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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17744 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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What a surprise!
Quote: | Energy Transfer LP and subsidiary Sunoco Inc. have received over 800 state and federal permit violations over the Energy Transfer Rover and Sunoco Mariner East 2 natural gas pipelines, with fines topping $15 million, according to an analysis of government data and regulatory records. The violations over the pipelines in the Appalachian region included spills of drilling fluid, sinkholes and improper waste disposal. (Reuters) |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17744 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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This is what state rules on the environment looks like. Mrgybe’s world. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17744 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 11:33 am Post subject: |
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From this morning's Morning Consult:
Quote: | A media investigation found that an air monitor on the border of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions Inc. refinery recorded levels of benzene that exceeded Environmental Protection Agency limits for all but 12 weeks from January 2018 to September 2019. Long-term exposure to benzene has been linked to leukemia, lymphoma and blood and immune system disorders, but the investigation found that many residents living near the refinery said they were never alerted about the high benzene levels. (E&E News, NBC News )
Sunoco Pipeline will pay an additional $1.95 million fine to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for multiple spills in 2017 during the construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline, resulting in more than 208,000 gallons of lubricating drilling fluid leaking into Raystown Lake in Huntingdon County. DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell said the company, which already had $13 million in fines imposed on it, did not immediately report the spills, with some cases not being reported until 537 days after they happened, according to the settlement. ( Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) |
These kinds of scandals, and Trump's and Barr's pandering to big oil are not likely to help them in Pennsylvania. Of course, it will help them with campaign contributions. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17744 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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With the rules of bankruptcy, this is akin to theft from their creditors and the taxpayers. Color me surprised.
Quote: | The Denver-based oil and gas group Whiting Petroleum Corp. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, becoming the first major shale producer to fall victim to the market turmoil triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and a global oil price war. The company's board approved $14.6 million in cash bonuses for five top executives in the days before the filing, with the payouts to be disbursed immediately. (Bloomberg) |
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vientomas
Joined: 25 Apr 2000 Posts: 2343
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Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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mac wrote: | With the rules of bankruptcy, this is akin to theft from their creditors and the taxpayers. Color me surprised.
Quote: | The Denver-based oil and gas group Whiting Petroleum Corp. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, becoming the first major shale producer to fall victim to the market turmoil triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and a global oil price war. The company's board approved $14.6 million in cash bonuses for five top executives in the days before the filing, with the payouts to be disbursed immediately. (Bloomberg) |
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Loopholes...
https://southerncalifornialawreview.com/2019/03/02/regulating-bankruptcy-bonuses-article-by-jared-a-ellias/ |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17744 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:02 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks. It's nice to occasionally have constructive postings. |
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vientomas
Joined: 25 Apr 2000 Posts: 2343
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Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 10:54 pm Post subject: |
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mac wrote: | Thanks. It's nice to occasionally have constructive postings. |
My pleasure. I agree that the practice described in the article is abhorrent and better legislation is warranted. But, I'm not holding my breath. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17744 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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Don't you just love how big oil apologists rant about renewable energy--and such up subsidies?
Quote: | The resource giants who built the mining boom since 2000 earned $53.8 billion in revenues in the 2017-18 year without paying any tax, according to the Australian Taxation Office’s latest figures.
Overall, one-third of companies with revenues over $100 million, or 710 firms, didn’t pay any tax at all.
The list of companies that didn’t pay tax includes massive oil and gas producers like Exxon Mobil [$9.23 billion in Australian revenues], Chevron [$5.27 billion] and Woodside [$6.28 billion].
They built the gargantuan gas platforms in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland that made Australia second only to Qatar in gas exports, but they have $324 billion in tax credits in the bank.
That means they won’t be paying tax for years to come, and the only other source of revenue from their massive projects, the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, only pulled in $1.15 billion in 2018-19.
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17744 Location: Berkeley, California
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17744 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 11:38 am Post subject: |
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Imagine that.
Quote: | Ahead of the 10-year anniversary today of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, all seven members of the bipartisan national commission set up to prevent a repeat of the disaster said that many of their recommendations were never taken seriously and that the United States is only marginally better prepared now than it was then. With drilling moving deeper underwater and further offshore, the commission members said another spill of comparable magnitude is possible. (The New York Times) |
And:
Quote: | By
Steven Mufson
April 19, 2020 at 1:30 p.m. PDT
A decade ago on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by BP was working a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico when a surge in pressure and a blowout triggered a fire that killed 11 crew members and unleashed the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
For much of that summer, many Americans were transfixed by an online “spill cam” that broadcast live images of the crude oil billowing out from the broken blowout preventer. Many Americans called for a boycott of BP, heavy penalties or the end of federal leases.
Today, however, attention has shifted to President Trump’s efforts to undo safety steps taken by the Obama administration to prevent such a spill from happening again.
In 2016, the Obama administration imposed the Well Control Rule, a package of safety measures including backup mechanisms on blowout preventers, regular tests of safety equipment, and independent inspectors so that the public no longer relies on the companies to police themselves.
Since coming into office, however, the Trump administration demonstrated it would roll back those rules by eliminating the need for independent inspectors. That followed the issuance of approximately 1,700 waivers to an industry the administration’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said was bearing “unnecessary burdens.”
The blowout preventer “was the main mechanical failure that, along with many operational mistakes, led to the series of events that produced the catastrophe,” said Paul Bledsoe, a public policy strategist who served as a senior staffer on the presidential commission that investigated the accident. “It brings us sort of back to the self-policing procedures that were in place before the disaster.”
Yet in the decade since the spill, much has changed — and much hasn’t.
For all the advances in shale oil technology, the United States and other countries remain heavily dependent on deepwater drilling, a daunting engineering challenge in seas so deep that even military submarines cannot venture there. U.S. oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is greater than ever before, just under 2 million barrels a day in January, up a third over the 1.5 million barrels a day in the month the Deepwater Horizon caught fire, toppled over and sank to the ocean floor. |
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