Category: Energy

Your Moment of Schadenfreude

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West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, who is at the forefront of cutting benefits from the unemployed in his state, is personally liable for nearly $¾ billion in loans from the collapsed dodgy non-bank loan company Greensill Capital.

It could not happen to a nicer guy:

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is personally on the hook for nearly $700 million in loans his coal companies took out from now-defunct Greensill Capital, according to people familiar with the loans and documents described to The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Justice’s personal guarantee of the loans, which hasn’t been reported, puts financial pressure on the popular Republican governor. He is also dealing with unrelated lawsuits alleging parts of his sprawling network of coal companies breached payment contracts or failed to deliver coal.

Greensill packaged the loans and sold them to investment funds managed by Credit Suisse Group and Greensill ran $10 billion in supply-chain finance funds that extended financing to a range of borrowers.

………

[Governor Justice’s company] Bluestone hadn’t expected to begin repaying the Greensill loans until 2023 at the earliest, it said in a lawsuit brought in March in a New York federal court alleging Greensill committed fraud in its lending practices.

………

Greensill was a once-hot private finance firm whose bankers said could have been worth $40 billion in a potential initial public offering. It attracted investment from SoftBank Group Corp. before collapsing into bankruptcy in March when it lost a key type of insurance that backed up its loans.

………

Credit Suisse in a recent notice to investors said Bluestone owes nearly $700 million in loans.

………

The guarantees were provided by Mr. Justice as well as his wife and covered unlimited amounts, some of the people familiar with the loans said. Mr. Justice’s son and Bluestone’s chief executive, James C. Justice III, guaranteed the loans up to a certain limit, one of the people said, though that figure couldn’t be learned. All three are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Greensill.

………

Forbes this year dropped Mr. Justice from its billionaires list, owing to Greensill’s failure. It now pegs his net worth at $450 million, down from $1.2 billion in April 2020. His wealth stems from dozens of coal companies, farms and other businesses he and his family oversee, including the famed Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

$450 million – $700 million = -$250 million dollars.

He’s rich, so he is not going to have to pay it all off, rich people never pay their bills, but this is going to take a significant bite out of his wallet.

I would also note that Greensill’s model was to make to make supply chain loans, where suppliers would get the cash while their customers dragged their feet on paying them.

Their special sauce was in using complex financial instruments to mask the risk involved in these transactions, which allowed them to offer lower rates.

If you were into Greensill for 700 Extra Large, it means that you company was already in serious trouble.

Here’s hoping that Justice will need to get an honest job after he leaves the Governor’s mansion.

Finally

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Protests make a difference.  Case in point, the Keystone XL Pipeline is not canceled:

The Canadian pipeline company that had long sought to build the Keystone XL pipeline announced Wednesday that it had terminated the embattled project, which would have carried petroleum from Canadian tar sands to Nebraska.

The announcement was the death knell for a project that had been on life support since President Biden’s first day in office and had been stalled by legal battles for years before that, despite support from the Trump administration.

On the day he was inaugurated, Mr. Biden, who has vowed to make tackling climate change a centerpiece of his administration, rescinded the construction permit for the pipeline, which developers had sought to build for over a decade. That same day, TC Energy, the company behind the project, said it was suspending work on the line.

On Wednesday, the company wrote in a statement that it “will continue to coordinate with regulators, stakeholders and Indigenous groups to meet its environmental and regulatory commitments and ensure a safe termination of and exit from the project.”

The good guys won, for once.

The Colonial Pipeline Was Unaffected by the Ransomeware Attack

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It turns out that the systems controlling the pipeline continued to function as intended, it was only the billing systems were hit, which means that the decision to shut down the pipeline, which threw much of the East Coast of the US into a panic, was not about safety, and critical infrastructure was not impacted, it was just that collecting payments from customers became more inconvenient.

The technical term for what Colonial did was irresponsible, and possibly negligent.

Why am I not surprised that Koch Industries, aka, the Koch Brothers, are a major shareholder?

This, “F%$# you, pay me,” attitude is integral to their warped souls:

The cyber attack that shutdown the Colonial pipeline causing a gas panic and stoking fears of gasoline shortages, didn’t actually shut down the pipeline. It impacted the billing system at the Colonial Pipeline Co., which shut it down because they were worried about how they’d collect payments. 

Yes, the fuel-carrying pipeline was shut down last week in order to prevent a company that is entrusted with what should be a public utility from enduring an accounting headache.

I really hope that someone, I’m looking at you Katie Porter, to whip out the old white board, and cut the executives running a new asshole at hearings.

For the problem described, they could have set up a paper system, and faxes, (or scanners and Gmail) to handle billing temporarily in perhaps 48 hours.

