Pretending Keystone XL Politics Is Science
. It turns out that “the analysis of greenhouse-gas emission presented by the State Department in its new environmental impact statement … includes dozens of references to reports by Jacobs Consultancy, a group that is owned by a big tar sands developer and that was hired by the Alberta government—which strongly favors the project.”
?An oil sands refinery in Alberta. © David Biello
You might expect a bigger public outcry given that State’s Inspector General was already investigatingaccusations that the environmental consultancy hired by the department to produce the report, Environmental Resources Management, has financial ties to TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline. Despite the fact that InsideClimate is a Pulitzer-winning investigative news outlet, its scoop was a classic week-two, follow-up story – the kind the public too often overlooks.
The problem is not the media, however, but rather the State Department. The first glut of articles, the one most people notice and that largely defines public opinion, appeared the day that the environmental impact report was released. Most, including those from The New York Times and the Associated Press, mentioned the Inspector General’s investigation of ERM, but State didn’t give journalists time to dig into the report to identify other concerns like the role of Jacobs Consultancy.
Instead, State issued a press release on January 31, the Friday before the Super Bowl. A select group of reporters received a link to the report and an invitation to a privateteleconference that morning. On the call, they were told that the report was under embargo until 3 p.m., giving them about five hours to read and digest a do ent that runs over 11 volumes with appendices. The executive summary alone has 44 pages, with over 18,000 words, not to mention charts, graphs, and tables.
Pretending Politics is Science
To complicate matters, the State Department official who led the teleconference and fielded questions from reporters was Kerri-Ann Jones, State’s Assistant Secretary of Scientific Affairs, who kept referring to the report as a “technical” do ent. However, the report was never about science. It’s simply politics. A week before the report came out, The Wall Street Journal reported:http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/02/14/pretending-keystone-xl-politics-is-science/
“One person familiar with the process at the State Department said the environmental-impact report will be crafted in a way that gives the president wide leeway to make a decision. Another official said the report is expected to be relatively vague, so Mr. Obama would be able to cite it to support a decision for or against the pipeline.”
There is still no proper scientific studies that show CO2 is the demon the alarmists say it is.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...d88_story.htmlA Nebraska judge ruled Wednesday that the state violated its cons ution when it allowed the governor to approve the route of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, a decision that could significantly delay the $5.3 billion project.
District Court judge Stephanie F. Stacy blocked Gov. Dave Heineman (R) and other defendants “from taking any action on the governor’s January 22, 2013 approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline route,” such as allowing land to be acquired by eminent domain for the project.
you're against the pipeline?
I haven't decided on that pipeline. In reality, I know very little of the issues surrounding it. If you notice, i haven't said a great deal on it.
However, I do like it when the cons ution prevails over someone trying to usurp it.
one person's cons utionalism is another's judicial activism. a judge overturned an executive action.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_4861859.htmlA consulting firm that helped write an environmental review of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline complied with federal rules regarding possible conflict of interest, the State Department's inspector general said Wednesday in a report that buoyed supporters of the controversial pipeline and disappointed critics.
The report said the contractor, Environmental Resources Management, fully disclosed that some staff members who worked on the State Department report had previously done work with the pipeline operator, Calgary-based TransCanada. None of the work for TransCanada involved Keystone XL, and all of it occurred before the staff members began work at ERM, the report said.
The State Department followed federal guidelines regarding use of outside contractors, the report said, "and at times was more rigorous than that guidance."
Still, the report said the State Department's process for hiring outside contractors can be improved, adding that requirements for do enting how contractors are selected were "minimal."
BigOil, BigCorps, with ALEC, dictate the laws, regulations to corrupt, compromised govt staffed with corporate shills, lobbyists, corrupted professionals.
XL = 100Ks jobs, and energy security!
Kock Bros, etc gonna export without ANY concern for energy security, only concern for their self-enrichment security!
Lie Here, Lie Now, Lie Always!
