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Empty study paves the way for fracking in California

Empty study paves the way for fracking in California

29 Aug 2014 5:10 PM

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Empty study paves the way for fracking in California

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Well, there you have it, ladies and gents: Fracking’s just fine! A study found no significant evidence to suggest that fracking and similar extraction techniques are harmful to the environment.

Energy companies poised to dig into California’s reserves are breathing a sigh of relief. The findings pave the way for the Bureau of Land Management to resume issuing oil and gas leases on federal land in California next year, following a temporary halt to the practice last year and the defeat of an attempted statewide moratorium on fracking this spring.

But here’s the catch: The study didn’t contain much information.

From the Los Angeles Times:

For example, the report found no evidence of water contamination from fracking in California, but the scientist directing the research, Jane Long, said researchers also had no data on the quality of water near fracking sites.

“We can only tell you what the data we could get says,” said Long, a former director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “We can’t tell you what we don’t know.”

Other unresolved issues, besides “the location, depth and quality of groundwater in oil- and gas-producing regions”: Any information about the toxicity of a third of the chemicals involved in fracking and whether or not plants or animals would be harmed by chronic exposure to those chemicals. Scientists behind the study had asked for more time, but the BLM had a seven-month timetable and wouldn’t budge.

BLM admits that this report doesn’t tell the whole story, and that — don’t worry — there will be more environmental impact studies done. They’ll just be done, you know, “as oil and gas development resumes.” Greeeeeeat.

Source:
Fracking report clears way for California oil, gas leasing to resume

, Los Angeles Times.

Feds to Resume Leasing for Fracking in California

, ABC News.

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Empty study paves the way for fracking in California

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Rand Paul Flubs the Facts on the Minimum Wage

Mother Jones

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says the minimum wage, like Trix, is for kids. Speaking in San Francisco over the weekend, the likely 2016 presidential candidate took issue with the president and first lady over an interview they gave to Parade, in which the Obamas suggested their daughters should work minimum wage jobs because “that’s what most folks go through every single day.” It was a fairly innocuous comment. But Paul argued it sent the wrong message. Per Politico:

Speaking at a downtown conference for libertarian and conservative technology types, the Kentucky Republican and prospective 2016 White House contender said he had an “opposite” view from the Obamas when it comes to seeing his own sons work delivering pizzas and at call centers.

“The minimum wage is a temporary” thing, Paul said. “It’s a chance to get started. I see my son come home with his tips. And he’s got cash in his hand and he’s proud of himself. I don’t want him to stop there. But he’s working and he’s understanding the value of work. We shouldn’t disparage that.”

Paul, a libertarian, was echoing the argument made by those who oppose raising the minimum wage: That those jobs are largely filled by young adults just entering the job market—people who are taking these low-paying positions before moving on to the better-paying jobs—so it’s no big deal if the compensation is at the bottom end of the scale. A low wage might even be beneficial, by providing an incentive to get to the next level. But this is not supported by the facts. Only a quarter of minimum wage workers are teenagers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly half of minimum wage earners are over 25, and 585,000 (18 percent) are over 45. These aren’t kids just learning the value of the buck; they’re adults who need income to support themselves and their families. As Mother Jones has reported previously, the current minimum wage doesn’t come close to doing that. Just take a spin on our living-wage calculator.

If Paul truly believes a low wage is “temporary” for most minimum-wage workers, perhaps he should take the Obamas’ advice for their daughters and spend some time working in a fast-food joint.

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Rand Paul Flubs the Facts on the Minimum Wage

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Corn on "Hardball": John Boehner Moves Forward With Clean Debt Ceiling Extension, Angers Tea Party

Mother Jones

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Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn spoke with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews about John Boehner’s decision to move forward with a clean debt ceiling extension and the “inevitable clash between two wings within the Republican party.” Watch here:

David Corn is Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He’s also on Twitter.

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Corn on "Hardball": John Boehner Moves Forward With Clean Debt Ceiling Extension, Angers Tea Party

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Step right up, Big Coal, for America’s Big Coal Giveaway

Step right up, Big Coal, for America’s Big Coal Giveaway

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It’s bad enough that the federal government leases out public lands to private companies to be torn up and mined for coal. Even worse is that the feds are ripping off taxpayers in the process, leasing the coal tracts at way-below-market prices, through a totally inept program, according to a new federal study.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has leased 107 coal-laden tracts of land to mining companies since 1990, recently generating about $1 billion a year for federal coffers. Coal mining on federal land accounts for two-fifths of the 1 billion tons of coal mined every year in the U.S. Less coal is being burned in the U.S. these days, but it still produces about 40 percent of the nation’s electricity. Meanwhile, coal exports are growing.

