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Author Topic: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution  (Read 30303 times)

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AGelbert

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  Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry   


Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong. Very wrong.
By Bill McKibben

SNIPPET:
Quote
Howarth and Ingraffea  began producing a series of papers claiming that if even a small percentage of the methane leaked—maybe as little as 3 percent—then fracked gas would do more climate damage than coal. And their preliminary data showed that leak rates could be at least that high: that somewhere between 3.6 and 7.9 percent of methane gas from shale-drilling operations actually escapes into the atmosphere.

To say that no one in power wanted to hear this would be an understatement . The two scientists were roundly attacked by the industry; one trade group    called their study the “Ivory Tower’s latest fact-free assault on shale gas exploration.” Most of the energy establishment joined in. An MIT team, for instance, had just finished an industry-funded  ;D report that found “the environmental impacts of shale development are challenging but manageable”   ; one of its lead authors, the ur-establishment energy expert Henry Jacoby  , described the Cornell research as “very weak.” One of its other authors, Ernest Moniz , would soon become the US secretary of energy; in his nomination hearings in 2013, he lauded the “stunning increase” in natural gas as a “revolution” and pledged to increase its use domestically.

The trouble for the fracking establishment  was that new research kept backing up Howarth and Ingraffea. In January 2013, for instance, aerial overflights of fracking basins in Utah found leak rates as high as 9 percent. “We were expecting to see high methane levels, but I don’t think anybody really comprehended the true magnitude of what we would see,” said the study’s director. But such work was always piecemeal, one area at a time, while other studies—often conducted with industry-supplied data—came up with lower numbers.

* * *

That’s why last month’s Harvard study came as such a shock. It used satellite data from across the country over a span of more than a decade to demonstrate that US methane emissions had spiked 30 percent since 2002.

The EPA had been insisting throughout that period that methane emissions were actually falling, but it was clearly wrong—on a massive scale. In fact, emissions “are substantially higher than we’ve understood,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted in early March.

The Harvard study wasn’t designed to show why US methane emissions were growing—in other parts of the world, as new research makes clear, cattle and wetlands seem to be causing emissions to accelerate. But the spike that the satellites recorded coincided almost perfectly with the era when fracking went big-time.

 
 
To make matters worse, during the same decade, experts had become steadily more worried about the effects of methane in any quantity on the atmosphere.

Everyone agrees that, molecule for molecule, methane traps far more heat than CO2—but exactly how much wasn’t clear. One reason the EPA estimates of America’s greenhouse-gas emissions showed such improvement was because the agency, following standard procedures, was assigning a low value to methane       and measuring its impact over a 100-year period. But a methane molecule lasts only a couple of decades in the air, compared with centuries for CO2. That’s good news, in that methane’s effects are transient—and very bad news because that transient but intense effect happens right now, when we’re breaking the back of the planet’s climate.

The EPA’s old chemistry and 100-year time frame assigned methane a heating value of 28 to 36 times that of carbon dioxide; a more accurate figure, says Howarth, is between 86 and 105 times the potency of CO2 over the next decade or two.

If you combine Howarth’s estimates of leakage rates and the new standard values for the heat-trapping potential of methane, then the picture of America’s total greenhouse-gas emissions over the last 15 years looks very different: Instead of peaking in 2007 and then trending downward, as the EPA has maintained, our combined emissions of methane and carbon dioxide have gone steadily and sharply up during the Obama years, Howarth says.

We closed coal plants and opened methane leaks, and the result is that things have gotten worse.

Full article
with irrefutable hard scientific data (that the liars and crooks working for the fossil fuel industry will, of course, rush to try to deny with mendacious propaganda  ).



http://www.thenation.com/article/global-warming-terrifying-new-chemistry/

Please pass this on . These dirty stinking fossil fuel industry crooks, their front men in government, their bought and paid for scientists and their propagandist scum need to be held accountable for degrading our biosphere AND our democracy.   
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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03/23/2016 03:10 PM     

Mass Protests In April, May in US and Around the World

SustainableBusiness.com News

This spring, huge rallies and protests are planned around the world against fossil fuels and to restore Democracy in the US.

On April 16-18, Democracy Awakening takes place in Washington DC.


We can't protect the environment without democracy, and environmental groups are joining with activists across the social spectrum to preserve our voice, such as labor, students and civil rights advocates.

