT Corp.’s checks arrive in the mail. The energy giant extracts natural gas from beneath the Stimmell family’s old farm in Doddridge County, West Virginia, under the terms of a lease signed when Teddy Roosevelt was president.
The royalty checks Stimmell receives from two “Bates Wells,” named for her great-great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson Bates, amount to just $9 and $3 each quarter.
The lease Bates signed more than a century ago with Carnegie Natural Gas Co. of Pittsburgh allowed legendary industrialist Andrew Carnegie’s company to drill for, produce and sell as much natural gas as Carnegie wanted. In exchange, Bates got a flat fee of $300 a year per well.
Because of that deal, Stimmell and the many other Bates descendants who have since inherited the gas — and that 112-year-old lease — have received tens of thousands of dollars less than they would have if the contract were negotiated today.
“They’ve paid pennies, compared to what they are making,” Stimmell said. “It’s ridiculous.”
It’s not clear how many West Virginians are stuck with old leases that pay residents a fraction of what they might otherwise get. Observers guess it’s in the thousands. But what is clear is that thousands more could find themselves getting far less in royalties, if at least one major gas company gets its way.
That’s because of a recent lawsuit filed by EQT — the state’s second-largest gas producer — that threatens to put far more people in Linda Stimmell’s situation, stuck with tiny monthly payments at a time when the natural gas industry is booming.
The lawsuit, filed in April, challenges a 1982 law that aimed to give gas owners a bigger share of the profits. That law applied to situations where the gas lease was an old flat-fee arrangement and the well was drilled after the law took effect. In order to get a state permit for such wells, gas companies would have to pay the gas owners at least 12.5 percent of the revenue from the gas.
EQT lawyers argue that the company invested time and money on leases, betting financially that, eventually, more modern drilling techniques would fuel skyrocketing production in West Virginia’s Marcellus Shale gas fields.
“It was entirely foreseeable that, over time and with investment, mineral extraction technology and related infrastructure would continue to improve, new technologies would develop, and the market for natural gas would grow,” the company maintained in its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Clarksburg.
EQT wants a federal judge to throw out the entire 1982 statute. The company declined to comment on the lawsuit beyond its court filings.
A victory for the company could shift millions of dollars in gas royalties from West Virginia residents and businesses to out-of-state gas producers like EQT, a politically connected company with a board member, Bray Cary, who is a top adviser to Gov. Jim Justice.
So far, the Justice administration is fighting the EQT lawsuit. Lawyers for the state have asked for it to be dismissed, citing the state’s interest in preventing the gas industry from “continuing to capitalize on older, flat-rate leases that provided unforeseen windfall profits in the modern natural gas marketplace.”
Tom Huber, president of the West Virginia Royalty Owners Association, said the company’s lawsuit shows that “EQT’s greed knows no limits.”
“They are determined to suck every bit of gas they can out of our state and pay us next to nothing for it,” Huber said. “EQT wants us to starve so they can please their Wall Street investors.”
---
Linda Stimmell’s natural gas story starts on Sept. 17, 1906, when her grandfather’s grandfather signed a lease that gave the rights to oil and gas under a 150-acre tract of land in Doddridge County to Carnegie Natural Gas.
The company drilled two wells there shortly afterward. A century later, both are still producing, even if just a trickle of gas in today’s market. Equitable Resources, EQT’s former name, took the wells over in 1999, when it acquired Carnegie Natural Gas. The lease lasts forever, or at least as long as the wells are active.
Stimmell inherited part of the gas rights from Bates, her great-great-grandfather on her father’s side, but she’s not sure exactly what her share is, or how many of her distant relatives, all descendants of Bates, are co-owners.
Situations like Stimmell’s aren’t that unusual in West Virginia.
Land ownership is often complex and confusing. Someone might own the surface land, while someone else owns the the coal, oil or gas underneath. Tracts such as natural gas reserves become divided among multiple owners, as land and mineral rights are passed down across generations.
In Stimmell’s case, Bates split his gas and other holdings among his five children. They split what they inherited among their children, and so on. After a couple of generations, what began as a one-half ownership turns into a one-twentieth share.
Stimmell didn’t pay attention to any of this until 1996, when her father died and she inherited part of the Bates mineral holdings. Her dad, George B. Swiger, worked more than 40 years for Hope Gas, as a maintenance man who helped residential customers with gas connections for their stoves, furnaces and hot-water tanks.
“My father retired from Hope Gas, and he always told me, don’t trust the gas companies,” Stimmell said. “I thought nothing about any of this stuff until he passed away.”
Stimmell soon learned. Her checks certainly weren’t making her rich, but her life seemed to become consumed by skirmishes with various gas companies.
Some West Virginians have gotten wealthy from the natural gas boom, the mineral rights under an old family farm turning them into “Marcellus millionaires.”
But Stimmell’s experience is just as common, and it reflects what some state residents who own land or minerals in the state’s gas-producing region go through: One company quibbled with her about the specific location for a gas line she requested to a cabin she kept on the old family property when she moved to Morgantown. Another wanted to wrestle with her over a right-of-way to build its new gas transmission pipeline.
There were periodic requests to amend her family’s leases to allow the gas company to reach more reserves. The industry says these are efforts to “modernize” leases. But those kinds of requests seldom include an offer to increase royalty payments to a more modern rate. Stimmell’s mail became an endless string of paperwork, much of it almost impossible to really understand.
And one thing is certain: As long as EQT holds her lease, and keeps producing even a little gas from it, she can’t work out a deal for some other company to drill a different well into a different gas formation — perhaps the Marcellus — and pay her larger royalties. It’s a common problem for some West Virginians in gas counties. Wells are “held by production,” allowing companies to avoid having to pay the costs to shut down and plug an old well, or just to stave off competition from some other company.
There once was hope for Stimmell, during a mid-2000s lawsuit over natural gas royalties.
Flat-rate leases are “void and unenforceable,” Roane County Circuit Judge Thomas C. Evans III had ruled, citing the legislative findings from the 1982 law.
“To enforce such a contract term under these circumstances would require this court to perpetuate oppression and injustice, in violation of the clear public policy of this state,” Evans ruled in August 2006.
But Evans didn’t offer gas owners like Stimmell any relief — no court order or statewide injunction. West Virginia lawmakers hadn’t provided any remedy, either.
Lawmakers in 1982 applied the law only to future gas wells, those that needed new permits from the state. They were trying to stay within the Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits public officials from interfering with private contracts unless there is a compelling public interest.
Lawyers representing gas owners in royalty cases have never tried to get a court to order higher royalties for pre-1982 wells. They, too, worry that the Contracts Clause would stand in their way.
Meanwhile, the 12.5 percent required by that 1982 law itself is growing outdated. As demand for natural gas increases, gas producers routinely pay as much as 16, 18 or even 20 percent royalties when they negotiate new leases for the right to drill.
---
Years ago, Stimmell was surfing the internet, trying to educate herself about gas leases, and she came across David McMahon, a lawyer and founder of the West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization.
McMahon, in a recent legal brief, cited Stimmell as an example of what might become more commonplace if EQT wins its lawsuit to throw out the 1982 law that requires royalties of 12.5 percent for newly drilled wells.
That law doesn’t help Stimmell, because her wells were drilled before 1982. But McMahon used the numbers from her well to show how paying a 12.5 percent royalty — rather than a flat fee — helps other gas owners with new wells.
If EQT had paid Stimmell and other Bates heirs 12.5 percent — one-eighth is the way the law expresses it — since 1982, McMahon wrote, they would have received $71,000 over that time. Instead, they received $22,000 from their flat-rate lease.
The difference would be far greater in situations in which EQT and other companies have drilled horizontal wells that can access far more gas. A modern well can produce about $7.1 million worth of gas a year and, with a 12.5-percent royalty rate, generate royalties worth more than $887,000 annually, McMahon wrote, citing one example.
If the companies were able to revert to leases paying $300 a year, they would collect “a windfall,” McMahon wrote, “depriving landowners in this state of income vital to their fortunes and families and the state’s economy — a windfall that the state has a legitimate interest in preventing.”
Even paying 12.5 percent is a good deal, he said. “They get to keep the other seven eighths.”
EQT argues in its lawsuit that those old leases “apportioned the risk according to each party’s preference at the time.” Gas owners would receive a reliable payment for gas development, regardless of how much gas was eventually produced. Producing companies would have “the incentive to invest in improving natural gas extraction, production and marketing.”
“Making such investments is exactly what EQT has done,” the EQT lawsuit says. “Over the better part of a century, EQT has invested millions of dollars to improve techniques for extracting natural gas and for infrastructure to develop an integrated market for natural gas.”
EQT says it should be able to “enjoy the returns of such investments,” without state lawmakers interfering with its leases.
During previous major cases over gas royalties, the two trade associations that represent the gas industry filed friend of the court briefs on the company’s side. This time, however, industry groups have stayed out of the case. EQT has said in court documents that flat-rate leases represent “a relatively small percentage of all leases in West Virginia,” but that it believes it holds the greatest number of them.
Some of EQT’s competitors say that getting rid of the flat-rate statute isn’t a priority for them.
“It just didn’t feel like the spirit of what we were trying to do with these legacy leases in West Virginia,” said Al Schopp, a regional senior vice president and spokesman for Antero Resources, the state’s largest gas producer.
Stimmell said she worries about the day when EQT might show up and want to drill a Marcellus well on the Bates lease. If EQT wins its current lawsuit, her six grandchildren would be stuck sharing a $300 per year flat payment — not a percentage cut of the millions of dollars a modern well could generate.
“I’ve always said I’m not against drilling,” Stimmell said. “But I am for the people — the mineral owners and the surface owners — to be paid a fair price.”
The royalty checks Stimmell receives from two “Bates Wells,” named for her great-great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson Bates, amount to just $9 and $3 each quarter.
The lease Bates signed more than a century ago with Carnegie Natural Gas Co. of Pittsburgh allowed legendary industrialist Andrew Carnegie’s company to drill for, produce and sell as much natural gas as Carnegie wanted. In exchange, Bates got a flat fee of $300 a year per well.
Because of that deal, Stimmell and the many other Bates descendants who have since inherited the gas — and that 112-year-old lease — have received tens of thousands of dollars less than they would have if the contract were negotiated today.
“They’ve paid pennies, compared to what they are making,” Stimmell said. “It’s ridiculous.”
It’s not clear how many West Virginians are stuck with old leases that pay residents a fraction of what they might otherwise get. Observers guess it’s in the thousands. But what is clear is that thousands more could find themselves getting far less in royalties, if at least one major gas company gets its way.
That’s because of a recent lawsuit filed by EQT — the state’s second-largest gas producer — that threatens to put far more people in Linda Stimmell’s situation, stuck with tiny monthly payments at a time when the natural gas industry is booming.
The lawsuit, filed in April, challenges a 1982 law that aimed to give gas owners a bigger share of the profits. That law applied to situations where the gas lease was an old flat-fee arrangement and the well was drilled after the law took effect. In order to get a state permit for such wells, gas companies would have to pay the gas owners at least 12.5 percent of the revenue from the gas.
EQT lawyers argue that the company invested time and money on leases, betting financially that, eventually, more modern drilling techniques would fuel skyrocketing production in West Virginia’s Marcellus Shale gas fields.
“It was entirely foreseeable that, over time and with investment, mineral extraction technology and related infrastructure would continue to improve, new technologies would develop, and the market for natural gas would grow,” the company maintained in its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Clarksburg.
EQT wants a federal judge to throw out the entire 1982 statute. The company declined to comment on the lawsuit beyond its court filings.
A victory for the company could shift millions of dollars in gas royalties from West Virginia residents and businesses to out-of-state gas producers like EQT, a politically connected company with a board member, Bray Cary, who is a top adviser to Gov. Jim Justice.
So far, the Justice administration is fighting the EQT lawsuit. Lawyers for the state have asked for it to be dismissed, citing the state’s interest in preventing the gas industry from “continuing to capitalize on older, flat-rate leases that provided unforeseen windfall profits in the modern natural gas marketplace.”