“Insanely Cheap,” Huh?

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It turns out that photovoltaic solar energy has gone from one of the most expensive electricity sources to one of the cheapest in the the past few years.

Rather unsurprisingly, there has been no such drop in the cost of nuclear power. 

Increasingly, fossil fuel generators are not competitive, which should help with our climate change problem:

In the year 2000, the International Energy Agency (IEA) made a prediction that would come back to haunt it: by 2020, the world would have installed a grand total of 18 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar capacity. Seven years later, the forecast would be proven spectacularly wrong when roughly 18 gigawatts of solar capacity were installed in a single year alone.

………

“When I got this job in 2005, I thought maybe one day solar will supply 1% of the world’s electricity. Now it’s 3%. Our official forecast is that it will be 23% by 2050, but that’s completely underestimated,” Chase says.

“We’ve got to the point where solar is the cheapest source of energy in the world in most places. This means we’ve been trying to model a situation where the grid looks totally different today.”

………

“The International Energy Agency now says solar is providing the cheapest energy the world has ever seen. But we’re headed towards a future of insanely cheap energy.

“Inanely cheap energy.”

I like the sound of that.

One of Teddy Kennedy’s Worst Legacies Ends

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The Blue Hashed Bit

After literally years of obstruction by Edward M (Ted) Kennedy, it looks like will finally be constructing a wind farm off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

He had objections to the project, because it was visible from the Kennedy compound.

I consider Kennedy’s legacy to be quite positive, but this piece of it I am very glad to see go:

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued its long-awaited final environmental impact study (FEIS) for the Vineyard Wind project off Massachusetts, which will be the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in federal waters.

BOEM is leaning towards a preferred alternative that would combine several of the development options examined in the draft EIS. The preferred option would allow Vineyard Wind to build the desired 800 MW wind farm, but with 84 larger GE Haliade-X turbines instead of 100 smaller MHI Vestas turbines; no turbines in the northernmost portion of the lease site; and north-south / east-west row alignment with one nautical mile spacing between foundations. These terms broadly align with the parameters submitted by Vineyard Wind itself in its construction and operations plan (COP).

The study paves the way for a formal record of decision on Vineyard Wind’s EIS review, and it will almost certainly result in a permit approval matching BOEM’s preferred alternative option. As such, it represents a landmark victory for the developer and for the U.S. offshore wind industry, which has been closely watching the permitting process for this pace-setting development.

About damn time.

Because ……… Texas

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It turns out that even under the insane rules under which the Texas energy markets operate, producers overcharged distributors and consumers to the tune of $16 billion.

Runnign the math, that’s about $550 for every man, woman, and child residing in Texas.

There are no plans to claw this back, because ……… Texas.

I’m thinking that we should allow Mexico to claw back the whole state:

An independent market monitor said the Texas power-grid operator made a critical mistake that resulted in $16 billion in electricity overcharges last month, and recommended that the charges be reversed.

The monitor concluded that Texas kept wholesale prices high for 33 hours longer than warranted as the state dealt with a major winter storm that led to power shortages and mass blackouts and should correct this mistake by retroactively repricing its wholesale power market for that period.

A Public Utility Commission of Texas spokesman said the issue was slated for discussion at a scheduled meeting on Friday.

A reversal of the charges would be a boon to many participants in the market—from retailers to electric cooperatives, wind farms to multistate generators—that suffered significant financial harm when they needed to buy power at the peak price of $9,000 per megawatt hour.

The entire culture of government in Texas is deeply and pervasively corrupt, both at the elected official level as well as at the bureaucratic level.

It needs to be addressed, with many senior Texas political officials, and senior bureaucrats, frog-marched out of their offices in hand cuffs.

Can We Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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Wind turbines in, you guessed it, Antarctica

Snow and cold weather has hit Texas hard, and because of what can only be called high Texas idiocy, the power grid has collapsed.

So, the answer to the question, “Has privatization failed Texas utility customers?,” is F%$# yes.

In order to evade federal regulation the Texas electricity grid is largely separate from the rest of the country, and because it is Texas, suppliers of both natural gas, used to make electricity, and the electricity generators, make more profit from shutting down their plants to spike the prices.

This is what caused the California energy crisis in 2000 and 2001, deregulatory mania leading to market manipulation:

Privatizers use the one-size-fits-all economic theory of “retail choice-free market competition” to promote the deregulation of Texas electric utilities. Privatizers promise that lower electricity prices and higher system reliability will follow electric utility deregulation. Privatizers’ sloganeering convinces on-the-take politicians and the unsuspecting electorate to approve their lobbyist-written deregulation rules and laws.

