Posts tagged: oil
The Solyndra stuff is “old news”, but I just came across Mark Fiore’s SolyndraGatePocalypse video, and it hits the hypocrisy so squarely that I could not pass up posting it.
In this interview on Democracy Now!, Carl Safina explains quite succinctly the actions and mistakes that led to the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and the aftermath. This interview is well worth reading or watching.
At the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill:
Most of the oil is still there in the Gulf today. It’s in the water. It’s on the sediment. It’s on the seafloor. A lot of it’s washed up into the wetlands, and it’s still there. It’s still being eaten by marine life today.
What has been done to deal with the problem, and prevent future recurrences?
[…] one year later the rest of the nation seems to have forgotten this tragedy, and our policymakers, one year later—not a single piece of legislation—not one—written to respond to the disaster has become law. And the money that BP is supposed to be paying has not come to the ground. The care—the claims that are supposed to be filled, the health provisions, the environmental provisions, none of it is there right now, and the U.S. Gulf Coast is still suffering under this glut of oil and chemicals.
How about all those claims that BP is supposed to pay out?
BP set up a claims process right away, and that’s because, as a result of the Exxon Valdez disaster, we had a great piece of legislation passed: the Oil Pollution Act. We need legislation like that now. One of the things the Oil Pollution Act did was require an immediate claims process to be established. BP set that up. But at this date, one year later, less than 40 percent of the claims that have been filed have even been processed, much less paid out.
Are there any signs of rampant hypocrisy?
[…] Transocean, the company that owned the offshore rig that exploded, […] awarded its top executives these bonuses, and in doing so, saying—it described the, quote, “best year in safety performance in our company’s history.” The bonus for the Transocean CEO Steve Newman was $400,000. Amidst tremendous criticism, he said he would give it to the families of the—
ANTONIA JUHASZ: Part of it.
AMY GOODMAN: Oh, he said he would give a part of it to the families of the dead workers.
Its skyline erupting from the desert in just two decades, Dubai is a cautionary tale about what money can’t buy: a culture of its own. After gorging on the Viagra of easy credit, the emirate has the world’s tallest building, the world’s most expensive racetrack, and a financial crisis to match. From the Western mercenaries and Asian drones who maintain the gaudy show to 100-odd families who are impervious to any economic reality, A. A. Gill discovers that no one truly belongs in Dubai, where the legacy of oil has made everything worthless.
TransCanada cannot begin constructing Keystone XL without both presidential permission and a State Department environmental impact statement (EIS), made necessary because the project crosses international borders. The State Department issued that EIS in April 2010 in the wake of public hearings in towns along the pipeline route. Environmental organizations, landowners, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were sharply critical of the EIS. Among other things, says the NRDC’s Anthony Swift, the statement failed to demonstrate “the need for the pipeline, its safety, and its greenhouse gas impacts.” Especially troubling, according to Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, was the failure to consider an alternate pipeline route that would not slash through the Ogallala aquifer.
I’m sure you realize how much oil and gas influence our politics.
Crude oil imports and exports around the world, and the global shipping choke points
So many numbers!
You could stare at this chart for hours and still not figure out why oil prices have risen so much due to “unrest in Libya and the Suez Canal.”
When the price of oil goes above a certain benchmark level, companies drilling on American territory in the Gulf of Mexico are supposed to pay royalties to the United States government. Which is to say, royalties to you, the taxpayer. Unfortunately, a bureaucratic snafu accidentally gave away some leases for free a few years ago, and ever since we, the taxpayers, have been receiving no royalties on those wells. But that’s no problem, right? Our elected representatives in the United States Congress will just fix the error. Matt Steinglass explains the facts of life:
As of 2008, the bill came to $1.3 billion; this year, the losses will be $1.5 billion. Over the decades-long lifetime of the wells it’ll add up to a lot more. According to the Government Accountability Office it’ll come to $53 billion over the next 25 years. Last week, representative Ed Markey and a few other Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee offered an amendment to the Republican budget bill to make those oil producers pay the standard amount in the future on the royalty-free leases they mistakenly received due to bureaucratic error. The amendment was voted down, 251-174.
Life is good when you own one of America’s two political parties, isn’t it?
As the GOP releases its ‘Pledge to America,’ including a pledge to continue bowing to Big Oil and fighting clean energy, the Sierra Club has launched a new web tool, www.paidforbybigoil.org, to track and publicize outrageous statements made by politicians about Big Oil and other polluters, and connecting those statements to campaign contributions they receive. The comments of candidates will be visible as animated oil slicks with an off-shore drilling platform in the background, and as a twitter feed @paidforbybigoil.
The GOP Pledge, written in part by a former Exxon lobbyist, is out of step with America and completely in line with polluting corporations. It reads in part:
-“We will fight to increase access to domestic energy sources.” (Meaning more of the offshore drilling that caused the BP disaster).
-“Oppose attempts to impose a national ‘cap and trade’ energy tax.” (Their cynical scare tactic to mask their opposition to the clean energy solutions and corresponding jobs that Big Oil won’t let them support).
-“Move immediately to cancel unspent ‘stimulus’ funds, and block any attempts to extend the timeline for spending stimulus funds.” (An attempt to block investment in clean energy jobs).
“The Republican’s pledge falls exactly in line with the agenda of Big Oil and Coal and their trade groups,” said Sierra Club Political Director Cathy Duvall. “Rather than present new ideas and fight for the clean energy solutions the majority of Americans support, the GOP is hoping for one more refrain of ‘drill baby drill.’ This is why we’ve created PaidforbyBigOil. We want to show just what exactly is spilling from the mouths of Big Oil and the candidates they support.”
Michael Klare provides a concise history of oil and energy in the U.S.A. and the world, and wonders how China’s increasing appetite for energy will affect everything.