"Corporate interests are holding our democracy hostage   . Voter suppression is running rampant   , fossil fuel money is warping our electoral process and now , leaders in Congress are even blocking fair consideration of a Supreme Court nominee ," says Rachel Rye Butler of Greenpeace.

Democracy Awakening is about: 

•Restoring Voting rights by stopping voter suppression.


This is the first presidential election where state voter suppression laws are in force, making it much harder for students, minorities and older people to vote.

In Texas, for example, a special state-issued ID is required to vote, a drivers license or a student ID won't work. In North Carolina and Wisconsin, university students can't vote if their families live elsewhere, and so many campus voting places have been eliminated that it can take hours to even find a place to vote.
 
•Getting Money Out of politics through campaign finance reform, transparency and overturning Citizens United

Without fossil fuel interests knocking on every Congressperson's door, a renewable energy economy is within our reach, for example.

They are calling for:

•Voting Rights Advancement Act: to restore and increase protection against voting discrimination.

•Voter Empowerment Act: to modernize voter registration and ensure equal access to voting for all.

•Democracy For All Amendment: would overturn Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United and limit influence of money in politics.

•Government By the People Act/Fair Elections Now Act: would amplify small contributions from everyday Americans.

May 4-15, Break Free From Fossil Fuels

People are mobilizing across the world to demand a rapid transition to renewable energy, and an end to taking fossil fuels out of the ground.

Globally coordinated mass actions are planned in the UK, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines Nigeria, South Africa, Canada and across the US.

They plan to occupy major fossil fuel sites, such as the largest coal mine in South Wales, where another may be built next door.

In the US, there will be "mass trespass at fracking sites", blockades at oil refineries and trains carrying oil.

The goal is to disrupt the power of the fossil fuel industry through "a series of peaceful, escalating actions...targeting the world's most dangerous and unnecessary fossil fuel projects," says organizer 350.org.

"The fossil fuel industry faces an unprecedented crisis - from collapsing prices, a new global climate deal, and an ever-growing movement calling for change. 

We have never had a better chance in history to break free from fossil fuels and build a just transition to clean and renewable energy," they say.

"There are no major economic or technical barriers to a future supported by renewable energy. Any new infrastructure built to support fossil fuel expansion, such as coal mines, power plants, oil rigs and export terminals will be a waste of money and further lock us into a path to irreversible climate change," states Arif Fiyanto, Coal Campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia.

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26586

Agelbert NOTE: Yes, the goons for the fossil fuel industry in the USA and abroad will be waiting for the protesters defending democracy and demanding the end of profit over planet. Yes, the "authorities", the media and the police will ensure the responsible citizens of this world present will be demonized, brutalized, tased, shot at and, when they aren't arrested, even murdered.

AND THAT VIOLENCE will spell the final doom of the fossil fuel fascist pigs EVERYWHERE. Of course the bought and paid for media will do their damnedest to prevent those who died from being given martyr status. They will fail.

And for those of you clever bastards working for the fossil fuel industry that think your fascist intimidation tactics will work (as usual), let me remind you that the people you have hired to do your murder and mayhem will overreach in their violence. If you think you can "damage control" the fallout from the violence your goons love to dish out, you are going to be very disappointed. All those thousands of fossil fuel industry employees just fired and police with families experiencing the health downsides of petroleum pollution are not going to remain "loyal" to the profit over planet "business model".

Everyday people will WELCOME severe energy disruption and rolling black outs just to see the end of subsidy swag and the pollution buck passing from the fossil fuel fascists jumping on the Chapter 11 "bankruptcy" wagon.

The people finally KNOW that the fossil fuel industry Modus Operandi has NEVER been abut providing low priced energy and has ALWAYS been about competitor destruction through government corruption based monopoly price control.

The fossil fuel industry has lost the support of the people. When that happens to any industry or government, no matter how effective its police state tactics are, it FALLS. The quislings in government, Wall Street and Main Street will rush to the support of the fossil fuel profit over planet "business model", but they will not be able to prevent the FALL of the fossil fuel industry/GOVERNMENT. 


