Category: Energy

WE Just Got Fracked

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A new analysis of what was previously considered the largest shale oil formation in the United States has just shrunk by 96%:

Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California’s vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national “black gold mine” of petroleum.

Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.

The new estimate, expected to be released publicly next month, is a blow to the nation’s oil future and to projections that an oil boom would bring as many as 2.8 million new jobs to California and boost tax revenue by $24.6 billion annually.

The Monterey Shale formation contains about two-thirds of the nation’s shale oil reserves. It had been seen as an enormous bonanza, reducing the nation’s need for foreign oil imports through the use of the latest in extraction techniques, including acid treatments, horizontal drilling and fracking.

The energy agency said the earlier estimate of recoverable oil, issued in 2011 by an independent firm under contract with the government, broadly assumed that deposits in the Monterey Shale formation were as easily recoverable as those found in shale formations elsewhere.

We are not going to frack our way into energy independence.

The problems that California is not like Texas, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, etc.  It is highly seismically active, and  this action has chopped the shale layer into isolated little pieces.

You have Problem with Corporate Communist Capitalism®©™, Comrade?

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North Carolina continues its trip off the deep end.

The Republicans who have control of the state are decided to make it a felony to reveal what fracking oil companies are pumping into people’s drinking water:

As hydraulic fracturing ramps up around the country, so do concerns about its health impacts. These concerns have led 20 states to require the disclosure of industrial chemicals used in the fracking process.

North Carolina isn’t on that list of states yet—and it may be hurtling in the opposite direction.

On Thursday, three Republican state senators introduced a bill that would slap a felony charge on individuals who disclosed confidential information about fracking chemicals. The bill, whose sponsors include a member of Republican party leadership, establishes procedures for fire chiefs and health care providers to obtain chemical information during emergencies. But as the trade publication Energywire noted Friday, individuals who leak information outside of emergency settings could be penalized with fines and several months in prison.

“The felony provision is far stricter than most states’ provisions in terms of the penalty for violating trade secrets,” says Hannah Wiseman, a Florida State University assistant law professor who studies fracking regulations.

The bill also allows companies that own the chemical information to require emergency responders to sign a confidentiality agreement. And it’s not clear what the penalty would be for a health care worker or fire chief who spoke about their experiences with chemical accidents to colleagues.

Seriously.

The Repubicans are beginning to give authoritarian corporatism a bad name.

Not the Onion

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The energy company Kinder Morgan is arguing for putting an oil pipeline through an environmentally sensitive area because oil spills can be good for the economy:

That’s according to a 15,000 page application Kinder Morgan has submitted to the National Energy Board for the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (a document so large that it “stands over two metres tall and fills 37 binders”).

 In a section of the application dedicated to the risks and effects associated with oil tanker traffic and the possibility of oil spills, Kinder Morgan finds that “spills can have both positive and negative effects.” In particular, “spill response and clean-up creates business and employment opportunities for affected communities, regions, and clean-up service providers.”

Great googly moogly!

As Charlie Pierce observed, this is on a par with a parent murderer asking for for mercy as an orphan.

Would You Let the Vampire Squid Get a Hold of Your Dong?

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It appears that the coalition in Denmark has collapsed over this issue:

After a recent spate of controversies and ministerial resignations, the Danish centre-left government suffered another blow on Thursday when the Socialist People’s party (SF) left the ruling coalition amid anger over Goldman Sachs‘s investment in Denmark’s state-owned energy company.

 Goldman’s 8bn kroner (£900m) purchase of a 19% share in Dong Energy has been championed by the government but caused a revolt among SF’s parliamentary group. After a night of tension and discussions, SF’s leader, Annette Vilhelmsen, announced her resignation and said her party was leaving the coalition.

 “It has been a dramatic 24 hours,” Vilhelmsen said. “Yesterday it became clear to me that it wasn’t possible to unite the party. For the sake of SF, I take the consequence of this.”

