BP

Fraudulent Claims in Louisiana – I’m Shocked, Shocked!

by Fred Smith on October 5, 2010 · 1 comment

in Culture, Odds & Ends, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

Kenneth Feinberg, the individual dolling out the $20 billion BP Oil Spill “Settlement” (a No Pressure Voluntary thing), has been criticized for distributing funds too slowly.   Fighting back, Feinberg has noted that the delay has resulted from the flood of dubious claims pouring into his office (some 50,000 at last count).  Over 5,000 of these, he noted, have no documentation at all — another 25,000 claims have various deficiencies.  He is forwarding to the Department of Justice examples where he thinks fraud is an issue.

That Feinberg is surprised that such problems might arise in Louisiana — a state whose history demonstrates that they do not tolerate corruption — but rather insist upon it — is shocking, shocking!

Spinning the Defeat of Cap-and-Trade

by Marlo Lewis on August 11, 2010 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

Barring the trickery of a lame duck conference committee, cap-and-trade is dead in the 111th Congress. Some blame Obama for not taking a more hands-on role. Others blame environmental groups for waging a $100 million lobbying campaign without winning a single GOP convert to the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill. Others blame the allegedly “well-funded denial machine,” even though proponents, who include major corporations like British Petroleum, must have outspent CEI and its free-market brethren by more than 100 to 1.

Today’s Climatewire (subscription required) features interviews with Exelon Corp. VP Betsy Moler and Phil Sharp, President of Resources for the Future, who lament that Republican lawmakers, the “inventors” of “market-based” environmental policy, have turned against their own “invention.” If I catch their drift, Moler and Sharp are trying to spin GOP opposition to cap-and-trade as self-contradictory, hence as unstable, hence as reversible. As Climatewire reports, Moler is not ready to “throw in the towel” and Sharp entertains the hope that a “new kind of coalition” will emerge in the next Congress.

Now, let’s look at this notion, peddled by Moler and Sharp, that Republicans betrayed themselves and besmirched their own legacy by blocking cap-and-trade. Here’s how it’s discussed in Climatewire:

In an interview, Moler said that her deep disappointment was the rejection by Republican leaders in Congress of a market-based strategy for raising the price of carbon emissions, to speed transitions by power plants, industry and consumers to cleaner energy.

The Democrats called it “cap and trade.” Republicans labeled it “cap and tax,” and the change in one word proved lethal.

“The thing that just amazes me, confounds me, surprises me is how successfully the Republican leadership and a lot of the people who would be potentially negatively impacted have been in vilifying what have historically been market-based solutions,” Moler said.

Inventors Turn on Invention

“Cap and trade is really a Republican instrument that grew out of a lot of the Republican thought leaders as a market-sensitive, market-friendly, anti-command-and-control mechanism” to reduce sulfur- and nitrogen-based air pollution in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. “Now, some of the same people who invented it have turned on it as an energy tax,” she said. “It’s a huge missed opportunity. I don’t know where you go next.”

Moler’sregret is seconded by Philip Sharp, president of Resources for the Future, who, as a Democratic House member from Indiana, stood with Moler in the 1990s in the energy deregulation campaign. Sharp was a pivotal factor in Congress’ adoption of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments and the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which opened the way for FERC’s electricity market orders four years later.

“I’m not here to say cap and trade is the only way to do this,” Sharp said in an interview. “It worked magnificently with SO2 and a couple of other instances.” Scaling it up massively to deal with economywide carbon emissions is another question. “We don’t know we can manage it as effectively,” he said.

“But what is really unfortunate in the public debate is that the current Republican leadership has overthrown one of the great Republican successes in this country [under President George H.W. Bush], to capitalize on the flexibility of the marketplace” in achieving regulatory change, Sharp said.

“I don’t think people appreciate the extraordinary challenge that represented and the difficulty of getting it done” in the 1990s, he said. Now, with the demise of that approach, Congress has invited U.S. EPA to step in on the climate front “and regulate the living [daylights] out of everything and see how well a modern economy works doing that.”

Moler and Sharp miss several key points.

First, the Title IV acid rain cap-and-trade program enacted under President George H.W. Bush is not the “magnificent” success they suppose it is. As Kenneth Green, Steven Hayward, and Kevin Hasset of the American Enterprise Institute note, prices of tradable sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission permits have been highly volatile: “SO2 trading prices have varied from a low of $70 per ton in 1996 to $1500 per ton in late 2005. SO2 allowances have a monthly volatility of 10 percent and an annual volatility of 43 percent over the last decade.”