Tom Huber, president of the West Virginia Royalty Owners Association, said the company’s lawsuit shows that “EQT’s greed knows no limits.”
“They are determined to suck every bit of gas they can out of our state and pay us next to nothing for it,” Huber said. “EQT wants us to starve so they can please their Wall Street investors.”
---
Linda Stimmell’s natural gas story starts on Sept. 17, 1906, when her grandfather’s grandfather signed a lease that gave the rights to oil and gas under a 150-acre tract of land in Doddridge County to Carnegie Natural Gas.
The company drilled two wells there shortly afterward. A century later, both are still producing, even if just a trickle of gas in today’s market. Equitable Resources, EQT’s former name, took the wells over in 1999, when it acquired Carnegie Natural Gas. The lease lasts forever, or at least as long as the wells are active.
Stimmell inherited part of the gas rights from Bates, her great-great-grandfather on her father’s side, but she’s not sure exactly what her share is, or how many of her distant relatives, all descendants of Bates, are co-owners.
Situations like Stimmell’s aren’t that unusual in West Virginia.
Land ownership is often complex and confusing. Someone might own the surface land, while someone else owns the the coal, oil or gas underneath. Tracts such as natural gas reserves become divided among multiple owners, as land and mineral rights are passed down across generations.
In Stimmell’s case, Bates split his gas and other holdings among his five children. They split what they inherited among their children, and so on. After a couple of generations, what began as a one-half ownership turns into a one-twentieth share.
Stimmell didn’t pay attention to any of this until 1996, when her father died and she inherited part of the Bates mineral holdings. Her dad, George B. Swiger, worked more than 40 years for Hope Gas, as a maintenance man who helped residential customers with gas connections for their stoves, furnaces and hot-water tanks.
“My father retired from Hope Gas, and he always told me, don’t trust the gas companies,” Stimmell said. “I thought nothing about any of this stuff until he passed away.”
Stimmell soon learned. Her checks certainly weren’t making her rich, but her life seemed to become consumed by skirmishes with various gas companies.
Some West Virginians have gotten wealthy from the natural gas boom, the mineral rights under an old family farm turning them into “Marcellus millionaires.”
But Stimmell’s experience is just as common, and it reflects what some state residents who own land or minerals in the state’s gas-producing region go through: One company quibbled with her about the specific location for a gas line she requested to a cabin she kept on the old family property when she moved to Morgantown. Another wanted to wrestle with her over a right-of-way to build its new gas transmission pipeline.
There were periodic requests to amend her family’s leases to allow the gas company to reach more reserves. The industry says these are efforts to “modernize” leases. But those kinds of requests seldom include an offer to increase royalty payments to a more modern rate. Stimmell’s mail became an endless string of paperwork, much of it almost impossible to really understand.
And one thing is certain: As long as EQT holds her lease, and keeps producing even a little gas from it, she can’t work out a deal for some other company to drill a different well into a different gas formation — perhaps the Marcellus — and pay her larger royalties. It’s a common problem for some West Virginians in gas counties. Wells are “held by production,” allowing companies to avoid having to pay the costs to shut down and plug an old well, or just to stave off competition from some other company.
There once was hope for Stimmell, during a mid-2000s lawsuit over natural gas royalties.
Flat-rate leases are “void and unenforceable,” Roane County Circuit Judge Thomas C. Evans III had ruled, citing the legislative findings from the 1982 law.
“To enforce such a contract term under these circumstances would require this court to perpetuate oppression and injustice, in violation of the clear public policy of this state,” Evans ruled in August 2006.
But Evans didn’t offer gas owners like Stimmell any relief — no court order or statewide injunction. West Virginia lawmakers hadn’t provided any remedy, either.
Lawmakers in 1982 applied the law only to future gas wells, those that needed new permits from the state. They were trying to stay within the Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits public officials from interfering with private contracts unless there is a compelling public interest.
Lawyers representing gas owners in royalty cases have never tried to get a court to order higher royalties for pre-1982 wells. They, too, worry that the Contracts Clause would stand in their way.
Meanwhile, the 12.5 percent required by that 1982 law itself is growing outdated. As demand for natural gas increases, gas producers routinely pay as much as 16, 18 or even 20 percent royalties when they negotiate new leases for the right to drill.
---
Years ago, Stimmell was surfing the internet, trying to educate herself about gas leases, and she came across David McMahon, a lawyer and founder of the West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization.
McMahon, in a recent legal brief, cited Stimmell as an example of what might become more commonplace if EQT wins its lawsuit to throw out the 1982 law that requires royalties of 12.5 percent for newly drilled wells.
That law doesn’t help Stimmell, because her wells were drilled before 1982. But McMahon used the numbers from her well to show how paying a 12.5 percent royalty — rather than a flat fee — helps other gas owners with new wells.
If EQT had paid Stimmell and other Bates heirs 12.5 percent — one-eighth is the way the law expresses it — since 1982, McMahon wrote, they would have received $71,000 over that time. Instead, they received $22,000 from their flat-rate lease.
The difference would be far greater in situations in which EQT and other companies have drilled horizontal wells that can access far more gas. A modern well can produce about $7.1 million worth of gas a year and, with a 12.5-percent royalty rate, generate royalties worth more than $887,000 annually, McMahon wrote, citing one example.
If the companies were able to revert to leases paying $300 a year, they would collect “a windfall,” McMahon wrote, “depriving landowners in this state of income vital to their fortunes and families and the state’s economy — a windfall that the state has a legitimate interest in preventing.”
Even paying 12.5 percent is a good deal, he said. “They get to keep the other seven eighths.”
EQT argues in its lawsuit that those old leases “apportioned the risk according to each party’s preference at the time.” Gas owners would receive a reliable payment for gas development, regardless of how much gas was eventually produced. Producing companies would have “the incentive to invest in improving natural gas extraction, production and marketing.”
“Making such investments is exactly what EQT has done,” the EQT lawsuit says. “Over the better part of a century, EQT has invested millions of dollars to improve techniques for extracting natural gas and for infrastructure to develop an integrated market for natural gas.”
EQT says it should be able to “enjoy the returns of such investments,” without state lawmakers interfering with its leases.
During previous major cases over gas royalties, the two trade associations that represent the gas industry filed friend of the court briefs on the company’s side. This time, however, industry groups have stayed out of the case. EQT has said in court documents that flat-rate leases represent “a relatively small percentage of all leases in West Virginia,” but that it believes it holds the greatest number of them.
Some of EQT’s competitors say that getting rid of the flat-rate statute isn’t a priority for them.
“It just didn’t feel like the spirit of what we were trying to do with these legacy leases in West Virginia,” said Al Schopp, a regional senior vice president and spokesman for Antero Resources, the state’s largest gas producer.
Stimmell said she worries about the day when EQT might show up and want to drill a Marcellus well on the Bates lease. If EQT wins its current lawsuit, her six grandchildren would be stuck sharing a $300 per year flat payment — not a percentage cut of the millions of dollars a modern well could generate.
“I’ve always said I’m not against drilling,” Stimmell said. “But I am for the people — the mineral owners and the surface owners — to be paid a fair price.”
Drilling overwhelms agency protecting America’s lands
Texas Tribune - raw story
13 NOV 2018 AT 06:03 ET
The Bureau of Land Management is making it easier to produce oil and gas on federal acreage. In southeastern New Mexico, it can’t even keep up with what’s already happening.
Wayne Smith was hardened to a certain level of chaos here, on land the American public owns. But even he was incredulous as he surveyed an area he leases for grazing, now cleared of grass and cluttered with above-ground pipelines, a drill pad for multiple wells and other oil and gas infrastructure.
“I still pay a grazing lease right there,” Smith said in May, pointing to a government map showing there should be no more than 17 acres of development on the site instead of the 125 acres he saw in front of him. “Now, what’s my cow going to eat?”
This isn’t what’s supposed to happen on publicly owned land the federal government oversees. The Bureau of Land Management can lease the same property to more than one party at once, but if New Mexico ranchers request it — as Smith did — the agency has instructed its field offices to contact them before such a build-up occurs. Smith said no one notified him. The BLM declined to comment on the matter.
Violations, from oil spills to haphazard land restoration, are becoming more common in this hotbed of oil and gas activity, according to ranchers and conservation groups. One sign of the area’s increasing appeal for drilling: A September federal oil and gas lease sale brought in a record-breaking $972 million. A local BLM official, Jim Stovall, has admitted his team doesn’t have the resources to enforce all the rules on the books, according to people who heard his remarks.
Fixing these problems isn’t the Trump administration’s priority. Instead, it’s working to speed up oil and gas permitting and open tens of thousands of additional acres to drilling here. For years, the industry in New Mexico has had outsize access to local BLM officials — federal employees relying on the private sector for everything from money to expertise. Now, it’s getting assistance from Washington.
“We want to make the BLM a better business partner for the oil and gas industry,” Michael Nedd, then-acting director of the agency, said last year at the Carlsbad Mayor’s Energy Summit.
Conservationists, ranchers and others worry that allowing more drilling without addressing the problems already created by ramped-up production could threaten one of the most biologically diverse deserts in the world and scar the land so it can’t be used for other purposes afterward. As the Trump administration calls for “energy dominance,” some here fear their way of life will become collateral damage.
The conflict is happening against a backdrop of record U.S. production of oil and gas, juiced by demand from international markets that federal rule changes opened up to American firms earlier in the decade. Much of what’s being sent abroad comes from the Permian Basin, a geologic formation in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico that includes about 2 million acres of land and 3 million acres of minerals such as oil and gas managed by the BLM around Carlsbad. In New Mexico, production is occurring ever closer to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, a United Nations World Heritage Site with more than 119 caves and 33,000 acres of desert wilderness, threatening air quality and the habitats of endangered birds.
An industry group that calls its close relationship with regulators an appropriate effort to help the BLM work more effectively says accelerating permitting will bring much-needed jobs and money to the area. Federal and state officials tend to see it the same way. New Mexico is heavily dependent on oil and gas revenue, and the permitting process, some say, has been hijacked by anti-development interests.... (read more)
Wayne Smith was hardened to a certain level of chaos here, on land the American public owns. But even he was incredulous as he surveyed an area he leases for grazing, now cleared of grass and cluttered with above-ground pipelines, a drill pad for multiple wells and other oil and gas infrastructure.
“I still pay a grazing lease right there,” Smith said in May, pointing to a government map showing there should be no more than 17 acres of development on the site instead of the 125 acres he saw in front of him. “Now, what’s my cow going to eat?”
This isn’t what’s supposed to happen on publicly owned land the federal government oversees. The Bureau of Land Management can lease the same property to more than one party at once, but if New Mexico ranchers request it — as Smith did — the agency has instructed its field offices to contact them before such a build-up occurs. Smith said no one notified him. The BLM declined to comment on the matter.
Violations, from oil spills to haphazard land restoration, are becoming more common in this hotbed of oil and gas activity, according to ranchers and conservation groups. One sign of the area’s increasing appeal for drilling: A September federal oil and gas lease sale brought in a record-breaking $972 million. A local BLM official, Jim Stovall, has admitted his team doesn’t have the resources to enforce all the rules on the books, according to people who heard his remarks.
Fixing these problems isn’t the Trump administration’s priority. Instead, it’s working to speed up oil and gas permitting and open tens of thousands of additional acres to drilling here. For years, the industry in New Mexico has had outsize access to local BLM officials — federal employees relying on the private sector for everything from money to expertise. Now, it’s getting assistance from Washington.
“We want to make the BLM a better business partner for the oil and gas industry,” Michael Nedd, then-acting director of the agency, said last year at the Carlsbad Mayor’s Energy Summit.
Conservationists, ranchers and others worry that allowing more drilling without addressing the problems already created by ramped-up production could threaten one of the most biologically diverse deserts in the world and scar the land so it can’t be used for other purposes afterward. As the Trump administration calls for “energy dominance,” some here fear their way of life will become collateral damage.
