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How Tories Dumped Your Interests at the Pump
How Tories Dumped Your Interests at the Pump
Oil is cheaper by half. So why don’t feds try and deliver savings to drivers?
Oil prices have plunged by 50 per cent since last year, but you would never know that looking at what people are paying at the pump. What gives?
Don’t ask the Conservatives. They halted the department in charge of telling us how much their Big Oil backers are profiting from those market-defying high prices.
When will the feds return to the business of revealing just how much we are getting screwed? The day this election is over, they say.
It’s a prime example of preemptory political damage control, and here are the details:
There is a quaint term in the oil refining business called the “crack spread.” This is the profit margin between the cost of buying crude oil and the retail price of produced gasoline. The “crack spread” keeps widening as Canadian consumers as they shell out almost as much per litre even though crude oil prices are roughly half what they were a year ago.
According to research by economist Robyn Allan, this yardstick of gas pump profit margins ballooned by 87 per cent above the 14-year industry average of 17.7 cents. Canadians buy over 43 billion litres of gas per year, so this year’s yawning crack spread adds up to big money for refiners. Canadians are on track to shell out over $5 billion in extra money to the oil industry in 2015 due to this apparent price-gouging at the pumps.
And what is the Harper government doing to protect Canadian consumers from such predatory profiteering? Making sure you don’t hear about it. Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) regularly publishes their Fuel Focusreport every two weeks detailing gas prices and refinery margins. That was until last summer.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Big Oil in Retreat
Big Oil in Retreat
On July 14, 2011, at TomDispatch, Bill McKibben wrote that he and a few other “veteran environmentalists” had issued a call for activists to descend on the White House and “risk arrest to demand something simple and concrete from President Obama: that he refuse to grant a license for Keystone XL, a new pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico that would vastly increase the flow of tar sands oil through the U.S., ensuring that the exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands will only increase.” It must have seemed like a long shot at the time, but McKibben urged the prospective demonstrators on, pointing out that “Alberta’s tar sands are the continent’s biggest carbon bomb,” especially “dirty” to produce and burn in terms of the release of carbon dioxide and so the heating of the planet.
Just over four years later, the president, whose administration recently green-lighted Shell to do test-drilling in the dangerous waters of the American Arctic, opened the South Atlantic to new energy exploration and drilling earlier this year, and oversaw the expansion of the fracking fields of the American West, has yet to make, or at least announce, a final decision on that pipeline. Can anyone doubt that, if there had been no demonstrations against it, if it hadn’t become a major issue for his “environmental base,” the Keystone XL would have been approved without a second thought years ago? Now, it may be too late for a variety of reasons.
The company that plans to build the pipeline, TransCanada Corporation, already fears the worst — a presidential rejection that indeed may soon be in the cards. After all, we’ve finally hit the “legacy” part of the Obama era. In the case of war, the president oversaw the escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan soon after taking office, sent in the bombers and drones, and a year ago plunged the country back into its third war in Iraq and first in Syria.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
California Water Wars Escalate: State Changes Law, Orders Farmers To Stop Pumping
California Water Wars Escalate: State Changes Law, Orders Farmers To Stop Pumping
“In the water world, the pre-1914 rights were considered to be gold,” exclaimed one water attorney, but as AP reports, it appears that ‘gold’ is being tested as California water regulators flexed their muscles by ordering a group of farmers to stop pumping from a branch of the San Joaquin River amid an escalating battle over how much power the state has to protect waterways that are drying up in the drought. As usual, governments do what they want with one almond farmer raging “I’ve made investments as a farmer based on the rule of law…Now, somebody’s changing the law that we depend on.” This is not abiout toi get any better as NBCNews reports, this drought is of historic proportions – the worst in over 100 years.
The current drought has averaged a reading of -3.67 over the last three years, nearly twice as bad as the second-driest stretch since 1900, which occurred in 1959.
Other studies using PDSI data drawn from tree-ring observations reaching even further back in time reveal similar findings. One such study from University of Minnesota and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute researchers showed the current drought is California’s worst in at least 1,200 years.
