Democracy Now Interviews Environmentalist Re: Oil Spill & Exemptions:

Government Exempted BP from Environmental Review


snip

......that the agency under Secretary Salazar had quote “categorically excluded” BP’s drilling as well as hundreds of other offshore drilling permits from environmental review. The agency was able to do this using a loophole in the National Environmental Policy Act created for minimally intrusive actions like building outhouses and hiking trails. ..........

KIERAN SUCKLING (Center for Biological Diversity): Well, when a federal government is going to approve a project, it has to go through an environmental review. But for projects that have very, very little impact like building an outhouse or a hiking trail, they can use something called a categorical exclusion and say there’s no impact here at all so we don’t need to spend energy or time doing a review. Well, we looked at the oil drilling permits being issued by the Minerals Management Service in the Gulf, and we were shocked to find out that they were approving hundreds of massive oil drilling permits using this categorical exclusion instead of doing a full environmental impact study. And then, we found out that BP’s drilling permit—the very one that exploded—was done under this loophole and so it was never reviewed by the federal government at all. It was just rubber-stamped.

snip

KIERAN SUCKLING: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s also important to note that when the government says it’s very unlikely this spill will occur, it’s unlikely the spill will reach shore, those aren’t even the government’s own assessments. They’re just repeating what BP, Exxon, and other oil companies put in their drilling applications. And since there’s no environmental impact study, the government never actually does an independent review. So everyone is just repeating the industry’s statements as they rubber-stamp the approvals.


AMY GOODMAN: Reporters questioned White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Wednesday about why BP’s Gulf of Mexico drilling operation was exempted from the detailed environmental impact analysis last year.

REPORTER: …Why BP was exempted from the environmental impact analysis?

SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: Yeah, well, I—the—there are a series of reviews that have to—that have to—you have to go through in order to get drilling permits. The process by which was referenced in that article is part of the review that Secretary Salazar is undergoing.

REPORTER: Robert, does the White House believe it was a mistake, for this categorical exemption to be granted to BP for Deepwater Horizon?

SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: That’s part of the investigation. I don’t know the answer to that.

REPORTER: Ok, so that’s something that you’re looking into presently?

SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: I would say as the President asked Secretary Salazar to undertake a thirty-day review of what happened, that that would certainly be part of the process under which he would evaluate.

AMY GOODMAN: Kieran Suckling, that was Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary. Respond to his response.


KIERAN SUCKLING: The White House and the Department of Interior are really sort of ducking their heads on this issue right now because it’s an enormous problem. Especially since just a few months ago the Government Accountability Office came out with the report on MMS’s operations in Alaska, where they also have offshore drilling, and specifically said the agency is not doing these environmental studies properly. They’re avoiding doing them at all. And then they went ahead knowing that the GAO had just done this study and continued to put them out. So, this is not something new. MMS knew they had a problem. In fact, when Interior Secretary Salazar first came into office, he announced ‘There’s a new Sheriff in town, I’m going to clean up this corrupt agency,’ and instead of doing that, he’s pushed them to put out more offshore oil drilling permits while not cleaning up what is clearly a broken process of doing any environmental review at all.

snip

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I want to put out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Kieran Suckling, your response?

KIERAN SUCKLING: Yeah, I mean, I think what the President has said here is actually just very, very critical, because he is repeating, and I suspect without even knowing it, the big lie of offshore oil drilling. For decades, the oil companies and the Minerals Management Services have told us, ‘Oil drilling is safe, it’s fine, that’s not where oil spills come from.’ In fact, that’s the basis of not doing any environmental review is, you simply assert it will never be a problem, therefore, you don’t even have to study it. When it’s true that they don’t leak often, but when they do leak, it’s absolutely catastrophic. It’s very similar to nuclear power plants. They don’t often fail, but when they fail it’s catastrophic. And, therefore, you have to plan for catastrophe. You have to do very intensive environmental analysis, not simply say, ’It’s rare, so we can ignore it.’

snip

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/7/government_exempted_bp_from_environmental_review

:kick:

How Big Oil Bought the Interior Department

The Salazar Quotient

.............The Appointment

Love-fests during confirmation hearings should immediately raise suspicions. Salazar fulfilled all of Obama’s expectations as the hearings proceeded, winning over even the most obstinate Republican critics of the new administration. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) neatly summarized the event as, "a full-fledged bouquet-tossing festival" (Denver Post, 1/15/2009). Even Jim DeMint, the politically paranoid Republican Senator from South Carolina, took time off from his campaign to “save freedom” from Obama’s “socialist agenda” to praise Salazar...................