Privatizers say the deregulation of Texas electric utilities is successful and other states should follow suit. This is misinformation. Relative electricity prices have increased dramatically, and dangerously lower electrical system reliability is the result of Texas electric utility deregulation in 2002.

But Texans, and Trotskyites, are never ones to let facts get in the way of their free market mousketeer theories, so Texas Governor Greg Abbot is claiming that the problem has come from renewables like wind and solar being disproportionately impacted by the weather.

It is a nice theory.  The problem is that it is complete bunk:

Frozen wind turbines in Texas caused some conservative state politicians to declare Tuesday that the state was relying too much on renewable energy. But in reality, the wind power was expected to make up only a fraction of what the state had planned for during the winter.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas projected that 80% of the grid’s winter capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power.

An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy.

By Wednesday, those numbers had changed as more operators struggled to operate in the cold: 45 gigawatts total were offline, with 28 gigawats from thermal sources and 18 gigawatts from renewable sources, ERCOT officials said.

“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

While Webber said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis, the natural gas industry is most notably producing significantly less power than normal.

“Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now,” Webber said.

………

He went on to note the shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Bay City because of the cold and finally got to what energy experts say is the biggest culprit, writing, “Low Supply of Natural Gas: ERCOT planned on 67GW from natural gas/coal, but could only get 43GW of it online. We didn’t run out of natural gas, but we ran out of the ability to get natural gas. Pipelines in Texas don’t use cold insulation —so things were freezing.”

This was compounded by looting from the various energy suppliers. 

It actually pays for them to have a significant amount of their generation capacity go offline, as shown by this anecdote:

As a historic winter storm raged across Texas over the weekend, Akilah Scott-Amos received an alarming message from her power company: Please switch services because “prices are about to explode.”

The 43-year-old owner of an organic skincare and apothecary shop was initially confused by the message from Griddy, which sells wholesale power for a monthly membership, but she began to look for other providers.

Then she checked her bill.

“I paid $450 for one day. I was in shock,” Scott-Amos told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “It made no sense because we have a gas heater, a gas fireplace, and we have been keeping the temperature around the house at 65 degrees. With that amount of money, and the labeled amount of usage Griddy said was used—we would have to be lighting up the whole neighborhood.”

The nightmare only got worse on Monday, when she realized her bill had increased by another $2,500. In comparison, Scott-Amos paid $33.93 last year for the entire month of February. 

The cost per kWh went from a bit more than 2¢ to more than $2.

………

But data from ERCOT suggests the price of getting the lights back on might be too steep for some Texans. As first reported by Reuters, the market prices on the power grid spiked more than 10,000 percent on Monday in the aftermath of the deep freeze. Prices skyrocketed to more than $9,000 per megawatt-hour—compared to the pre-storm prices of less than $50 per hour.

The amped-up wattage costs have affected Griddy customers in particular because of the company’s distinctive business model. In Texas’ hypercharged market for electricity, Griddy makes money by debiting its subscribers a flat $9.99 monthly fee—and then selling them raw power at its going wholesale value, effectively stripping out any insulation between consumers and the oscillations in supply and demand.

New business models and cute names translating into ripping off consumers, yeppers, there’s a deregulated market.

It’s just another excuse to pick your pocket.

It ain’t the weather, it’s the corruption.

Not Enough Bullets

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What a surprise, Peabody Energy, the biggest coal company in the country, has been bankrolling pretty much every nutty climate change denier they can find.

Who cares about the destruction of the world, we have profits to make:

Peabody Energy, America’s biggest coalmining company, has funded at least two dozen groups that cast doubt on manmade climate change and oppose environment regulations, analysis by the Guardian reveals.

The funding spanned trade associations, corporate lobby groups, and industry front groups as well as conservative thinktanks and was exposed in court filings last month.

The coal company also gave to political organisations, funding twice as many Republican groups as Democratic ones.

Peabody, the world’s biggest private sector publicly traded coal company, was long known as an outlier even among fossil fuel companies for its public rejection of climate science and action. But its funding of climate denial groups was only exposed in disclosures after the coal titan was forced to seek bankruptcy protection in April, under competition from cheap natural gas.

Environmental campaigners said they had not known for certain that the company was funding an array of climate denial groups – and that the breadth of that funding took them by surprise.

………

“The breadth of the groups with financial ties to Peabody is extraordinary. Thinktanks, litigation groups, climate scientists, political organisations, dozens of organisations blocking action on climate all receiving funding from the coal industry,” said Nick Surgey, director of research for the Center for Media and Democracy.

“We expected to see some denial money, but it looks like Peabody is the treasury for a very substantial part of the climate denial movement.”

Peabody’s filings revealed funding for the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate lobby group which opposes clean energy standards and tried to impose financial penalties on homeowners with solar panels, as well as a constellation of conservative thinktanks and organisations.

