Category Archives: oil

BP covered up blow-out two years prior to deadly Deepwater Horizon spill

Greg Palast writes: Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

This week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases: the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use the dangerous methods in the Gulf of Mexico—causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. April 20 marks the second anniversary of the Gulf oil disaster.

There were several failures in common to the two incidents identified by the eyewitness. He is an industry insider whose identity and expertise we have confirmed. His name and that of other witnesses we contacted must be withheld for their safety.

The failures revolve around the use of “quick-dry” cement, the uselessness of blow-out preventers, “mayhem” in evacuation procedures and an atmosphere of fear which prevents workers from blowing the whistle on safety problems. [Continue reading…]

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The Kazakhstan massacre: Killing hope to benefit U.S. geopolitical interests

Steve Horn and Allen Ruff report: December 16, 2011, should have been, at minimum, a fairly bright day for the people of Kazakhstan marking the country's Independence Day and 20th birthday.

But rather than being a moment of celebration, it became a day of brutal repression and death, a bloody scene in the regional center of Zhanaozen paralleling those that occurred at the hands of US-supported dictatorial regimes during the uprisings now commonly referred to as the Arab Spring.

The victims of the state's crackdown were striking oil workers protesting subsistence wages and poor working conditions in the city of 51,000 citizens 75 miles east of the Caspian Sea.

Kazakhstan's state media reported police shot and killed ten workers, wounding more than 80 strikers. Independent journalist Mark Ames translated an account of a Russian reporter who estimated approximately 70 dead, with 500 to 800 wounded. Scores more were jailed, likely the victims of beatings and torture.

Following the shootings and arrests, Zhanaozen, home to the state-owned oil company, KazMunaiGas (KMG), was placed under a state of emergency. Authorities cut off Internet and communications access nationwide and the city was inundated with additional thousands of police. KMG has ongoing business ownership partnerships with the US-based multinational energy giants Chevron and ExxonMobil, which hold significant concessions in the country.

EurasiaNet's Joshua Kucera reported the attacks on the strikers were carried out by police armed with US-supplied weaponry. Some of the 114 Humvees given to Kazkahstan since 2002 as part of the US-funded  Kazakhstan Peacekeeping Brigade (KAZBRIG) were filmed on the streets during the height of the repression.

That same cold, dark December day at Aktau, 75 miles to the west, police cracked down on rallies held in solidarity with the Zhanaozen workers. Human Rights Watch documented that, "police detained about 100 protesters and took them to a temporary detention center … Workers in Aktau reported heavy police surveillance at the protest, which was held in front of the regional mayor's office."

Human Rights Watch responded to the abuse of civil liberties by calling for an investigation into the use of state violence and called for the restoration of telecommunications services.

The repression was conducted by a police apparatus built up under the dictatorial reign of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country's leader and "winner" of fixed election after election since the Central Asian Republic became independent following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Later, parliamentary elections took place on January 15, with Nazarbayev initially barring those living in Zhanaozen from participating. He later revoked that decision, but that didn't matter, since the elections are consistently rigged to begin with under what is essentially a one-party state.

The December repression of oil workers, and the political situation at large in Kazakhstan, call for a deeper examination into the geopolitical situation of a country located at the heart of what has long been referred to as the historic Silk Road trade route and what investigative journalist Pepe Escobar refers to as Pipelineistan.

Four times the size of Texas and larger than western Europe, a massive country of over 16 million at the heart of Central Asia, resource-rich Kazakhstan has increasingly become a vital centerpiece of US strategic interest, "soft power" and "hard power" regional influence.

The country has become case study for US deployment of the so-called "three D's": diplomacy, development and defense – as part of the broader ongoing long-war effort delineated in the Pentagon's April 2011 National Strategic Narrative and elsewhere. [Continue reading…]

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Doomsday Clock ticks one minute closer to midnight

The Guardian reports: The world tiptoed closer to the apocalypse on Tuesday as scientists moved the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to the zero hour.

The symbolic clock now stands at five minutes to midnight, the scientists said, because of a collective failure to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, act on climate change, or find safe and sustainable sources of energy – as exemplified by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The rare bright points the scientists noted were the Arab spring and movement in Russia for greater democracy.

The clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, has been gauging our proximity to global disaster since 1947, using the potent image of a clock counting down the minutes to destruction. Until Tuesday afternoon, the clock had been set at six minutes to midnight.

“It is five minutes to midnight,” the scientists said. “Two years ago it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed.”

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Chevron accused of racism as it fights Ecuador pollution ruling

The Guardian reports: Lawyers representing Ecuadorian plaintiffs in their long-running suit against Chevron over the dumping of toxic waste in the Amazon river basin have accused the oil giant of racism.

The allegation comes as Chevron vows to fight off a ruling that said the oil giant must pay $18bn for causing pollution in the Amazon rainforest more than 20 years ago.

An Ecuadorian appeals court upheld the case against Chevron on Tuesday, following an eight-year legal battle. The ruling was the latest leg in a decades-long legal dispute.

Chevron, which has accused the plaintiffs of submitting fraudulent evidence, has publicly vowed to continue the fight. “Chevron does not believe that the Ecuador ruling is enforceable in any court that observes the rule of law. The company will continue to seek to hold accountable the perpetrators of this fraud,” the company said in a statement.

Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorian lawyer, said Chevron was guilty of “a racist attitude” and said that it was clear the judgment could now be enforced.

“Chevron does not want to ever recognise that indigenous or poor people have the right to access justice,” he said.

“Despite all the efforts of Chevron to floor this case, we have won. What that means is justice does exist. We are happy because after 18 years of battle and 40 years of suffering finally there will be justice and hopefully repair of the Amazon.”

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Big Oil threatens Obama

North America could be self-sufficient in gasoline and diesel fuel in 15 years if only the government would get out of the way, the president of the American Petroleum Institute said on Wednesday in a “state of American energy” address intended to raise the industry’s profile in the presidential election.

Jack N. Gerard, the president and chief executive of the trade group, said repeatedly that his organization would not take a position on whom to vote for. But he also said, “It would be a huge mistake on the part of the president of the United States to deny the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline,” which would deliver crude extracted from oil sands in Canada to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Turning it down would have “huge electoral consequences,” he said.


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With reservations, Obama signs act to allow indefinite detention of U.S. citizens

ABC News reports: In his last official act of business in 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act from his vacation rental in Kailua, Hawaii. In a statement, the president said he did so with reservations about key provisions in the law — including a controversial component that would allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.

The legislation has drawn severe criticism from civil liberties groups, many Democrats, along with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who called it “a slip into tyranny.” Recently two retired four-star Marine generals called on the president to veto the bill in a New York Times op-ed, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary.”

“Due process would be a thing of the past,” wrote Gens Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar. “Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States – and hand Osama bin Laden an unearned victory long after his well-earned demise.”

The president defended his action, writing that he signed the act, “chiefly because it authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, crucial services for service members and their families, and vital national security programs that must be renewed.”

Senior administration officials, who asked not to be named, told ABC News, “The president strongly believes that to detain American citizens in military custody infinitely without trial, would be a break with our traditions and values as a nation, and wants to make sure that any type of authorization coming from congress, complies with our Constitution, our rules of war and any applicable laws.”

The Associated Press adds: The administration also raised concerns about an amendment in the bill that goes after foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank, barring them from opening or maintaining correspondent operations in the United States. It would apply to foreign central banks only for transactions that involve the sale or purchase of petroleum or petroleum products.

Officials worry that the penalties could lead to higher oil prices, damaging the U.S. economic recovery and hurting allies in Europe and Asia that purchase petroleum from Iran.

The penalties do not go into effect for six months. The president can waive them for national security reasons or if the country with jurisdiction over the foreign financial institution has significantly reduced its purchases of Iran oil.

The State Department has said the U.S. was looking at how to put them in place in a way that maximized the pressure on Iran, but meant minimal disruption to the U.S. and its allies.

In response to the threatened penalties, Iran warned this past week that it may disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf waterway. U.S. officials say that while they take all threats from Iran seriously, they view this latest warning as little more than saber rattling because disrupting the waterway would harm Iran’s economy.

The $662 billion bill authorizes money for military personnel, weapons systems, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and national security programs in the Energy Department for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

The measure also freezes some $700 million in assistance until Pakistan comes up with a strategy to deal with improvised explosive devices.