The conflict is happening against a backdrop of record U.S. production of oil and gas, juiced by demand from international markets that federal rule changes opened up to American firms earlier in the decade. Much of what’s being sent abroad comes from the Permian Basin, a geologic formation in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico that includes about 2 million acres of land and 3 million acres of minerals such as oil and gas managed by the BLM around Carlsbad. In New Mexico, production is occurring ever closer to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, a United Nations World Heritage Site with more than 119 caves and 33,000 acres of desert wilderness, threatening air quality and the habitats of endangered birds.
An industry group that calls its close relationship with regulators an appropriate effort to help the BLM work more effectively says accelerating permitting will bring much-needed jobs and money to the area. Federal and state officials tend to see it the same way. New Mexico is heavily dependent on oil and gas revenue, and the permitting process, some say, has been hijacked by anti-development interests.... (read more)
paying for their pollution!!!
Voters in three US states reject initiatives to curb fossil fuel use
Reuters - raw story
07 NOV 2018 AT 16:29 ET
Voters in Colorado, Arizona and Washington states rejected ballot initiatives that sought to curb fossil fuels use by restricting drilling, putting a fee on carbon emissions and mandating wider use of renewable energy.
The results were a setback for green activists, but a win for the energy industry and the Trump administration, which has sought to unfetter oil, gas, and coal production by rolling back environmental protections.
The outcomes showed “voters reject policies that would make energy more expensive,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of free market advocacy group American Energy Alliance.
While polls had indicated rising concerns among Americans over carbon emissions and water quality, the measures on the ballot in the three states to rein in fossil fuels industries were soundly rejected on U.S. Election Day on Tuesday.
In Colorado, an initiative to limit new drilling near populated or vulnerable areas, which would have heavily curtailed the industry, received 43 percent of the vote, less than the majority required to pass.
The Washington state measure, meanwhile, which would have imposed the nation’s first fee on carbon emissions – mostly at the expense of the state’s oil refiners – garnered only 44 percent of the vote.
Groups defending the oil industry spent a combined $66 million to defeat the Colorado and Washington measures, with much of the contributions coming from large energy companies – including BP Plc and Marathon Oil Corp unit Andeavor.
Environmental groups blamed the defeat of the Washington state carbon fee on the hefty spending by opponents.
“Big oil spent unprecedented amounts of money to tell big lies,” Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said at an event on Wednesday to discuss the election.
Washington state’s measure was supported by millions of dollars in contributions from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and an alliance of other billionaires and environmental groups.
Ted Halstead, head of the Climate Leadership Council, an industry-backed group proposing a nationwide carbon tax, said the defeat of the Washington state carbon fee “highlights the need for a popular and politically viable approach to carbon pricing at the federal level.” A tax or fee is intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
In Arizona, voters defeated a proposal backed by billionaire activist Thomas Steyer that would have required electricity providers to use renewable energy for half of their needs by 2030, up from the current 15 percent.
The measure was opposed by Arizona Public Service Co [AZD.UL], the state’s largest utility, which argued it would be forced to shut coal and nuclear plants, and pass along those costs to customers.
A similar measure backed by Steyer in Nevada passed.
On Wednesday Steyer said the failure in Arizona was due to the way the measure was described on the ballot, implying the change could drive up costs for consumers and which had been written by the state’s Republican attorney general.
“What we saw in terms of the ballot initiatives is that Americans in purple states support clean energy overwhelmingly as long as you are allowed to talk honestly about it,” Steyer said, referring to states where the Democratic and Republican parties have similar levels of support.
DRILLER SHARES JUMP
Shares in oil producers operating in Colorado rallied on Wednesday after the state’s proposed drilling restrictions failed. Anadarko Petroleum Corp gained 6 percent and Noble Energy Inc jumped 5 percent.
“We think the wide margin of victory matters and that it will serve as a deterrent to those who might otherwise decide to fund another round of opposition to the industry in the next election cycle,” Capital One Advisors wrote in a Wednesday note about the Colorado measure.
Colorado’s proposal would have required new oil wells to be at least 2,500 feet (762 m), five times the current minimum separation, from occupied or sensitive areas, effectively placing much of the state off-limits to new drilling.
“We are going to keep fighting,” Russell Mendell, of anti-fracking group Colorado Rising, which backed the measure, said on Wednesday.
But opponents, including Colorado municipal officials, warned that the measure would have cost the state’s economy billions of dollars, and would have reduced funding for roads, schools and public safety.
The results were a setback for green activists, but a win for the energy industry and the Trump administration, which has sought to unfetter oil, gas, and coal production by rolling back environmental protections.
The outcomes showed “voters reject policies that would make energy more expensive,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of free market advocacy group American Energy Alliance.
While polls had indicated rising concerns among Americans over carbon emissions and water quality, the measures on the ballot in the three states to rein in fossil fuels industries were soundly rejected on U.S. Election Day on Tuesday.
In Colorado, an initiative to limit new drilling near populated or vulnerable areas, which would have heavily curtailed the industry, received 43 percent of the vote, less than the majority required to pass.
The Washington state measure, meanwhile, which would have imposed the nation’s first fee on carbon emissions – mostly at the expense of the state’s oil refiners – garnered only 44 percent of the vote.
Groups defending the oil industry spent a combined $66 million to defeat the Colorado and Washington measures, with much of the contributions coming from large energy companies – including BP Plc and Marathon Oil Corp unit Andeavor.
Environmental groups blamed the defeat of the Washington state carbon fee on the hefty spending by opponents.
“Big oil spent unprecedented amounts of money to tell big lies,” Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said at an event on Wednesday to discuss the election.
Washington state’s measure was supported by millions of dollars in contributions from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and an alliance of other billionaires and environmental groups.
Ted Halstead, head of the Climate Leadership Council, an industry-backed group proposing a nationwide carbon tax, said the defeat of the Washington state carbon fee “highlights the need for a popular and politically viable approach to carbon pricing at the federal level.” A tax or fee is intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
In Arizona, voters defeated a proposal backed by billionaire activist Thomas Steyer that would have required electricity providers to use renewable energy for half of their needs by 2030, up from the current 15 percent.
The measure was opposed by Arizona Public Service Co [AZD.UL], the state’s largest utility, which argued it would be forced to shut coal and nuclear plants, and pass along those costs to customers.
A similar measure backed by Steyer in Nevada passed.
On Wednesday Steyer said the failure in Arizona was due to the way the measure was described on the ballot, implying the change could drive up costs for consumers and which had been written by the state’s Republican attorney general.
“What we saw in terms of the ballot initiatives is that Americans in purple states support clean energy overwhelmingly as long as you are allowed to talk honestly about it,” Steyer said, referring to states where the Democratic and Republican parties have similar levels of support.
DRILLER SHARES JUMP
Shares in oil producers operating in Colorado rallied on Wednesday after the state’s proposed drilling restrictions failed. Anadarko Petroleum Corp gained 6 percent and Noble Energy Inc jumped 5 percent.
“We think the wide margin of victory matters and that it will serve as a deterrent to those who might otherwise decide to fund another round of opposition to the industry in the next election cycle,” Capital One Advisors wrote in a Wednesday note about the Colorado measure.
Colorado’s proposal would have required new oil wells to be at least 2,500 feet (762 m), five times the current minimum separation, from occupied or sensitive areas, effectively placing much of the state off-limits to new drilling.
“We are going to keep fighting,” Russell Mendell, of anti-fracking group Colorado Rising, which backed the measure, said on Wednesday.
But opponents, including Colorado municipal officials, warned that the measure would have cost the state’s economy billions of dollars, and would have reduced funding for roads, schools and public safety.
New York sues Exxon for misleading investors on climate change risk
Reuters - raw story
24 OCT 2018 AT 14:00 ET
New York’s attorney general sued Exxon Mobil Corp, alleging that the energy company misled investors about the risks of climate change regulations on its business.
“The company claimed to be factoring the risk of increasing climate change regulation into its business decisions,” Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a statement. “Yet as our investigation found, Exxon often did no such thing.”
Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The company claimed to be factoring the risk of increasing climate change regulation into its business decisions,” Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a statement. “Yet as our investigation found, Exxon often did no such thing.”
Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Another West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Declines to Step Aside in Another Natural Gas Case
A lawyer who represented new Supreme Court Justice Evan Jenkins is on the legal team representing the natural gas giant Antero. The opposing side asked Jenkins to recuse himself, but he said no.
by Ken Ward Jr., The Charleston Gazette-Mail - pro publica
Oct. 10, 5 a.m. EDT
In another recusal controversy involving the West Virginia Supreme Court and the natural gas industry, a newly appointed justice declined to step aside from hearing a case on Tuesday, despite the fact that he was personally represented by a lawyer now representing a company involved in the proceeding.
Former U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins hired Huntington lawyer Ancil Ramey, a former court clerk who often appears before the justices, to appear on his behalf last month when two lawyers tried to block Jenkins’ appointment to the court by arguing that he didn’t meet state constitutional requirements for the post.
Ramey won that case, and Jenkins was sworn in on Oct. 1.
Tuesday was the first day Jenkins was scheduled to hear oral arguments, and the second case on the docket was a major lawsuit filed by a group of Harrison County residents against Antero, West Virginia’s largest natural gas producer, alleging that the company is making life in their community unbearable.
Among the attorneys representing Antero: Ancil Ramey.
On Tuesday, Jenkins turned down a motion filed by the residents asking him to disqualify himself from the Antero case because of Ramey’s involvement in ensuring Jenkins got his seat on the Supreme Court.
In a one-page memo made public just before court was to begin for the day, Jenkins said he “had no prior relationship” with Ramey, “the representation was brief, and it has terminated.”
“Therefore, I find no reasonable grounds requiring my recusal,” Jenkins wrote.
The court has faced several recusal controversies in recent years.
Just weeks after taking office in 2017, Justice Beth Walker voted to rehear and then to overturn a previous ruling over how lease payments from gas producers to gas owners are calculated. Walker denied a motion to disqualify herself based on her husband’s stock holdings in energy industry companies. She said her husband had sold the shares before the case was argued.
Years earlier, then-Justice Brent Benjamin refused to recuse himself from hearing an appeal involving Massey Energy Co., even though its CEO at the time, Don Blankenship, had spent $3 million on a campaign against Benjamin’s opponent in the 2004 election. That case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2009 that Benjamin should have stepped aside. Walker defeated Benjamin in the 2016 election.
The Jenkins controversy also comes as West Virginia’s Supreme Court faces a continuing crisis over spending — including allegedly using state cars for private trips and lavish office renovations that included a $32,000 couch — that has touched all five justices.
One justice, currently suspended, is on trial in federal court, contesting criminal charges that include fraud and obstruction; another justice resigned and then pleaded guilty to wire fraud; and a third retired after being impeached, but alleged the House GOP leadership was trying to take over another branch of government. A fourth was publicly reprimanded by the state Senate after an impeachment trial, but denied wrongdoing and avoided the more serious punishment of removal from office. The fifth faces an impeachment trial this fall, and has vowed to fight removal from office.
Jenkins was appointed to fill the seat of Robin Davis, the justice who retired after being impeached.
Attorneys for several Harrison County residents filed a motion last week urging Jenkins to not take part in the Antero matter.
“Justice Jenkins presiding over a case wherein his attorney is representing the respondents Antero raises reasonable questions about impartiality and has an appearance of impropriety which requires Justice Jenkins disqualify himself from this matter,” said the motion from Anthony Majestro, lawyer for the residents.
In a response filing on behalf of Antero, Ramey said that disqualification of Jenkins was not necessary, because Ramey’s representation of him had ended before Jenkins officially joined the court. The response also said that while Ramey helped write Antero’s briefs in the natural gas case, he was not the lead lawyer and would not be taking part in the oral arguments.