TWO historical examples of what is about to happen: 

Truman wasn't the only president that pushed the use of nuclear weapons. Eisenhower wanted to nuke North Korea in the 1950s and Nixon wanted to nuke North Korea in 1969 as a "scare the commies" tactic to end the Viet Nam War. Eisenhower telegraphed his intent with a nukes=bullets speech that caused such an uproar he had to hastily shelve his "nuke bullets" (as you can see he, really did not believe the bomb was such an "awful thing" as he claimed). Nixon was convinced by the MASSES of people around the White House and across the country demanding an end to the Viet Nam War that he would be run out of office if he executed his nuke barbarity (I will provide documented evidence of what I just said to anyone interested.  ;D).

The fossil fuel industry, a business that became powerful and influential through corruption and violence, with a stranglehold on governments all over the world, is about to learn a lesson (see: French Revolution times 1000).

« Last Edit: March 24, 2016, 07:05:27 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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SEC Forces Exxon to Bring Climate-Friendly Accounting to Shareholder Vote

As You Sow | March 25, 2016 12:37 pm

SNIPPET:

In a key win  ,
the Oakland-based non-profit advocacy group, As You Sow defeated ExxonMobil’s attempt to suppress an innovative, first of its kind shareholder resolution. The resolution asks Exxon to report its energy resources in an energy-neutral metric—BTUs—in addition to the traditional “barrels of oil equivalent” standard.

Establishing a climate-friendly measure of energy reserves is a key step in incentivizing management, and the market, to support the transition to a clean energy economy.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/25/exxon-climate-friendly-accounting/

Agelbert COMMENT: The fossil fuel industry, a business that became powerful and influential through corruption and violence, with a stranglehold on governments all over the world, is about to learn a lesson.

A "barrel of oil" is a polluting energy resource, NOT an energy resource.

The BTU standard should REQUIRE that the BTUs needed to bio-remediate the pollution produced by each barrel of oil be SUBTRACTED from that energy return on energy invested (ERoEI) of said barrel of oil.

The fossil fuel industry's "business model" is not profitable when all the energy math is done. They know that. That is why do everything they can to corrupt government officials.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Mark Ruffalo and Annie Leonard: We Must Rebuild Our Democracy

Annie Leonard and Mark Ruffalo | March 25, 2016 8:23 am

SNIPPET:

2016 will be the first American presidential election since 1965 with major new voting restrictions—photo identification requirements, cuts to early voting and the elimination of same day voting registration are just a few of the roadblocks thrown up by special interests in 15 states.

Not only that, but once voters overcome these obstacles to actually vote, the candidates they have to choose from will be largely self-selected from the economic elites  , looking out for banks like Goldman Sachs instead of everyday people.

Quote
Rather than a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we have a government of super-PACs and dark money, by the 1% and for corporate interests. 

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/25/ruffalo-leonard-democracy-awakening/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Rockefeller Fund Votes to Divest, Knocks Exxon

SNIPPET:

The Rockefeller Family Fund will divest from fossil fuels and ditch its holdings of Exxon Mobil, citing the oil giant’s "morally reprehensible” stance on climate change issues. John D. Rockefeller, the fund’s founding father, made his fortune on Exxon’s predecessor, Standard Oil, but spokespeople for Rockefeller stated,
Quote

"There is no sane rationale for companies to continue to explore for new sources of hydrocarbons." 
Fossil-fuel investments make up about 6 percent of the Rockefeller Family Fund’s $130 million endowment.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/23/rockefeller-fund-divestment-fossil-fuel-companies-oil-coal-climate-change
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Protesters against a Vermont Gas natural gas pipeline hold a banner in front of the building that houses the Department of Public Service and Public Service Board on Montpelier’s State Street. Photo by C.B. Hall/VTDigger

Public    Service  Board considers barring public from Vermont Gas eminent domain hearings

Mar. 26, 2016, 5:24 am by Mike Polhamus

The Vermont Public Service Board is considering whether to bar the public from attending eminent domain hearings for a controversial gas pipeline.

The board has asked participants in the Vermont Gas Systems hearings for comment by March 31.

Protesters have interrupted eminent domain proceedings, the March 17 court order says, “by shouting, singing loudly, and leaving their seats to crowd the physical space around many of the parties and the court reporter.”

Law enforcement officials have expressed doubt over whether they can prevent protesters from disrupting future hearings.  ;D

The board’s request for comment was issued in part out of concern for the safety of participants and others who may be in attendance at the hearings.

