tagged w/ big oil money
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Desperation can lead to poor decisions. So can wishful thinking. Both elements are at work in the case of the Keystone XL pipeline project, rejected by the Obama administration on Wednesday.
[Important article today from the ultra-conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_777467.html
The economics of the proposed pipeline are nonsensical.
It makes no sense for Canadian oil producers, acting essentially in a panic mode, to ignore the economic red flags that should prevent them from turning a blind eye to the reality of competitive economics.
They are committing billions of dollars toward patently unsound projects.
The cost of production from Canada, when tar sands oil are moved to the U.S. Gulf Coast by pipeline, is on the order of $50 per barrel more than conventional foreign oil imports.
Obviously one would never expect Canadian supplies to be competitive in this location.
The major impetus for the Keystone pipeline to the Gulf Coast is the urgent need of the Canadian tar sands producers -- who extract crude oil from sands in remote western Canada -- to create an outlet for their planned production increases.
Billions of dollars of investment have already been spent, and more is committed, to create facilities capable of extracting Canadian bitumen from the vast tar sands reserves.
The current high price of petroleum has provided the economic justification for these projects. Universally, all of the planned production is assumed to be marketable regardless of quality. This is the fatally flawed assumption.
Canadian bitumen contains a component not present in most of the world's current oil production, save for Venezuela. This component is asphaltenes, a material with the same characteristics as coal.
In the case of previous Venezuelan and Canadian production, the producers have provided upgrading capacity, essentially on-site or in dedicated facilities financed by the producer, to facilitate removal of the asphaltene component.
The remaining asphaltene-free oil is what is then moved into the market. The current Canadian production expansions omit this costly step and, instead, assume that somehow, this expensive impediment will magically disappear.
Such is not the case.
Transport costs are another overlooked fact.
All crudes of identical quality will have the same market value at any U.S. location. This simplifies the decision on movement from an inland location as this decision is reduced to the relative transportation cost of one destination versus another.
But in the case of in-land transportation of Canadian crude from Hardisty, in the province of Alberta, the two obvious outlets are Canadian/U.S. West Coast and U.S. Gulf Coast. Both moves would best be accomplished by pipeline.
The distance -- and therefore the cost -- to the Gulf Coast is approximately four times that to the West Coast. When this difference in distance is expressed as pipeline cost in dollars per barrel, the West Coast destination is $8 to $10 a barrel less costly.
Since the crude has the same value delivered to each location, it is obvious that the West Coast outlet will be the one that is ultimately chosen.
A pipeline to the U.S. Gulf coast cannot compete while shouldering this large added expense with no offsetting benefit.
(William Edwards, who runs Edwards Energy Consultants of Katy, Texas, has spent more than 50 years working in oil economics and pricing.)Desperation can lead to poor decisions. So can wishful thinking. Both elements are at... more
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In Central New York, we are blessed with our connections to the enviroment and 95% of the fresh water supply for the U.S. We are home to over 20% of the world's fresh water.
Our watershed provides some of the purest fresh water in the country. The drinking water for millions of people is now in jeopardy as well as the country's taxdollar investment in reclaming our most precious resources.
In Syracuse, New York the most polluted toxic waste site in the U. S., lies within the heart of our community. It is called Onondaga Lake, it is a sacred lake in the ancestral homeland of the Onondaga Nation. It has been poisoned beyond recognition over the past 50 years by the corporate interests of GM, Crucible Metals, Solvay - Semet co., Allied Chemicals, [the compassionate people that burned Bhopal India, off the maps], Sewage overflow from the Onondaga County/ City of Syracuse and hundreds of smaller industrial pollluters.
15 miles[+/-] to the west are three of the Finger Lakes; Cayuga Lake, Seneca Lake, and Skaneatlas Lake, [the purest fresh water lake in the country]. Skaneatlas Lake and Otisco Lake as well as Lake Ontario provide our drinking water as well as the northeast's most productive fisheries and recreational uses.
Here in Syracuse and our local towns we hold the honor of holding National Speed Boat Competitons, the National Bass Masters Tournament, National Water Skiing Shows,SU Rowing Regattas, as well as the International Carp Fishing Competitons and much more.
Now, all of the work done over the past 10years,[+/-] through super funds to minimize sewage runoff and corporate pollution is once again in jeopardy!
Allied Chemical/ Honeywell, [the new owners hired to clean and run], and now the NYS DEC want to remove unfathomable amounts of cubic yards of mercury laden, chlorinated bi-phenyls, toulene, benzene, pcbs and more from the bottom of Onondaga Lake! The Lake is about 4.5 miles long and approximately 1 mile wide and has an average depth of toxic sludge of about 30 feet deep across the entire lake. Dredging this sludge will disperse particulates of the lake sending toxic soup into the Seneca River which ties into the Oneida River which then runs into the Oswego River and straight into Lake Ontario!