In the case, residents in the Cherry Camp area of Harrison County are appealing a lower court decision that threw out their lawsuit against Antero. The residents sued over a variety of natural gas production activities they argue create a nuisance, including unbearable traffic, “constant dust” that hangs in the air and settles on homes and vehicles, disruptive heavy equipment noise, and bright lights that shine into their homes day and night.
Antero attorneys say the company has only done what was reasonably necessary under its leases to extract gas, and that those operations don’t interfere with the residents’ use of their property. Antero lawyers said a panel of lower court judges was right when it threw out the case.
Hundreds of similar cases are pending in West Virginia courts, and the eventual ruling in the matter before the Supreme Court will likely set a precedent.
The issues raised in the cases are of growing concern in West Virginia, as the state’s natural gas industry continues to boom.
While Jenkins didn’t recuse himself, another new justice, Tim Armstead, did. It was not clear why Armstead recused himself from the Antero case, although, previously, Armstead, a former state House of Delegates speaker, worked as an attorney for a different natural gas company. Armstead was appointed to the court by Gov. Jim Justice at the same time as the governor appointed Jenkins.
No party filed a motion asking Armstead to disqualify himself, a court spokeswoman said. Armstead offered no explanation in a one-sentence memo to the court clerk.
His disqualification came just moments before the case was to be argued, so there was no time to find a replacement judge, a process that is allowed in West Virginia on a case-by-case basis. The residents asked that the argument be rescheduled for a later date, and the court agreed.
The seats held by Jenkins and Armstead are on the ballot in West Virginia’s general election next month. Both men are running.
Former U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins hired Huntington lawyer Ancil Ramey, a former court clerk who often appears before the justices, to appear on his behalf last month when two lawyers tried to block Jenkins’ appointment to the court by arguing that he didn’t meet state constitutional requirements for the post.
Ramey won that case, and Jenkins was sworn in on Oct. 1.
Tuesday was the first day Jenkins was scheduled to hear oral arguments, and the second case on the docket was a major lawsuit filed by a group of Harrison County residents against Antero, West Virginia’s largest natural gas producer, alleging that the company is making life in their community unbearable.
Among the attorneys representing Antero: Ancil Ramey.
On Tuesday, Jenkins turned down a motion filed by the residents asking him to disqualify himself from the Antero case because of Ramey’s involvement in ensuring Jenkins got his seat on the Supreme Court.
In a one-page memo made public just before court was to begin for the day, Jenkins said he “had no prior relationship” with Ramey, “the representation was brief, and it has terminated.”
“Therefore, I find no reasonable grounds requiring my recusal,” Jenkins wrote.
The court has faced several recusal controversies in recent years.
Just weeks after taking office in 2017, Justice Beth Walker voted to rehear and then to overturn a previous ruling over how lease payments from gas producers to gas owners are calculated. Walker denied a motion to disqualify herself based on her husband’s stock holdings in energy industry companies. She said her husband had sold the shares before the case was argued.
Years earlier, then-Justice Brent Benjamin refused to recuse himself from hearing an appeal involving Massey Energy Co., even though its CEO at the time, Don Blankenship, had spent $3 million on a campaign against Benjamin’s opponent in the 2004 election. That case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2009 that Benjamin should have stepped aside. Walker defeated Benjamin in the 2016 election.
The Jenkins controversy also comes as West Virginia’s Supreme Court faces a continuing crisis over spending — including allegedly using state cars for private trips and lavish office renovations that included a $32,000 couch — that has touched all five justices.
One justice, currently suspended, is on trial in federal court, contesting criminal charges that include fraud and obstruction; another justice resigned and then pleaded guilty to wire fraud; and a third retired after being impeached, but alleged the House GOP leadership was trying to take over another branch of government. A fourth was publicly reprimanded by the state Senate after an impeachment trial, but denied wrongdoing and avoided the more serious punishment of removal from office. The fifth faces an impeachment trial this fall, and has vowed to fight removal from office.
Jenkins was appointed to fill the seat of Robin Davis, the justice who retired after being impeached.
Attorneys for several Harrison County residents filed a motion last week urging Jenkins to not take part in the Antero matter.
“Justice Jenkins presiding over a case wherein his attorney is representing the respondents Antero raises reasonable questions about impartiality and has an appearance of impropriety which requires Justice Jenkins disqualify himself from this matter,” said the motion from Anthony Majestro, lawyer for the residents.
In a response filing on behalf of Antero, Ramey said that disqualification of Jenkins was not necessary, because Ramey’s representation of him had ended before Jenkins officially joined the court. The response also said that while Ramey helped write Antero’s briefs in the natural gas case, he was not the lead lawyer and would not be taking part in the oral arguments.
In the case, residents in the Cherry Camp area of Harrison County are appealing a lower court decision that threw out their lawsuit against Antero. The residents sued over a variety of natural gas production activities they argue create a nuisance, including unbearable traffic, “constant dust” that hangs in the air and settles on homes and vehicles, disruptive heavy equipment noise, and bright lights that shine into their homes day and night.
Antero attorneys say the company has only done what was reasonably necessary under its leases to extract gas, and that those operations don’t interfere with the residents’ use of their property. Antero lawyers said a panel of lower court judges was right when it threw out the case.
Hundreds of similar cases are pending in West Virginia courts, and the eventual ruling in the matter before the Supreme Court will likely set a precedent.
The issues raised in the cases are of growing concern in West Virginia, as the state’s natural gas industry continues to boom.
While Jenkins didn’t recuse himself, another new justice, Tim Armstead, did. It was not clear why Armstead recused himself from the Antero case, although, previously, Armstead, a former state House of Delegates speaker, worked as an attorney for a different natural gas company. Armstead was appointed to the court by Gov. Jim Justice at the same time as the governor appointed Jenkins.
No party filed a motion asking Armstead to disqualify himself, a court spokeswoman said. Armstead offered no explanation in a one-sentence memo to the court clerk.
His disqualification came just moments before the case was to be argued, so there was no time to find a replacement judge, a process that is allowed in West Virginia on a case-by-case basis. The residents asked that the argument be rescheduled for a later date, and the court agreed.
The seats held by Jenkins and Armstead are on the ballot in West Virginia’s general election next month. Both men are running.
Energy Board Rushes Giant Alaska Project
Plan Calls for a New 800-Mile Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, Focuses on Shipping Liquefied Natural Gas to Asia
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
10/5/18
Federal energy regulators plan to rush through environmental reviews for a $45 billion liquified natural gas project in Alaska that would sell gas to Asian utilities and could help worsen climate change.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission plans to issue an environmental impact statement for the proposed 825-mile pipeline a month early, in November 2019. A decision on building the pipeline could be made in February 2020. By then, the commission is likely to have a three-person Republican majority. Trump has nominated long-time fossil fuel supporter Bernard McNamee to the five-person board.
“It’s incredibly reckless for Trump to try to fast-track the biggest natural gas project in U.S. history,” said Kristen Monsell, senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “A proper review would show this risky venture endangers Alaska’s wildlife and deepens our dependence on dirty fossil fuels.”
Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen told senators in September that exporting natural gas to China will fuel their country’s manufacturing industry at the expense of the U.S.
Our country is one of the biggest exporters of liquified natural gas, which is cooled to -260° Fahrenheit, to make it easier to ship and store. The U.S. exported $3.3 billion in liquified natural gas in 2017.
In April, more than a dozen federal agencies agreed to slash the time needed for environmental reviews and permitting on major infrastructure projects such as the pipeline. In August, FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre signed an agreement with the administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to speed up approving liquified natural gas transportation facilities.
The same day that the agreement was signed FERC announced revised review schedules for a dozen LNG projects including the Alaska pipeline. Other projects that would be speeded up included ones in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
“LNG export terminals are extremely complicated and dangerous facilities with wide-ranging harmful environmental impacts,”
said Moneen Nasmith, an attorney with Earthjustice. “It is irresponsible to arbitrarily expedite the review of these proposals.”
Republican senators, including Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who have received $4.7 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry have pushed FERC to approve liquified natural gas projects quicker.
Howard “Skip” Elliott, a former railroad executive with no previous pipeline experience, heads the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Alaska is working with three major China-owned institutions – oil company Sinopec, China Investment Corp., and Bank of China – that could invest in the project. Other potential gas buyers include PetroVietnam and Tokyo Gas.
Alaska’s major oil companies and the state originally developed the liquified natural gas project, but those companies dropped it because of low natural gas prices and an oversupply of liquified natural gas.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission plans to issue an environmental impact statement for the proposed 825-mile pipeline a month early, in November 2019. A decision on building the pipeline could be made in February 2020. By then, the commission is likely to have a three-person Republican majority. Trump has nominated long-time fossil fuel supporter Bernard McNamee to the five-person board.
“It’s incredibly reckless for Trump to try to fast-track the biggest natural gas project in U.S. history,” said Kristen Monsell, senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “A proper review would show this risky venture endangers Alaska’s wildlife and deepens our dependence on dirty fossil fuels.”
Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen told senators in September that exporting natural gas to China will fuel their country’s manufacturing industry at the expense of the U.S.
Our country is one of the biggest exporters of liquified natural gas, which is cooled to -260° Fahrenheit, to make it easier to ship and store. The U.S. exported $3.3 billion in liquified natural gas in 2017.
In April, more than a dozen federal agencies agreed to slash the time needed for environmental reviews and permitting on major infrastructure projects such as the pipeline. In August, FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre signed an agreement with the administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to speed up approving liquified natural gas transportation facilities.
The same day that the agreement was signed FERC announced revised review schedules for a dozen LNG projects including the Alaska pipeline. Other projects that would be speeded up included ones in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
“LNG export terminals are extremely complicated and dangerous facilities with wide-ranging harmful environmental impacts,”
said Moneen Nasmith, an attorney with Earthjustice. “It is irresponsible to arbitrarily expedite the review of these proposals.”
Republican senators, including Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who have received $4.7 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry have pushed FERC to approve liquified natural gas projects quicker.
Howard “Skip” Elliott, a former railroad executive with no previous pipeline experience, heads the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Alaska is working with three major China-owned institutions – oil company Sinopec, China Investment Corp., and Bank of China – that could invest in the project. Other potential gas buyers include PetroVietnam and Tokyo Gas.
Alaska’s major oil companies and the state originally developed the liquified natural gas project, but those companies dropped it because of low natural gas prices and an oversupply of liquified natural gas.
Another Court Ruling Against a West Virginia Pipeline, Then Another Effort to Change the Rules
A federal appeals court has revoked a key approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Now, state regulators are working to change the rules — again — so it can proceed.
by Ken Ward Jr. and Kate Mishkin, The Charleston Gazette-Mail - pro piblica
Oct. 4, 5 a.m. EDT
Time and again, opponents have tried to delay a natural gas pipeline that would stretch from Northern West Virginia to Southern Virginia, using lawsuits to stall permit approvals or construction.
And time and again, state and federal regulators have stepped in to remove such hurdles, even if it has meant rewriting their own rules.
Now, the process looks to be repeating itself.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court blocked a key permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 300-mile natural gas project that’s known as MVP. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wrongly approved a permit that allowed MVP to temporarily dam four of West Virginia’s rivers so the pipeline can be buried beneath the streambeds.
But rather than pausing or rethinking the project, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has already been rewriting the state construction standards for pipeline river crossings that prompted the appeals court to block the plan.
Once that happens, MVP will apply for a new Clean Water Act permit, which it expects to secure in early 2019, said Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for the pipeline’s developers. Developers still expect the pipeline to be in service by the fourth quarter of 2019, she said.
“MVP is committed to the safety of its communities, to the preservation and protection of the environment, and to the continued responsible construction of this important natural gas infrastructure project that will serve homes and business in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast United States,” Cox said in a statement.
The ruling against the pipeline and the effort to change the rules mirrors a review by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, in collaboration with ProPublica, which found that, over the past two years, federal and state agencies tasked with enforcing the nation’s environmental laws have moved repeatedly to clear roadblocks and expedite the pipeline, even changing the rules at times to ease the project’s approvals.