Auctions for the coal-tract leases attract few bidders, and a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office is the latest reminder that the feds are selling the public short by accepting lowball offers.

Of the 107 coal-tract leases, 96 were sold to the only bidder — often to a company that was already mining for coal nearby:

GAO

The government is under no obligation to accept the lowball bids, but it appears to be doing so anyway because of systemic failures within BLM to properly estimate fair market value. The GAO found that some bureau offices failed to follow procedures, seek independent advice, or consider future market conditions when estimating market value. And when the bureau sold America’s assets at fire-sale prices, it “did not consistently document the rationale for accepting bids that were initially below the fair market value,” according to the report.

“Taxpayers are likely losing out so that coal companies can reap a windfall,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who asked the GAO to conduct the study. Markey’s office estimates that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars may have been lost to coal companies through these bargain leases.

Following publication of the GAO report on Tuesday, Markey and environmentalists called on the federal government to suspend new coal leases until it can be sure it will get fair prices for them.

Of course, it would be even better for the U.S. to stop coal mining on federal land entirely — something that President Obama might consider were he to take his own rhetoric about climate change seriously.

On that note, here’s how Rolling Stone describes the administration’s muddled coal policy in a must-read article titled “How the U.S. Exports Global Warming”:

With the freefall in domestic [coal] demand, industry giants like Peabody are desperate to turn American coal into a global export — targeting booming Asian economies that are powering their growth with dirty fuel. China now consumes nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined, and its demand is projected to grow by nearly 40 percent by the end of the decade. “China’s demand,” according to William Durbin, head of global markets for the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, “will almost single-handedly propel the growth of coal.”

Since Obama took office, American coal exports are up more than 50 percent. … [T]he administration opened up more than 300 million tons of coal in the Powder River Basin to bidding by the coal companies last year. The coal is on government land; it belongs to the public. Yet the leasing practices of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are so flawed that one independent study estimates that taxpayers have been fleeced of $30 billion over the past three decades. In the past, that stealth subsidy to Big Coal at least helped create cheap power for American homes and businesses. Today, the administration has put American taxpayers in the position of subsidizing coal destined to fuel the growth of our nation’s fiercest, and carbon-filthiest, economic rival.

In an era of climatic craziness and growing clean energy capacity, the last thing Americans should be subsidizing is coal mining.


Source
BLM Could Enhance Appraisal Process, More Explicitly Consider Coal Exports, and Provide More Public Information, GAO
How the U.S. Exports Global Warming, Rolling Stone

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Step right up, Big Coal, for America’s Big Coal Giveaway

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Federal solar auction flops in Colorado

Federal solar auction flops in Colorado

Tee Poole

No one bid to build solar projects in the San Luis Valley this week.

Oh come on, solar industry. You know you want a piece of Colorado.

The rights to build solar projects on 3,705 acres of high-altitude, federally owned desert in Colorado were put up for bid on Thursday. But not a single bidder showed up.

The outcome was a disappointment for U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials. They were conducting the first of many planned solar auctions on public lands in the West.

The officials are describing the auction as a learning experience and say they will try again. The Denver Post reports:

Five companies had filed preliminary applications for the three San Luis Valley parcels, and there were another 27 inquires about the sites, according to Bureau of Land Management officials.

Based on that interest, officials scheduled an auction at the BLM Colorado office in Lakewood for the 3,700 acres of valley land.

“We are going to have to regroup and figure out what didn’t work,” said Maryanne Kurtinaitis, renewable-energy program manager for the BLM in Colorado.

Ken Johnson, a spokesperson for the Solar Energy Industries Association, suggested that the auction was premature.

“To date, BLM has yet to finalize any regional mitigation plans,” Johnson told the newspaper. “Frankly, it’s not smart business to commit to something until you’ve read the fine print.” Solar developers may also have been concerned about securing financing in a time of market uncertainty.


Source
1st auction of solar rights on public lands in Colorado draws no bids, The Denver Post

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Coal companies get sweetheart deals on federal leases, shortchange taxpayers

Coal companies get sweetheart deals on federal leases, shortchange taxpayers

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As if climate disruption, air pollution, health problems, and landscape destruction weren’t bad enough, here’s another reason to hate the coal industry: Coal companies are shortchanging U.S. taxpayers out of tens of millions of dollars they should be paying for the rights to mine federal land.