I really hope that someone can find a way to send their executives to a federal PMITA prison.

They deserve it.

Peter Thiel’s America

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There are a lot of people out there who support Peter Thiel using his billions to harass Gawker through the legal process because they and its founder and CEO Nick Denton are bad people who practice shallow gossip journalism.

Well, this sort of action most often cuts against ordinary citizens who choose to raise their voices against the powerful as is shown in the case of the $30,000,000.00 lawsuit against activists in Uniontown, Alabam who have the temerity to object to Green Group Holdings and Howling Coyote’s poisoning their water by dumping of millions of pounds of toxic coal ash there:

“We all should have the right to clean air and clean water.”

Would you agree with that sentence? Would you say it yourself? It seems uncontroversial — something kids might be taught in school. Something any of us might say without blinking an eye. Unless, that is, you happened to say it in Uniontown, Alabama — an overwhelmingly Black and poor rural town in the heart of the South’s Black Belt. In Uniontown, it turns out that having the audacity to fight for your fundamental human rights — for instance, by saying the exact sentence above — can get you sued for $30 million in federal court by companies seeking to silence their critics.

………

Fighting for justice in Uniontown means opposing the trains that roll into town carrying hazardous coal ash from 33 states to deposit it at the Arrowhead landfill — a dump bewilderingly located in a residential neighborhood, near wetlands, within this spacious county full of rolling fields and open space. It means worrying about the safety of that coal ash — the very same coal ash that catastrophically leaked out of a Tennessee facility in 2008 and destroyed the surrounding environment before it was hurriedly redirected to Uniontown.

………

In the lawsuit, Green Group and Howling Coyote claim that by advocating against hazardous waste in their town, Esther, Ben, Mary, and Ellis have engaged in “defamation” that’s harmed them to the tune of a cool $30 million. But the only harm evident in this lawsuit is the gripping terror that average citizens — not scientists or paid policy wonks — feel after being sued for millions for speaking their truth in order to protect their community. Fortunately, the First Amendment protects a person’s right to do precisely what Esther, Ben, Mary, and Ellis have so bravely done.

Think again about that sentence: We all should have the right to clean air and clean water. Would you say it if you knew a powerful corporation would sue you for (more than) everything you’ve got? No one should have to make that choice.

The law in this case may focus on the First Amendment, but the story of Esther, Ben, Mary, and Ellis is one about racial justice. In Uniontown, racial justice means environmental justice. And the road to justice starts with voices calling out injustice. The ACLU is representing [6] Esther, Ben, Mary, and Ellis to make sure their voices are not silenced.

This is exactly the same thing that Peter Thiel is doing.

The only difference is that these companies are not attempting to claim that this is some sort of act of philanthropy, as the PayPal founder does.

These are all SLAPP suits, and they are all profoundly corrupting and profoundly evil.

Well, That Didn’t Take Long

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As some of you know, even though Obama shut down the Keystone XL project, significant portions of the pipeline, the plain old Keystone (no XL) have already been completed in the upper Midwest.

And that part just had an oil spill:

The Keystone pipeline will likely remain shut down for the rest of the week while officials investigate an apparent oil spill in southeastern South Dakota.

 Oil covered a 300-square-foot area in a farm field ditch 4 miles from a Freeman-area pump station, about 40 miles southwest of Sioux Falls. It was discovered Saturday. TransCanada hasn’t released the amount of oil.

 About 100 workers are investigating where the oil came from and removing the contaminated soil. No pipeline damage had been found as of midmorning Tuesday, company spokesman Mark Cooper said.

 TransCanada also said it had found no significant environmental harm. State officials were monitoring the cleanup, and so far TransCanada has “taken the necessary steps,” said Brian Walsh, an environmental scientist with the South Dakota Department of Natural Resources.

 The pipeline runs from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois and Cushing, Oklahoma, passing through the eastern Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri. It’s part of a pipeline system that also would have included the Keystone XL pipeline had President Barack Obama not rejected that project last November.

The Keystone pipeline can handle 550,000 barrels, or about 23 million gallons, daily. Cooper didn’t immediately know the status of the oil that normally would be flowing through the pipeline.

I am so not surprised.

Oil pipelines are difficult, and TransCanada sucks it managing and maintaining them.

How Lovely!