And as AP reports, regulatords are changing the laws to address the problems…
The State Water Resources Control Board issued the cease and desist order Thursday against an irrigation district in California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley that it said had failed to obey a previous warning to stop pumping. Hefty fines could follow.The action against the West Side Irrigation District in Tracy could be the first of many as farmers, cities and corporations dig in to protect water rights that were secured long before people began flooding the West and have remained all but immune from mandatory curtailments.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Big Oil Was Saved From The Oil Price Crash
How Big Oil Was Saved From The Oil Price Crash
Low oil prices have been less of a drag on the big integrated oil companies than it has for smaller producers. Diversified portfolios have allowed the largest oil companies to weather the storm better than their smaller competitors.
To be sure, Big Oil has not gotten off lightly. In fact, some of the largest megaprojects that are only undertaken by the oil majors appear to be huge financial burdens. Having spent billions of dollars on extraordinarily large and complex projects – ultra-deep water, LNG, large oil sands projects – the costs are a colossal weight around the necks of the oil majors. The oil industry has scrapped an estimated $200 billion in future offshore and LNG projects as the industry backs away from the massive costs.
Smaller onshore shale projects that have shorter lead times look attractive by comparison, despite shorter lifespans and relatively high breakeven costs. Wells can be drilled for a few million dollars over the course of a few months, rather than the billions needed for the megaprojects that can take a decade to develop.
Related: The Front-Runners In Fusion Energy
At a time in which OPEC is fighting for market share, which could lead to oil prices remaining low for an extended period of time, smaller has its advantages. “The major oil companies are being squeezed,” CEO of Italian oil giant Eni, Claudio Descalzi, said in Vienna in early June. “We need to slow down and look for easier projects away from the complexity of the last 10 years.”
Nevertheless, it pays to be big and diversified. Complex megaprojects may be weighing on the balance sheets of the oil majors, but their extensive downstream assets are paying off.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The G7 and its 85–year carbon pledge
The G7 gives itself a lifetime to fulfil its climate change promise
If you thought it was hard to keep up your New Year’s resolution, try keeping an 85-year pledge.
That’s exactly what Canada and the other G7 countries are committing themselves to as they try to get control of global greenhouse gases. While Canada failed on its Kyoto agreement and won’t meet its 2020 Copenhagen target, that’s not stopping Prime Minister Stephen Harper from making even more long-lived environmental pledges.
First, a deep cut in carbon emissions by 2050 and second, an eventual end to fossil fuel use by 2100.
At first glance, it’s praiseworthy. The world’s leading economies commit to decarbon the world economy. Some environmental groups were quick to call the G7 announcement “groundbreaking,” although not everyone is as supportive and approving.
- Difficult to invest in green energy in Canada without Big Oil
- Rising carbon emissions from oilsands a ‘unique’ challenge
“It’s not groundbreaking. It is politically cheap to pledge a non-binding commitment that falls way behind someone’s time in office,” said David Keith, an engineering professor at Harvard University and former University of Calgary professor who was one of Time magazine’s “heroes of the environment” in 2009.
“What we really need is specifics in the next few years or decades.”
Vague on execution
The pledges do add weight to the movement to get off of fossil fuels, but how the G7 countries achieve their goals is unclear.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise considering how vague Canada has been in the past about achieving its emissions targets. Just last month, the federal government promised a 30 per cent cut to emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. It gave little indication how it exactly planned to do it. Eliminating all cars for a year would only put a dent in carbon emissions.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Difficult to invest in green energy in Canada without Big Oil
Divestiture movement continues as organizations clean carbon holdings from portfolios
If you thought the divestiture movement was losing steam, Norway’s recent announcement shows there still is momentum around the world to stop investing in fossil fuels.
The country has confirmed that its hefty $900-billion government pension fund, considered the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, will purge some of its fossil fuel stocks.
Many other organizations have made similar moves in past years.
Concordia University in Montreal launched a $5-million fund dedicated to divestment, social and ethical investing. Stanford University in California pledged not to make direct investments in companies whose principal business is coal for energy. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund pledged to reduce investments in coal and the oilsands projects to less than one per cent of its portfolio.
But in Canada, divestiture may not be the best method of promoting renewable energy development.