The stakes are high for West Virginia’s natural gas industry, which is booming and needs pipelines to move its product to East Coast and Southern cities. The issues also loom large for state residents who worry that West Virginia’s drive to encourage natural gas growth poses threats to the environment and their communities.
Last month, MVP developers said the cost of the project had risen from $3.7 billion to $4.6 billion, and they blamed about half of that increase on litigation-related delays.
Projects like MVP require a variety of permits before they can be built. Developers and regulators are supposed to study alternatives, articulate a clear need for the project and outline steps to minimize damage to the environment. In numerous instances, though, officials have allowed the pipeline to go ahead despite serious unanswered questions, the Gazette-Mail and ProPublica found after examining government documents and court records.
Tuesday’s ruling by the 4th Circuit focused on one such move by regulators, a change in guidelines for river crossings needed for four significant West Virginia rivers: Elk, Greenbrier, Meadow and Gauley.
The river crossings involve each river being dammed and excavated — sometimes with blasting — so that the 42-inch-diameter pipeline can be buried beneath the streambed.
This work requires a Clean Water Act “dredge-and-fill” permit from the Corps of Engineers. If the construction isn’t handled properly, sediment can increase in the water, oxygen can decrease and aquatic habitat can be harmed.
Because of those concerns, state officials put in place a 72-hour limit for completing these kinds of stream crossings when they approved the use of a streamlined Corps review process that MVP used.
MVP developers said each stream crossing would take four to six weeks to complete. Nonetheless, despite the 72-hour limit set by the state, the Corps approved the pipeline permit anyway, using the streamlined process that saved the developers time, money and scrutiny.
The Sierra Club, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and other groups sued and, in June, the 4th Circuit issued a stay of the Corps-approved permit. The stay prompted a late-night news release from Gov. Jim Justice, who said his Department of Environmental Protection would “continue to monitor these proceedings closely to determine what role the state may play in expediting the construction of this pipeline.”
Then, in July, the Corps rewrote its approval of the pipeline to essentially waive the 72-hour limit imposed by the DEP on the river crossing construction. Agency lawyers said the alternative of digging a trench for the pipeline, without diverting water flow, would cause more environmental damage. Citizen groups said the agencies could instead push for MVP to use a more conventional method to bore under the rivers, perhaps reducing the effects.
Last Friday, a three-judge panel of the appeals court heard arguments in the case, and then, on Tuesday, issued a ruling. The unanimous panel said its reasons would be “more fully explained” in a forthcoming opinion, but in a three-page orderoffered some clues as to its thinking.
The order said the Corps “lacked authority to substitute” one construction method for the 72-hour restriction issued by the DEP. But the DEP is pushing to exempt the stream-crossing method proposed by Mountain Valley Pipeline developers from its 72-hour limit, essentially changing the conditions it had earlier attached to the Clean Water Act permit. The agency is now reviewing public comments submitted by a mid-September deadline.
Kelly Martin, director of the Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign at the Sierra Club, which opposes the pipeline, urged the DEP not to follow through on those changes.
“This isn’t a goal-post-moving moment,” Martin said. “[The] DEP needs to end this game and do its job. Full stop.”
MVP developers submitted a letter in support of the changes. The West Virginia Rivers Coalition opposed the changes, and Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a nonprofit law firm that represents citizen groups, argued that the DEP’s move is illegal.
DEP spokesman Jake Glance said that, although his agency is not a party to the lawsuit before the appeals court, it is “evaluating the ruling and will review the court’s opinion when it is released and respond accordingly.”
Corps spokesman Brian Maka declined to comment until the full 4th Circuit opinion is released.
As the court case has played out, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been acting to keep MVP construction moving.
On July 27, a panel of judges on the 4th Circuit vacated two construction permits, from the federal Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, saying Americans “deserve more than silent acquiescence to a pipeline company’s justification for upending large swaths of national forestlands.” Environmental groups considered the decision a victory, and the FERC ordered construction to stop.
The next week, MVP developers asked for and received permission from the FERC to continue work on the first 77 miles in Northern West Virginia, with the exception of a 7-mile stretch near the Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike Trail.
By the end of August, the FERC had granted MVP permission to work on the rest of the pipeline, except for near the Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike and Jefferson National Forest, over the objections of FERC Commissioners Cheryl LaFleur and Richard Glick.
“We have significant concerns with today’s decision to allow construction to resume while required right-of-way and temporary use permits remain outstanding,” Glick and LaFleur wrote in a joint statement Aug. 29.
And time and again, state and federal regulators have stepped in to remove such hurdles, even if it has meant rewriting their own rules.
Now, the process looks to be repeating itself.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court blocked a key permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 300-mile natural gas project that’s known as MVP. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wrongly approved a permit that allowed MVP to temporarily dam four of West Virginia’s rivers so the pipeline can be buried beneath the streambeds.
But rather than pausing or rethinking the project, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has already been rewriting the state construction standards for pipeline river crossings that prompted the appeals court to block the plan.
Once that happens, MVP will apply for a new Clean Water Act permit, which it expects to secure in early 2019, said Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for the pipeline’s developers. Developers still expect the pipeline to be in service by the fourth quarter of 2019, she said.
“MVP is committed to the safety of its communities, to the preservation and protection of the environment, and to the continued responsible construction of this important natural gas infrastructure project that will serve homes and business in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast United States,” Cox said in a statement.
The ruling against the pipeline and the effort to change the rules mirrors a review by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, in collaboration with ProPublica, which found that, over the past two years, federal and state agencies tasked with enforcing the nation’s environmental laws have moved repeatedly to clear roadblocks and expedite the pipeline, even changing the rules at times to ease the project’s approvals.
The stakes are high for West Virginia’s natural gas industry, which is booming and needs pipelines to move its product to East Coast and Southern cities. The issues also loom large for state residents who worry that West Virginia’s drive to encourage natural gas growth poses threats to the environment and their communities.
Last month, MVP developers said the cost of the project had risen from $3.7 billion to $4.6 billion, and they blamed about half of that increase on litigation-related delays.
Projects like MVP require a variety of permits before they can be built. Developers and regulators are supposed to study alternatives, articulate a clear need for the project and outline steps to minimize damage to the environment. In numerous instances, though, officials have allowed the pipeline to go ahead despite serious unanswered questions, the Gazette-Mail and ProPublica found after examining government documents and court records.
Tuesday’s ruling by the 4th Circuit focused on one such move by regulators, a change in guidelines for river crossings needed for four significant West Virginia rivers: Elk, Greenbrier, Meadow and Gauley.
The river crossings involve each river being dammed and excavated — sometimes with blasting — so that the 42-inch-diameter pipeline can be buried beneath the streambed.
This work requires a Clean Water Act “dredge-and-fill” permit from the Corps of Engineers. If the construction isn’t handled properly, sediment can increase in the water, oxygen can decrease and aquatic habitat can be harmed.
Because of those concerns, state officials put in place a 72-hour limit for completing these kinds of stream crossings when they approved the use of a streamlined Corps review process that MVP used.
MVP developers said each stream crossing would take four to six weeks to complete. Nonetheless, despite the 72-hour limit set by the state, the Corps approved the pipeline permit anyway, using the streamlined process that saved the developers time, money and scrutiny.
The Sierra Club, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and other groups sued and, in June, the 4th Circuit issued a stay of the Corps-approved permit. The stay prompted a late-night news release from Gov. Jim Justice, who said his Department of Environmental Protection would “continue to monitor these proceedings closely to determine what role the state may play in expediting the construction of this pipeline.”
Then, in July, the Corps rewrote its approval of the pipeline to essentially waive the 72-hour limit imposed by the DEP on the river crossing construction. Agency lawyers said the alternative of digging a trench for the pipeline, without diverting water flow, would cause more environmental damage. Citizen groups said the agencies could instead push for MVP to use a more conventional method to bore under the rivers, perhaps reducing the effects.
Last Friday, a three-judge panel of the appeals court heard arguments in the case, and then, on Tuesday, issued a ruling. The unanimous panel said its reasons would be “more fully explained” in a forthcoming opinion, but in a three-page orderoffered some clues as to its thinking.
The order said the Corps “lacked authority to substitute” one construction method for the 72-hour restriction issued by the DEP. But the DEP is pushing to exempt the stream-crossing method proposed by Mountain Valley Pipeline developers from its 72-hour limit, essentially changing the conditions it had earlier attached to the Clean Water Act permit. The agency is now reviewing public comments submitted by a mid-September deadline.
Kelly Martin, director of the Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign at the Sierra Club, which opposes the pipeline, urged the DEP not to follow through on those changes.
“This isn’t a goal-post-moving moment,” Martin said. “[The] DEP needs to end this game and do its job. Full stop.”
MVP developers submitted a letter in support of the changes. The West Virginia Rivers Coalition opposed the changes, and Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a nonprofit law firm that represents citizen groups, argued that the DEP’s move is illegal.
DEP spokesman Jake Glance said that, although his agency is not a party to the lawsuit before the appeals court, it is “evaluating the ruling and will review the court’s opinion when it is released and respond accordingly.”
Corps spokesman Brian Maka declined to comment until the full 4th Circuit opinion is released.
As the court case has played out, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been acting to keep MVP construction moving.
On July 27, a panel of judges on the 4th Circuit vacated two construction permits, from the federal Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, saying Americans “deserve more than silent acquiescence to a pipeline company’s justification for upending large swaths of national forestlands.” Environmental groups considered the decision a victory, and the FERC ordered construction to stop.
The next week, MVP developers asked for and received permission from the FERC to continue work on the first 77 miles in Northern West Virginia, with the exception of a 7-mile stretch near the Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike Trail.
By the end of August, the FERC had granted MVP permission to work on the rest of the pipeline, except for near the Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike and Jefferson National Forest, over the objections of FERC Commissioners Cheryl LaFleur and Richard Glick.
“We have significant concerns with today’s decision to allow construction to resume while required right-of-way and temporary use permits remain outstanding,” Glick and LaFleur wrote in a joint statement Aug. 29.
States Allow For-Profit Pipeline Companies to Seize Private Property
BY Mike Ludwig Truthout
PUBLISHED
September 12, 2018
A Bayou Bridge Pipeline construction site in Louisiana's iconic Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp. Energy Transfer Partners agreed to halt construction of the pipeline on a parcel of private property this week after a conservation group filed a lawsuit on behalf of a landowner.
L'EAU EST LA VIE CAMP
According to Misha Mitchell, an attorney for a conservation group in Louisiana’s ecologically sensitive Atchafalaya Basin, Energy Transfer Partners and other private oil interests broke the law when they began building a section of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline on a parcel of private land in the iconic river swamp without permission from the landowners.
Mitchell filed a lawsuit against the pipeline project on behalf of landowner Peter Aaslestad and his family after construction began on their property in late July, but work continued on the property until Monday, when Energy Transfer Partners struck a deal in a local court with the plaintiffs to temporarily halt construction.
The company must now wait until at least November to finish, when a court will decide whether Energy Transfer Partners has the legal right to “expropriate” the property under state law. Workers have already built much of the pipeline easement on the property after clearing trees and grinding them into mulch. The deal is a setback for the company and a victory for environmentalists, but much of the project is already completed.
Aerial photos show unpermitted pipeline construction on Aaslestad’s property as far back as July 23, but the local police did not show up until the media and environmental activists arrived last month. Unlike Energy Transfer Partners, the activists claimed to have written permission from one of Aaslestad’s co-owners to be on the property, but several were arrested on felony charges and dragged off to jail after resorting to civil disobedience to halt construction.
“Everyone should be concerned that certain people get away with things that others can’t,” said Mitchell. “It’s not an equitable system, and there should be serious spotlight on accountability and compliance with the laws of this state.”
As the spoils of fracking and the Trump administration’s pro-drilling agenda increase demand for new fossil fuel infrastructure, private oil companies are seizing private property from landowners to build oil and gas pipelines across the country. In most cases, state regulators and courts have granted private firms like Energy Transfer Partners eminent domain or “expropriation” powers by framing their for-profit pipelines as public benefit.