Jim Dumont, an attorney for several of the private landowners, wrote in a response to the board’s order that it is wrong for the board to treat peaceful protesters as a threat to public safety.

“One may disagree with the protesters’ views on the efficacy or style of their protests, but I think it ill serves reasonable public debate about this terribly important subject to suggest that their actions have been tainted by threats of violence,” Dumont wrote.

Dumont told the board to do whatever they consider necessary to maintain order during the proceedings, but said it would be inappropriate to exclude the public. That would go against the First Amendment, the Vermont Constitution, and Vermont’s open meetings laws, he said.

“Any member of the public who disrupts the proceedings can be removed by law enforcement,” he said. “There is no legitimate reason to exclude members of the public who do not disrupt the proceedings.”

One of the protesters said he plans to continue agitating against the pipeline as long as he is able.
“If there are more eminent domain hearings, there will be protests,” said Alex Porlman, an organizer with the anti-pipeline group Rising Tide Vermont.

Quote
“The eminent domain process is structured so that the company is always going to win at the end of the day,” he said.
“It’s just the most egregious example of the state working with the company to pave the way for the pipeline. It’s worth fighting against, and we’ll definitely keep doing so.”

Vermont Gas
spokeswoman Beth Parent said she couldn’t comment on the company’s response to the board’s order because it has not yet been submitted.

Protesters have forestalled several attempts by the Public Service Board to conduct hearings on eminent domain proceedings against landowners across whose property Vermont Gas would bury the pipeline. Protesters have also prevented multiple attempts by appraisers to valuate the land.  ;D

Vermont Gas has built an 11 mile a loop between Colchester to Williston, which is part of the 41-mile project. When complete it will extend to Middlebury.

The company has negotiated agreements from 98 percent of landowners to build a pipeline through Addison County.

http://vtdigger.org/2016/03/26/public-service-board-considers-barring-public-from-vermont-gas-eminent-domain-hearings/

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelbert NOTE: The old Chapter 11 Bankruptcy SCAM (Expect the Fossil Fuel Corporations, who have always yammered about being "responsible" to shaft ALL their non-executive employees  as they go the way of the Dodo Bird).

These fossil fuel Corporate crooks and liars are always yammering about "responsibility and hard work". But when things get a little tight, they throw their non-executive employees in the street and do the old Chapter 11 trick to weasel their way out of debts, retirement obligations and health care.

And they DO all this "limited liability" = BREACH OF CONTRACT with the full legalese approval of a bought and paid Bankruptcy Court Judge while the executives rob the corporation blind with golden parachutes. AND, our "Justice" Department just says it's all part of the "limited liability" way of our grand and glorious "democratic system"...

So much for the "sanctity of contracts" that the fossil fuel corporations in general, and all the conservatives in particular, solemnly claim is part of our system.


These Corporations Have **** the Land and Robbed the People
 

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/03/these-corporations-have-****-land-and-robbed-people

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelbert NOTE: GUESS what buyer our shale gas polluting pigs have found? These criminals will not stop until somebody STOPS them!   


U.S. Taps India as Asia’s Debut Buyer of American Shale Gas  :P

April 1, 2016 by Bloomberg
 
LNG carrier Asia Vision. Photo credit: Chevron

By Debjit Chakraborty, Anna Shiryaevskaya and Harry R. Weber

(Bloomberg) — Gail India Ltd. bought the second shipment of liquefied natural gas from Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana in a deal that makes it the first Asian importer of U.S. shale gas.

The nation’s biggest supplier will receive the cargo, bought on spot basis, at the Dabhol import terminal on the country’s west coast by mid-April, Vandana Chanana, a company spokeswoman, said Friday by e-mail. Faith Parker, a spokeswoman at Cheniere in Houston, didn’t immediately respond to a voice mail left outside office hours and an e-mail sent Friday morning.

The deal marks the beginning of U.S. LNG exports into the world’s biggest importing region of the super-chilled fuel, just as regional producers from Australia to Papua New Guinea ramp up supplies. India last year overtook South Korea as the world’s second-biggest importer of the fuel on a spot and short-term basis as buyers took advantage of a slump in prices brought on by the crash in crude oil and an oversupply.

“This is the first and definitely will not be the last shipment to go to India from the U.S. Gulf Coast,” Chris Rumley, a senior LNG and natural gas consultant at Poten & Partners, said by telephone from Houston on Friday. “There is terminal capacity in India and if the price is competitive against alternative fuels, then there’s a market there for it.”