 The Goldman Sachs deal was approved by the parliament’s finance committee on Thursday, but it has come under widespread scrutiny and criticism in recent weeks. A poll showed 68% of Danes were against the sale, and close to 200,000 people signed an online petition opposing the deal.

(emphasis mine)

Even worse, like most privatization deals, it is a hand out from taxpayers to overpaid CEOs:

My friend Niels-Jakob Harbo Hansen and I calculated some of the financial aspects of the deal, and they don’t look that good. The bidders are offering about 107.25 kroner per share, supposedly valuing the company at 31.5 billion kroner before the investment. In addition to a healthy package of minority rights, they also get a put option for 60% of the shares: if DONG doesn’t go public within 4 years or so (and Goldman can veto that), the investors can sell 60% of their shares at a strike price equal to the purchase price of 107.25 kr per share, plus a healthy return of about 3% per year.

 That’s like an insurance policy that covers not only your loss, but also the insurance premium you originally paid, plus interest.

 Once you account for the put option, the deal values the shares at 24.5 billion kr., around 47% of book value. Maybe that’s fair because DONG just had a big loss and will be constrained by its business plan to invest in windmills and such, but it still seems awfully low. On the other hand, the investment bankers have deemed it Fair™, so who am I to question that.

 The main thing we did was to compare the deal to the most obvious alternative: the Danish government (AAA rating, 26% debt/GDP, 45% including local government) could borrow at an interest rate of about 1%, and make the investment itself. The expected loss from the deal compared to a government investment is about 2.5 billion kroner.

So, it costs the taxpayer 3x as much as a public investment, and you can be certain that rates will go up faster than they would if the company were to remain completely publicly owned.

Clearly, Answer is More Money to the NSA Contractors for Cyberdefense

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Did you hear about the attack on a power plant in California?

No, it was not a cyber attack, it was guys with guns:

When U.S. officials warn about “attacks” on electric power facilities these days, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a computer hacker trying to shut the lights off in a city with malware. But a more traditional attack on a power station in California has U.S. officials puzzled and worried about the physical security of the the electrical grid–from attackers who come in with guns blazing.

Around 1:00 AM on April 16, at least one individual (possibly two) entered two different manholes at the PG&E Metcalf power substation, southeast of San Jose, and cut fiber cables in the area around the substation. That knocked out some local 911 services, landline service to the substation, and cell phone service in the area, a senior U.S. intelligence official told Foreign Policy. The intruder(s) then fired more than 100 rounds from what two officials described as a high-powered rifle at several transformers in the facility. Ten transformers were damaged in one area of the facility, and three transformer banks — or groups of transformers — were hit in another, according to a PG&E spokesman.

………

“These were not amateurs taking potshots,” Mark Johnson, a former vice president for transmission operations at PG&E, said last month at a conference on grid security held in Philadelphia. “My personal view is that this was a dress rehearsal” for future attacks.

I am inclined to agree with Mr. Johnson.

We’ve spent billions on cyber defense for an attack on the grid which has never occurred, anywhere in the world, but physical attacks on power stations by insurgents have been occurring since power plants first existed.

Of course, it’s not the current business model for the for-profit portion of out state security apparatus, so not a whole bunch of money there.

Just When I Think that the Right Wing Cannot Get Any More Evil………

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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is pushing for legislation to fine homeowners for installing solar power:

An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as “freeriders” – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.

Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama’s main channel for climate action.

Details of Alec’s strategy to block clean energy development at every stage – from the individual rooftop to the White House – are revealed as the group gathers for its policy summit in Washington this week.

Great shades of Elvis.

This level of evil and the stupidity is a complete mind f%$#.

Break Even Fusion at National Ignition Facility, Livermore

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This is a major milestone:

But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive.

Now, a breakthrough by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) could boost hopes of scaling up fusion.

NIF, based at Livermore in California, uses 192 beams from the world’s most powerful laser to heat and compress a small pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place.

This is known as “inertial confinement”. Basically heat and pressure is created because the concentrated lasers heat up the pellet so rapidly that it creates intense heats and pressures.