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Iran and the U.S. trade threats

The Associated Press reports: Oil prices fell on Wednesday, after Saudi Arabia said it will offset any loss of oil from a threatened Iranian blockade of a crucial tanker route in the Middle East.

The U.S. Navy warned that any disruption of traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz “will not be tolerated.”

In New York, benchmark crude fell $1.98, or about 2 percent, to finish at $99.36 a barrel.

Brent crude fell $1.71 to end at $107.56 a barrel in London.

On Tuesday Iran’s vice president said that his country was ready to close the Strait of Hormuz — a vital waterway through which a third of the world’s tanker traffic flows — if western nations embargo the country’s oil because of Iran’s ongoing nuclear program. The head of the country’s navy added on Wednesday that his fleet can block the strait if need be. His comments came as Iran held a 10-day drill in international waters near the strategic route, which is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point.

A Saudi oil ministry official told The Associated Press that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers are ready to provide more oil if Iran tries to block the strait. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue. He didn’t specify other routes that could be used to transport oil, although they would likely be longer and more expensive for getting crude to the region’s customers.

“Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated,” said Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is responsible for naval operations in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.

Steve LeVine writes: Is Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz — the seaway chokepoint for some 17 percent of the world’s daily oil supply — as empty as its vow to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth? Oil traders by and large think so — a day after Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi issued the threat, global oil prices were sharply lower.

Traders say the main reason for their non-chalance is the extent of U.S. military forces deployed in the area. The idea is that, if Iran mines the waterway — which links the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean — or harasses oil tankers with its fast patrol boats (such as the one pictured above), the U.S. Navy will swiftly come to the rescue.

At the Financial Times, Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Javier Blas say we may be witnessing a reflection of Iranian politics ahead of March parliamentary elections.

Yet the characters in this latest Persian Gulf drama are among the most unpredictable on the big geopolitical chessboard. While Iran may very well be simply huffing and puffing, it is not out of the question that it would, as it has before, make trouble for oil traffic in the Strait. If it does, that would be serious stuff because of those who are dispatching the 13 oil and liquefied natural gas supertankers that ply Hormuz every day — in addition to Iran, they are Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In his daily note to clients today, Connecticut-based oil analyst Peter Beutel steps away from the machismo of other traders, and notes the stakes should Iran make good on its threat: “Under any scenario, [it] would be a game-changer. It could keep millions of barrels a day from moving out of the Petroleum Gulf — perhaps as much as 19 million barrels per day — and would instantly draw all consuming nations into opposition with Tehran. The U.S. and its Arab allies would be compelled to open [the strait] by military force.”

I remarked last week on the poor record of sanctions in terms of achieving foreign policy objectives. But it is hung up because, notwithstanding the lobby that earns a living by urging war with this or that country, there is very little upside, and much in the way of downside, in any military solution. So if you wish to forestall a nuclear-armed Iran, and war is too risky, sanctions are about all there is.

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Iran threatens to close Strait of Hormuz if West imposes oil sanctions

The New York Times reports: Iran issued a blunt warning on Tuesday that it would block the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil transit point, if Western powers attempt to impose an embargo on Iranian petroleum exports in their campaign to isolate the country over its suspect nuclear energy program.

The warning, issued by Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, came as Iran’s naval forces were in the midst of a 10-day war games exercise in a vast area of the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman. The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage that connects the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf, is the route for one third of the world’s oil-tanker traffic.

“If Iran oil is banned not a single drop of oil will pass through Hormuz Strait,” Mr. Rahimi was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency at a conference in Tehran.

“We are not interested in any hostility,” he was quoted as saying. “Our motto is friendship and brotherhood, but Westerners are not willing to abandon their plots.”

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Don’t stop at Iraq: Why the U.S. should withdraw from the entire Persian Gulf

Toby C. Jones writes: The U.S. is finally drawing down its military presence from Iraq, but why stop there? Why not reduce or outright remove our military presence from the entire Persian Gulf? The U.S. has been waging war in the Gulf for more than two and a half decades, since it took up arms against in Iran in the closing stages of the Iran-Iraq war. The human and environmental costs have been catastrophic. The presumptive gains of what has amounted to one long war have proven elusive at best. More often that not, the justifications for war have been either ill-conceived or manufactured. The Persian Gulf today is hardly stable or secure. But permanent war, and our militarization of the Gulf, isn’t so much a reflection of regional instability as it is the cause.