Higher Price

The delivered price of the cargo is about $5 per million British thermal units, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Chanana declined to comment on commercial terms.

That’s higher than the $4.30 per million British thermal units now paid by customers in northeast Asia for spot cargoes, according to assessments by the World Gas Intelligence publication. Prices crashed 78 percent from the peak in February 2014.

The price slump supported demand for spot cargoes in India. Imports rose 45 percent to 9.7 million tons in 2015, the biggest increase in spot and short-term traded volumes last year, according to the International Group of LNG importers annual report published this week. India imported a total of 14.6 million tons of LNG last year, unchanged from a year earlier, according to the group.

Tanker Route

The Clean Ocean LNG tanker left Sabine Pass on March 15 after loading the second export cargo from the terminal. It’s sailing toward South Africa, according to ship-tracking data on Friday.

Some analysts had expected the vessel to go elsewhere, perhaps to South America because of demand there for the power-plant fuel and because of the content of the gas Cheniere was producing.

“We initially thought when it left it would be Rio or Kuwait, because of there being hotter gas, meaning higher ethane and C+ content, in the tanks when they started to liquefy,” Jason Lord, LNG analyst for energy data provider Genscape Inc., said by telephone from Boulder, Colorado. “Their regas facilities and grid tend to be able to handle that better in the Atlantic basin. Potentially, this one in India can handle that.”

The first batch of LNG from the Cheniere terminal was shipped to Brazil in February, marking the start of U.S. shale gas exports. The third cargo on the GasLog Salem is also set to go to Brazil, while the destination of the fourth shipment on the Energy Atlantic is still unclear, according to the ship-tracking data.

Eight Cargoes

Cheniere plans to ship as many as eight cargoes of LNG from its Sabine Pass project by May, the Houston-based company said in a February notice to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Cheniere’s initial exports are commissioning cargoes as part of the startup process to ensure the terminal is fully operational. Once that’s complete, Cheniere will need regulatory approval to operate the terminal commercially.

Gail India has agreed to buy 3.5 million metric tons of LNG a year for two decades from Sabine Pass. It has also booked 2.3 million tons a year capacity in the Cove Point LNG liquefaction terminal in Maryland. The shipments are expected to start in 2017 or 2018.

Gail will import around 6 million metric tons of gas from the U.S. from 2018, India’s Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in an interview in New Delhi on March 28.

–With assistance from Naureen S. Malik.

© 2016 Bloomberg L.P

https://gcaptain.com/u-s-taps-india-as-asias-debut-buyer-of-american-shale-gas/




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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The Big Coal Bailout of 2016   

Carl Pope | March 31, 2016 9:20 am

SNIPPET:


Finally, in February 2015, the Administration moved, proposing a “Power Plus” plan to help protect miner’s pensions, health care and the economic based on coal dependent communities. (It also moved in the same month to reform royalty abuses).

But, of course, by this time such aid required Congressional appropriations. Bankruptcy courts had already let Patriot and other companies dump their pension and health care obligations. The same Republican leaders who blasted Obama for making war on coal denounced the new plan. Leading the charge? Kentucky Senator and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made it clear that his hostility towards the United Mines Workers trumped whatever concern he might have had for Kentucky coal miners. In December, McConnell personally blocked efforts to include community and pension rescue efforts in the budget deal Republicans cut with Obama.

Here there is a partisan difference. Democrats who are waging “War on Coal” favor keeping the promise America made to coal miners. Hilary Clinton has strongly advocated help for the workers and communities.

How do conservatives justify this stand? By calling any effort to ensure that miners get the pensions they earned yes, “a bailout.” But conservative attacks on such efforts to protect pensions simply don’t mention the shenanigans by which companies like Peabody got rid of their debts. These are actually worse than bailouts. In a bailout the calculation is that a healthy enterprise emerges. But there is no prospect in these cases that Patriot, Arch or Shortly Peabody is going to bounce back.

Quote
These are give-aways What is hard to calculate is how big and costly they are.

The UMW Pension fund, for example, protects more than 100,000 coal miners and former miners. It has $3.8 billion in assets, but must pay out about $600 million a year—so if it goes bankrupt, (ignoring the likely collateral damage to the whole U.S. pension insurance system) over a decade $6 billion could be transferred from the coal industry to the public—12 Solydras!