Note that “Break Even” does have a qualifier though:

This is a step short of the lab’s stated goal of “ignition”, where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. This is because known “inefficiencies” in different parts of the system mean not all the energy supplied through the laser is delivered to the fuel.

But the latest achievement has been described as the single most meaningful step for fusion in recent years, and demonstrates NIF is well on its way towards the coveted target of ignition and self-sustaining fusion.

Interestingly, inertial confinement, which has gotten far less funding and attention than magnetic confinement, most notably the Tokomak and Stellerator configurations, but they have not progressed as far.

Inertial containment is a lot simpler, both from a physics and an engineering standpoint, but making it economically viable appears appears rather more difficult than for magnetic confinement, because inertial confinement is by its nature an intermittent process.

Fracking Assholes Literally Think That They are Above the Law

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And no, I am not invoking Battlestar Galactica.

I am referring to the hissy fit that drillers in Pennsylvania are having about being prosecuted for illegal dumping:

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s decision to prosecute a major Marcellus Shale natural-gas driller for a 2010 wastewater spill has sent shock waves through the industry.

But environmentalists Wednesday hailed the prosecution of the Exxon Mobil Corp. subsidiary as a departure from the soft treatment they say the industry has received from Pennsylvania regulators.

………

Kane’s office announced charges Tuesday against XTO Energy Inc. for discharging more than 50,000 gallons of toxic wastewater from storage tanks at a gas-well site in Lycoming County.

XTO in July settled federal civil charges over the incident by agreeing to pay a $100,000 fine and deploy a plan to improve wastewater-management practices. The consent decree included no admissions of liability.

The Fort Worth, Texas, drilling company, which Exxon acquired in 2010, said it had worked cooperatively with federal and state authorities to clean up the spilled waste, known as “produced water.” XTO excavated and removed 3,000 tons of contaminated soil from the site.

“Criminal charges are unwarranted and legally baseless because neither XTO nor any of its employees intentionally, recklessly, or negligently discharged produced water on the site,” XTO said in a statement.

Kane’s office said it did not need to prove intent to prosecute the company for crimes. XTO is charged with five counts of unlawful conduct under the Clean Streams Law and three counts of unlawful conduct under the Solid Waste Management Act.

Industry leaders said the prosecution of a company for what they called an inadvertent spill creates a hostile business environment.

Because prosecuting criminals is constitutes a “hostile business environment.”

YOU see, laws are only for the little people.

The official story from XTO also stinks to high heaven:

The XTO spill received very little public attention when it occurred.

A DEP inspector discovered wastewater leaking from an open valve on a storage tank during an unannounced visit to the Marquardt well site on Nov. 16, 2010. The wastewater spilled into a tributary of the Susquehanna River and also contaminated a spring. Pollutants were present in the stream for 65 days after the spill.

The grand jury’s presentment does not say who opened the valves on the tank or why. XTO officials at the time suggested vandals might be responsible. But it noted that the drilling site had no secondary containment, little security, and no alarm system for leaks.

Yes, “vandals”.

It’s gotta be vandals, and not some corporate drone who decided that it made business sense to just dump the water, even if every now and again you get caught and have to pay a 100 Grand fine.

A tip of the hat, to Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

Mexico’s President Drinks the Free Market Mousketeer Koolaid

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It’s not a surprise, the energy companies have been trying to get ownership stakes in the state owned Mexican oil company, Pemex, for years, so it was only matter of time before a useful idiot was elected to the Mexican presidency, the useful idiot in this case being Enrique Peña Nieto:

If Mexico had a crown jewel, it would be the giant state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. Year after year, it has poured billions of dollars into the state treasury, historically paying for schools, hospitals, dams, highways, ports and more.

The seizure of foreign oil companies 75 years ago that created the company is a cause for annual celebrations affirming Mexico’s fierce sense of independence from outside interference.

