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California Oilfield Operators Refuse To Report Water Usage, In Violation Of The Law
How much water does California’s oil and gas industry actually use? We still don’t know, despite a 2014 law signed by Governor Jerry Brown that went into effect this year requiring companies to report on all water produced, used and disposed of by oilfield operations.
Oil and gas regulators with California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) missed the first reporting deadline, April 30, claiming they had simply received too much data to process in time. But now we know there was probably another reason: hundreds of companies had flat out refused to obey the law.
In fact, more than 100 companies still refuse to comply with the water reporting requirements altogether.
DOGGR extended the filing date for the first quarter of 2015 to June 1, and has now, at long last, released the first report on oilfield water usage and disposal — though more than 100 companies still haven’t submitted any data to the state despite the extension.
According to the report, just 166 oilfield operators filed their quarterly water report by June 1, prompting DOGGR to issue 289 Notices of Violation to companies that failed to meet the extended deadline. Some 146 companies complied with the violation notices and did submit their water usage data, but 104 operators remain out of compliance and at risk of civil penalties.
No fines or other penalties have been levied against noncompliant companies so far.
DOGGR says the data it did receive, and on which the report is based, represents “approximately 59 percent of the produced water, and 41 percent of the injected water during the first quarter.” The agency did not verify the accuracy of the data self-reported by oilfield operators.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Are US Regulators Trying to Cover Up Influence Of Lobbyists On New Oil-By-Rail Regulations?
It’s no secret that the oil and rail industries lobbied the Obama Administration heavily during the creation of new oil-by-rail regulations released this past May, with lobbyists reportedly not even taking a break the day after a major oil train accident.
But just how much influence did lobbyists actually have in the drafting of the regulations?
Environmentalists who criticize the new rules as far too weak to stop business-as-usual — which has already resulted in five oil train explosions so far this year — are endeavoring to find out by submitting Freedom of Information Act requests for correspondence between lobbyists and five federal agencies within the US Department of Transportation that worked on the oil train safety rules.
So far, they say, they’ve been stonewalled by the Obama Administration.
The FOIA requests were originally filed in January by La Crosse, WI’s Citizens Acting for Rail Safety, Communities for a Better Environment, Albany, NY’s Ezra Prentice Homes Tenants Association and ForestEthics. The rules came out on May 1.
The groups were seeking all records of communications exchanged between lobbyists and staff at the Federal Railroad Administration, the Surface Transportation Board, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Office of the Secretary of Transportation since January 1, 2012.
Some 97 individual lobbyists were named in the requests, among them representatives from trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the Association of American Railroads as well as oil and rail companies including Chevron, Tesoro, and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF).
Six former members of the US Congress, including Trent Lott, Vin Weber, John Breaux, Steve LaTourette, Max Sandlin and Bill Lipinski, are also among the lobbyists named in the requests.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“There Could Be Trouble” As US Fracking Revolution Prepares to Go Global
“There Could Be Trouble” As US Fracking Revolution Prepares to Go Global
A new report showing the U.S. overtaking Russia as the leading producer of oil and gas in the world should put to rest any doubt that the fracking revolution that has occurred in the U.S. is for real, or as BP’s chief economist put it, “profound.”
And now with the recent Environmental Protection Agency report on the impacts of fracking on drinking water being touted by the American Petroleum Institute as proof that fracking is safe, the industry’s insatiable greed got another boost. More recently, the Harvard Business School has also joined in the discussion calling for the end of the ban on exporting U.S. crude oil and warning about the implications of missing the “opportunity” offered by fracking.
So with all of this momentum, what does ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson think should be next? Less regulation. As previously mentioned on DeSmog, at this year’s CERAweek conference Tillerson complained that the industry was overly regulated and held back by “the noise.”
“Regulators must look at facts and they must look at sound science and not just respond to the noise,” Tillerson said.
As Tillerson and the industry get set to roll out the fracking revolution to every possible shale location in North America and the rest of the world, now is a good time to review what the inventor of modern fracking had to say on the subject of regulating his invention.
Fracking Inventor Warned of Trouble
George Mitchell became a billionaire due to fracking but even that amount of money didn’t keep him from speaking the truth about his invention. In an interview with MarketPlace a year before his death in 2013, Mitchell was clear that without strong regulations, fracking was a serious danger to the environment.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Regulatory State – Central Planning and Bureaucracy on a Rampage
The Regulatory State – Central Planning and Bureaucracy on a Rampage
The New 10,000 Commandments Report – It’s Worse than Ever
Before we begin, we should mention that the US economy has long been one of the least regulated among the major regulatory States of the so-called “free” world, and to a large extent this actually still remains true. This introductory remark should give readers an idea of how terrible the situation is in many of the socialist Utopias elsewhere.
Even in the US though, today’s economic system is light years away from free market capitalism or anything even remotely resembling a “laissez faire” system. We are almost literally drowning in regulations. The extent of this regulatory Moloch and that the very real costs it imposes is seriously retarding economic progress. It is precisely as Bill Bonner recently said: the government’s main job is to look toward the future in order to prevent it from happening.