New Post-ABC News poll: Keystone XL project overwhelmingly favored by Americans
Source: Washington Post
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...39c_story.htmlAmericans support the idea of constructing the Keystone XL oil pipeline between Canada and the United States by a nearly 3 to 1 margin, with 65 percent saying it should be approved and 22 percent opposed, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The findings also show that the public thinks the massive project, which aims to ship 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta and the northern Great Plains to refineries on the Gulf Coast, will produce significant economic benefits. Eighty-five percent say the pipeline would create a significant number of jobs, with 62 percent saying they “strongly” believed that to be the case.
At the same time, nearly half of those interviewed — 47 percent — say they think Keystone will pose a significant risk to the environment.
People are for it because they think it means jobs and energy for America, if they knew it meant 34 jobs and the oil would go to China whilst our children pay for the pollution, I wonder how many would still be worth it?
"will produce significant economic benefits"
to whom?
all the Repug's Drill Here, Drill Now fracked oil hasn't made a dent in US transport or heating fuel.
and here's that bag, criminal BP raping the spirit of the export ban:
BP Splitter Refinery Seen Skirting U.S. Oil Export Ban
The British oil giant has signed on to take at least 80 percent of the capacity of a new $360 million mini-refinery in Houston that will process crude just enough to escape restrictions on sales outside the country.
Amid a flood of new U.S. oil, the demand for simple, one-step plants capable of transforming raw crude into exportable products such as propane is feeding a construction boom along the Gulf Coast. If the new processing units continue to multiply, they could render moot the politically sensitive debate over whether to ease the restrictions in place since the Arab oil embargo of 1973.
“It’s a relatively inexpensive way around the export prohibition,” said Judith Dwarkin, chief energy economist for ITG Investment Research Inc. “You can lightly ruffle the hydrocarbons and they are considered processed and then they aren’t subject to the ban.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...xport-ban.html
Koch Brothers Are The Largest Land Owners Of Canada’s Tar Sands
The Koch Brothers are known for many things — their vast financial empire, their conservative political ideology, their active political involvement, their support of the Keystone XL pipeline — but their Alberta, Canada land ownership has not been as widely discussed. A Washington Post feature has brought this subject back to attention as the Keystone XL debate heats up and discussion over the relationship between the Koch Brothers and their Republican allies takes on even greater significance in an important election year.
According to the Washington Post, which uses a report from the activist group the International Forum on Globalization as a foundation, a Koch Industries subsidiary holds leases on 1.1 million acres in the northern Alberta oil sands, an area nearly the size of Delaware. The Post confirmed the group’s findings with Alberta Energy, the provincial government’s ministry of energy.
“What is Koch Industries doing there?,” asks the Washington Post. “The company wouldn’t comment on its holdings or strategy, but it appears to be a long-term investment that could produce tens of thousands of barrels of the region’s thick brand of crude oil in the next three years and perhaps hundreds of thousands of barrels a few years after that.”
In 2012, InsideClimate News reported on the Koch family’s long-term investments in Canada’s heavy oil industry, calling it an essential part of the company’s massive growth since 1959.
In a wide-ranging analysis, InsideClimate News found that Koch Industries has been involved with almost every aspect of the tar sands industry, from mining bitumen to transportation, exportation, distribution and, of course, refining the petrochemicals — a large part of their empire.
The report found that Koch Industries is “one of Canada’s largest crude oil purchasers, shippers, and exporters, with more than 130 crude oil customers,” and is also responsible for about 25 percent of oil sands crude imports into the U.S., for use at its refineries.
In their recent report The Billionaires’ Carbon Bomb about the Koch Brothers and the Keystone XL pipeline, the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) contends that Koch Exploration Canada, the Koch Industries subsidiary that buys and sells land for energy development, could profit by up to $100 billion with the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. While this number is up for debate, it is clearly not a losing investment. And at the very least the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would lower transportation costs of getting the oil to refineries, increasing the production margins of those refineries, whether Koch-owned or not.