Yet even as the country’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, credits Pemex with building the nation, his administration acknowledges that the notoriously inefficient conglomerate is in trouble: If it is not opened to private and foreign investment, Mexico, the world’s ninth-largest oil producer, will become a net energy importer by 2020, officials say.

As Peña Nieto moves ahead with a plan to overhaul Pemex, he is navigating the most perilous political minefield of his young presidency. He is toying with taboos and challenging revered perceptions surrounding the nation’s top revenue earner. And he is meeting with impassioned opposition.

At the back of a recent rally for Pemex, Jesus Castillo Sanchez, a 46-year-old handyman, waved a giant Mexican flag as if he’d just taken a hill in battle. Booting the foreign oil companies in 1938 “gave Mexico its true independence from the great powers,” Castillo said. “After [the foreigners] bring their oil platforms, they will bring their armies and their troops.”

The president is expected to introduce landmark energy reform legislation, including proposals addressing Pemex, as early as this week.

………

The government and industry experts contend that Mexico needs advanced technical expertise from outside companies to find and retrieve oil and gas from deep water and shale-rock formations that are believed to hold more than half the country’s estimated 14 billion barrels of reserves.

But “Pemex is not allowed … to choose associations … to reduce the level of risk that you run” in deep-water exploration, Carlos Morales Gil, Pemex director of exploration and production, said in an interview. “What Pemex needs is budget autonomy and flexibility” to form joint ventures, he said.

If you look at the Deepwater Horizon case, you will notice that BP doesn’t know much of anything about oil drilling.

They hire Halliburton and Slumberger (who took one look at the well, and left) for their drilling expertise, and Transocean to operate the rig.

Oil companies no longer have much in the way of technical expertise, they outsourced those during the oil downturn in the late 1980s.

As to the money to go after harder to reach oil, Pemex clearly needs some reforms, it is a wasteful and bloated bureaucracy.

As to the fixes, the first one comes to mind would be an expansion of their refining facilities, so that Pemex would not have to import (and subsidize) fuel for internal consumption.

But one need only look at the disastrous privatization of British rail to understand that this is a solution that has everyone losing but the foreign firms.

If you bring in foreign investors, oil and gas drilling in Mexico is going to end up looking like Nigeria.

Canada Says “Nothing” is Not an Appropriate Response to an Oil Spill

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No, seriously, the government of British Columbia just denied a permit to build a tar sands pipeline to a company that refused to offer remediation plans for a potential spill”

Oil spill cleanup concerns have led the British Columbia Government to reject a proposed multi-billion dollar tar sands oil pipeline that the Canadian company Enbridge wants to construct across the province.

 In its final submission Friday to the federally-appointed Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel, the province states that it cannot support the Enbridge Northern Gateway project because the company “has been unable to address British Columbians’ environmental concerns.”

 Environment Minister Terry Lake said, “British Columbia thoroughly reviewed all of the evidence and submissions made to the panel and asked substantive questions about the project including its route, spill response capacity and financial structure to handle any incidents. Our questions were not satisfactorily answered during these hearings.”

 “Northern Gateway has said that they would provide effective spill response in all cases. However, they have presented little evidence as to how they will respond,” Lake said. “For that reason, our government cannot support the issuance of a certificate for the pipeline as it was presented to the Joint Review Panel.”

 ………

 “It shows that Northern Gateway would have comprehensive oil spill response plans for all Project components and would substantially improve existing emergency response on Canada’s pacific coast – something unprecedented for a pipeline project. It shows that the Project has been developed with a comprehensive public and Aboriginal engagement program that would continue throughout Project construction and operation,” the company said in its submission.

 But the B.C. government’s submission points out that the company’s proposal indicates that “doing nothing is a possible response to a spill.”

(Emphasis mine)

<snark> Are they Communists in Canada or something?   Don’t they know this is supposed to work?