A great many of today’s regulations have only one goal: to protect established interest groups. Regulations that are ostensibly detrimental to certain unpopular corporatist interests are no different. Among these is e.g. the truly monstrous and nigh impenetrable thicket of financial rules invented after the 2008 crash in a valiant effort to close the barn door long after the horse had escaped. They are unlikely to bother the established large banking interests in the least. The banking cartel is probably elated that it has become virtually impossible for start-ups to ever seriously compete with it. The same is true of many other business regulations; their main effect is to protect the biggest established companies from competition.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
No Wrongdoing Here, Just 6,300 Corporate Fines and Settlements
No Wrongdoing Here, Just 6,300 Corporate Fines and Settlements
Despite the PR about how corporate profits benefit widows and orphans, this vast wealth is concentrated in the top 1% and the top 5%.
I am honored to share a remarkable data base of Corporate Fines and Settlementsfrom the early 1990s to the present compiled by Jon Morse. Here is Jon’s description of his project to assemble a comprehensive list of all corporate fines and settlements that can be verified by media reports:
What struck me was the sheer number of corporate violations of laws and regulations–thousands upon thousands, the vast majority of which occurred since corporate profits began their incredible ascent in the early 2000s–and the list of those paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and settlements, which reads like a who’s who of Corporate America and Top 100 Global Corporations.“This spreadsheet is all the corporate fines/settlements I’ve been able to find sourced articles about, mostly in the period from the 1990’s up to today (with a few 80’s and 70’s). This is by far the most comprehensive list of such things online. At least that I could find, because the lack of any decent list is what made me start compiling this list in the first place.”
I encourage you to open one of the three alphabetical tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet on Google Docs and scroll down to find your favorite super-profitable corporation.
Many have a long list of fines and settlements, and many of the fines are in excess of $100 million. Many are for blatant cartel price-fixing, not disclosing the dangers of the company’s heavily promoted medications, destroying documents to thwart an investigation of wrong-doing, etc.
In other words, these were not wrist-slaps for minor oversights of complex regulations— these are blatant violations of core laws of the land.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A Mountain of Debt and no Growth
A Mountain of Debt and no Growth
Too Many Geezers
So far, we’ve proposed two reasons why the 21st century has been such a dud …
First … the developed nations are cursed with too many geezers. We have nothing against old people (especially as we hope to be one ourselves all too soon). But old people do not build a new economy; young people do. And today, there are not enough young people to power the kind of economic growth we’ve gotten used to.
Second… rules, regulations, subsidies, laws and orders now protect established financial interests against upstart competitors. Businesses get older along with the population, as government creeps over more and more of the economy.
The feds use monopoly force to prevent competition and reward today’s voters and capital owners. The baby born in 2015 finds himself subject to debts, obligations and restrictions that were meant to benefit his grandparents. Today, we give you another reason for the flop that is the 21st century. As you will see, they are all related…
Pages in the Federal Register. There was a brief reprieve from over-regulation in the Reagan era, but shortly thereafter the regulatory State went into action again at full blast. Capitalism is slowly but surely asphyxiated, and with it any chance to escape the debt trap is dying with it (chart source: the George Washington University regulatory studies center) – click to enlarge.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
No Surprises: Obama’s Fracking Rules Upset Everyone
No Surprises: Obama’s Fracking Rules Upset Everyone
The Obama administration’s new rules on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, are being denounced by the energy industry as impeding a US oil renaissance and by environmental groups who call them too weak to be effective.
The Interior Department and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) drew up the rules for the technology used in extracting oil and gas from underground shale formations. Interior argues that they’re years overdue, and that they can be a guide for many states working to develop their own rules for the practice.
Fracking’s advantage is that it provides drillers with a new way to extract oil and gas that was previously inaccessible because it was locked deep underground in shale. It’s more expensive than conventional drilling, requiring injections of water mixed with chemicals to break up the rock.
Related: Three Reasons Why US Shale Isn’t Going Anywhere
Fracking could help the United States become the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, but it has also raised concerns that the chemicals – each drilling company has its own secret mix – could poison nearby groundwater supplies for both people and wildlife. As a result, states are struggling to develop their own rules to cover private and state-owned land, where most fracking is practiced.
The new federal rules will formally cover only federally owned land, where only about 10 percent of fracking occurs in the United States, according to the Interior Department. But it says it can help states address their own approach to fracking rules.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
All Over America, Government Officials Are Cracking Down On Preppers
All Over America, Government Officials Are Cracking Down On Preppers
Why would the government want to punish people that are just trying to work hard, become more self-sufficient and take care of their families? There are approximately 3 million preppers in the United States today, and often they appear to be singled out for punishment by bureaucratic control freaks that are horrified at the thought that there are families out there that actually want to try to become less dependent on the system. So if you use alternative methods to heat your home, or if you are not connected to the utility grid, or if you collect rainwater on your property, or if you believe that parents should have the ultimate say when it comes to health decisions for their children, you could become a target for overzealous government enforcers. Once upon a time, America was the land of the free and the home of the brave, but now we are being transformed into a socialist police state where control freak bureaucrats use millions of laws, rules and regulations to crack down on anyone that dares to think for themselves.
For example, people have been burning wood to heat their homes since this country began. And this is still very common in rural areas. But the Obama administration does not like this at all. The Obama bureaucrats at the EPA fear that our little wood stoves may be contributing to “global warming”, so they have outlawed the production and sale of 80 percent of the wood stoves that are currently in use. The following comes from a recent Forbes article…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