Activists and landowners are fighting back, and some have been jailed in the process.
Ellen Sue Gerhart, a retired school teacher, grandmother and leading opponent of the Energy Transfer Partners’ Mariner East 2 Pipeline in Pennsylvania, is currently serving a minimum of two months in jail for allegedly baiting a bear onto a pipeline construction site on her rural property — a charge the activist and her family deny.
The Gerhart family challenged construction on their land in court and with protests, but Energy Transfer Partners won the right to build on the property and put the family under heavy surveillance, according to family members and their attorney.
In Louisiana, at least one journalist and 12 Water Protectors have been arrested in the Atchafalaya Basin and charged with felonies under a newly enacted state law that effectively criminalizes civil disobediencearound fossil fuel infrastructure. Activists believe the law specifically targets the direct action campaign against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline.
Last week, police aggressively arrested four activists as they attempted to peacefully block construction on the land co-owned by Aaslestad and other members of his family. The activists claimed to have written permission from property co-owner Theda Wright and her sisters to be there, but Energy Transfer Partners did not. Mitchell said the property has dozens of co-owners besides Wright and Aaslestad, and state law requires the company receive permission from all of them or take them to court in order to proceed with construction.
“I’ve been asked to protect this piece of land and I intend to do it,” said organizer Cherri Foytlin in a statement after her arrest, referring to family members who co-own the land.
Meanwhile, activists marched 100 miles in Iowa last week to bring attention to a major legal challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline, the northern leg of the Energy Transfer Partners oil pipeline that faced sustained Indigenous-led resistance at Standing Rock. The Iowa Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case today, which pits Energy Transfer Partners and the Iowa Utility Board against Iowa farmers and landowners who own property in the pipeline’s path.
The Dakota Access Pipeline would pump oil from vast fracking fields in North Dakota across Midwestern states to Texas and the Gulf Coast. There, it will link up to Bayou Bridge, which bisects much of southern Louisiana and is expected to deliver oil to refineries and export terminals.
In 2016, the Iowa Utilities Board granted a the pipeline a sweeping permit for construction that allows Energy Transfer Partners, a private company, to exercise eminent domain like a public utility company. Under Iowa state law, such powers can only be granted to a private pipeline company if the project if the utilities board determines that the project will “promote public convenience and necessity.”
However, unlike a natural gas pipeline bringing fuel to homes, for example, the Dakota Access Pipeline does not serve Iowans directly. In their lawsuit challenging the permit, landowners and environmental groups argue that the utilities board has failed to show that the pipeline will serve the Iowa residents and the public good, so Energy Transfer Partners should be denied broad powers to seize property under eminent domain.
The Iowa Utilities Board and Energy Transfer Partners claim that Dakota Access meets federal requirements for interstate pipelines and will bring jobs and money into the state to the benefit of Iowa residents. Transporting oil by pipeline is safer than transporting it by rail, they claim, and the pipeline would promote energy independence to keep fuel prices down for Iowa farmers.
In a reply brief on behalf of the landowners, the Iowa Sierra Club points out that gasoline is already readily available to farmers in Iowa without the pipeline in place. Plus, data suggest that pipeline accidents are about as common as rail accidents — a point that was punctuated by a fiery explosion in rural Pennsylvania on Monday, where a natural gas pipeline operated by Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco sent flames shooting 150 feet into the air. At least one home was destroyed and residents were evacuated. Luckily, nobody was hurt, according to StateImpact Pennsylvania.
That pipeline reportedly feeds into the Mariner East 2 Pipeline. In 2017, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled 2-1 that Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco could exercise eminent domain over private property (including Ellen Sue Gerhart’s) to build the pipeline. The court found that the pipeline provides “public benefit” and serves the “public interest.” Much of the liquefied gases it transports from fracking fields in Pennsylvania will be sold outside the state and even overseas.
In Louisiana, pipelines such as Bayou Bridge must be a “common carrier for hire” that serve a “public and necessary purpose” in order to “expropriate” private property for construction. Like other parts of the US, pipeline builders typically offer residents some compensation before taking them to court. Mitchell said the initial offers are often paltry and only those who can afford a lawyer can negotiate a better deal.
“Most folks are unable to challenge [the pipeline] or are nervous to,” Mitchell said. “They are scared because they are going up against giants.”
Legal challenges like the lawsuits against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Iowa typically only progress to higher courts when attorneys with large environmental groups intervene on behalf of landowners. Libertarian and property rights groups have also taken interest in the Iowa case and others, a sign that reforming the system for permitting pipelines could gain public support across ideological boundaries.
“The big picture is that very well-monied interests have sown discord for their own purpose and everyone else is in a big street fight in a ridiculous way, where everyone is being hurt except the big corporations,” said Deborah Sivas, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford University, in an interview with Truthout. “And how do you get people to see that? Maybe this is one of those issues.”
Lawsuits filed by landowners against Bayou Bridge are still winding their way through the courts, and Mitchell said there has yet to be a case challenging the application of state’s “public and necessary purpose” standard for authorizing expropriation of private land for major pipeline construction.
Louisiana is politically dominated by the oil and gas industry, and state regulators have ignored a judge’s order to halt construction of Bayou Bridge after the court ruled that a crucial permit did not contain an evacuation plan for a historic African-American community in the pipeline’s path.
However, for the activists opposed to Bayou Bridge and other pipelines, the fight is not just about private property rights. Pipeline constructions disrupts sensitive ecosystems in areas such as the Atchafalaya Basin and threatens them with leaks and spills. Continued reliance on fossil fuels only pushes us deeper into the throes of climate disruption. Perhaps courts and state regulators will one day recognize that maintaining a healthy planet can also serve the public interest.
Mitchell filed a lawsuit against the pipeline project on behalf of landowner Peter Aaslestad and his family after construction began on their property in late July, but work continued on the property until Monday, when Energy Transfer Partners struck a deal in a local court with the plaintiffs to temporarily halt construction.
The company must now wait until at least November to finish, when a court will decide whether Energy Transfer Partners has the legal right to “expropriate” the property under state law. Workers have already built much of the pipeline easement on the property after clearing trees and grinding them into mulch. The deal is a setback for the company and a victory for environmentalists, but much of the project is already completed.
Aerial photos show unpermitted pipeline construction on Aaslestad’s property as far back as July 23, but the local police did not show up until the media and environmental activists arrived last month. Unlike Energy Transfer Partners, the activists claimed to have written permission from one of Aaslestad’s co-owners to be on the property, but several were arrested on felony charges and dragged off to jail after resorting to civil disobedience to halt construction.
“Everyone should be concerned that certain people get away with things that others can’t,” said Mitchell. “It’s not an equitable system, and there should be serious spotlight on accountability and compliance with the laws of this state.”
As the spoils of fracking and the Trump administration’s pro-drilling agenda increase demand for new fossil fuel infrastructure, private oil companies are seizing private property from landowners to build oil and gas pipelines across the country. In most cases, state regulators and courts have granted private firms like Energy Transfer Partners eminent domain or “expropriation” powers by framing their for-profit pipelines as public benefit.
Activists and landowners are fighting back, and some have been jailed in the process.
Ellen Sue Gerhart, a retired school teacher, grandmother and leading opponent of the Energy Transfer Partners’ Mariner East 2 Pipeline in Pennsylvania, is currently serving a minimum of two months in jail for allegedly baiting a bear onto a pipeline construction site on her rural property — a charge the activist and her family deny.
The Gerhart family challenged construction on their land in court and with protests, but Energy Transfer Partners won the right to build on the property and put the family under heavy surveillance, according to family members and their attorney.
In Louisiana, at least one journalist and 12 Water Protectors have been arrested in the Atchafalaya Basin and charged with felonies under a newly enacted state law that effectively criminalizes civil disobediencearound fossil fuel infrastructure. Activists believe the law specifically targets the direct action campaign against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline.
Last week, police aggressively arrested four activists as they attempted to peacefully block construction on the land co-owned by Aaslestad and other members of his family. The activists claimed to have written permission from property co-owner Theda Wright and her sisters to be there, but Energy Transfer Partners did not. Mitchell said the property has dozens of co-owners besides Wright and Aaslestad, and state law requires the company receive permission from all of them or take them to court in order to proceed with construction.
“I’ve been asked to protect this piece of land and I intend to do it,” said organizer Cherri Foytlin in a statement after her arrest, referring to family members who co-own the land.
Meanwhile, activists marched 100 miles in Iowa last week to bring attention to a major legal challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline, the northern leg of the Energy Transfer Partners oil pipeline that faced sustained Indigenous-led resistance at Standing Rock. The Iowa Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case today, which pits Energy Transfer Partners and the Iowa Utility Board against Iowa farmers and landowners who own property in the pipeline’s path.
The Dakota Access Pipeline would pump oil from vast fracking fields in North Dakota across Midwestern states to Texas and the Gulf Coast. There, it will link up to Bayou Bridge, which bisects much of southern Louisiana and is expected to deliver oil to refineries and export terminals.
In 2016, the Iowa Utilities Board granted a the pipeline a sweeping permit for construction that allows Energy Transfer Partners, a private company, to exercise eminent domain like a public utility company. Under Iowa state law, such powers can only be granted to a private pipeline company if the project if the utilities board determines that the project will “promote public convenience and necessity.”
However, unlike a natural gas pipeline bringing fuel to homes, for example, the Dakota Access Pipeline does not serve Iowans directly. In their lawsuit challenging the permit, landowners and environmental groups argue that the utilities board has failed to show that the pipeline will serve the Iowa residents and the public good, so Energy Transfer Partners should be denied broad powers to seize property under eminent domain.
The Iowa Utilities Board and Energy Transfer Partners claim that Dakota Access meets federal requirements for interstate pipelines and will bring jobs and money into the state to the benefit of Iowa residents. Transporting oil by pipeline is safer than transporting it by rail, they claim, and the pipeline would promote energy independence to keep fuel prices down for Iowa farmers.
In a reply brief on behalf of the landowners, the Iowa Sierra Club points out that gasoline is already readily available to farmers in Iowa without the pipeline in place. Plus, data suggest that pipeline accidents are about as common as rail accidents — a point that was punctuated by a fiery explosion in rural Pennsylvania on Monday, where a natural gas pipeline operated by Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco sent flames shooting 150 feet into the air. At least one home was destroyed and residents were evacuated. Luckily, nobody was hurt, according to StateImpact Pennsylvania.
That pipeline reportedly feeds into the Mariner East 2 Pipeline. In 2017, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled 2-1 that Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco could exercise eminent domain over private property (including Ellen Sue Gerhart’s) to build the pipeline. The court found that the pipeline provides “public benefit” and serves the “public interest.” Much of the liquefied gases it transports from fracking fields in Pennsylvania will be sold outside the state and even overseas.
In Louisiana, pipelines such as Bayou Bridge must be a “common carrier for hire” that serve a “public and necessary purpose” in order to “expropriate” private property for construction. Like other parts of the US, pipeline builders typically offer residents some compensation before taking them to court. Mitchell said the initial offers are often paltry and only those who can afford a lawyer can negotiate a better deal.
“Most folks are unable to challenge [the pipeline] or are nervous to,” Mitchell said. “They are scared because they are going up against giants.”
Legal challenges like the lawsuits against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Iowa typically only progress to higher courts when attorneys with large environmental groups intervene on behalf of landowners. Libertarian and property rights groups have also taken interest in the Iowa case and others, a sign that reforming the system for permitting pipelines could gain public support across ideological boundaries.
“The big picture is that very well-monied interests have sown discord for their own purpose and everyone else is in a big street fight in a ridiculous way, where everyone is being hurt except the big corporations,” said Deborah Sivas, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford University, in an interview with Truthout. “And how do you get people to see that? Maybe this is one of those issues.”