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As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had her State Department aggressively push fracking across the world:

One icy morning in February 2012, Hillary Clinton’s plane touched down in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, which was just digging out from a fierce blizzard. Wrapped in a thick coat, the secretary of state descended the stairs to the snow-covered tarmac, where she and her aides piled into a motorcade bound for the presidential palace. That afternoon, they huddled with Bulgarian leaders, including Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, discussing everything from Syria’s bloody civil war to their joint search for loose nukes. But the focus of the talks was fracking. The previous year, Bulgaria had signed a five-year, $68 million deal, granting US oil giant Chevron millions of acres in shale gas concessions. Bulgarians were outraged. Shortly before Clinton arrived, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets carrying placards that read “Stop fracking with our water” and “Chevron go home.” Bulgaria’s parliament responded by voting overwhelmingly for a fracking moratorium.

Clinton urged Bulgarian officials to give fracking another chance. According to Borissov, she agreed to help fly in the “best specialists on these new technologies to present the benefits to the Bulgarian people.” But resistance only grew. The following month in neighboring Romania, thousands of people gathered to protest another Chevron fracking project, and Romania’s parliament began weighing its own shale gas moratorium. Again Clinton intervened, dispatching her special envoy for energy in Eurasia, Richard Morningstar, to push back against the fracking bans. The State Depart­ment’s lobbying effort culminated in late May 2012, when Morningstar held a series of meetings on fracking with top Bulgarian and Romanian officials. He also touted the technology in an interview on Bulgarian national radio, saying it could lead to a fivefold drop in the price of natural gas. A few weeks later, Romania’s parliament voted down its proposed fracking ban and Bulgaria’s eased its moratorium.

The episode sheds light on a crucial but little-known dimension of Clinton’s diplomatic legacy. Under her leadership, the State Department worked closely with energy companies to spread fracking around the globe—part of a broader push to fight climate change, boost global energy supply, and undercut the power of adversaries such as Russia that use their energy resources as a cudgel. But environmental groups fear that exporting fracking, which has been linked to drinking-water contamination and earthquakes at home, could wreak havoc in countries with scant environmental regulation. And according to interviews, diplomatic cables, and other documents obtained by Mother Jones, American officials—some with deep ties to industry—also helped US firms clinch potentially lucrative shale concessions overseas, raising troubling questions about whose interests the program actually serves.

………

Clinton, who was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, believed that shale gas could help rewrite global energy politics. “This is a moment of profound change,” she later told a crowd at Georgetown University. “Countries that used to depend on others for their energy are now producers. How will this shape world events? Who will benefit, and who will not?…The answers to these questions are being written right now, and we intend to play a major role.” Clinton tapped a lawyer named David Goldwyn as her special envoy for international energy affairs; his charge was “to elevate energy diplomacy as a key function of US foreign policy.”

………

Goldwyn had a long history of promoting drilling overseas—both as a Department of Energy official under Bill Clinton and as a representative of the oil industry. From 2005 to 2009 he directed the US-Libya Business Association, an organization funded primarily by US oil companies—including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Marathon—clamoring to tap Libya’s abundant supply. Goldwyn lobbied Congress for pro-Libyan policies and even battled legislation that would have allowed families of the Lockerbie bombing victims to sue the Libyan government for its alleged role in the attack.

………

But environmental groups were barely consulted, while industry played a crucial role. When Goldwyn unveiled the initiative in April 2010, it was at a meeting of the United States Energy Association, a trade organization representing Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and ConocoPhillips, all of which were pursuing fracking overseas. Among their top targets was Poland, which preliminary studies suggested had abundant shale gas. The day after Goldwyn’s announcement, the US Embassy in Warsaw helped organize a shale gas conference, underwritten by these same companies (plus the oil field services company Halliburton) and attended by officials from the departments of State and Energy.

………

Around the time of his departure, WikiLeaks released a slew of diplomatic cables, including one describing a 2009 meeting during which Goldwyn and Canadian officials discussed development of the Alberta oil sands—a project benefiting some of the same firms behind the US-Libya Business Association. The cable said that Goldwyn had coached his Canadian counterparts on improving “oil sands messaging” and helped alleviate their concerns about getting oil sands crude to US markets. This embarrassed the State Department, which is reviewing the controversial Keystone XL pipeline proposal to transport crude oil from Canada and is under fire from environmentalists.

After leaving State, Goldwyn took a job with Sutherland, a law and lobbying firm that touts his “deep understanding” of pipeline issues, and launched his own company, Goldwyn Global Strategies.

In late 2011, Clinton finally unveiled the new Bureau of Energy Resources, with 63 employees and a multimillion-dollar budget. She also promised to instruct US embassies around the globe to step up their work on energy issues and “pursue more outreach to private-sector energy” firms, some of which had generously supported both her and President Barack Obama’s political campaigns. (One Chevron executive bundled large sums for Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, for example.)

So Clinton, who at the Flint debates was using double-talk about common sense regulations, employed a energy industry lobbyist to run her policy of aggressively pushing fracking to the world.