How much are the reclamation costs being forgiven? Well, an earlier generation of mining reclamation costs are now estimated to cost $17 billion—34 Solyndras.

And the pending defaults on self-bonded mining costs seem likely to run another $2.7 billion. So the total give-aways to coal companies as they race towards bankruptcy seems to be over $25 billion—almost 50 Solyndras.

That’s quite a bailout—the GM bailout cost taxpayers only $11.2 billion, less than half as much and the taxpayers got a healthy GM out of the deal—we get nothing from coal give-aways.

So the next time some economist earnestly lectures you on the need to avoid subsidizing clean energy, or a Republican says government shouldn’t pick winners and losers, ask them to show you where—and how loudly—they denounced the Big Coal Bailout of 2016.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/31/big-coal-bailout-2016/
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How Much Money Has Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Taken From the Fossil Fuel Industry?  ???

Democracy Now! | April 4, 2016 11:18 am

According to a new report by Greenpeace, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting her have received $138,400 from fossil fuel lobbyists and $1,327,210 from bundlers, totaling more than $4.5 million from lobbyists, bundlers and large donors connected the fossil fuel industry  . Clinton maintains that she’s received only about $330,000 from individuals who work for fossil fuel companies—about 0.2 percent of the total raised by her campaign. 

We speak with Charlie Cray, research specialist for Greenpeace and lead researcher on the fossil fuel lobbyists’ contributions to the Clinton campaign, as well as Eva Resnick-Day, a democracy organizer for Greenpeace who confronted Clinton at a rally.

Watch here:



With the Wisconsin primary just a day away, Democratic presidential challengers Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders sparred over the weekend over whether fossil fuel lobbyists are funding Clinton’s campaign. The dispute took center stage after video emerged of Greenpeace activist Eva Resnick-Day questioning Clinton at a campaign rally at the State University of New York in Purchase on Thursday. Resnick-Day has been working on a Greenpeace campaign to get candidates to take a pledge rejecting future donations from oil, gas and coal lobbyists, and executives.

“These lobbyists are people whose job it is to make connections with Senator Clinton to influence her policy going forward. And giving her money in the campaign, they’re clearly trying to find influence,” says Resnick-Day. “I don’t think that that is how democracy should work.”

We speak with Resnick-Day, the democracy organizer for Greenpeace who confronted Clinton.

Watch here:



http://ecowatch.com/2016/04/04/clinton-fossil-fuel-money/

Agelbert NOTE: Senator Sanders says below, what Hillary Clinton NEVER will say or even admit.

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SandRidge Energy, with $3.6 billion debt, flags bankruptcy risk

Nicolas Torres April 4, 2016

Oklahoma-based SandRidge Energy confirmed on Wednesday that it has hired advisers to evaluate potential restructuring options.

SandRidge said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it has engaged advisers to evaluate strategic alternatives that could include restructuring, refinancing of existing debt through a private restructuring or reogranizaiton under Chapter 11.

“As a result of these uncertainties and the likelihood of a restructuring or reorganization, management has concluded that there is substantial doubt regarding the company’s ability to continue as a going concern as it is currently structured,” SandRidge said.

SandRidge’s total debt stood at $3.6 billion as of December 31.
The company also had $11 million in outstanding letters of credit as of December 31 and preferred stock outstanding with an aggregate liquidation preference of $542 million.

The company said its “substantial level of indebtedness” and dividends tied to its outstanding preferred stock increase the possibility that it may be unable to generate enough cash to make principal, interest or divided payments.

SandRidge added that the inclusion of a statement in its full year consolidated financial statements citing the firm’s “substantial doubt” about its ability to remain a going concern could result in a default under the terms of its senior secured revolving credit facility.

If SandRidge  does not obtain a waiver for that covenant within 30 calendar days its senior credit facility lenders will be able to accelerate maturity of the debt.

“These defaults create additional uncertainty associated with the company’s ability to repay its outstanding long-term debt obligations as they become due and further reinforces the substantial doubt over the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” SandRidge said.

The company elected to take a 30 day grace period last month to defer making $21.7 million in interest payments that were due February 16.

SandRidge said it had sufficient liquidity to make the payments but chose to use the grace period to continue its “ongoing discussions with stakeholders.”