Traditional oil, gas and coal companies are creating the majority of renewable energy in Alberta. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)
The reason is that, outside of government, it is the traditional oil and gas companies that are constructing much of the green energy projects in the country, such as wind, hydro and solar.
For instance, the largest wind and hydro projects in Alberta are owned in whole or in part by traditional oil, gas and coal companies.
- ANALYSIS: Big Oil to Rachel Notley: Bring on a carbon tax
- Alberta energy sector waits for policies from NDP
Capital Power is an example of a private sector company with a mixed bag of energy projects. It’s a leader in renewable energy development and uses fossil fuels too. The Edmonton-based company has more than 20 wind and solar power plants in North America. It also operates a coal mine as well as several coal- and natural gas-fired plants.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Bypassing Big Oil’s Alliance with Government
Bypassing Big Oil’s Alliance with Government
In his almost 30-year career as an advocate for environmental justice, Louisiana attorney Stuart Smith has fought many of the biggest energy companies in the world and has come away victorious in his fair share of cases.
Smith tells the stories behind these cases in Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America, a new book that is part memoir and part legal thriller. With energy companies acquiring even greater leeway to do as they please, Smith believed now was the right time to show the public how he successfully used the courts to gain some justice against corporate wrongdoers.
The book’s legal dramas take place primarily in the oil patch of the Gulf Coast states, where companies such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron spent millions of dollars defending themselves in cases brought by Smith and his fellow plaintiffs’ attorneys. One energy industry behemoth feared a loss in a single case brought by Smith in a small town in Mississippi would establish legal precedent and wind up costing the industry considerably more money down the road.
“Part of me understood exactly why they fought. We were looking to establish a brand-new area of environmental law, one that could gain a small measure of justice for workers and other citizens who’d been poisoned all across the oil patch of the Deep South and could cost Big Oil hundreds of millions of dollars,” Smith writes.
As a storyteller, Smith fills the book with intrigue and suspense, often leaving the reader to wonder how he and his outgunned colleagues will be able to claim a legal victory on behalf of their underdog clients.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“Motherfrackers” and Big Oil Hypesters
“Motherfrackers” and Big Oil Hypesters
Forbe’s contributor Christopher Helman has always been an unapologetic supporter of shales. For instance, only last September he wrote a piece entitled “America’s Energy Outlook is Fracking Great, For Now”. Never mind that oil prices had begun their downward spiral three months prior to this statement. Never mind that every shale gas play in the US with the exception of the Marcellus had already tipped into decline. And never mind that reserve estimates had been repeatedly downgraded culminating with the colossal downgrade of the Monterey shale in California by 96% by EIA. You bet…fracking great!
Christopher Helman, however, is paid to hype Big Oil. And to his credit, he does occasionally mention a few problems as he tries to gloss over their implications. For instance, in this same article dated September 2014 he states:
“At the same time, they have to get their volumes up high enough that they can generate enough free cash flow to pay back their debt. If you can’t drill economically it all unravels.”
Yes, it does.
There’s just one problem. Shale operators have never been able to get their volumes up high enough to generate free cash flow though Mr. Helman leaves one with the impression that they have. But they haven’t…at least not since 2009! That’s right, 2009.
Examining a universe of 21 shale operators including all the usual suspects, free cash flow has been overwhelmingly negative since at least 2009. Only three companies of the 21 have ever had positive free cash flow during that time frame. And even then it was nominal and not consistent.
Mr. Helman, however, glossed over this but went on to state with his usual hyperbole that:
“What is news is that the boom is showing no signs of slowing down.”
Well, not exactly!
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
New Report Warns of West Coast Tar Sands Oil Invasion
New Report Warns of West Coast Tar Sands Oil Invasion
The West Coast of the United States and Canada is facing an imminent tar sands oil invasion, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
“The West Coast is about to fall victim to a tar sands invasion, unless our leaders choose to protect the health and safety of our communities and say no to Big Oil,” said Anthony Swift, deputy director of NRDC‘s Canada Project. “At a time when the nation is moving toward a clean energy future, there is no reason to welcome the dirtiest oil on the planet into our communities.”