Silly Rabbit, the profits go to the energy companies, and the taxpayer pays for the cleanup! </snark>

H/t Americablog

Why a Carbon Tax is Better than a Carbon Market, Part 3.1415926

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The EU which has the largest and most ambitious carbon market world, has effectively shut it down by refusing to subsidize it:

The European Parliament this week voted 334-315 (with 60 abstentions) against a controversial “back-loading” plan that aimed to boost the flagging price of carbon, which since 2008 has fallen from about 31 euros per tonne to about 4 euros (about $5.20). Since the vote, the price has fallen even farther, to 2.80 euros. The collapsing market is hardly the kind of firm foundation needed for building a clean-energy economy.

“Now, the market is dead, as far as I can see,” said Steffen Böhm, director of the Essex Sustainability Institute at Britain’s Essex Business School.

What will be the aftermath of the ETS collapse? Here’s a quick primer on what happened, and what it could mean elsewhere, particularly in California, which inaugurated a new carbon market at the start of this year. (Related: “California Tackles Climate Change, But Will Others Follow?”

The “backloading” is an indirect subsidy which would pull carbon credits off of the market to raise prices.

Cap and trade does not work without extensive government intervention, it costs more to administer, and it requires extensive and ongoing government subsidies.

Tell me again why cap and trade is better than a carbon tax again?

The only thing that I can figure out is tribalism:  It allows politicians to create yet another mechanism for them to throw profits toward their classmates from their “elite” schools who are working at Wall Street or the City of London.

Sarah Palin Did One Right Thing, and Alaska Republicans Vote to Overturn It

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She changed the royalty structure for oil extracted from the state, and now Republicans have reversed this in a give away to big oil:

The Alaska Senate on Sunday afternoon approved the oil-tax bill that passed the House 13 hours before, sending to Gov. Sean Parnell the measure he had sought to save billions of dollars for Alaska’s leading industry.

The Senate vote was 12-8 to concur with the revised bill that the House approved 24-15 just before 2 a.m. Sunday morning (on reconsideration, three Republicans switched to support the bill). The Senate vote came past the midway point of the 90th day of the 90-day session.

Parnell said that Alaska’s current tax regime, which he backed as lieutenant governor in 2007 when it was pushed by Gov. Sarah Palin, is broken. It is taking so much money from industry, he said, that producers have been investing elsewhere, explaining the decline in oil production here. His bill, modified but not changed drastically in either the House or Senate, effectively wipes out Palin’s tax policy, Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share, or ACES.

The new bill ends ACES big progressive tax steps, where tax rates increase as the price of oil rises. Parnell and supporters said the progressive tax was punitive toward industry. ACES supporters agreed that the tax took too much money at high oil prices, but the remedy was to lower the rate — not toss it.

Today’s Republican Party in Alaska: too radical, too stupid, and too obsequious to big oil for Sarah Palin.

That is truly a major mind f%$#, and Alaska, arguably the state which is least suited to the actual cultivation of bananas, is an a clown like banana republic.

How Many Jobs Does the Keystone Pipeline Create?

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Only 20.

Call me a political Little Orphan Annie, but I think that if you have to lie this much, it’s probably not a good idea:

TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, heralded by supporters as a major job creator, will add few permanent positions once the $7 billion project is built.

The number of people needed to operate and maintain the 1,661-mile (2,673-kilometer) pipeline may be as few as 20, according to the U.S. State Department, or as many as a few hundred, according to TransCanada.

“I don’t see a big jobs impact,” Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, said in an interview. “It gets the oil into refineries that already exist. It’s like replacing a bridge on the highway.”

The debate in Washington has focused on short-term construction and manufacturing jobs, rather than on permanent ones. Estimates for construction and manufacturing employment range from 2,500 to 20,000, depending on assumptions of how much of the project’s budget will be spent in the U.S. The company says some of the steel will be made in Canada and India.

TransCanada Vice President Robert Jones said permanent jobs would be “in the hundreds, certainly not in the thousands,” in a Nov. 11 interview on CNN.

Calgary-based TransCanada says construction will create 20,000 “new, real U.S. jobs.”

What a surprise, TransCanada is a bunch of lying sacks of sh%$.