Today, it’s still not clear what the United States’ strategic priorities are in the Gulf. Are we there to secure access to oil? Protect friendly regimes from unfriendly ones? American policymaking is muddled, a combination of concern about energy security, Iranian aggression, and terrorism. This uncertainty is perilous. And the reality is that none of these challenges really require a significant military presence. Indeed, if recent history is any guide, a large military footprint in the Gulf will generate more rather than less risk.

Historically, oil and “energy security” have been at the heart of American strategy in the Gulf. It is home to the richest oil and natural gas deposits on the planet. It was President Jimmy Carter who most clearly made protecting the flow of oil to global markets a national priority. Carter declared oil a “vital interest” and that any assault on it would “be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” Protecting oil meant protecting its producers. Indeed, much of the war-fighting of the last two decades has been rationalized as necessary to defend Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and their oil, from neighborhood threats. The economic logic that has underpinned all this is based mostly on an assumption that oil is a scarce resource, that there is a tight gap between supply and demand, that ensuring supply is essential to stabilize prices and to protect the global economy from potentially devastating disruptions.

None of that is really true. For most of the 20th century, oil companies and oil producing states regularly collaborated to regulate supply in order to limit competition and control prices. There never has been a global oil market. Instead, oil’s production and delivery has been managed by a small network of corporate and national energy elites, whose primary concern has been serving their own interests and maintaining their bottom line.

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Big Oil and Canada thwarted U.S. carbon standards

Salon reports: When President Barack Obama decided in early November to delay a decision on TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline until after the next election, America’s environmental movement celebrated one of its biggest victories in recent memory. And no doubt the news came as a blow to Alberta’s tar sands industry, and to Canada’s oft-stated dream of becoming the next global energy superpower.

But behind activists’ jubilation lurked a somber reality, an untold story with much wider implications. The broader fight to reform Alberta’s tar sands, the one which actually stood a chance of breaking America’s addiction to the continent’s most polluting road fuel, has been quietly abandoned over the past several years. For that we can thank the planet’s richest oil companies and their Canadian government allies, who’ve together waged a stealthy war against President Obama’s climate change ambitions.

Their battle-plan is revealed in more 300 pages of personal emails obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the Alberta government. The story in the emails, reported for the first time here in Salon and The Tyee, Canada’s leading independent online news site, traces a year in the relationship of Michael Whatley, a GOP-connected oil industry lobbyist and his friend, Gary Mar, a smooth-talking and ambitious diplomat at the Canadian embassy in the Washington, DC.

The messages lay bare a sophisticated and stealthy public relations offensive, one designed to manipulate the U.S. political system; to deluge the media with messages favorable to the tar-sands industry; to sway key legislators at state and federal levels; and most importantly, to defeat any attempt to make the gasoline and diesel pumped everyday into U.S. vehicles less damaging to the climate. The goal of it all? “Defeat” Obama’s effort to reduce carbon consumption and keep America hooked on Canada’s $441 billion tar sands industry, no matter what the cost to our planet’s future.

That campaign has largely succeeded too, with only a small group of players any the wiser.

Reuters reports: Environmental opponents of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline aimed to deluge the White House and Congress with phone calls on Friday, slamming a Republican plan to speed approval of the project in exchange for extending a payroll tax cut.

“Red alert – call the White House and tell them not to back down to big oil on Keystone,” environmental activist Bill McKibben said in a tweet. McKibben mobilized some 10,000 demonstrators outside the White House earlier this year to protest the pipeline.

A spokesman for Friends of the Earth said a call for grassroots opposition to the deal generated more than 10,000 phone calls to U.S. senators on Friday.

“We are surprised at the extent to which the Republicans have decided to go to bat for Big Oil here,” said Nick Berning, a spokesman for the group. “We’re urging the Democrats to stand strong with the position they’ve articulated and not to cave.”

House Republicans warned last week they planned to include approval of the Keystone pipeline to a payroll tax cut bill, a challenge to President Barack Obama, who has said he would veto such a bill if the pipeline deal is part of it.