Second, utilities participating in the SO2 emissions trading program could meet all or part of their obligations by purchasing low-sulfur coal and/or installing scrubbers, a commercially-proven emission control technology. In contrast, there is no low-carbon coal, and no commercially-proven technology to “scrub” carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions out of power plant exhaust streams.

Third, unlike sulfur, which is an impurity or contaminant in coal and oil, carbon is intrinsic to the chemistry of fossil fuels. Consequently, whereas emission control requirements for SO2 do not logically entail an unlimited agenda aiming at total abolition of the fuel, emission control requirements for CO2 do imply abolition as the ultimate objective. Such extremism is reflected in the apocalyptic rhetoric of the global warming movement, in petitions demanding that EPA establish national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for CO2 at 350 parts per million and for other greenhouse gases at pre-industrial levels (not even a global depression lasting several decades would be sufficient to lower CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm), and in Al Gore’s campaign to “repower America“ with “zero-carbon energy” within “ten years.” More pertinently, pull-out-the-stops, sky-is-the-limit regulation lurks in the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Lieberman bills’ escalator clauses, which all but ensure that the explicit emission reduction target (83% below 2005 levels by 2050) would be superseded by more aggressive requirements.

Fourth, just because a “market-based” approach is more efficient, in principle, than command-and-control regulation does not in any way obligate Republicans to support Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Lieberman if those same Republicans oppose all regulatory climate policies.

Fifth, every Republican in the Senate voted for the Murkowski resolution to block EPA regulation of greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act. So it’s silly to say that Republicans “invited U.S. EPA to step in on the climate front ‘and regulate the living [daylights] out of everything. . .’” President Obama threatened to veto both the Murkowski resolution and the much weaker Rockefeller bill, which would merely postpone EPA regulation of stationary sources of greenhouse gases for two years. It’s the Democratic leadership, not the GOP, that has “invited” EPA to make climate policy through the regulatory back door.

Finally, Republicans betray themselves (ask President George “Read My Lips; No New Taxes” Bush) when they vote for rather than against higher taxes. Because carbon is intrinsic to the chemistry of fossil fuels, a carbon cap-and-trade scheme is a virtual broad-based energy tax. The same cannot be said of the SO2 program, which was merely a virtual pollution tax. Moler and Sharp would like GOP lawmakers to believe they can win elections by becoming the Party of Energy Taxes. Fortunately, most Republicans don’t need much coaching to realize that is complete bunk.

LibertyWeek 102: Collective Insanity

by Richard Morrison on July 19, 2010

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Richard Morrison and Marc Scribner welcome guest co-host Alex Nowrasteh to Episode 102 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We take on the healthcare tax, obscenity and the First Amendment, the prognosis for the Gulf of Mexico, and the collective insanity coming out of Venezuela.

Blowout Prevention Act – Will Rs Get Buyer’s Remorse? (Modified July 18, 2010)

by Marlo Lewis on July 16, 2010

in Ethanol, Global Warming

Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved H.R. 5626, Chairman Henry Waxman’s Blowout Prevention Act. Here’s the version of the bill as marked up and approved by the Committee. Here’s the earlier discussion draft on which the Energy and Environment Subcommittee held a hearing on June 30.

Like the discussion draft, the marked-up version of the bill is a Trojan Horse for restricting and, ultimately, shutting down deepwater oil production.

The most mischievous language is in the first substantive provision, Sec. (2).

Sec. (2)(a)(3) requires each applicant for a drilling permit to have an oil spill response plan ensuring “the applicant has the capacity to promptly control and stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail” (p. 2). If the ongoing disaster in the Gulf has taught us anything, it is that once the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail, there may be no way “to promptly control and stop a blowout.” H.R. 5626 would establish a test no oil company can pass, a standard none can meet.

Nobody had the capacity to “promptly control and stop” the Macondo well blowout after the preventer and other well control measures failed — not BP, not the oil industry working as a team, not the federal and state governments working with the oil industry.

The sponsors had to know they were demanding the impossible when they drafted the bill. Consider these excerpts from a colloquy between Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson at the June 15 Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing:

Stupak: “So when these things happen, these worst-case scenarios, we can’t handle them, correct?”
Tillerson: “We are not well equipped to handle them. There will be impacts as we are seeing. . . .That’s why the emphasis is always on preventing these things from occurring, because when they happen, we’re not very well equipped to deal with them.”
Stupak: “. . . so no matter which one of the oil companies here before us had the blowout, the resources are not enough to prevent what we’re seeing day after day in the gulf, not only the loss of 11 people, but we’re on, what, day 56 or 57 of oil washing up on shores. There is no other plan. There is no way to stop what’s happening until we finally cap this well, correct?”
Tillerson: “That is correct. . . . There is no response capability that will guarantee you will never have an impact. It does not exist and it will probably never exist.”