And the bitumen that they will be extracting is an ecological disaster as well.

Just When You Thought that the JSF Could Not Get Any More f%$#ed………

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We now find out that they bought into Lithium Ion batteries for the fighter, the technology that has grounded the 787:

The Pentagon said it plans to continue using lithium-ion batteries on the new F-35 fighter jet despite problems with similar batteries that have grounded Boeing Co’s new 787 airliner and are causing Airbus to rethink their use on its A350 jet.

Joe DellaVedova, spokesman for the Pentagon’s $396 billion F-35 program office, said on Tuesday that the lithium-ion batteries used on the new radar-evading fighter were made by different manufacturers than those used on the 787, and the jet’s battery systems had been rigorously tested.

“The bottom line is the lithium-ion batteries used on the F-35s have been through extensive tests and have redundant systems to protect the aircraft and battery compartments; they are considered safe,” DellaVedova said.

DellaVedova said there had been some irregularities with the lithium-ion batteries not starting properly in cold temperatures that were being addressed, but no issues affecting flight safety had come up during years of testing.

All 50 Boeing Dreamliners in commercial service were grounded worldwide on January 16 after a series of battery-related incidents, including a fire on board a parked 787 at Boston’s Logan International Airport and an in-flight problem on another airplane in Japan.

The groundings have cost airlines tens of millions of dollars, with no solution yet in sight, and have sparked growing concerns among aerospace industry executives about whether the powerful but delicate backup energy systems are technically “mature”, or predictable.

Why am I not surprised?

When you cross reference “advance technology”, “unproven”, and “risky”, the Venn diagram of the intersection is the JSF.

Payback’s A Bitch

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Everyone is freaking out because Argentina is renationalizing its formerly state owned oil company, YPF:

Argentina says it will seize a controlling interest in oil company YPF that is owned by Spanish firm Repsol.

President Cristina Fernandez said a bill would be presented to the Senate allowing the government to expropriate 51% of YPF shares.

The move, announced on national television, was welcomed by her cabinet and Argentina’s regional governors.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo said the action had “broken the climate of friendship”.

Speaking after a government crisis meeting, Mr Margello told journalists his government would take “clear and forceful measures”, although he did not specify what these would be.

In a statement Repsol said it “considers the announced measure to be manifestly unlawful and gravely discriminatory”.

The sale of the former state owned energy company was in the middle of the Argentine financial crisis, when creditor nations held a figurative gun to the Argentine government’s head, so it was sold at fire sale prices.

As to concerns about Argentina no longer being “friendly” to foreign investment, it’s not a big deal.

Argentina has been growing more rapidly than all of its neighbors, including the vaunted Brazil.

Additionally, foreign investment won’t go away, though it might demand an additional 50 basis points return.

Also, reduced foreign investment also less risk of the speculative inrushes that cause crashes which result in the loss of economic sovereignty and a shredding of middle class.

The recent lesson of Argentina, and of Iceland, as well as that of Malaysia during the Asian financial crisis, is that the so called Washington consensus, that currency speculation and completely unimpeded capital flows, that this will produce unparalleled economic growth, is completely wrong.

This is not an expropriation, this is justice. The assets were stolen by the looters in the first place.

So, the Keystone XL Pipeline Is On Hold

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The ‘Phants forced a decision in the payroll tax bill, and so he denied the application:

President Obama on Wednesday rejected, for now, the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, saying the $7 billion project could not be adequately reviewed within the 60-day deadline set by Congress. While the president’s action does not preclude later approval of the project, it sets up a baldly partisan fight over energy, jobs and regulation that will most likely persist through the November election.

The president said his hand had been forced by Republicans in Congress, who inserted a provision in the temporary payroll tax cut bill passed in December giving the administration only until Feb. 21 to decide the fate of the 1,700-mile pipeline, which would stretch from oil sands formations in Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

The State Department, which has authority over the project because it crosses an international border, said there was not enough time to draw a new route for the pipeline and assess the potential environmental harm to sensitive grasslands and aquifers along its path. The agency recommended that the permit be denied, and Mr. Obama concurred.