Lawsuits filed by landowners against Bayou Bridge are still winding their way through the courts, and Mitchell said there has yet to be a case challenging the application of state’s “public and necessary purpose” standard for authorizing expropriation of private land for major pipeline construction.
Louisiana is politically dominated by the oil and gas industry, and state regulators have ignored a judge’s order to halt construction of Bayou Bridge after the court ruled that a crucial permit did not contain an evacuation plan for a historic African-American community in the pipeline’s path.
However, for the activists opposed to Bayou Bridge and other pipelines, the fight is not just about private property rights. Pipeline constructions disrupts sensitive ecosystems in areas such as the Atchafalaya Basin and threatens them with leaks and spills. Continued reliance on fossil fuels only pushes us deeper into the throes of climate disruption. Perhaps courts and state regulators will one day recognize that maintaining a healthy planet can also serve the public interest.
government by the stupid and the greedy!!!
US Says Conserving Oil Is No Longer An Economic Imperative
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER | tpm
August 19, 2018 10:01 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the U.S., the Trump administration declares in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for gas-thrifty cars and other conservation programs.
The position was outlined in a memo released last month in support of the administration’s proposal to relax fuel mileage standards. The government released the memo online this month without fanfare.
Growth of natural gas and other alternatives to petroleum has reduced the need for imported oil, which “in turn affects the need of the nation to conserve energy,” the Energy Department said. It also cites the now decade-old fracking revolution that has unlocked U.S. shale oil reserves, giving “the United States more flexibility than in the past to use our oil resources with less concern.”
With the memo, the administration is formally challenging old justifications for conservation — even congressionally prescribed ones, as with the mileage standards. The memo made no mention of climate change. Transportation is the single largest source of climate-changing emissions.
President Donald Trump has questioned the existence of climate change, embraced the notion of “energy dominance” as a national goal, and called for easing what he calls burdensome regulation of oil, gas and coal, including repealing the Obama Clean Power Plan.
Despite the increased oil supplies, the administration continues to believe in the need to “use energy wisely,” the Energy Department said, without elaboration. Department spokesmen did not respond Friday to questions about that statement.
Reaction was quick.
“It’s like saying, ‘I’m a big old fat guy, and food prices have dropped — it’s time to start eating again,'” said Tom Kloza, longtime oil analyst with the Maryland-based Oil Price Information Service.
“If you look at it from the other end, if you do believe that fossil fuels do some sort of damage to the atmosphere … you come up with a different viewpoint,” Kloza said. “There’s a downside to living large.”
Climate change is a “clear and present and increasing danger,” said Sean Donahue, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund.
In a big way, the Energy Department statement just acknowledges the world’s vastly changed reality when it comes to oil.
Just 10 years ago, in summer 2008, oil prices were peaking at $147 a barrel and pummeling the global economy. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was enjoying a massive transfer of wealth, from countries dependent on imported oil. Prices now are about $65.
Today, the U.S. is vying with Russia for the title of top world oil producer. U.S. oil production hit an all-time high this summer, aided by the technological leaps of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
How much the U.S. economy is hooked up to the gas pump, and vice versa, plays into any number of policy considerations, not just economic or environmental ones, but military and geopolitical ones, said John Graham, a former official in the George W. Bush administration, now dean of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.
“Our ability to play that role as a leader in the world is stronger when we are the strongest producer of oil and gas,” Graham said. “But there are still reasons to want to reduce the amount we consume.”
Current administration proposals include one that would freeze mileage standards for cars and light trucks after 2020, instead of continuing to make them tougher.
The proposal eventually would increase U.S. oil consumption by 500,000 barrels a day, the administration says. While Trump officials say the freeze would improve highway safety, documents released this month showed senior Environmental Protection Agency staffers calculate the administration’s move would actually increase highway deaths.
“American businesses, consumers and our environment are all the losers under his plan,” said Sen. Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat. “The only clear winner is the oil industry. It’s not hard to see whose side President Trump is on.”
Administration support has been tepid to null on some other long-running government programs for alternatives to gas-powered cars.
Bill Wehrum, assistant administration of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, spoke dismissively of electric cars — a young industry supported financially by the federal government and many states — this month in a call with reporters announcing the mileage freeze proposal.
“People just don’t want to buy them,” the EPA official said.
Oil and gas interests are campaigning for changes in government conservation efforts on mileage standards, biofuels and electric cars.
In June, for instance, the American Petroleum Institute and other industries wrote eight governors, promoting the dominance of the internal-combustion engine and questioning their states’ incentives to consumers for electric cars.
Surging U.S. and gas production has brought on “energy security and abundance,” Frank Macchiarola, a group director of the American Petroleum Institute trade association, told reporters this week, in a telephone call dedicated to urging scrapping or overhauling of one U.S. program for biofuels.
Fears of oil scarcity used to be a driver of U.S. energy policy, Macchiarola said.
Thanks partly to increased production, “that pillar has really been rendered essentially moot,” he said.
The position was outlined in a memo released last month in support of the administration’s proposal to relax fuel mileage standards. The government released the memo online this month without fanfare.
Growth of natural gas and other alternatives to petroleum has reduced the need for imported oil, which “in turn affects the need of the nation to conserve energy,” the Energy Department said. It also cites the now decade-old fracking revolution that has unlocked U.S. shale oil reserves, giving “the United States more flexibility than in the past to use our oil resources with less concern.”
With the memo, the administration is formally challenging old justifications for conservation — even congressionally prescribed ones, as with the mileage standards. The memo made no mention of climate change. Transportation is the single largest source of climate-changing emissions.
President Donald Trump has questioned the existence of climate change, embraced the notion of “energy dominance” as a national goal, and called for easing what he calls burdensome regulation of oil, gas and coal, including repealing the Obama Clean Power Plan.
Despite the increased oil supplies, the administration continues to believe in the need to “use energy wisely,” the Energy Department said, without elaboration. Department spokesmen did not respond Friday to questions about that statement.
Reaction was quick.
“It’s like saying, ‘I’m a big old fat guy, and food prices have dropped — it’s time to start eating again,'” said Tom Kloza, longtime oil analyst with the Maryland-based Oil Price Information Service.
“If you look at it from the other end, if you do believe that fossil fuels do some sort of damage to the atmosphere … you come up with a different viewpoint,” Kloza said. “There’s a downside to living large.”
Climate change is a “clear and present and increasing danger,” said Sean Donahue, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund.
In a big way, the Energy Department statement just acknowledges the world’s vastly changed reality when it comes to oil.
Just 10 years ago, in summer 2008, oil prices were peaking at $147 a barrel and pummeling the global economy. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was enjoying a massive transfer of wealth, from countries dependent on imported oil. Prices now are about $65.
Today, the U.S. is vying with Russia for the title of top world oil producer. U.S. oil production hit an all-time high this summer, aided by the technological leaps of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
How much the U.S. economy is hooked up to the gas pump, and vice versa, plays into any number of policy considerations, not just economic or environmental ones, but military and geopolitical ones, said John Graham, a former official in the George W. Bush administration, now dean of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.
“Our ability to play that role as a leader in the world is stronger when we are the strongest producer of oil and gas,” Graham said. “But there are still reasons to want to reduce the amount we consume.”
Current administration proposals include one that would freeze mileage standards for cars and light trucks after 2020, instead of continuing to make them tougher.
The proposal eventually would increase U.S. oil consumption by 500,000 barrels a day, the administration says. While Trump officials say the freeze would improve highway safety, documents released this month showed senior Environmental Protection Agency staffers calculate the administration’s move would actually increase highway deaths.
“American businesses, consumers and our environment are all the losers under his plan,” said Sen. Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat. “The only clear winner is the oil industry. It’s not hard to see whose side President Trump is on.”
Administration support has been tepid to null on some other long-running government programs for alternatives to gas-powered cars.
Bill Wehrum, assistant administration of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, spoke dismissively of electric cars — a young industry supported financially by the federal government and many states — this month in a call with reporters announcing the mileage freeze proposal.
“People just don’t want to buy them,” the EPA official said.
Oil and gas interests are campaigning for changes in government conservation efforts on mileage standards, biofuels and electric cars.
In June, for instance, the American Petroleum Institute and other industries wrote eight governors, promoting the dominance of the internal-combustion engine and questioning their states’ incentives to consumers for electric cars.
Surging U.S. and gas production has brought on “energy security and abundance,” Frank Macchiarola, a group director of the American Petroleum Institute trade association, told reporters this week, in a telephone call dedicated to urging scrapping or overhauling of one U.S. program for biofuels.
Fears of oil scarcity used to be a driver of U.S. energy policy, Macchiarola said.
Thanks partly to increased production, “that pillar has really been rendered essentially moot,” he said.
Colorado’s oil and gas industry goes after reporters and signature gatherers in new fracking fight
With large oil and gas reserves, Colorado often is at the center of the nation's fossil fuel wars.
MARK HAND - thinkprogress
AUG 16, 2018, 5:07 PM
As Colorado gears up for another fight over oil and gas drilling near homes and schools, this time the fossil fuel industry is reportedly doing whatever it takes to win.
In the latest flare-up, the oil and gas industry used a website to single out individual journalists for criticism. At the same time, pro-industry protesters were reportedly shadowing canvassers who were gathering signatures to get a measure — Initiative 97 — on the November ballot that would increase the distance between drilling sites and homes.
Colorado Rising, the anti-fracking group behind the ballot initiative, issued a statement last week claiming “harassers were paid to intimidate petition circulators and discourage voters from signing” the petition to get the initiative on the ballot.
Anne Lee Foster, a Colorado Rising volunteer, told Colorado Public Radio that an anonymous employee at Anadarko Petroleum shared an internal document that appeared to ask employees to report when they see Initiative 97 canvassers. The letter includes an email address and a text message hotline, Foster said.
Anadarko had not returned a request for comment from ThinkProgress at the time this article was published.
With huge reserves of oil and gas and an active environmental and clean energy movement, the state often finds itself at the center of the nation’s fossil fuel wars. Oil and gas companies have increasingly been moving into suburban and urban areas of Colorado in search of new drilling opportunities; at the same time, suburban sprawl is colliding with oil and gas fields as housing developers build new communities north of Denver.
Given the huge amounts of money on the line, oil and gas companies have ratcheted up their efforts to prevent the creation of regulatory roadblocks that could stop them from accessing more densely populated areas.
Under the proposed initiative, the current 500 foot setback for oil and gas development would be expanded to a minimum of 2,500 feet. The organizers of the ballot initiative campaign cite public safety and health as the primary reasons for expanding the setbacks.
They point to an April 2017 explosion in Firestone, Colorado — about 30 miles north of Denver — that killed two people at a home located about 200 feet from a natural gas well operated by Anadarko. According to a Denver Post investigation, in the eight months following the Firestone explosion, at least a dozen explosions and fires have been associated with oil and gas facilities along Colorado’s Front Range.
Low-income communities of color in Colorado have also fought against drilling efforts along the Front Range.
In the wake of such accidents, the oil and gas industry and its political supporters typically call for investigations and a temporary shut down of operations. But they remain steadfast in the belief that the economic benefits of drilling, even in more heavily populated regions of Colorado, outweigh the industry’s risks.
In a fiscal analysis of the initiative, the secretary of state’s office said the greater setbacks will reduce oil and gas development in Colorado, leading to less oil and gas employment, reduced rent and royalty income for mineral owners, and reduced profits for oil and gas producers.
For homeowners, the fiscal analysis found that the increased setback distance may preserve property value for homeowners most affected by the setback and “to the extent less development improves health outcomes for affected residents, may increase productivity and reduce medical costs.”
In its analysis of the proposal, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a state regulatory agency, estimated the initiative would bar oil and gas extraction on more than 85 percent of the state’s non-federal lands.
As activists were gathering signatures for Initiative 97, a new pro-fracking website, called the Energy Accountability Project, was launched, with its “About Me” page explaining the site was “sponsored by energy interests.” But after a Denver television station ran a news report on the website on August 8, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an industry trade association, contacted 9News to announce it was the entity behind the website.