The discussion draft’s permitting requirements apply to all “high risk” wells, defined expansively as any offshore well plus any onshore well having the potential to cause serious environmental harm in the event of a blowout. The marked-up version targets “covered wells” rather than “high risk” wells, but this is largely a distinction without a difference. Covered wells include all wells located on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), plus any other well that, “based on criteria established by rule … could, in the event of a blowout, lead to extensive and widespread harm to public health, safety, and the environment” (pp. 41-42).

The OCS is defined (by reference to Sec. 1301 of the Submerged Lands Act) as waters lying seaward of three geographic miles from the coastline (p. 43). So H.R. 5626 would cover any deepwater well plus any shallow-water and onshore well where a blowout could lead to widespread environmental harm. Very few large wells would be exempt.

Presumably, operators could “promptly control and stop” a blowout at any onshore well and most shallow-water wells. Nonetheless, H.R. 5626 could effectively ban new wells in deep water, and deep water is the future of offshore oil and gas production. As the Department of Interior notes in its May 27 report, Increased Safety Measures for Energy Development on the Outer Continental Shelf, U.S. deepwater offshore oil production surpassed shallow water oil production in 2001, and in 2009, 80% of offshore oil production and 45% of offshore gas production “occurred in water depths in excess of 1,000 feet.” 

The bill does not clearly state how its requirements would apply to existing wells. Would an operator’s permit be revoked if he cannot demonstrate the capacity to “promptly control and stop” a blowout after the preventer and other well-control measures fail? If so, then the bill would not only block new deepwater drilling, it would also create a vehicle for shutting down existing wells. 

Sec. (2)(c) requires the operator to obtain a revised permit if he makes a “material modification” in well design, the blowout preventer, his plan to promptly stop a blowout, or his capability to begin or compete drilling of a relief well for a covered well. Apparently, then, an existing well would be subject to the new permitting requirements if it undertakes a “material modification.” In that case, however, the bill could discourage operators from making material improvements in well safety. Some might avoid or delay making safety improvements in order to avoid or delay becoming subject to an impossible standard. If I am reading these provisions correctly, H.R. 5626 could actually make offshore drilling less safe!  

Federal officials may not be able to finesse Sec. (2)(a)(3), even if they want to, because H.R. 5626 would empower “citizens” to enforce its provisions and associated regulations via litigation:

Any person having a valid legal interest which is or may be adversely affected may commence a civil action in Federal district court of appropriate jurisdiction on such person’s own behalf to compel compliance with this Act, or any regulation or order issued under this Act, or any regulation or order issued under this Act, against any person, including the United States, and any other government instrumentality or agency (to the extent permitted by the eleventh amendment to the Constitution) for any alleged violation of any provision of this Act or any regulation or order issued under this Act. [p. 28]

The discussion draft did not include the qualifier “valid legal interest.” But how difficult is it for an environmental group to demonstrate a “valid legal interest” in enforcing environmental laws and regulations? Enact the Blowout Prevention Act, and environmental groups will be able to sue any agency that fails to hold an oil company to an unattainable standard.

A few concluding thoughts. The security risks of dependence on petroleum imports are often hugely exaggerated, as the Cato Institute’s Jerry Taylor and Peter van Doren explain. Nonetheless, the sponsors of H.R. 5626 view petroleum imports with alarm. If the bill kills the future of U.S. offshore production, our dependence on Saudi Arabia and OPEC will increase. Is that what the sponsors want?

Perhaps their core premise is that oil is so evil that any restriction on oil production is good, because it will hasten the arrival of a “beyond petroleum” future. Such thinking is dangerous folly.

Although oil spills are bad, oil is good. Without oil, there would be no modern commerce and no mechanized agriculture. Life for most of humanity, including most Americans, would be poor, nasty, and short. Indeed, many of us would not even be alive.

Killing the future of offshore production would increase consumers’ pain at the pump, destroy tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, and undermine the economy of the Gulf Coast region. A “beyond petroleum” future would likely be just as distant — or even more so, because a poorer America would have fewer resources to invest in technological innovation.

Petrophobes overestimate their ability to predict and control the future. Consider these examples. 