“As the State Department made clear last month,” the president said in a statement, “the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment.”

The Republicans think that they have an issue, but it will be long forgotten by election time.

As to the final outcome, it will be approved after the election, and Obama will tweak the route a bit, and claim some sort of post partisan victory, all while basically selling out to big oil.

Well, Knock Me Over With a Mackerel!

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Congress has ended both the subsidy on corn ethanol and the tariff on imported Brazilian sugar based ethanol:

Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy, an ethanol trade group, clearly wasn’t thrilled with the decision, but in an interview earlier this month he claimed the ethanol industry would survive without government handouts stating, “The blenders’ tax credit initially helped the ethanol industry develop. But today, we don’t have a production problem, we have a market access problem. Without the tax credit, the ethanol industry will survive; it will continue to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, create jobs and strengthen our economy.”

By some estimates the total gifts to corn ethanol business totalled $45B USD since 1980.

The subsidy cut — approved by a 73-27 Senate vote in June — also is accompanied by the end of a tariff on the importation of Brazilian ethanol. Brazil has an excess of sugarcane ethanol, but the U.S. government had previously penalized this fuel stream as a means of allowing U.S. ethanol producers to escape competing on the free market.

The ethanol debate has divided both political parties and even set federal representatives within certain corn-producing states against each other.

I wonder if this says something about the increasing irrelevance of Iowa caucuses this year.

I’m pleasantly surprised by this development.

The Reality is That Obama is Preparing for a Post Election F%$# You to Environmentalists

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Obama is in election mode.

He’s criticizing Republicans and trying for a new jobs program.

And now the State Department as delayed a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the election.

They want a study on another route, one that might be a bit less likely to contaminate the Ogallala aquifer.

This is not a policy change.  This is an cynical exercise in electioneering, and once Obama doesn’t need the environmentalists, he will once again go out of his way to sh%$ all over them once again.

Remember when Obama ran these f%$#ers over the coals? Remember when BP execs were clapped in irons and given life sentences for crimes against humanity?

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Me neither.*

In case you are wondering, why yes, the Deepwater Horizon is spilling oil again:

Oil is once again fouling the Gulf of Mexico around the Deepwater Horizon well, which was capped a little over a year ago.

Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of small, circular patches of oily sheen dotted the surface within a mile of the wellhead. With just a bare sheen present over about a quarter-mile, the scene was a far cry from the massive slick that covered the Gulf last summer.

Floating in a boat near the well site, Press-Register reporters watched blobs of oil rise to the surface and bloom into iridescent yellow patches. Those patches quickly expanded into rainbow sheens 4 to 5 feet across.

Each expanding bloom released a pronounced and pungent petroleum smell. Most of the oil was located in a patch about 50 yards wide and a quarter of a mile long.

Because playing nice with the least safety conscious energy company in the western world is such a winning strategy.

Not feeling that “Audacity of Hope”.

There is a difference between dealing with people who merely disagree with you, and dealing with evil ratf%$#s who will destroy everything for a few pennies.

BP’s upper management is clearly the latter, and dealing with them as the former just makes things worse.

*H/T JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the title and the first line.

It Looks Like Gaddafi is Out

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Or will be in a matter of hours.

I was listening to NPR, and they were hoping that the rebels would not go medieval on former Gaddafi loyalists, but that is a pipe dream.

They have no credibility, because they were installed largely as the result of direct military action by NATO, which requires the widespread application of violence against any potential opposition.

Additionally, because they are effectively clients of big oil and finance NATO, they will have to aggressively implement “free market reforms”, which means the end of their publicly financed healthcare and education systems, as well as signing sweetheart deals with big oil, which will not be supported by the general populace.

It’s good that Gaddafi is gone, but because he was removed through what was essentially a colonial intervention, the new regime will for the foreseeable future be a colonial administration, which may in the long run prove worse for the average Libyan.