Trump Cronies Rewarded as House GOP 'Dirty Trick' Bolsters Big Oil. The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday voted to repeal a rule curbing methane emissions on public lands, delivering a win, say environmental groups, to big oil and cronies of President Donald Trump. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) regulation, finalized under the Obama administration in November, limited methane venting, flaring, and leaks from fossil fuel production on federal and tribal lands, thereby aiming to "avoid wasting up to 41 billion cubic feet (bcf) of natural gas per year," as Reuters wrote at the time. The Associated Press adds Friday: "A government report said about 40 percent of gas being flared or vented could be captured economically and sold.
" Lukas Ross, climate and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth (FOE), calls this "royalty-free" release of natural gas "one of the most over-looked fossil fuel subsidies on the books. " allows Congress, with a simple majority, to completely revoke any rules made in the last 6 months of the Obama administration. Problem loading page. Stop the Frack Attack. Journalist and author Chris Hedges, in his keynote speech at the Stop the Frack Attack conference in Denver, Colorado, declared that real change typically starts in the U.S. at the grassroots level, not the federal level.
Hedges’ comment resonated with the conference’s attendees, many of whom are focusing their organizing efforts at the state and local levels to slow down or halt shale gas drilling in their communities. “Any hope we have of overthrowing … corporate power will come with movements like this. It’s going to come from the bottom-up,” Hedges told the audience. “It’s not going to come from the top-down.” Hedges worked at The New York Times for 15 years as a foreign correspondent and was part of a team of reporters that won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on terrorism. Since leaving The Times, Hedges has written a dozen books on American politics and society.
Mark Hand has reported on the energy industry for more than 25 years. Fracking: Putting Our National Parks at Risk. Tapes reveal Enron's secret role in California's power blackouts | Business. Newly discovered tapes have revealed how the energy corporation Enron shut down at least one power plant on false pretences, deliberately aggravating California's crippling 2001 blackouts with the aim of raising prices.
The tapes also show that Enron, whose bankruptcy three years ago was the biggest corporate scandal of recent times, manipulated energy markets in Canada and was planning to rig the Californian market even before deregulation in 1998, for which the Texan corporation actively campaigned. The most damning revelations concern Enron's secret role in creating artificial power shortages in California, helping to trigger an energy crisis in 2000 and 2001 which cost residents billions of dollars in surcharges. The crisis ultimately led to the ousting of the state's Democratic governor, Gray Davis, and paved the way for rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his place.
Meanwhile, the shortages helped Enron to make $1.6bn (£850m). Another Oil Bomb Train Explodes, Third in Last Three Weeks. Yet another train carrying volatile crude oil from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota derailed yesterday, this time in northwestern Illinois near the historic tourist area of Galena overlooking the Mississippi River. It follows recent derailments in West Virginia and Ontario. The area in which it occurred was not as remote as the Ontario derailment. However, it did not require as extensive evacuation as the one in West Virginia in which hundreds were forced from their homes in the bitter cold.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, firefighters were allowing the fireball to burn itself out. The 105-car train included 103 cars loaded with the crude oil, with eight derailing. It’s not known yet if any oil spilled into the Mississippi River. Residents of the Galena area might be especially uneasy about trains rolling through their area. So far this year, these derailments, followed by explosions and fires, have happened only in unpopulated and sparsely populated areas. While the U.S. Constitution Pipeline: 'The Keystone Pipeline of Natural Gas' “This Constitution pipeline is about enriching a few billionaires by impoverishing the people of New York State,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. told Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show. “And the bullying that we’ve seen go along with this, the corruption—FERC is really a rogue agency, it’s a classic captive agency, it issued this permit illegally.”
A popular movement is building against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), for its outrageous rubber-stamping of permits for expansion of the gas industry. Kennedy’s powerful indictment of FERC on national television last week was the latest manifestation of this hopeful, much-needed development. Kennedy was speaking about the Constitution pipeline, one of about eight interstate pipelines originating in or going through Pennsylvania (ground zero for fracking in the Northeast) that are currently in some stage of getting approval from FERC, which interstate gas pipelines need to do. The leadership of FERC knows that they’ve got a problem. World's Biggest PR Firm Quits American Oil Lobby. Perhaps you heard the good news—the world’s largest public relations firm, Edelman, just spun off an advertising subsidiary so that it could show a commitment to not aiding the denial of climate change science.
The Guardian explains how American Petroleum Institute’s (API) contracts with Edelman were so massive—tens of millions of dollars—that it was up to 10 percent of the PR giant’s income. For years, Edelman has managed multi-million dollar contracts with the API, using its Blue Advertising subsidiary to help API run commercials selling fantasies to people: that oil and gas are our only viable, plentiful, “AMERICAN” sources of energy.
In the saga that led Edelman to dump the lobbyists at API, Greenpeace had a small role to play: we infiltrated a commercial shoot, run by Edelman’s Blue advertising arm for API. After being dressed up in a button-down, plaid orange shirt—I’m not sure what look they had in mind for me—I was put in front of the camera and told to repeat lines back. Mr. Two More 'Bomb Train' Explosions Should Be 'Wake-Up Call to Politicians to Stop These Dangerous Oil Trains' Within the last several days, two trains carrying volatile crude oil derailed and caught on fire. These accidents highlight the danger of government foot-dragging over train safety and show that towns seeking to ban these trains coming through their area aren’t just being contentious and “anti-business.”
Yesterday a 109-car train carrying fracked oil from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota derailed in Fayette County, West Virginia, with several cars catching on fire and at least one plunging into the Kanawha River. A house was consumed by fire, two towns were evacuated and West Virginia governor Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency for two counties. The West Virginia Department of Health and Resources posted on its website: “The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Bureau for Public Health today announced water intakes in Montgomery and Cedar Grove have been closed following a train derailment that occurred in Fayette County.