But on Friday, a White House spokesman left open the possibility that Obama might consider approving the legislation to get the extended tax cut.

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Funds and refiners ponder oil Armageddon, war on Iran

Reuters reports: Oil consuming nations, hedge funds and big oil refineries are quietly preparing for a Doomsday scenario: An attack on Iran that would halt oil supplies from OPEC’s second-largest producer.

Most political analysts and oil traders say the probability of military action is low, but they caution the risks of such an event have risen as the West and Israel grow increasingly alarmed by signs that Tehran is building nuclear weapons.

That has Chinese refiners drawing up new contingency plans, hedge funds taking out options on $170 crude, and energy experts scrambling to determine how a disruption in Iran’s oil supply — however remote the possibility — would impact world markets.

With production of about 3.5 million barrels per day, Iran supplies 2.5 percent of the world’s oil.

“I think the market has paid too little attention to the possibility of an attack on Iran. It’s still an unlikely event, but more likely than oil traders have been expecting,” says Bob McNally, once a White House energy advisor and now head of consultancy Rapidan Group.

Rising tensions were clear this week as Iranian protesters stormed two British diplomatic missions in Tehran in response to sanctions, smashing windows and burning the British flag.

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Petroleum junkies of the world, unite!

Craig Collins writes: It took me years to realize that our supercharged lifestyle depends on a vanishing supply of fossil fuels and cannot possibly be reproduced on a global scale. If the people of China lived like Americans, there would be more cars in China than there are in the entire world today. Their cars would need all of the oil the world produces plus fifteen million extra barrels a day. China would consume two-thirds of the world’s grain harvest, burn more coal than the entire world uses today and use twice as much paper. And this is just China. The Earth simply does not have enough land, water and hydrocarbons for everyone to live the high-energy lifestyle of Americans. In fact, America’s coveted lifestyle is running on empty and on the verge of going bust, like the boomtowns that became ghost towns after the gold rush panned out.

Throughout the 20th century, the world was preoccupied with modernity, progress, science and technology, yet no one was crediting the amazing energy source that made it all possible. Even today, we routinely underestimate and overlook the unique characteristics that have made fossil fuels the energy source that has utterly transformed human life on this planet.

Fossil fuels are the most concentrated, versatile, inexpensive energy source ever discovered. Energy is the capacity to do work and we have harnessed fossil fuels to do unbelievable amounts of it. There are about 23,000 human labor hours (12.5 years at 40 hours per week) in every barrel of oil and humans use about 85 million barrels of oil every day. Just one gallon of gas can do as much work as 350 to 500 hours of hard human labor. How much would you expect to be paid for 350 to 500 hours of hard work? At $15 an hour, your labor would be worth between $5,250 and $7,500 dollars. Now compare that with how much you spend for a gallon of gas.

Modern industry and agriculture would be impossible without fossil fuels. According to Michael Pollan, it takes about ten calories of fossil energy to produce and transport each calorie of supermarket food we eat. In the United States, food typically travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to plate. Supermarkets and fast food chains survive on a life support system of cheap fossil fuels. Agricultural machinery, irrigation systems, petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, huge centralized feedlots, slaughterhouses, food processors and refrigerated storage all rely on hydrocarbons – as do the trucks, ships, trains and planes that move food around the world.

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Bill McKibben, Keystone XL, and Barack Obama

Jane Mayer writes: Last spring, months before Wall Street was Occupied, civil disobedience of the kind sweeping the Arab world was hard to imagine happening here. But at Middlebury College, in Vermont, Bill McKibben, a scholar-in-residence, was leading a class discussion about Taylor Branch’s trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr., and he began to wonder if the tactics that had won the civil-rights battle could work in this country again. McKibben, who is an author and an environmental activist (and a former New Yorker staff writer), had been alarmed by a conversation he had had about the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline with James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and one of the country’s foremost climate scientists. If the pipeline was built, it would hasten the extraction of exceptionally dirty crude oil, using huge amounts of water and heat, from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, which would then be piped across the United States, where it would be refined and burned as fuel, releasing a vast new volume of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. “What would the effect be on the climate?” McKibben asked. Hansen replied, “Essentially, it’s game over for the planet.”