Later in the article, they talk about how her pet lobbyist lobbied aggressively for Canadian tar sands at State.

Yes, she sure sounds like someone who is serious about the dangers of fracking and Canadian bitumen, and the associated problems with global warming, doesn’t she?

Another TTP/TTIP Talking Point Shown to be a Lie

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One of the claims made by the supporters of current and pending trade deals is that the US has never been sued through the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process, with the implication that such a suit will simply never happen.

Not so much:

A $15 billion lawsuit by the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline against the US government shows the serious threat to democracy posed by special privileges for investors, a new report has said. TransCanada is suing under investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to demand damages following rejection of the controversial pipeline due to its climate impact.

Keystone illustrates how the increasingly common ISDS clauses, that are contained in the draft EU-Canada trade agreement (CETA) and the proposed EU-US deal (TTIP), can be used to undermine climate action, the report by T&E, Friends of the Earth Europe and Sierra Club stated.

Last year US president Barack Obama denied permission to build the US-stage of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to American refineries, as it was not in the interest of national security and would have undercut America’s climate leadership. TransCanada’s lawsuit is under chapter 11 of NAFTA, which allows multinational corporations to sue governments if they feel they have not been treated as a domestic company would have been.

TransCanada has reportedly invested $3.1 billion in the project but is seeking five times this amount in damages. It will be able to launch its case as early as May 2016. A three-judge tribunal will issue a ruling, which cannot be appealed to any national court. It can award damages but not force the US to grant permission for Keystone to be built.

The ISDS process as currently practiced is a morass of corruption and opacity.

It’s underlying philosophy is that government has no rights to protect the common good, and that any lost profits as a result is a taking.

It is a perverted and evil thing.

The House of Saud Surrenders………

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Russia and Saudi Arabil have cut a deal to limit the supply of oil.

Unfortunately, the ball is still rolling downhill:

Several top OPEC producers made headlines with Russia on Tuesday, revealing that a secret meeting between their respective energy ministers led to a deal to “freeze” production in an effort to boost oil prices.

The agreement is monumental in the sense that OPEC and Russia are poised to agree to cooperate, the first OPEC and non-OPEC deal in 15 years. At the same time, the deal is a half-measure and will likely be inadequate to substantially rescue oil prices from their rock bottom lows.

………

The real problem for this deal, though, is with Iran, who is unlikely to sign on to a production freeze when its output is still close to sanctions-era levels. With substantial gains in production expected for this year, the deal would be harder to swallow than it would for other OPEC members. Saudi Arabia would be willing to freeze its output if it meant burdening its rival Iran. As a result, Iran’s acquiescence is an open question. “We have not yet reached our level of pre-sanctions production. So when we get there, we will be on an equal level, then we can talk,” a senior source told Reuters, pouring cold water on the deal. Venezuelan officials believe they can bring Iran on board, but that remains to be seen.

In short, despite Tuesday’s announcement, implementing the deal will be trickier than it sounds.

The current low oil prices are largely an artifact of a Saudi decision to overproduce in an attempt to drive more expensive fracked oil off the market.

Unfortunately for them, with interest rates being near zero, the frackers can still make payments on their loans, and now we have any number of oil producer nations who continue to overproduce because they are too dependent on oil revenues.

It’s a vicious circle.

TransCanada, Calm Down and Have a Piping Hot Cup of Shut the F%$# Up

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Everyone’s favorite oil spill pipeline company is suing the United States for stopping the pipeline:

TransCanada said on Wednesday that it would seek $15 billion in damages over the Obama administration’s decision to cancel the company’s Keystone XL pipeline project.

The company is taking the unusual step of suing through the North American Free Trade Agreement, calling the decision “arbitrary and unjustified.” The Canadian business also filed a lawsuit in Houston asking that the decision be overturned.

“TransCanada has been unjustly deprived of the value of its multibillion-dollar investment by the U.S. administration’s action,” the company said in a statement. “Rather, the denial was a symbolic gesture based on speculation about the (false) perceptions of the international community regarding the administration’s leadership on climate change.”

Seriously, just stop whining.

That Sound is the House of Saud Collapsing

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While the reports of internecine conflict amongst the House of Saud might presage a crackup, at the core of everything that is the descendants of Ibn Saud is money.

There is no state craft, no vision, no understanding of the fundamental reciprocity that makes one a leader.

Well, it appears that their attempts to bury alternative fossil fuel extraction techniques by dropping oil prices through the floor is in the process of bankrupting them.

It appears that we have found a benefit to fracking:

Saudi Arabia on Monday unveiled spending cuts in its 2016 budget, subsidy reforms and a call for privatisations to rein in a yawning deficit caused by the prolonged period of low oil prices.