While the West Coast is not currently the destination for much tar sands oil, the area’s heavy oil refining capacity and deepwater port access make it a likely destination for large amounts of Canadian tar sands oil in the future.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) forecasts that tar sands supply will increase from 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2013 to 6.2 million bpd by 2030. To achieve those volumes, a significant portion of that oil would have to go to the West Coast by a combination of pipelines, rail and tanker.
The new report notes that if current plans for infrastructure to handle tar sands oil transportation proceed, “tar sands refining on the West Coast could increase eightfold, from about 100,000 bpd in 2013 to nearly 800,000 bpd in coming decades.” To put this in perspective, this is approximately the amount the proposed TransCanada KXL pipeline would transport to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Tomgram: Michael Klare, Is Big Oil Finally Entering a Climate Change World?
Tomgram: Michael Klare, Is Big Oil Finally Entering a Climate Change World?
Welcome to the asylum! I’m talking, of course, about this country, or rather the world Big Oil spent big bucks creating.You know, the one in which the obvious — climate change — is doubted and denied, and in which the new Republican Congress is actively opposed to doing anything about it. Just the other day, for instance, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote a column in his home state paper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, adopting the old Nancy Reagan slogan “just say no” to climate change. The senator from Coalville, smarting over the Obama administration’s attempts to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, isurging state governors to simply ignore the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed “landmark limits” on those plants — to hell with the law and to hell, above all, with climate change. But it’s probably no news to you that the inmates are now running the asylum.
Just weeks ago, an example of Big Energy’s largess when it comes to sowing doubt about climate change surfaced. A rare scientific researcher, Wei-Hock Soon, who has published work denying the reality of climate change — the warming of the planet, he claims, is a result of “variations in the sun’s energy” — turned out to have received $1.2 million from various fossil fuel outfits, according to recently released documents; nor did he bother to disclose such support to any of the publications using his work. “The documents,” reported the New York Times, “show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as ‘deliverables’ that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Was Shell the First Big Oil Company to Publicly Accept the Science of Climate Change and its Consequences?
Was Shell the First Big Oil Company to Publicly Accept the Science of Climate Change and its Consequences?
The DeSmog UK epic history series investigates the divide that opened up between chief executives and shareholders who were anxious that company operations and profits could be undermined by climate change.
The heavy-handed attack from lobbyists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that arose during the 1990s presented a new risk: that the oilmen would become isolated from other leaders of industry.
As early as 1995, a deep divide began to open up between the chief executive officers and shareholders of major corporations in the United States and Britain who were anxious that their own operations and profits could be undermined by climate change.
The Delphi Group in London, a major investments advisor, published a landmark report that year, warning banks, insurers and institutional investors to immediately withdraw investments from oil and coal.
Mark Mansley, the report’s author, pointed out that “climate change presents major long-term risks to the carbon fuel industry [which] has not been adequately discounted by the financial markets.”
Major Threat
At the same time, Sven Hansen, vice-president of the Union Bank of Switzerland, spoke at a conference for finance capital: “Some of our clients are under major threat from climate change.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
‘Failure of Conscience’: Groups Urge Congress to Fund Social Well-Being, Not Fossil Fuel Industry
‘Failure of Conscience’: Groups Urge Congress to Fund Social Well-Being, Not Fossil Fuel Industry
Diverse coalition launches calculator to measure cost of fossil fuel subsidies
A coalition of environmental and social justice groups has come together to declare collective disgust with the spending of billions of taxpayer dollars on unnecessary subsidies for the oil and gas industries when that same money could be used to improve the lives of millions if spent on social services, renewable energy investments, healthcare, and education.
The coalition includes Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, People for the American Way, and Oxfam America, among others. As part of its effort, the coalition has launched a Fossil Fuel Subsidies Tradeoff Calculator, a tool which breaks down both the government’s giveaways to the oil industry into smaller brackets, such as tax credits for manufacturers and fossil energy research programs, and the social programs that could benefit from those subsidies instead, like school lunches and veteran healthcare.
“Leaving the social safety net in tatters and keeping Big Oil on the dole is not just a failure to prioritize. It is a failure of conscience,” said Lukas Ross, climate and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, one of the organizations in the coalition. “In the face of record inequality, crumbling infrastructure, and looming climate disruption, it is time for Congress to think hard about the government spending we need and the corporate welfare we don’t.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