Prior to the report, visitors to the website could sort through the industry group’s critiques of the news media by journalist. Even the names of behind-the-scenes producers, whose names and faces aren’t known to the public, were included on the drop-down menu, 9News reported.
After the news story ran, that sorting element of the website was fixed, COGA spokesperson Scott Prestidge said Thursday in an email to ThinkProgress. “At no point was a ‘dossier’ being collected on anybody,” he added.
“We were asked by 9News this week if the Colorado Oil & Gas Association was supporting this website, and we said yes. Whenever anyone asked, we said yes. We should have been forthcoming with that at the beginning,” Dan Haley, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said in statement posted on the Energy Accountability Project’s website last Thursday.
Haley explained that the website was established because “too often lately, we find reporters and elected leaders rely on activist studies, misrepresentations, and one-sided arguments for their coverage, and many times they are not responsive when we seek corrections or opportunities to tell our side of the story.”
Energy In Depth, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, boasts a similar mission, but on a national level, serving as a rapid response site that offers critiques of journalists and anti-fracking activists.
Activists submitted 171,000 signatures to the Colorado secretary of state on August 6 for what they are calling the Safer Setbacks from Fracking initiative. The organizers needed to gather about 98,500 valid voter signatures to get the initiative on the ballot.
In a separate ballot initiative, the farming and energy industries want companies and individuals to be compensated if new regulations devalue their property. The groups reportedly spent $1.2 million on signature gathering for the initiative. The measure’s supporters were required to gather signatures from all 34 Colorado state senate districts because — unlike the fracking setback initiative — the “takings” measure would amend the state constitution.
Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), generally a supporter of the state’s oil and gas industry, said he opposes both ballot measures.
The secretary of state has 30 days to review the petitions, giving the state officials until September 5 to let the organizers known whether it is sufficient to appear on the ballot.
In the latest flare-up, the oil and gas industry used a website to single out individual journalists for criticism. At the same time, pro-industry protesters were reportedly shadowing canvassers who were gathering signatures to get a measure — Initiative 97 — on the November ballot that would increase the distance between drilling sites and homes.
Colorado Rising, the anti-fracking group behind the ballot initiative, issued a statement last week claiming “harassers were paid to intimidate petition circulators and discourage voters from signing” the petition to get the initiative on the ballot.
Anne Lee Foster, a Colorado Rising volunteer, told Colorado Public Radio that an anonymous employee at Anadarko Petroleum shared an internal document that appeared to ask employees to report when they see Initiative 97 canvassers. The letter includes an email address and a text message hotline, Foster said.
Anadarko had not returned a request for comment from ThinkProgress at the time this article was published.
With huge reserves of oil and gas and an active environmental and clean energy movement, the state often finds itself at the center of the nation’s fossil fuel wars. Oil and gas companies have increasingly been moving into suburban and urban areas of Colorado in search of new drilling opportunities; at the same time, suburban sprawl is colliding with oil and gas fields as housing developers build new communities north of Denver.
Given the huge amounts of money on the line, oil and gas companies have ratcheted up their efforts to prevent the creation of regulatory roadblocks that could stop them from accessing more densely populated areas.
Under the proposed initiative, the current 500 foot setback for oil and gas development would be expanded to a minimum of 2,500 feet. The organizers of the ballot initiative campaign cite public safety and health as the primary reasons for expanding the setbacks.
They point to an April 2017 explosion in Firestone, Colorado — about 30 miles north of Denver — that killed two people at a home located about 200 feet from a natural gas well operated by Anadarko. According to a Denver Post investigation, in the eight months following the Firestone explosion, at least a dozen explosions and fires have been associated with oil and gas facilities along Colorado’s Front Range.
Low-income communities of color in Colorado have also fought against drilling efforts along the Front Range.
In the wake of such accidents, the oil and gas industry and its political supporters typically call for investigations and a temporary shut down of operations. But they remain steadfast in the belief that the economic benefits of drilling, even in more heavily populated regions of Colorado, outweigh the industry’s risks.
In a fiscal analysis of the initiative, the secretary of state’s office said the greater setbacks will reduce oil and gas development in Colorado, leading to less oil and gas employment, reduced rent and royalty income for mineral owners, and reduced profits for oil and gas producers.
For homeowners, the fiscal analysis found that the increased setback distance may preserve property value for homeowners most affected by the setback and “to the extent less development improves health outcomes for affected residents, may increase productivity and reduce medical costs.”
In its analysis of the proposal, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a state regulatory agency, estimated the initiative would bar oil and gas extraction on more than 85 percent of the state’s non-federal lands.
As activists were gathering signatures for Initiative 97, a new pro-fracking website, called the Energy Accountability Project, was launched, with its “About Me” page explaining the site was “sponsored by energy interests.” But after a Denver television station ran a news report on the website on August 8, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an industry trade association, contacted 9News to announce it was the entity behind the website.
Prior to the report, visitors to the website could sort through the industry group’s critiques of the news media by journalist. Even the names of behind-the-scenes producers, whose names and faces aren’t known to the public, were included on the drop-down menu, 9News reported.
After the news story ran, that sorting element of the website was fixed, COGA spokesperson Scott Prestidge said Thursday in an email to ThinkProgress. “At no point was a ‘dossier’ being collected on anybody,” he added.
“We were asked by 9News this week if the Colorado Oil & Gas Association was supporting this website, and we said yes. Whenever anyone asked, we said yes. We should have been forthcoming with that at the beginning,” Dan Haley, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said in statement posted on the Energy Accountability Project’s website last Thursday.
Haley explained that the website was established because “too often lately, we find reporters and elected leaders rely on activist studies, misrepresentations, and one-sided arguments for their coverage, and many times they are not responsive when we seek corrections or opportunities to tell our side of the story.”
Energy In Depth, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, boasts a similar mission, but on a national level, serving as a rapid response site that offers critiques of journalists and anti-fracking activists.
Activists submitted 171,000 signatures to the Colorado secretary of state on August 6 for what they are calling the Safer Setbacks from Fracking initiative. The organizers needed to gather about 98,500 valid voter signatures to get the initiative on the ballot.
In a separate ballot initiative, the farming and energy industries want companies and individuals to be compensated if new regulations devalue their property. The groups reportedly spent $1.2 million on signature gathering for the initiative. The measure’s supporters were required to gather signatures from all 34 Colorado state senate districts because — unlike the fracking setback initiative — the “takings” measure would amend the state constitution.
Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), generally a supporter of the state’s oil and gas industry, said he opposes both ballot measures.
The secretary of state has 30 days to review the petitions, giving the state officials until September 5 to let the organizers known whether it is sufficient to appear on the ballot.
World’s biggest oil exporter is betting $2 billion on electric cars
Saudis buy major stake in Tesla.
JOE ROMM - thinkprogress
AUG 8, 2018, 12:00 PM
The big headline-grabbing Tesla story Tuesday was that Elon Musk says he is considering taking the company private.
But we shouldn’t miss an equally important story. The Financial Times reported Tuesday that Saudi Arabia has acquired an “undisclosed stake of between 3 and 5 per cent of Tesla’s shares this year.” The position is worth some $2 to $3 billion, making the Saudis “one of Tesla’s largest shareholders.”
In other words, the world’s biggest oil exporter — whose entire economy is built around more than $100 billion in oil and oil-related exports a year — has placed a massive bet on the company whose entire goal is transitioning the world off of oil.
The investment came from Saudi Arabia’s $230 Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is the Saudi’s “sovereign wealth fund” — a state-owned investment vehicle.
Expanding the PIF with oil revenues — and using the fund to help transition the Saudi economy off of dependence on oil — has been a major strategy of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Back in March, the prince announced a plan to build a stunning 200 gigawatts of solar power capacity in Saudi Arabia for $200 billion. This is 100 times larger than the largest solar farm ever proposed. And, as Bloomberg has reported, it will provide “evening hour” power thanks to what will be “the largest utility-scale battery.”
Tesla has been the world leader in driving down the price of both batteries and electric cars to the point where countries from England and France to India and China have announced plans to ban gasoline powered cars outright.
A 2016 study by the credit rating agency Fitch concluded that advances in batteries could “tip the oil market from growth to contraction earlier than anticipated,” leading to an “investor death spiral” in the 2020s as savvy investors — and then everyone else — pull out of oil company assets such as stocks and bonds.
Interestingly, the Financial Times reported that before buying the Tesla shares in secondary markets, the PIF had first approached Musk to buy new shares directly from Tesla.
But Musk rejected the offer, since he’s trying to show Wall Street that he doesn’t need to issue more shares to raise money. Indeed, he has been endeavoring to convince investors that the company will be cash-flow positive in the second half of the year, after burning through $1.8 billion — nearly half of all its cash reserves — in the first two quarters of 2018.
Musk surprised the world Tuesday when he tweeted in the middle of the day, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.”
That news, coming directly on the heels of the announcement of the massive Saudi investment, led to a jump in the stock, which had been trading at just above $340 a share yesterday and is now, at time of publishing, above $370.
Within hours of the first tweet, Musk had sent an email to employees, “Taking Tesla Private,” explaining that he wants to take the company public to escape “the quarterly earnings cycle that puts enormous pressure on Tesla to make decisions that may be right for a given quarter, but not necessarily right for the long-term.”
If indeed he succeeds in taking the company private, we won’t get as much public news on the company as we do today, but it will give more stability to a company that has been on one long roller-coaster ride to the future.
But we shouldn’t miss an equally important story. The Financial Times reported Tuesday that Saudi Arabia has acquired an “undisclosed stake of between 3 and 5 per cent of Tesla’s shares this year.” The position is worth some $2 to $3 billion, making the Saudis “one of Tesla’s largest shareholders.”
In other words, the world’s biggest oil exporter — whose entire economy is built around more than $100 billion in oil and oil-related exports a year — has placed a massive bet on the company whose entire goal is transitioning the world off of oil.
The investment came from Saudi Arabia’s $230 Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is the Saudi’s “sovereign wealth fund” — a state-owned investment vehicle.
Expanding the PIF with oil revenues — and using the fund to help transition the Saudi economy off of dependence on oil — has been a major strategy of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Back in March, the prince announced a plan to build a stunning 200 gigawatts of solar power capacity in Saudi Arabia for $200 billion. This is 100 times larger than the largest solar farm ever proposed. And, as Bloomberg has reported, it will provide “evening hour” power thanks to what will be “the largest utility-scale battery.”
Tesla has been the world leader in driving down the price of both batteries and electric cars to the point where countries from England and France to India and China have announced plans to ban gasoline powered cars outright.
A 2016 study by the credit rating agency Fitch concluded that advances in batteries could “tip the oil market from growth to contraction earlier than anticipated,” leading to an “investor death spiral” in the 2020s as savvy investors — and then everyone else — pull out of oil company assets such as stocks and bonds.
Interestingly, the Financial Times reported that before buying the Tesla shares in secondary markets, the PIF had first approached Musk to buy new shares directly from Tesla.
But Musk rejected the offer, since he’s trying to show Wall Street that he doesn’t need to issue more shares to raise money. Indeed, he has been endeavoring to convince investors that the company will be cash-flow positive in the second half of the year, after burning through $1.8 billion — nearly half of all its cash reserves — in the first two quarters of 2018.
Musk surprised the world Tuesday when he tweeted in the middle of the day, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.”
That news, coming directly on the heels of the announcement of the massive Saudi investment, led to a jump in the stock, which had been trading at just above $340 a share yesterday and is now, at time of publishing, above $370.
Within hours of the first tweet, Musk had sent an email to employees, “Taking Tesla Private,” explaining that he wants to take the company public to escape “the quarterly earnings cycle that puts enormous pressure on Tesla to make decisions that may be right for a given quarter, but not necessarily right for the long-term.”
If indeed he succeeds in taking the company private, we won’t get as much public news on the company as we do today, but it will give more stability to a company that has been on one long roller-coaster ride to the future.
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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