  • In 1990, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted a zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate requiring 10% of all new cars sold in California be electric vehicles by 2003. Ten percent of the California new-car market is about 150,000 vehicles. CARB had to backpeddle several times as it became apparent that consumers were not buying these costly, limited-range vehicles. In 2008, CARB reduced the mandate to 2,500 all-electric vehicles – a rollback of about 98%.
  • Congress in 2007 enacted a Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requiring refiners to sell 250 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2011. Earlier this week, EPA announced it would reduce the 2011 target to 5 – 17 million gallons per year –  a 94-98% rollback.

It is not surprising that veteran petrophobes like Reps. Waxman and Markey (D-Mass.) drafted H.R. 5626. It is surprising that every Republican member voted for it too. Do any of them have buyer’s remorse? If not now, when?

EPA, Not Jones Act, Blocked Dutch Skimmers

by Hans Bader on July 14, 2010 · 2 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Energy, Environment, International, Legal, Mobility, Natural Resources, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Trade, Zeitgeist

It was apparently the EPA, not the Jones Act, that blocked Dutch skimmers from cleaning up the oil spill in Louisiana in late April:

Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. “Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour,” Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.

The U.S. government responded with “Thanks but no thanks,” remarked Visser, despite BP’s desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer–the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment–unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.

Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million–if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

I earlier cited a news report that attributed this rejection to the Jones Act.  That is contradicted by the article found above, which was published later.  I regret the likely error.

Enron & BP: Global Warming as the Great Distraction

by Marlo Lewis on July 6, 2010

in Global Warming

In a three-part post over at MasterResource.Org, my colleague Robert L. Bradley, Jr. shows that BP  has much in common with Enron. Both companies aggressively sought rents (politically-contrived profits) via global warming policies. Both aggressively marketed themselves as green. Both were highly regarded as progressive corporations within the environmental community. Both became disasters.

For both companies, global warming advocacy and greenwashing became a fatal distraction, Bradley argues:

Just imagine if John Browne had used the time and resources BP spent on climate alarmism and ‘beyond petroleum’ on real safety and environmental issues.

BP might still have a capitalization of $150 billion and not face a potential worst-case scenario of bankruptcy and ruin. And more importantly, the U.S. Gulf would not be in an environmental crisis.

Just imagine if Enron’s Ken Lay had used the time and resources spent on climate alarmism and forced energy transformation on accounting, risk control, and the real things that promote business sustainability.

Enron might still be with us today.

Diverted management attention has an opportunity cost. Left environmentalists lobbied and praised BP and Enron for putting form over substance. A few shouted ‘greenwashing’, but most applauded their coveted split within the fossil-fuel industry on climate and energy.

Enron is no longer around. Instead it has become the poster child of political capitalism run amuck. And the Deepwater Horizon accident–for which, in an effort to save about $5 million, BP will pay tens of billions of dollars–may sink BP as an independent company.

What an irony: fake environmentalism driving out real environmentalism.

Blowout Prevention Act Would Blowout Domestic Oil Production

by Marlo Lewis on July 1, 2010 · 2 comments

in Global Warming, Natural Resources, Precaution & Risk

Yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held a hearing on H.R. 5626, the Blowout Prevention Act of 2010. Although the sponsors claim their intent is simply to prevent a disaster like the blowout of BP’s Macondo deepwater well from ever happening again, the bill would establish, as a precondition for obtaining a permit to drill, a test no oil company can pass.

Let’s look at the bill’s first substantive provision:

SEC. 2. NO DRILLING WITHOUT DEMONSTRATED ABILITY
 TO PREVENT AND CONTAIN LEAKS.
(a) FEDERALLY PERMITTED HIGH-RISK WELLS.—
Effective one year after the date of enactment of this Act, the appropriate Federal official shall not issue a permit to drill for a high-risk well unless the applicant for such
permit demonstrates, the Chief Executive Officer of the applicant attests in writing, and the appropriate Federal  official determines that—
(1) the blowout preventer and other well control measures will prevent a blowout from occurring;
(2) the applicant has an oil spill response plan that ensures that the applicant has the capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail; and
(3) the applicant has the capability to begin drilling of a relief well within 15 days, and complete such drilling of a relief well to control a blowout within 90 days of the well control event that causes such blowout.

The unattainable standard is in Section 2(a)(2). Under this provision, no oil company may obtain a permit to drill for a high-risk well unless it demonstrates the ”capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail.” But, as is painfully obvious, the Macondo well has been gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months with no clear end in sight. Nobody has the capacity to “promptly stop” the blowout after the preventer and other well control measures failed — not BP, not the oil industry working as a team, not the federal and state governments working with the oil industry.

