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Big Oil and citizenship
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Do you think Chevron wants to be required to tell the truth?

Quote:
By EVAN HALPERSTAFF WRITER
APRIL 29, 2021 5 AM PT
WASHINGTON — California clean tech innovator Bloom Energy, with its noncombustion, low-emission fuel cells, is hardly taking the same approach to powering the planet as oil giant Chevron, but one thing the companies have in common are slick promotional campaigns defining them as environmental pioneers.
That public relations savvy, though, has lately become a liability for both firms.

As they grapple with accusations of exaggerating their place in the green economy, many other businesses are taking notice. A push by the Biden administration and the state of California could soon force all public companies to be far more forthright about their preparedness — or lack thereof — for the disruptions created by climate change and about the size of their carbon footprint.

Unlocking the black box of corporate secrecy is a central pillar of federal and state plans for confronting warming, which are increasingly focused on requiring a wide range of businesses, including financial firms, food suppliers and tech giants, to be painstakingly — perhaps uncomfortably — specific with investors and the public. Even secret contributions to advocacy and political groups could soon be forced into the daylight.
[/quote]
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 12:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Old buggy whip has complained about the environmentalists who make life difficult for refineries in California--and don't care about the poor in Africa. Just the latest example of corporate "ethics" from big oil.

Quote:


Evidence of oil spills and pollution in the water of the Niger Delta in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 2018.Ron Bousso/Reuters
6. Big Oil has made billions in profits in the vast Niger Delta region from decades of extraction. Now some companies are pulling out — and leaving a mess behind.

Environmentalists say companies like Chevron often leave without decommissioning their aging infrastructure, which is done to restore the environment and prevent leaching. Today, the delicate ecosystem of the Niger Delta is one of the most polluted places on the planet. Now hundreds of women, who do most of the fishing in the creeks and marshes, are trying to call the oil companies to account.

From the NYT.

Of course, uncapped wells throughout the US and in other countries are a source for methane. Avoiding accountability and increasing oil company profits is why the Trump administration tried to de-rail methane emission regulation.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 11:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The right wing is quick to tout the benefits of capitalism--but slow to actually embrace it. From Morning Consult:

Quote:

Chart Review
The World's Biggest Governments Are Still Propping Up Fossil Fuels

Bloomberg


To the tune of over $600 billion in 2019
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 10:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oil and chemical companies cheat and lie? Trump political appointees violate the laws to help them? Who would have thought?

Quote:
ew oil and gas leasing program in Alaska refuge
By BECKY BOHRER
today
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced Tuesday it is moving ahead with a new environmental review of oil and gas leasing in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge after the Interior secretary said she found “multiple legal deficiencies” in a prior review that provided a basis for the first lease sale on the refuge’s coastal plain earlier this year.

The federal land agency said there will be a public process to determine the scope of the review and identify major issues related to a leasing program. Information gathered during that process will influence development of the review, according to an agency notice.

President Joe Biden, in a January executive order, called on the Interior secretary to temporarily halt activities related to the leasing program, review the program and “as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, conduct a new, comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impacts of the oil and gas program.”


and

Quote:
Sharon LernerSharon Lerner
August 4 2021, 3:00 a.m.

Part 1
Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office
EPA Exposed
Part 2
Whistleblowers speak out about the Environmental Protection Agency’s practice of routinely approving dangerous chemicals.

PART 3 IS COMING SOON
WILLIAM IRWIN’S SUPERVISORS had a simple request. They just wanted him, a scientist who assesses the safety of chemicals at the Environmental Protection Agency, to sign off on a report that would give a chemical the agency’s OK to enter the market. It would have been easy for him to affix his signature to the document, which would have allowed him to finally get the project he had worked on for months off his desk.

The only problem? The science didn’t show that the chemical was safe.

Irwin, who has a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology and three board certifications in toxicology and has worked at the EPA for 12 years, was asked to greenlight the chemical in May 2020. But he had already found reason to be concerned about the chemical’s effects on developing fetuses. Because the manufacturer hadn’t submitted any health studies, he had found an analog — a structurally similar chemical to help predict its effects. That compound was bisphenol A, or BPA, an additive to plastics that is well known to cause reproductive problems as well as immune and neurological effects. Irwin had noted his concerns and a lack of studies that could allay them. His work on the assessment, a document that determines if and how a chemical is allowed to be used, also pointed out that workers faced risks from both breathing and touching the chemicals.

Hair on Fire
But because the chemical fell into a category known within his division as “hair-on-fire” cases, high-priority situations in which manufacturers object to scientists’ findings that their chemicals pose hazards, the conclusions Irwin reached in the assessment were scrutinized and ultimately changed. After he refused to sign off on the altered findings, a higher-ranked employee in the division took over the case and used a different — and, according to Irwin, scientifically inappropriate — approach that allowed the agency to avoid calculating the developmental risks posed by the chemical. On June 15, 2020, the agency posted the final risk assessment of the chemical, which minimized risks to the general population and didn’t calculate the risks to workers that Irwin had highlighted.

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Because of confidentiality claims by the manufacturers, Irwin and his colleagues who spoke with The Intercept felt that they were legally bound not to reveal the names of this and other chemicals mentioned in this story.