 The Gulf kingdom has kept oil production at high levels in an attempt to force out higher-cost producers, such as shale, and retain its market share. But this year’s deficit ballooned to 367bn Saudi riyals ($97.9bn,) or 15 per cent of gross domestic product, as oil revenues fell 23 per cent to Sr444.5bn.

 Seeking to ward off future fiscal crises, the ministry of finance confirmed wide-ranging economic reforms, including plans to “privatise a range of sectors and economic activities”.

 Riyadh would revise energy, water and electricity prices “gradually over the next five years” to optimise efficiency while minimising “negative effects on low and mid-income citizens and the competitiveness of the business sector,” it added.

 The first reforms will be effective from Tuesday, including an increase in gasoline prices, a rise in electricity tariffs for the wealthiest consumers, a modest increase in water costs for all, and changes to all energy prices for industrial users.

;………

The kingdom’s austerity and reform programme, a reaction to the past decade of profligate spending, has raised alarm among parts of the country’s business community, who are already reeling from this year’s cuts that have triggered widespread delays in government payments.

Radical reforms to the social contract between Saudi citizens and the ruling al-Saud family also threaten discord at a time when Islamist extremist groups such as Isis have threatened the country.

………

“We see real GDP growth decelerating sharply in 2016, albeit remaining positive,” said Monica Malik, chief economist with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. “Non-oil GDP is forecast to moderate with the lower government spending feeding into the wider economy.”

The government’s austerity measures have been accompanied by extra spending items, such as the Saudi-led war in Yemen and Sr88bn in bonus payments for civil servants when King Salman ascended to the throne in January.

The 2016 budget envisions spending Sr840bn in 2016, compared to the Sr975bn that is forecast to have been spent this year and Sr1.14tn in 2014. Actual spending has outstripped projections by as much as a quarter for the past decade, but the government is trying to instil greater fiscal discipline.

It’s been clear for some time that the House of Saud will fall at some point in the not too distant future.  They are an anachronism whose continued existence is an artifact of the fossil fuel rich geography of the Arabian peninsula.

The only question is whether it falls like the House of Windsor, with a few colorful figureheads remaining as a historical oddity, or if it falls like the House of Romanov, with the family shot and buried in a ditch.

The recent budgetary issues point to sooner rather than later, and the fate of the Russian Royal Family, not the British one.

The Stupid, It Burns Us!!!!!!

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The good people of Woodland, North Carolina have defeated a solar power plant in their community, because they don’t want it sucking the sunlight away from the crops.

No, I am not joking:

The citizens of Woodland, N.C. have spoken loud and clear: They don’t want none of them highfalutin solar panels in their good town. They scare off the kids. “All the young people are going to move out,” warned Bobby Mann, a local resident concerned about the future of his burg. Worse, Mann said, the solar panels would suck up all the energy from the Sun.

Another resident—a retired science teacher, no less—expressed concern that a proposed solar farm would block photosynthesis, and prevent nearby plants from growing. Jane Mann then went on to add that there seemed to have been a lot of cancer deaths in the area, and that no one could tell her solar panels didn’t cause cancer. “I want information,” Mann said. “Enough is enough.”

These comments were reported not in The Onion, but rather by the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. They came during a Woodland Town Council meeting in which Strata Solar Company sought to rezone an area northeast of the town, off of US Highway 258, to build a solar farm. The council not only rejected the proposal, it went a step further, voting for a complete moratorium on solar farms.

To quote the movie Billie Madison, “What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response, were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

29 Dead, and Only a Misdemeanor?

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Donald Blankenship, former President of Massey Energy, was convicted of only a misdemeanor for his role in the deaths of miners in a mine explosion:

Donald L. Blankenship, whose leadership of the Massey Energy Company was widely criticized after 29 workers were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine in 2010, was convicted Thursday of conspiring to violate federal safety standards, becoming the most prominent American coal executive ever convicted of a crime related to mining deaths.

But in a substantial defeat for the Justice Department, the verdict, announced in Federal District Court here, exonerated Mr. Blankenship, Massey’s former chief executive, of three felony charges that could have led to a prison term of 30 years. Instead, after a protracted and complex trial that began on Oct. 1, jurors convicted Mr. Blankenship only of a single misdemeanor charge that carried a maximum of a year in prison.

“We are disappointed, but not as disappointed as we could have been,” said William W. Taylor III, a defense lawyer for Mr. Blankenship, who will appeal the conviction and is expected to be sentenced next spring.

Mr. Blankenship was not tried on any charges that accused him of direct responsibility for the deaths at Upper Big Branch, which investigators said exploded because of improper ventilation that allowed gases to accumulate. But prosecutors argued that Mr. Blankenship’s leadership had laid the groundwork for a catastrophe. There was not necessarily a formal conspiracy, prosecutors acknowledged, but they said that Mr. Blankenship’s example and tone had set Massey on a course that put profits ahead of lives.