snip

Outside of the hearings, things were less cordial. Environmental groups, such as the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), who had overwhelmingly supported the Obama presidential campaign, viewed Salazar as a “disappointing choice.” Salazar claimed that he wanted “to clean up the mess” left by the scandal-ridden, anti-science Bush administration DOI, but the CBD thought otherwise, viewing his record of having, “…fought against federal action on global warming, against higher fuel efficiency standards, and for increased oil drilling and oil subsidies” as a serious liability.
..............However, these were the heady days of Obama-mania. Valid criticisms of Salazar from the left were subsumed under the pomp and circumstance of the “anybody but Bush” and “Change We Can Believe In” hysteria. Surely, the thinking went, the new administration would mark a critical break from the Bush regime and a rational energy policy would be one part of the new consensus developing in the now Democratic Party controlled White House. However, as Obama’s Colorado cowboy headed to the DOI, BP had already set up shop in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Contributors

A more critical review of Salazar’s record would have revealed direct links to the oil and coal sector. .........

snip

Why would two law firms have such an interest in Salazar? A quick look at their client list reveals some answers. Formed in 1892, Sherman & Howard claims to be the oldest law firm in Denver, Colorado. They represent a wide variety of corporations, but the Westmoreland Coal Company (WCC), is of special interest to Salazar’s position at the DOI. WCC is a big coal company that operates five surface coal mines in North Dakota, Montana and Texas and coal fired power plants in North Carolina that generate 230 megawatts of energy.

It’s no surprise that, at his confirmation hearing, Salazar gushed about an innovative energy source that would move the country away from dependence on foreign oil – “clean” coal. "The challenge,” Salazar told Congress, “is how we create clean coal. I believe that we will move forward with the funding of some of those demonstration projects so we can find ways to burn coal that don't contribute to climate change" (Reuters, 2/11/2009). Arch Coal CEO Steve Leer praised Salazar’s “balanced approach” and stated that, “we often worked with him on natural resource issues” (Reuters, 2/11/2009). Arch Coal had also paid the price of admission by passing on a $2,000 campaign donation to Salazar in 2006.

Big oil was not to be outdone by big coal. BHFS offers lobbying as well as legal services to their clients. Delta Petroleum Company contracted BHFS in 2005 and has, since then, spent $960,000 to lobby elected officials on the issue of offshore oil drilling (Center for Responsive Politics). Delta also successfully sued to defend their lease claims to drilling sites in Federal waters off the Pacific coast (Amber Resources Company et al. v. United States). These sites had been leased to the company during the first term of the Reagan presidency, but the company had been blocked from oil exploration by the Federal government and the State of California. When, in 2005, it appeared Delta would finally be able to exercise its drilling rights, a lawsuit was filed by the State of California and several environmental groups claiming that Delta had not filed sufficient impact analysis reports. The suit delayed the exploration, and Delta was eventually compensated for its lease claims as they continued to press their right to offshore drilling via BHFS lobbying efforts.

...... in March 2010, Salazar and Obama announced a radical expansion of offshore drilling projects all along the Eastern seaboard and in Alaska. This maritime equivalent to “Drill, Baby Drill,” was presented by the DOI Secretary as a “middle-ground” compromise between oil companies and conservationists. For Delta Petroleum, it was lobbying money well spent, as a completely new terrain for exploration was opened because of their political pressure and campaign generosity....

snip

http://www.counterpunch.org/wharton05122010.html

Dirty Subsidies

By JOSHUA FRANK

At the G20 Economic Forum in Pittsburg last September, President Obama said his administration would combat climate change by phasing out the government's grandiose subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.
But a report released on April 13, by Synapse Energy Economics (SEE) in conjunction with the Sierra Club and others, argues that Obama hasn't followed through on his promise to cut dirty energy handouts. The study, titled "Phasing Out Federal Subsidies for Coal," states that Obama is in fact overseeing the continuation of taxpayer resources being given away for the construction and expansion of arguably the largest contributor to global warming -- coal-fired power plants.