The New York Stock Exchange delisted shares of SandRidge in late January after the stock’s price stayed below $1 per share for more than seven months.

SandRidge booked a fourth quarter 2015 adjusted EBITDA of$79 million in the fourth quarter of 2015, down from $239 million in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Full year adjusted EBITDA for 2015 was $589 million, down from $873 million in 2014.

SandRidge is also dealing with a class action lawsuit filed earlier this month against the firm, SandRidge’s former CEO Tom Ward and Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy.

The lawsuit, filed by Dallas-based law firm Burns Charest in an Oklahoma federal court, alleges that the “defendants violated federal antitrust laws by rigging bids and limiting competition for oil and gas leases in northwest Oklahoma.”

The defendants listed in the suit have not commented on the matter. 

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/04/sandridge-energy-3-6-billion-debt-flags-bankruptcy-risk/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Oil and Gas Companies     Stiff 29,000 Workers Out of $40 Million

America's fracking boom promised big paychecks, but thousands of workers were exploited, the Labor Department says.


By Alan Neuhauser April 4, 2016, at 12:30 p.m.

Like beacons in the night, the flares burning over America's oil and gas fields drew tens of thousands of workers over the past decade, promising big paydays and new pickup trucks, even for those who had just graduated high school.

But in an industry sector recently plagued by plunging oil prices that have forced thousands of rigs to go idle, many of those workers have been feeling even more financial pain, having been forced to wait for their full paychecks.

More than 29,000 oil and gas employees have been stiffed over $40 million in back wages, according to findings from more than 1,100 investigations launched since 2012 by the Labor Department.

Despite booming industry profits and record oil and gas output – which together rejuvenated the country's economy and transformed the U.S. into the world's top oil and gas producer in 2014 and 2015 – companies misclassified their workers and failed to pay them required overtime, even as they put in long workdays in often dangerous conditions.

"We continue to find unacceptably high numbers of violations in the oil and gas   industry," Betty Campbell, regional administrator for the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division in the Southwest, said in a statement.

The most recent violations were announced last month, when more than 2,500 employees for four companies – Jet Specialties, Frank's International, Viking Onshore Drilling and Stream-Flo USA – were found to be owed $1.6 million in back wages.  >:(

Violations ranged from failing to pay production bonuses to wrongly  ;) considering employees as "exempt" from overtime requirements, paying them flat salaries regardless of how many hours they worked.

The specific investigations of Frank's International and Stream-Flo USA began in the Northeast, and ultimately encompassed employees from Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Wyoming, the Labor Department said. Employers who violate the law in their pay practices harm workers, their families and law-abiding industry employers," Campbell said.

The Wage and Hour Division's inquiries into the energy industry began in the agency's Northeast regional offices in Pennsylvania. The state, sitting atop the Marcellus Shale formation, was one of the country's biggest fracking hubs, and jobs nationwide eventually surged past 191,000 on the extraction side alone by the end of 2012, not including service companies and other related sectors. By comparison, there were around 179,000 such employees last month.

Investigators soon discovered the sector was rife with wage problems.

"Investigations in the [Northeast] region in 2012 revealed that the violations were widespread," says Robin Mallett, a Wage and Hour Division district director in Houston, whose office led two of the most recent investigations in March. The initiative rapidly spread west, involving offices in Chicago and Texas.

Mallett stopped short of saying whether the violations were systemic. But jobs were often not nearly as lucratively as they seemed, she says.

Quote
"Even though they have a reputation, the industry, for paying high wages," Mallett says, "sometimes the economic reality of it is the workers are receiving these hefty paychecks simply because of the sheer number of hours that they're working – really it was not that high a rate of pay."

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-04/oil-and-gas-companies-stiff-29-000-workers-out-of-40-million

Agelbert NOTE: If the above surprises you, then you do not understand the "philosopy" of life of the Predators 'R' US crowd that run the fossil fuel corporations. Their "business model" REQUIRES that they "externalize" pollution costs to the population and biosphere while they fleece the same population through "subsidy" swag and various bought and paid for tax fraud loopholes.

IOW, they make money because they CHEAT.

There is NO WAY that Fracking OR ocean rigs could have EVER made money if they were not able to flare all those toxic gases into the atmosphere and had to capture and process them.

   


These psychopaths will OBVIOUSLY not hesitate to SHAFT their "salt of the earth" employees the INSTANT anything gets in the way of the SWAG for the management.