A new report [PDF] from the inspector general of the Interior Department reveals that the Bureau of Land Management routinely underestimates the value of coal, letting companies like Peabody and Arch Coal snap up federal mining rights for a song, often with little or no competition. More than 80 percent of coal leases up for auction in the past 20 years received only one bid, the report found.

The New York Times reports:

The report said that the process by which the value of the leases is computed is faulty, costing the government millions. At the current rate of coal leasing, the inspector general found, every penny-a-ton undervaluation costs the taxpayers $3 million.

Further, the Bureau of Land Management allows coal companies to expand their leaseholdings by as much as 960 acres with no competitive bidding and little oversight, the report says. The bureau has approved 45 such lease modifications since 2000 without adequate documentation, the report states, potentially costing taxpayers $60 million.

Allowing coal companies to pay bargain-basement prices for mining rights supposedly keeps coal-fired power cheap for Americans. But as we turn to cleaner and increasingly cheaper sources of energy, coal’s share of the electricity market is falling — from 50 percent to 40 percent over the past decade. That’s leading U.S. coal companies to ship their goods to Asia, where coal sells for four to seven times more than it does in the U.S., yet the BLM isn’t properly accounting for that higher export value, the report found.

Interior is conducting a separate investigation into whether coal being exported to Asia is properly valued by the BLM. Meanwhile, at the request of Congress, the Government Accountability Office is taking its own look at coal leasing programs.

Luke Popovich of the National Mining Association called the loss of value highlighted by the inspector general’s report a “rounding error” compared to the $2.4 billion in royalties and lease payments the government collected from the coal industry last year. Hardly. An independent study published in 2012 estimated that the BLM’s consistent undervaluing of coal cost the government $30 billion over the last 30 years. Add in all the hidden external costs of coal mining and production, and this is looking like a really terrible deal for taxpayers.

The BLM says it’s revamping it process and convening a task force to consider how it values coal leases. Green groups like the Sierra Club are unimpressed; they’re calling for a moratorium on all coal leasing on federal land.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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BP can bid on new Gulf drilling leases, but will it be allowed to drill?

BP can bid on new Gulf drilling leases, but will it be allowed to drill?

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The sun setting on BP’s time in the doghouse?

A glimmer of good news for BP and its shareholders: After being forced to sit out a single auction of Gulf of Mexico drilling leases as punishment for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the company will be allowed to bid on new leases this week.

That’s not only good news for BP, which already has more Gulf drilling leases than any other company. It’s a victory for Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and other lawmakers who said they were fed up with persecution of BP by the Obama administration.

There is, however, a major catch. The company’s suspension from bidding on new leases has been lifted, but it remains suspended from actually leasing any of the new drilling areas. From Fuel Fix:

[The Interior Department] said in a notice Thursday that if the British oil giant is the highest bidder and remains under suspension at the time of the lease award, which is given following a 90-day post-sale evaluation period, it will be disqualified.

“Concurrently, the previous second highest bidder will assume the position of the highest responsible qualified bidder,” the notice says.

For now, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will accept and process BP bids following standard procedures.

How forward thinking of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Tim DeChristopher banned from dangerous acts of ‘social justice’

Tim DeChristopher banned from dangerous acts of ‘social justice’

Climate activist Tim DeChristopher, who was locked up for 15 months for disrupting an auction of oil and gas leases on public land, is now out of prison and trying to put his life back together. As part of that effort, DeChristopher secured a job at a First Unitarian Church — that is, until the Federal Bureau of Prisons stepped in.

Cliff LyonTim DeChristopher.

DeChristopher wasn’t seeking a job in oil leasing or even environmental activism — fields related to his “crime.” But the feds, in their infinite wisdom, put their feet down. “You know what, we’ve been too easy on these hippies and their subversive jobs at churches.”

From the Deseret News:

DeChristopher had been offered a job with the church’s social justice ministry, which would include working with cases of race discrimination, sex discrimination or other injustices that fall contrary to Unitarian beliefs.

“The Bureau of Prisons official who interviewed Tim indicated he would not be allowed to work at the Unitarian church because it involved social justice and that was what part of what his crime was,” [DeChristopher’s attorney Patrick] Shea said.

Ken Sanders, proprietor of a downtown rare books store, instead offered DeChristopher a job as a clerk. That employment has been deemed “safe,” Shea confirmed.

Oh god, but what’s in the books? Science, economics, politics? What’s in the books???

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