Honeywells engineeers and the DEC that is supposed to protect our enviroment have quietly negotiated, [special town committee meetings on this, as well as many other meetings were held without public input or recorded meeting minutes], and have agreed to place the sludge in a former allied chemical soda ash waste bed.
The wastebed, known as SCA #13 is adjacent to the protected famous trout stream, NINE MILE CREEK and is less than 2 miles to the lake shore. The potential for leaching toxic chemicals back into the lake, is more than probable as the waste bed has already broken free of it's containment berms in the past, it is at a higher elevation sloping gently into the lake and adjacenet to NINE MILE CREEK that is already filed with toxic leachates from the waste beds to the lake shore. the geo-tube containment method of storage planned is experimental and designed to allow contaminated water to leach back into the soils surrounding the lake, supposedly to allow the sludge to dry and be covered for 'recreational use'.
The PROBLEM with this whole 'plan' is that it is the only proposed 'plan' as there is no 'plan b'. Less than 90 miles from this site is a federally monitored toxics landfill, but honeywell/Allied Chemical thought that removal to a FEDERALLY APPROVED SITE would be too expensive. Just 3-4 miles to the south of SCA #13 lies an abondoned limestone quarry on a rail spur. Geo-fabrics and concrete liners can contain this toxic soup due to the depth of the rock base, yet this idea is given no consideration because it 'might' be more expensive to the companies remediation plan.
Add to this danger the Exxon Mobil/Xto Energy deal to extract gas from the newly discovered reserves via a process known as hydro-fracking. a process wherein wells are drilled and a chemical mix with water is pressurized into the rock fractures to extract gas. This method, was allowed when the bush-cheney admin. excluded big oil and the chemicals used in this process in the 2005 Clean Water act. The NYS DEC apparently has no concerns for this because everyone from the governor to the state legislators down to the local beauracracy can only see dollar signs. People's drinking water wells from west virginia to pennsylvania have already been contaminated and the cause as acknowledged by the DEC is hydrofracking.
Big Oil representatives have already secured land leases from innocent property owners. Big oil land leases protect the companies from any liabilities for clean up placing that responsibility with apparently naive land owners. Operations require an average 5 mile wide clear cut through many old growth forests and farm land. Operational damages to the enviroment alone should be reason enough to stop this invasion, but our government sees only dollars to help out astronomical budget deficits of the most dysfunctional state government in U.S. history! There is no safe way to store the toxic by products and the oild companies know it, they are already looking for alternative storage options because of a grass roots out cry!
please help us! see the attached link below to learn of the SCA #13 catastrophe in the making. Check out Syracuse.com , search for hydrofracking; Syracuse.com/forums west for perspectives from the locals in Camilus, NY where the wastebeds are located.
please consider the possibility that government is no longer of the people, by the people or for the people...especially when corporate interests are at stake!!
won't you please consider signing our petition?http://cleancny.com/Home_Page.html
more hydrofacking links to follow. this is a national precedent playing out in communities across our state where government, once again fails to act in the interests of the people!
Thank you for your consideration, we hope you will make your voices known on our behalf....In Central New York, we are blessed with our connections to the enviroment and 95% of... more
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Original story at: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/climategate-cru-looks-to-big-oil-for-support/
One of the favorite put-downs from people who think they have the moral high ground in the climate debate is to accuse skeptics with this phrase: “You are nothing but a shill for Big Oil”
Who amongst us hasn’t seen variants of that pointed finger repeated thousands of times? The paradigm has shifted. Now it appears CRU is the one looking for “big oil” money. See the email:
______________________________________________
From: "Mick Kelly"
To: m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Shell
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 13:31:00 +0100
Reply-to: m.kelly@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Cc: t.oriordan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.o'riordan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Mike
Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday. Only a minor part of the
agenda, but I expect they will accept an invitation to act as a strategic
partner and will contribute to a studentship fund though under certain
conditions. I now have to wait for the top-level soundings at their end
after the meeting to result in a response. We, however, have to discuss
asap what a strategic partnership means, what a studentship fund is, etc,
etc. By email? In person?
I hear that Shell's name came up at the TC meeting. I'm ccing this to Tim
who I think was involved in that discussion so all concerned know not to
make an independent approach at this stage without consulting me!
I'm talking to Shell International's climate change team but this approach
will do equally for the new foundation as it's only one step or so off
Shell's equivalent of a board level. I do know a little about the Fdn and
what kind of projects they are looking for. It could be relevant for the
new building, incidentally, though opinions are mixed as to whether it's
within the remit.