"On an annual basis, globally, there are at least $250 billion dollars in global fossil fuel subsides, and some people will think that number is closer to $400 billion," said Steve Kretzman's of the advocacy group Oil Change International.
The U.S. is the leading shareholder for the globe's top lender, the World Bank, which recently approved a staggering $3.75 billion loan for the construction of a coal-fired power plant in South Africa. The bank also continues to finance fossil fuel extraction, coal plant retrofitting all over the world.

International financial institutions, since the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change came into effect in 1994, have doled out over $137 billion in direct and indirect support for new coal-fired power plants.

snip

Coal subsidies keep the cost of consumption for consumers artificially low because production prices are decreased. As such, the true costs, environmental as well as economic, are not included in the price of coal.
Approximately $70 billion flows annually to the global fossil fuel industry strictly on the production side, yet subsidies for producing renewables is far lower.

"You know, solar, wind, efficiency, these things get about $12 billion on an annual basis, as compared again to $70 for fossil fuels," said Kretzman of Oil Change International. "So that's a really imbalanced energy market. A few years back, there was a study of climate change, in particular, and it was noted by Nicholas Stern, who was the World Bank's chief economist, that climate change is the greatest market failure of all time, and that the subsidies -- the fossil fuel subsidies -- are the major reason for this market distortion."

Even so, President Obama has not taken any substantive measures to curb the enormous subsidies that flow to the fossil fuel industries, and in particular to the coal sector. Many federal policies, as SEE's study indicates, are often in conflict with this administration's alleged efforts to adopt a clean energy policy.
While President Obama has refused to directly challenge the World Bank's energy lending practices, his administration is also investing more taxpayer dollars into the research and development of so-called "clean-coal" technology. In February 2009, when the Stimulus Package was signed into law, a total of $3.4 billion was set aside for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects, otherwise known as clean coal.

snip

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank05132010.html

re: exemptions and the courses of action that preceded the disaster.

How Oil Companies Cheat
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER

BP will not be happy with Mike Mason.

Mason is a 27 year oil industry veteran who worked on oil rigs at BP facilities on the North Slope of Alaska.

He knows the ins and outs of blowout preventers.

And he says that cheating on tests for blowout preventers is widespread in the industry.

He says he’s witnessed BP cheating on such tests in the North Slope.

On January 21, 2005, Corporate Crime Reporter ran an article detailing Mason’s allegations of BP’s cheating on blowout preventer tests.

At the time, Mason was working for Nabors Alaska Drilling Inc. – a BP contractor on the North Slope.

Mason witnessed two blowouts of BP wells on the North Slope in 2003 – one on July 3 and one on December 6.

At the time, Mason was feeding information to oil industry critic Charles Hamel.

Hamel wrote to then Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), asking for an investigation.

“BP and Nabors Alaska Drilling are reported to be falsifying drilling records and critical AOGCC (Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission) required Blow Out Prevention tests as well as concealing from AOGCC and ADEC (Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation) at least two reportable blow-out/spills,” Hamel wrote.

The Wall Street Journal followed up with a story on February 5, 2005.

As a result of the Corporate Crime Reporter and Wall Street Journal articles, investigations were launched.

In June 2005, the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission (AOGCC) ruled that a Nabors' employee had falsified blowout preventer tests.

How?

Chart spinning.

What is chart spinning?

Well, to test a blowout preventer, you build up the pressure for five minutes.

And you record the pressure test on a chart.

The Commission found that the Nabors employee cheated.

They built up the pressure for only one minute.

Or two minutes.

And then manually moved the chart to show that it had been pressurized for the required five minutes.

Nabors also investigated the situation and agreed with the Commission’s findings.

The Commission ordered Nabors to pay $10,000 in costs.

And according to Mason, Nabors fired the responsible manager.

But Mason says that that was just one instance.

He says that cheating on blow out prevention tests is a way of life in the oil industry.

“They cheat to save money and time,” Mason said.

Mason says he personally witnessed BP managers repeatedly cheating on blowout prevention tests.

But BP was never charged.

Why not?

Mason says that he spoke with the Nabors manager who was fired.

And the Nabors manager who was fired said that he wouldn’t tell investigators who at BP was complicit.

Why did the Nabors manager take the fall for the BP managers?

“That’s just the type of person he was,” Mason says. “He wasn’t the type of person who was going to turn other people in.”

Mason was fired from his job at Nabors on July 16, 2006, four days after he wrote a letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News.

In the letter, Mason criticizes Nabors for incorporating in Barbados for tax reasons.