You are seeing JUST THE TIP OF A MASSIVE "iceberg" turd defined as the Corporate Tyranny of Big Oil.   


We need fossil fuel corporations like a HOLE IN THE HEAD. As long as they have a nickel, they will spend it to crap all over the people and the planet. Ethical business practices are a JOKE to them.    The sooner all fossil fuel corporate polluting pigs get selected out of human civilization, the BETTER! 



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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The only way DESTRUCTION (i.e. pollution catastrophe) can "creative" (i.e. profit over planet)      is if you can FRAUDULENLY "legally" DEDUCT IT from your Tax Liability so that WE-the-PEOPLE PAY for MOST OF THE POLLUTION CLEANUP COSTS.

Deepwater Horizon future tax deduction



Report: BP can deduct majority of Deepwater Horizon settlement

Staff Writers April 12, 2016

BP may be able to deduct the majority of the record-setting $20 billion settlement it reached for claims tied to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy group, said Tuesday that BP may be able to claim up to $15.3 billion of the settlement as a tax deduction.

While corporations are not able to deduct penalties or fines paid to the government penalties only account for a small portion of the settlement.

BP will pay a Clean Water Act penalty of $5.5 billion plus interest.

The company will pay $8.1 billion in natural resource damages and up to an additional $700 million to address injuries to natural resources that are presently unknown, according to a statement released by the DOJ late last month.

BP will also pay $600 million for other claims, including claims under the False Claims Act, royalties and reimbursement of natural resource damage assessment costs and other expenses tied to the accident.

The settlement will be paid out over the course of 16 years.

The deal was approved by a federal judge on Monday and will also allow for the implementation of a related settlement of economic damage claims for five Gulf states and local governments.

The five states included in the settlement are Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

According to BP’s 2015 annual report, the company has taken a cumulative pre-tax income statement charge of $55.5 billion as a result of the incident.  

That sum excludes amounts that BP said were not “possible to measure reliably at this time.”   

The settlement is the single largest settlement the DOJ has ever reached with a single entity.

The deal resolves all of the government’s civil claims against BP related to the April 2010 Macondo well blowout that caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history and killed 11 people.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/04/report-bp-can-deduct-majority-deepwater-horizon-settlement/


Agelbert  NOTE: The fossil fuel government strikes AGAIN:




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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We Can't Afford The Fossil Fuel Industry

&&Apr. 14, 2016 2:38 pm

By Thom Hartmann

We're constantly told that we can't afford to enact the bold climate solutions necessary to make the switch to 100 percent renewable energy.
Quote
But, the people who say such things often leave out the hefty price that taxpayers are already paying to cover the cost of dirty fossil fuel energy.

In addition to the twenty-or-so billion dollars that oil and gas companies receive in direct subsidies from the government,
Quote
they rake in billions more in bailouts in the form of tax write-offs, subsidized clean up costs, and mandated customer fees.


Last week alone there were two glaring examples of fossil fuels company bailouts that stuck taxpayers with the bill, even though they never got a vote.

First, utility customers in Ohio learned that they would be stuck paying billions in fees to prop up aging coal and nuclear plants in their state.

Then, Gulf Coast residents learned that BP will be permitted to write off $15.3 billion dollars of the settlement resulting from the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill.

In both cases, the fossil fuel industry benefited from billions of dollars in subsidies on the front end, only to ask for another hand out when their failure to update plants or install appropriate safety mechanisms got them into trouble. And, they are both perfect examples of why people claim that oil and gas are still cheaper than clean energy.

If you never include the external costs or the numerous taxpayer-funded bailouts, it is easy to make fossil fuels appear cheaper than the alternative.

If oil and gas actually had to compete on a level playing field, no one would consider pollution, oil spills, and fracking earthquakes reasonable side effects of energy production.

If we want solar, wind, and other renewable sources to flourish in our nation, all we have to do is stop the massive subsidies that perpetuate our addiction to fossil fuels.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/04/we-cant-afford-fossil-fuel-industry#sthash.8mcwFoGD.dpuf
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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  April 20, 2016

Why BP's $20 Billion Settlement is Business as Usual in the Gulf of Mexico


Antonia Juhasz analyses the lasting devastation from the spill in the Gulf and the renewed commitments to offshore drilling    

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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