The toll includes: Worst Fracking Wastewater Spill in North Dakota Leaks 3 Million Gallons Into River. Oil company to file $1.2 billion lawsuit against county with 57k people–for banning fracking. Lobbyist secretly taped revealing all of the right-wing's dirty tactics to energy execs. NYTimes put together a piece on a recording of Richard Berman soliciting millions from energy industry execs, back in June. The company executives, Mr. Berman said in his speech, must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups.
And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said. “Think of this as an endless war,” Mr. Berman told the crowd at the June event in Colorado Springs, sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance, a group whose members include Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum, which specialize in extracting oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.
“And you have to budget for it.” Berman didn't know he was being secretly taped by one of the executives at the meeting. A transcript of the hour long power-point presentation can be found here. Concerning the ACA: California Aquifers Contaminated With Billions Of Gallons of Fracking Wastewater. Mike G, DeSmogBlogWaking Times After California state regulators shut down 11 fracking wastewater injection wells last July over concerns that the wastewater might have contaminated aquifers used for drinking water and farm irrigation, the EPA ordered a report within 60 days.
It was revealed yesterday that the California State Water Resources Board has sent a letter to the EPA confirming that at least nine of those sites were in fact dumping wastewater contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants into aquifers protected by state law and the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. Timothy Krantz, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Redlands, says these chemicals could pose a serious risk to public health: “The fact that high concentrations are showing up in multiple water wells close to wastewater injection sites raises major concerns about the health and safety of nearby residents.” The full extent of the contamination is not yet known. After earthquake, Ohio suspends two wells for fracking wastewater. Fracking in Public Forests Leaves Long Trail of Damages, Struggling State Regulators. Corporation Exploiting Major Loophole To Quickly Build 600-Mile Tar Sands Pipeline. By Katie Valentine "Corporation Exploiting Major Loophole To Quickly Build 600-Mile Tar Sands Pipeline" In the five years since TransCanada submitted its first application to build the Keystone XL pipeline, protesters have held marches and vigils, chained themselves to pipeline trucks, interrupted a presidential speech and gotten themselves purposefully arrested, all in the name of stopping the pipeline.
For Debra Michaud, one of the founders of Tar Sands Free Midwest, getting these activists to just take notice of the pipeline her group has been working to stop since early last year would be a victory. “Nobody’s heard of it,” Michaud said. “People know Keystone, but nobody’s heard of Flanagan South.” Unlike Keystone’s northern leg, which has been mired in court challenges and political skirmishes since 2008, Flanagan South is already in the works, after about two years of negotiating with landowners along the route and going through its permitting process. ‘Piecemealing’ Pipelines. Exxon CEO Joins Lawsuit to Stop Fracking Near His Home. Five Facts And One Big Lie: A Closer Look At The Oil Lobby's Keystone XL Jobs Claims.
With the 2012 presidential election rapidly approaching, the oil lobby is pushing harder than ever to frame the Keystone XL Pipeline (KXL) as a "job creator. " However, TransCanada (the Canadian company behind the pipeline), the American Petroleum Institute (API), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have used massively inflated statistics.
In fact, KXL would create few permanent jobs. BIG LIE: KXL Will Create 20,000-465,000 Jobs U.S. American Petroleum Institute: KXL Will Enable "More Than A Half A Million New U.S. TransCanada: KXL Will Create 20,000 Jobs In Construction And Manufacturing And 465,000 Jobs Throughout the U.S Economy. FACT 1: Experts Say Those Numbers Are "Meaningless" And "Dead Wrong" Energy Expert: The Analysis Supporting TransCanada's Claims Is "Dead Wrong. " Environmental Economist: "These Gross Employment Figures Are Meaningless. " Cornell University Global Labor Institute: TransCanada's Estimate Is "So Opaque As To Make Meaningful Review Impossible. " Word Games are Misleading the American Public About Fracking.
Sky TruthWaking Times “Half the truth is often a great lie.” - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac – 1758 Hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, and other drilling practices have unlocked previously inaccessible reserves of oil and gas across the United States and the world. However, some of the debate over fracking is distorting public understanding of these practices and interfering with good decision-making about this recent boom in unconventional oil and gas production. We often hear statements like this from industry and pro-drilling politicians: America has drilled and fracked more than 1 million wells over the past 60 years, and in all that time there has never been a proven case of groundwater contamination caused by fracking.
Let’s take a closer look at some of these claims: America has drilled and fracked around 1.3 million wells over the past 60 years… First, has fracking really been around for over 60 years? While the U.S. …caused by fracking. By this criteria… Jumping Aboard Fracking's Fossil Fuel Carousel. Strip Mine by University of Kentucky by Walter Brasch Two Pennsylvania legislators who have taken money from--and enthusiastically supported--the natural gas industry have teamed up to now praise coal.
State Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Williamsport), chair of the Environmental Resource and Energy Committee, and Rep. Tim Solobay (D-Canonsburg, Pa.) are co-chairs of the newly-established Coal Caucus. It's a strange move on their part, since both have praised natural gas as the economic future of Pennsylvania. Yaw, in his first run for the Senate in 2008 accepted only $3,700 in campaign contributions from energy companies; the largest were $1,000 donations from Anadarko Petroleum and Chesapeake Energy.
In March 2013, now in his second term, Yaw introduced two bills to expand natural gas usage in the state. "Conflict of interest is the most easily-thrown-about concept when you can't think of anything else to say," said Yaw.