It seemed a moment when, literally, a line had to be drawn in the sand. Crossing it, environmentalists believed, meant entering a more perilous phase of “extreme energy.” The tar sands’ oil deposits may be a treasure trove second in value only to Saudi Arabia’s, and the pipeline, as McKibben saw it, posed a powerful test of America’s resolve to develop cleaner sources of energy, as Barack Obama had promised to do in the 2008 campaign.

But TransCanada, the Canadian company proposing the project, was already two years into the process of applying for the necessary U.S. permit. The decision, which was expected by the end of this year, would ultimately be made by Obama, but, because the pipeline would cross an international border, the State Department had the lead role in evaluating the project, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already indicated that she was “inclined” to approve it. Both TransCanada and the Laborers’ International Union of North America touted the construction jobs that the pipeline would create and the national-security bonus that it would confer by replacing Middle Eastern oil with Canadian.

The lineup promoting TransCanada’s interests was a textbook study in modern, bipartisan corporate influence peddling. Lobbyists ranged from the arch-conservative Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform to TransCanada’s in-house lobbyist Paul Elliott, who worked on both Hillary and Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns. President Clinton’s former Ambassador to Canada, Gordon Giffin, a major contributor to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential and Senate campaigns, was on TransCanada’s payroll, too. (Giffin says that he has never spoken to Secretary Clinton about the pipeline.) Most of the big oil companies also had a stake in the project. In a recent National Journal poll of “energy insiders,” opinion was virtually unanimous that the project would be approved.

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How the 99 percent beat Keystone XL

Jamie Henn writes: On Thursday afternoon, President Obama announced that the State Department will be sending plans for TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline back to the drawing board. Most analysts think the 12- to 18-month delay will cause enough cost overruns and missed contracts that TransCanada will have to scrap the project altogether.

Keystone XL was going to be another fuse to the largest carbon bomb in North America: the Canadian tar sands. The tar sands are the dirtiest fuel on the face of the planet, and our top climate scientist says fully exploiting them could be “essentially game over” for the climate. We haven’t defused the bomb yet, but fighting Keystone has taught us a lot about how to dismantle it.

This fight started in indigenous communities in Canada and quickly spread down the pipeline route to ranchers in Nebraska and farmers in Texas. National environmental groups picked up the beat a while back. But it was the bravery of 1,253 people that transformed Keystone XL from a regional fight into the most important environmental question facing President Obama before the 2012 election.

For two weeks this August, one person after another was led away from the White House in handcuffs protesting Keystone XL. The sit-in united a uniquely diverse movement, from consummate D.C. insiders to indigenous leaders to Tea Party supporters. I was arrested on the second Wednesday with an architect from Philadelphia, a lawyer from National Resources Defense Council, and Darryl Hannah.

From those 1,253 people, the movement quickly spread. Protests met President Obama at nearly every public campaign stop. Groups of 50 to 100 people started visiting Obama for America offices to say, “We’re not going to donate or volunteer for your campaign until President Obama lives up to the promises he made in 2008, stands up to Big Oil, and kills this pipeline.” Hundreds of people were arrested in Ottawa to turn up the heat on the Canadian government. And this Sunday, more than 12,000 people surrounded the White House in a Keystone XL protest.

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Here comes the sun

Paul Krugman writes: These days, mention solar power and you’ll probably hear cries of “Solyndra!” Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol of government waste — although claims of a major scandal are nonsense — and a stick with which to beat renewable energy.

But Solyndra’s failure was actually caused by technological success: the price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn’t keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

But will our political system delay the energy transformation now within reach?

Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar.

So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true. Fracking is not a dream come true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if we’re willing to let it in.

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Obama’s gift to the Koch brothers and curse to the planet

Jamie Henn, Co-founder and Communications Director of 350.org, writes: Here’s a unique political strategy for you: in the lead up to a crucial election, as anti-corporate sentiment is sweeping the nation, consider giving a huge handout to a major corporation that happens to be your biggest political enemy and is already spending hundreds of millions to defeat you and your agenda.

If that seems too crazy to believe, welcome to the Obama 2012 campaign.

Right now, President Obama is faced with the most crucial environmental decisions he is going to face before the 2012 election: whether or not to approve the permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700 mile fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the continent, the Canadian tar sands.