“My son has made a commitment to his country, and I will see him off to Iraq soon,” Mason wrote. “All I can think about is he could end up making the ultimate sacrifice for his country and at the same time Nabors is avoiding their responsibilities as Americans. Forget Benedict Arnold. Nabors Industries is the ultimate American traitor.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/mokhiber05072010.html

".......While the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf was huge and certainly dramatic, it was hardly the first instance of oil company malfeasance. In 1998 for example, a leaky pipeline belonging to BP gave rise to a spill of about 155,000 gallons of crude oil. The pipeline was connected to an oil platform lying about 100 miles southeast of New Orleans, and reportedly the spill reached the southeastern tip of Louisiana.

BP, which merged with Amoco and Arco, continued to play fast and loose with the environment when, in 2002, the company allowed a pipeline to rupture. The spill sent about 90,000 gallons of oil into the Southeast Louisiana coastal area. Then, BP encountered further problems when one of its oil platforms was damaged during Hurricane Katrina and started to leak off the coast of Louisiana. The incident, remarked Oil Daily at the time, cast doubt on BP’s safety record “in the wake of pipeline corrosion problems and oil spills in Alaska.” ....

http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff05032010.html

and the use of Categorical Exceptions to permit oil exploration or production drilling projects.

The CEs are no doubt tiered to higher order NEPA documents (EISs and EAs) but CEs eliminate or greatly reduce any further analysis, fast track the projects, and give only a 30 day period for agency and public review. An unnamed DOI official stated in a comment posted in another thread that the 30 days was not adequate for MMS agency review.

Olberman noted last night that the NEPA implementing regs used by the MMS have not been updated since 1978.

Salazar now wants to re-structure the MMS and I agree (as well as updating the NEPA implementing regs used by the agency).

Absurb is defined by the very idea that CEs are adequate for projects of this magnitude and risk.

I walk the walk in that I was a fed from 69-85, did projects under NEPA after NEPA became law in the mid 70s, and resigned from the feds when Reagan made a mockery of NEPA in the particular agency. In the period 1989-1995, I was a consultant on several large federal NEPA projects (each of several years duration of analysis and review) as project manager and/or technical specialists where the output was a programatic EIS.

I did not like the appointments of Salazar (nor Vilsack at USDA). I was in the USDA and later as a private citizen spent 4 years on the BoD of a Resource Conservation District.

I know some do not like this site so take what one wants and discard thwe rest:

http://www.counterpunch.org/wharton05122010.html

How Big Oil Bought the Interior Department

The Salazar Quotient

By BILLY WHARTON

Big oil and coal interests seemed to have reached their high point with the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. He was a well-heeled oil man, as firmly committed to the military seizure of the world’s oil spigot, as he was hostile to the kind of science that spoke about anti-business notions such as global warming. However, the time of big energy was supposed to have faded with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Obama hailed the beginning of a new age of political sanity, where the US would be brought into line with global opinion about pressing issues such as carbon emissions and the transition to clean energy sources. Then, a humble Coloradan, with a cowboy hat that seemed permanently affixed to his head, named Ken Salazar ambled to the microphone to accept Obama’s nomination to be the new Secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI). Somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, a bird shuttered as the future of its habitat was being sealed by putting big energy back in charge of the one part of government capable of reining it in.

The Early Clashes

Salazar had a long record of clashes with environmental activists while serving as the Attorney General for the State of Colorado in the 1990s. One case with particularly ominous tones, given the current BP-oil spill cleanup, involved Salazar botching the Summitville Mine Superfund cleanup. The then Attorney General claimed that the Canadian-based Summitville Consolidated Mining Corp. would be made to pay for all of the environmental damage caused by their gold mining operation. In the end, Salazar’s inept negotiations and unwillingness to legally prosecute the company meant that millions of dollars in public funds were expended during the cleanup (Counterpunch, 12/18/2008). Salazar allowed Summitville to cut and run.

However, a good track record on environmental issues was not the new administration’s primary criteria as suitable candidates for Secretary of the DOI were considered. Political expediency was the guiding principle in this Obama appointment. Salazar fit the bill. He was likely to fly through confirmation hearings by bringing together an odd coalition of energy corporations and Republican senators preparing to make war against the new administration and big-name environmental groups. What ensued was one part political theatre – the backwoods, cowboy hat wearing Senator with rural sensibilities comes to the capital – and one part pure Washington power politics – yet another example of big corporations installing their representative into a position of decision-making power.

snip