“The biggest way Koch could benefit from Keystone is by the pipeline’s acting as the ‘keystone’ of oil industry strategy to increase the ‘takeaway’ capacity for producers of Canadian crude, whereby getting more oil to more lucrative markets, and ending the deep discounts on Canadian crude currently glutting markets,” IFG’s Victor Menotti told the Washington Post.
In Alberta, like in many places in the U.S., owning the land and owning the mineral rights beneath the surface are different things. According to the Alberta Department of Energy, 81 percent of the surface mineral rights in the province are owned by the provincial Crown, with the remaining 19 percent owned by National Parks, First Nations, or individuals or corporations that acquired the land in the 1800s before the modern rights went into effect.
Koch Industries has held the line that they have no financial stake in the Keystone XL Pipeline and “are not party to its design or construction,” or “a proposed shipper or customer of oil delivered by this pipeline.”
Most people in the path of oil and gas development find themselves helpless in the face of the industry’s deep pockets and political affiliations. Landowners and farmers are left to deal with the environmental and health impacts of nearby fracking and drilling, often polluting or drying up their water sources. It would seem that the Koch brothers would be happy to sell their land away for a little profit — and with little risk of physical or psychological harm. They doubtlessly have land to spare. And until the true impacts come to their own backyard — as they recently did for ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson outside of Dallas — that isn’t likely to change.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...das-tar-sands/
Oil Company Threatens Landowners: Give Us Property Rights Now, Or You’ll Get Less Money
TransCanada has doubled down on Nebraska landowners refusing to sign over their land to Keystone XL, warning them that if they don’t accept the current offers by May 14, future offers will be far less lucrative.
The deadline comes months after TransCanada upped its cash offers to Nebraska residents by as much as 700 percent to try to persuade them to allow their land to be used for the pipeline’s route. In January, the energy company offered one family $61,977.84 to allow the pipeline to run through their farmland, a huge increase from the $8,900 the company offered them in 2012. The company has offered landowners as much as $250,000 to turn over their land, with some easements including crop damage and land-use compensation.
Now, however, the company says it will not be making any further increases to the easement offers.
“No matter what we do, some people are going to criticize us, but these offers are not going up,” TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said.
There are still about 115 landowners who are refusing to sign easements with TransCanada — close to 25 percent of Nebraska’s landowners who are in the proposed path of the pipeline, Jane Kleeb, executive director of Bold Nebraska, told ThinkProgress. Kleeb said she’s seen the same tactic used by TransCanada multiple times since 2010 — the company will threaten landowners with deadlines, saying their easements will go down if they don’t sign, but every time the easements have only increased. TransCanada has also threatened Nebraska landowners with eminent domain and have said they’ll take away their signing bonuses, but each time, nothing has come from their threats, Kleeb said.
“This new deadline is just an arbitrary deadline – they have set many, many deadlines,” Kleeb said. “This is an empty threat, and our landowners are laughing at it.”
Kleeb said she’s confident this deadline won’t convince Nebraska landowners to accept TransCanada easements. TransCanada wants to be able to say that they’ve gotten 100 percent of the landowners to cooperate in Nebraska before Obama makes his decision, Kleeb said, but she doesn’t think that will happen.
“The landowners that haven’t signed with TransCanada yet — for them, it’s not about the money, and we aren’t sure why TransCanada hasn’t gotten that message yet over the last five years,” she said. “They don’t want more money — they want their lives back, and they certainly don’t want the terms of the contract that TransCanada continues to put in front of them.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...ners-deadline/
Sooner or later, cornhuskers gonna get cornholed.
Btw...the Washington Post article in post #110 is complete and utter bull ....not that it matters to thinkprogress (lol).
What's utter bull is the Kock Bros' claim that they no interest in XL pipeline
Koch Subsidiary Told Regulators It Has 'Direct and Substantial Interest' in Keystone XL
In recent months Koch Industries Inc., the business conglomerate run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, has repeatedly told a U.S. Congressional committee and the news media that the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline has "nothing to do with any of our businesses."