The Keystone XL isn’t just an XL environmental disaster — the nation’s top climate scientists say that fully exploiting the tar sands could mean “essentially game over” for the climate — it also happens to be an XL sized handout to Big Oil and, you guessed it, the Brothers Koch. You want fries with that?

Earlier this year, when Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) attempted to investigate whether or not the Koch Brothers stood to gain from the pipeline, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Fred Upton (R-Mich.) called the idea an “outrageous accusation” and “blatant political sideshow.” Is it even necessary to mention that reports show Koch and its employees gave $279,500 to 22 of the energy committee’s 31 Republicans and $32,000 to five Democrats?

As you might expect, Upton was completely wrong. Reporters at InsideClimateNews and elsewhere proved that the Koch’s stand to make a fortune with the construction of the pipeline. The brothers already control close to 25 percent of the tar sands crude that is imported into the United State and own mining companies, oil terminals, and refineries all along the pipeline route. You can bet that the champagne will be flowing in Koch HQ when toxic tar sands crude starts moving down the pipe.

Which brings us back to Obama. It’s not too late for the president to intervene and stop the Koch Brothers from pocketing another profit at the expense of the American people. Because it crosses an international border, in order for the Keystone XL pipeline to be built the Obama administration must grant it a “presidential permit” that states that the construction project is in the national interest of the United States.

President Obama can deny the permit, right now, and shut down this flow of cash to the Kochs. In doing so, he’ll show that our national interest isn’t always determined by the 1%, in this case a few big oil companies and the Koch Brothers, but by the 99% of us who have to pay the price for their greed.

Denying the permit will also send a jolt of electricity through President Obama’s base, the millions of us who went out and volunteered and donated to the campaign because we believed in a candidate who said that it was time to “end the tyranny of oil.” In fact, this November 6, thousands of us former believers will be descending on Washington, DC to surround the White House with people carrying placards with the President’s own words in an attempt to resuscitate the 2008 Obama who seemed capable of standing up to folks like the Kochs. You can join here.

I can’t say that I’m privy to what the Obama 2012 campaign will advise the president to do when it comes to the pipeline. But if I was sitting in Chicago watching the Koch Brothers assembled their army of lobbyists across the nation, I’d be thinking that XL handout wasn’t such a good idea.

The Keystone XL pipeline network of corruption revealed through an investigation by DeSmogBlog, Oil Change International, The Other 98% and Friends of the Earth (click on the image below to view the complete network):

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Saudi oil exports under threat from within

Reuters reports: The world may have to live on a lot less Saudi Arabian crude towards the end of this decade as rampant internal demand eats into oil exports and the kingdom’s alternative energy plans may prove too little too late.

The top crude exporter is already burning more than 10 percent of its output in power plants on hot summer days. Meanwhile huge fuel subsidies, which have helped sedate Saudi social unrest throughout the Arab Spring, are exacerbating a demand boom that is lapping up the world’s largest oil reserves.

Faced with ever increasing quantities of its biggest export earner being consumed at home, Riyadh is banking on a massive nuclear plant building programme to drastically reduce oil use from around 2020, with solar power bridging the gap.

But that may not be quick enough to avert a supply crunch by the end of the decade for a world economy still hooked on abundant Saudi crude.

“Domestic consumption has been growing very fast as a result of rapid demographics, steady economic growth and heavy subsidies, with the latter leading to excess demand,” said Ali Aissaooui, head of economic research at Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation in Saudi Arabia.

“With the ongoing turmoil in parts of the region, social demands are featuring prominently on top of governments’ policy agenda. In this context phasing out subsidies to rein in excess demand growth has become extremely tricky,” he told Reuters.

“Excess demand could affect the capacity of some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, to maintain the spare capacity needed to provide flexibility to the global oil market.”

Thanks to huge subsidies, which the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned last week encourage waste, Saudi energy demand has been growing much faster than its non-oil economy in the last few years, while the rest of the world has become more efficient in its energy use.

According to analysts at Riyadh-based Jadwa Investment, oil demand in the kingdom rose by 22 percent between 2007 and 2010, out pacing the Chinese oil demand growth rate despite China’s economy expanding almost three times faster.

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