I hope that the judge sentences him to the full year, but somehow I doubt it.

I expect him to get probation, or possibly house arrest, which would be far less satisfying than his ass getting shivved while he is in the stir.

This is the Least Surprising News of the Day

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Russia accused Turkey of buying ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Whatever oil. Turkish President Erdogan called this a false slander.

But guess what? Putin is ready to give the world pictures:

Russia’s defense ministry said on Wednesday it had proof that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family were benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq.

Moscow and Ankara have been locked in a war of words since last week when a Turkish air force jet shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian-Turkish border, the most serious incident between Russia and a NATO state in half a century.

Erdogan responded by saying no one had the right to “slander” Turkey by accusing it of buying oil from Islamic State, and that he would stand down if such allegations were proven to be true. But speaking during a visit to Qatar, he also said he did not want relations with Moscow to worsen further.

At a briefing in Moscow, defense ministry officials displayed satellite images which they said showed columns of tanker trucks loading with oil at installations controlled by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and then crossing the border into neighboring Turkey.

The officials did not specify what direct evidence they had of the involvement of Erdogan and his family, an allegation that the Turkish president has vehemently denied.

“Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq. According to information we’ve received, the senior political leadership of the country – President Erdogan and his family – are involved in this criminal business,” said Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov.

“Maybe I’m being too blunt, but one can only entrust control over this thieving business to one’s closest associates.”

“In the West, no one has asked questions about the fact that the Turkish president’s son heads one of the biggest energy companies, or that his son-in-law has been appointed energy minister. What a marvelous family business!”

………

The Russian defense ministry also alleged that the same criminal networks which were smuggling oil into Turkey were also supplying weapons, equipment and training to Islamic State and other Islamist groups.

“According to our reliable intelligence data, Turkey has been carrying out such operations for a long period and on a regular basis. And most importantly, it does not plan to stop them,” Sergei Rudskoy, deputy head of the Russian military’s General Staff, told reporters.

The defense ministry said its surveillance revealed hundreds of tanker trucks gathering at Islamic State-controlled sites in Iraq and Syria to load up with oil, and it questioned why the U.S.-led coalition was not launching more air strikes on them.

“It’s hard not to notice them,” Rudskoy said of the lines of trucks shown on satellite images.

Russian officials said their country’s bombing campaign had made a significant dent in Islamic State’s ability to produce, refine and sell oil.

Oh, snap!

I Should Feel Good about This, but I Keep Waiting to the Other Shoe to Drop

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Obama has now officially rejected the Keystone-XL pipeline.

While a rational person should see this as an unalloyed good, I keep thinking that if TranCanada had not attempted to defer its application, making it clear that they were planning for a Republican victory in 2016, Obama would still be hedging his bets:

Saying that “the Keystone XL Pipeline would not serve the national interests of the United States,” President Obama rejected the much-debated project on Nov. 6. (AP)

President Obama rejected a presidential permit Friday for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, citing concerns about its impact on the climate.

“America’s now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” Obama told reporters, standing in the Roosevelt Room beside Vice President Biden and Secretary of State John F. Kerry. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership. And that’s the biggest risk we face, not acting.”

Also, I wonder if this might be some sort of attempt to disarm the left in an attempt to get the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal passed.

Heh.

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Obama has just told TransCanada “No Backsies”.

It’s about bloody time:

The White House on Tuesday said President Obama had no intention of bowing to a request from the company behind the Keystone XL oil pipeline to delay a decision on the project, saying he wanted to take action before his tenure ends.

The State Department is reviewing a request made on Monday by the company, TransCanada, to pause its yearslong evaluation of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which has become part of a broader debate over Mr. Obama’s environmental agenda.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that “there’s reason to suspect that there may be politics at play” in TransCanada’s request. He strongly suggested that the review, which has been widely expected to result in a rejection of the pipeline as soon as this month, remained on track.

“Given how long it’s taken, it seems unusual to me to suggest that somehow it should be paused yet again,” Mr. Earnest said about the evaluation at the State Department, which reviews proposed cross-border projects that require a presidential permit. The president, Mr. Earnest added, “would like to have this determination be completed before he leaves office.”

Environmental protection advocates say Mr. Obama is poised to reject the pipeline project in large part to make a bold statement about his commitment to curb climate change in advance of a United Nations summit meeting in Paris. He will seek to broker an accord at the December gathering, committing every nation to enacting new policies to counter global warming.

It would be nice if he hadn’t waited 6 years to start this.