As The Intercept reported in the first installment of this series, managers within the EPA have pressured health assessors to minimize and downplay the risks posed by chemicals for use even when there is clear evidence that they present harms. That reporting was based on extensive information provided by four whistleblowers — Elyse Osterweil, Martin Phillips, Sarah Gallagher, and William Irwin — who worked as health hazard assessors in the new chemicals division of the agency. This article is based on new information from those whistleblowers along with one additional EPA risk assessor, who has recently come forward but has chosen to remain anonymous because of fear of retaliation.

Through documents, interviews, and a written disclosure that they provided exclusively to The Intercept, the EPA inspector general, and select members of Congress, these government scientists have detailed some extreme examples of interference with the scientific evaluation of chemical safety. Working with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, also known as PEER, an environmental group that helps whistleblowers, they laid out the process through which industry exerts particular pressure in “hair-on-fire” cases — sometimes through members of Congress — to expedite the approval of chemicals or minimize their restrictions.


In these cases, some EPA managers have worked hand-in-hand with industry to fend off the safety concerns raised by the agency’s own scientists about new chemicals entering the marketplace. While not all of the instances of manipulated chemical assessments were designated “hair on fire,” these high-priority cases have become so common that the division of new chemicals has arranged to have someone always available to oversee them. Since at least January 2021, managers have been on a rotating schedule for “HOF Duty,” as it’s called on internal calendars.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2021 10:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh dear, another big flaring event at the Richmond refinery. Shelter in place for the local residences. Not to worry, we can't have lithium mining.
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J64TWB



Joined: 24 Dec 2013
Posts: 1685

PostPosted: Fri Aug 13, 2021 8:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/06/north-dakota-republicans-oil-fracking-environment-502308
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Aug 20, 2021 3:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And then there is this:

Quote:
By Isaac Stanley-Becker
Yesterday at 3:48 p.m. EDT



1.8k
When Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting Republican firebrand, was running for Congress last year, she traced her income to Shooters Grill, a restaurant she and her husband own in Rifle, Colo.

She suggested her husband also did some consulting, listing “Boebert Consulting — spouse” on her candidate form, but identified his income source as “N/A.”

Only now, with Boebert not just in Congress but on the House Natural Resources Committee, has she revealed that her husband made $478,000 last year working as a consultant for an energy firm. He made $460,000 the year before, she disclosed in a filing Tuesday with the House of Representatives. Her husband, Jayson Boebert, earned that income as a consultant for Terra Energy Productions, according to the filing.

Boebert has been a staunch advocate for the energy industry during her first six months in office, introducing a bill in February seeking to bar the president from issuing moratoriums on oil and gas leasing and permitting on some federal land.


Big money to be made flacking for big oil. Why I bet she can afford two homes in the Outer Banks.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Anti-competitive practices? Systematic lying? Liars paid richly?

Quote:
oil and gas companies in a memo last week. . (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
By Jeff Stein
Today at 10:20 a.m. EDT



19
The Federal Trade Commission plans to ramp up enforcement of anticompetitive practices by oil and gas companies, as the Biden administration presses for ways to alleviate unusually high fuel prices for motorists.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina M. Khan told White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese in a memo last week that she is directing regulatory staff to ensure that the consolidation of large oil and gas firms is not leading to higher prices through “collusive practices.” Khan also vowed additional steps to “deter unlawful mergers” in the oil and gas industry and investigate whether “the power imbalance favoring large national chains” force fuel station franchisees to sell gasoline at higher prices.

The directive comes as part of the White House’s broader antitrust push aimed at deterring corporate consolidation in a handful of major economic sectors. Khan, an antitrust crusader, was tapped by Biden for the powerful FTC position in June. The administration has faced political attacks from Republicans over high prices — particularly at the pump — and sought to demonstrate to voters that it is trying to cool inflationary trends.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Sep 29, 2021 9:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

We’re subsidizing them to cook the planet. And more.

Quote:


RO KHANNA, EARL BLUMENAUER
September 28, 2021 by San Francisco Chronicle
Each year, Big Oil receives more than $20.5 billion a year in federal and state subsidies. Many of these subsidies are holdovers from another century, enacted when the industry was first getting on its feet. One of the largest, a tax deduction for drilling oil wells, dates to 1913. Then there's the tar sands loophole, which gives a tax break to companies that import or produce tar sands oil, which is one of the dirtiest fuels on Earth.

The fossil fuel industry is overwhelmingly responsible for the climate crisis.
Yes, you read that right. The U.S. gives the fossil fuel industry a special deduction to help make the planet hotter.

Unlike when they were first created, these giveaways no longer create jobs. Instead, they pad the profits of a malign industry. A recent study found that 96% of federal fossil fuel subsidies increase profits for oil and gas companies over and above the investment hurdles needed to begin new projects.

Even more dismaying, this is an industry that has spent the last four decades carefully researching the human impacts of climate change, while publicly denying its existence or that it is a problem, and continuing to spew planet-altering greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Why are we rewarding them with taxpayer money for this behavior?

On Earth Day this year, a senior official from a fossil fuel industry trade group claimed, under oath at a congressional hearing, that "if you want to take the entire tax code and treat the oil and gas industry as every other industry, we're happy to do that."


OJus one of the recent resuts.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Lies, subsidies and spills. Big spill in Southern California. Gybe’s buddies do it again.
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