But the company has told Canadian energy regulators a different story.
In 2009, Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, an Alberta-based subsidiary of Koch Industries, applied for—and won—"intervenor status" in the National Energy Board hearings that led to Canada's 2010 approval of its 327-mile portion of the pipeline. The controversial project would carry heavy crude 1,700 miles from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast.
In the form it submitted to the Energy Board, Flint Hills wrote that it "is among Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters. Consequently, Flint Hills has a direct and substantial interest in the application" for the pipeline under consideration.
InsideClimate News contacted the Flint Hills manager who filed the Canadian do ent. She referred questions to Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden, who did not return calls. Neither did Koch spokespeople.
That analysis, also published on Reuters.com and later cited by various news organizations, found that Flint Hills is deeply involved in the Canada-Alberta oil sands trade and is well positioned to benefit if more heavy crude is exported to the United States.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20...line?page=show
No, the claims made in the moonbat hit piece (lol thinkprogress) were complete bull . But keep ignoring the slap and move your goal posts again, little .
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...0140423?page=2…Although no final decision has been made, two high-level sources in the Obama administration told me recently that the president has all but decided to deny the permit for the pipeline – a dramatic move that would light up Democratic voters and donors while further provoking the wrath of Big Oil. Finally, Obama is positioning the U.S. to play a key role in negotiations on a new global-climate treaty that will begin next year, establishing American leadership on climate issues and giving him one last chance to lead the world to a cooler future before he leaves the Oval Office
.................................
Exactly how the president has weighed the decision on Keystone is a closely guarded secret in the White House, known only to a few senior advisors like Valerie Jarrett and Dan Pfeiffer. But it's no surprise that I was told recently by members of the administration that the pipeline would, in fact, be rejected. "If the president is really serious about his legacy on climate change, he can't have that and approve Keystone," an Obama insider told me. "The only question now is the timing of the announcement."
22
We'll see....
GOP derails Keystone vote in the Senate: http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbyi...-keystone-vote
The biggest foreign lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.
The Koch Industries subsidiary holds leases on 1.1 million acres -- an area nearly the size of Delaware -- in the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada, according to an activist group that studied Alberta provincial records. The Post confirmed the group’s findings with Alberta Energy, the provincial government’s ministry of energy. Separately, industry sources familiar with oil sands leases said Koch’s lease holdings could be closer to two million acres. The companies with the next biggest net acreage positions in oil sands leases are Conoco Phillips and S , both close behind.
What is Koch Industries doing there? The company wouldn't comment on its holdings or strategy, but it appears to be a long-term investment that could produce tens of thousands of barrels of the region's thick brand of crude oil in the next three years and perhaps hundreds of thousands of barrels a few years after that.
The finding about the Koch acreage is likely to inflame the already contentious debate about the Keystone XL Pipeline and spur activists and environmentalists seeking to slow or stop planned expansions of production from the northern Alberta oil sands, or tar sands. Environmental groups have already made opposing the pipeline their leading cause this spring and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called the Koch brothers Charles and David “un-American” and “shadowy billionaires.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...koch-brothers/
Koch Subsidiary Told Regulators It Has 'Direct and Substantial Interest' in Keystone XL
In recent months Koch Industries Inc., the business conglomerate run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, has repeatedly told a U.S. Congressional committee and the news media that the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline has "nothing to do with any of our businesses."
But the company has told Canadian energy regulators a different story.
In 2009, Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, an Alberta-based subsidiary of Koch Industries, applied for—and won—"intervenor status" in the National Energy Board hearings that led to Canada's 2010 approval of its 327-mile portion of the pipeline. The controversial project would carry heavy crude 1,700 miles from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast.
In the form it submitted to the Energy Board, Flint Hills wrote that it "is among Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters. Consequently, Flint Hills has a direct and substantial interest in the application" for the pipeline under consideration.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20...line?page=show
hit piece? yes, FACTS hit REAL HARD
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