Regards
Mick
Mick Kelly Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
Tel: 44-1603-592091 Fax: 44-1603-507784
Email: m.kelly@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/
______________________________________________
See the entire email here:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=171&filename=962818260.txt
There’s more.
______________________________________________
From: Mike Hulme
To: Simon.Shackley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: industrial and commercial contacts
Date: Mon Jan 10 17:01:32 2000
Simon,
I have talked with Tim O'Riordan and others here today and Tim has a wealth of contacts he is prepared to help with. Four specific ones from Tim are:
- Charlotte Grezo, BP Fuel Options (possibly on the Assessment Panel. She is also on the ESRC Research Priorities Board), but someone Tim can easily talk with. There are others in BP Tim knows too.
- Richard Sykes, Head of Environment Division at Shell International
- Chris Laing, Managing Director, Laing Construction (also maybe someone at Bovis)
- ??, someone high-up in Unilever whose name escapes me.
And then Simon Gerrard here in our Risk Unit suggested the following personal contacts:
- ??, someone senior at AMEC Engineering in Yarmouth (involved with North Sea industry and wind energy)
- Richard Powell, Director of the East of England Development Board
You can add these to your list and I can ensure that Tim and Simon feed the right material through once finalised.
I will phone tomorrow re. the texts.
Cheers,
Mike
______________________________________________
But wait that’s not all!
Further down in that email, look at who else they were looking to for money. Oh, this is horrible, it just can’t be, they wouldn’t. They were looking to not only BP but, but EXXON in its Esso incarnation:
______________________________________________
>I am sending a draft of the generic version of the letter eliciting
>support and the 2 page summary to Mike to look over. Then this can be
>used as a basis for letter writing by the Tyndall contact (the person
>in brackets).
>
>Mr Alan Wood CEO Siemens plc [Nick Jenkins]
>Mr Mike Hughes CE Midlands Electricity (Visiting Prof at UMIST) [Nick
>Jenkins]
>Mr Keith Taylor, Chairman and CEO of Esso UK (John
>Shepherd]
>Mr Brian Duckworth, Managing Director, Severn-Trent Water
>[Mike Hulme]
>Dr Jeremy Leggett, Director, Solar Century [Mike Hulme]
>Mr Brian Ford, Director of Quality, United Utilities plc [Simon
>Shackley]
>Dr Andrew Dlugolecki, CGU [Jean Palutikof]
>Dr Ted Ellis, VP Building Products, Pilkington plc [Simon Shackley]
>Mr Mervyn Pedalty, CEO, Cooperative Bank plc [Simon Shackley]
>
>
>Possibles:
>Mr John Loughhead, Technology Director ALSTOM [Nick Jenkins]
>Mr Edward Hyams, Managing Director Eastern Generation [Nick
>Jenkins]
>Dr David Parry, Director Power Technology Centre, Powergen
>[Nick Jenkins]
>Mike Townsend, Director, The Woodland Trust [Melvin
>Cannell]
>Mr Paul Rutter, BP Amoco [via Terry Lazenby, UMIST]
______________________________________________
See the entire email here:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=156&filename=947541692.txt
Now who is the shill for Big Oil again? Next time somebody brings up that ridiculous argument about skeptics, show them this.Original story at:... more
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Dagum
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added this
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2 years ago
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It's always interesting to see how the Democrats spin things one way when it's convenient http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqYMfV7tMO0 and then conveniently ignore it when it's not http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/08/oil-industry-leans-toward-mcca.html .
That's been the case the last few weeks with election mud-slinging over who has gotten more money from the oil tycoons. The Obama campaign released an ad stating that it was McCain who was getting all the money ( http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1185304443/bctid1709838907 ), but as Open Secrets reports ( http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/08/here-in-the-centers-press.html ), that's not quite the case. In fact, it's Obama who has been getting the most money from oil men, not McCain! This is where it gets a little tricky.
Big oil family and friends give more to Obama, while big oil PACs give more to McCain. Yes, McCain is getting the lions' share of money (about $1.3 million depending on how you do the math, comapred to Obama's $400,000), but Obama is no saint either. You can check the money amounts yourself, in a great flash application that the CPR has put up called Oil Change USA. You'll find it here: http://prezoilmoney.oilchangeusa.org
(I'd love to see them add Palin into the mix on this chart, and see how that might change things, being from a big oil state and all...)
Sadly, this raises the eternal question of the skeptical third party/independent citizens about what, if any, change we can really expect to see from the two-party plutocracy. Remember kids, it's money that makes the world go round. As Lord Acton once said:
"The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or
fraud, in carrying elections."
It's always interesting to see how the Democrats spin things one way when... more
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