In short, the bill would hold applicants for drilling permits to a standard that none can meet. Moreover, as fully documented here, the sponsors of the Blowout Prevention Act know very well that once the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail, physics takes over and there is no way to stop oil from spilling into the ocean environment. Consider these excerpts from a colloquy between Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson:

Stupak: . . . so no matter which one of the oil companies here before us had the blowout, the resources are not enough to prevent what we’re seeing day after day in the gulf, not only the loss of 11 people, but we’re on, what, day 56 or 57 of oil washing up on shores. There is no other plan. There is no way to stop what’s happening until we finally cap this well, correct?

Tillerson: That is correct. . . . There is no response capability that will guarantee you will never have an impact. It does not exist and it will probably never exist.

Now, you might suppose that although Section 2(a)(2) would effectively bar all drilling of “high-risk wells,” it would not affect offshore wells that are low-risk. Alas, no. Sec. 16(12)(A) defines “high risk” to include any “offshore oil or gas exploration or production well within 200 nautical miles of the coast of the United States.”

At yesterday’s hearing several members criticized this language as indiscriminate, because it ignores the site-specific circumstances (such as oil pressure, temperature, and geology) that would affect the risk level of a particular drilling operation. Chairmen Waxman (D.-Calif.), Markey (D-Mass.), and Stupak may thus agree to define “high risk” more narrowly — for example, offshore wells in water deeper than 1000 feet.

Even with this modification, however, the bill would still wreak havoc on offshore oil production. As the Department of Interior notes in its May 27 report, Increased Safety Measures for Energy Development on the Outer Continental Shelf, U.S. deepwater offshore oil production surpassed shallow water oil production in 2001, and in 2009, 80% of offshore oil production and 45% of offshore gas production “occurred in water depths in excess of 1,000 feet.” The future of offshore oil is in deep water. Even if “high risk” applies only to deepwater wells, H.R. 5626 would sabotage the industry’s future.

Sec. 16(12)(B) also defines ”high risk” to include any ”onshore oil or gas exploration or production well in the United States . . . that, in the event of a blowout, could lead to substantial harm to public health and safety and the environment.” Is there anyone in the environmental movement who does not think an oil spill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) “could lead to substantial harm to . . . the environment”? Let’s call this provision the ANWR Prohibition Clause. Of course, it could effectively prohibit onshore drilling in many places besides ANWR.

Federal officials won’t be able to finesse these strictures, even if they want to, because the bill would empower “citizens” to enforce the Act and its associated regulations and orders via litigation:

Any person may commence a civil action in Federal district court of appropriate jurisdiction on such person’s own behalf to compel compliance with this Act, or any regulation or order issued under this Act, or any regulation or order issued under this Act, against any person, including the United States, and any other government instrumentality or agency (to the extent permitted by the eleventh amendment to the Constitution) for any alleged violation of any provision of this Act or any regulation or order issued under this Act. [Sec. 16(a)]

Enact the Blowout Prevention Act, and every eco-litigation group will be able to sue any agency that fails to hold any oil company to an unattainable standard.

All of this would be okay if oil were evil and abolishing U.S. oil production could not happen too soon. That seems to be an unstated premise of the Blowout Prevention Act.

That premise, however, is outrageously false. Although oil spills are bad, oil is good. Without oil, there would be no modern commerce and no mechanized agriculture. Life for most of humanity, including most Americans, would be poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Indeed, many of us would not even be alive.

Banning offshore drilling would increase consumers’ pain at the pump, destroy tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, cripple the economy of the Gulf coast states, and make America more dependent on OPEC oil. Presumably, those are not results most Members of Congress want to bring about. Yet Congress will set the stage for just such a policy disaster if, applying the so-called Precautionary Principle to domestic oil production, it demands proof of absolute safety as a precondition for approving the operation of offshore and onshore wells.

USA prevents effective oil spill cleanup

by Carolyn Homer on June 30, 2010 · 2 comments

in Energy, Environment, Regulation

As readers may recall, a brouhaha erupted three summers ago concerning BP’s planned expansion of its Whiting Refinery near Chicago, Illinois. BP had received permission to release marginally more pollutants, including ammonia and mercury, into the water. Facing public outcry, BP held a press conference explaining that the water they were releasing was actually cleaner than the Lake Michigan water from which it came. The public remained unconvinced, insisting that regardless of the net effect, BP should still comply with the strict original standards.

Ironically, that same rabid devotion to EPA standards has made the current BP Gulf oil spill worse. As the Financial Post explains, the Netherlands and other foreign countries with highly developed cleanup vessels offered their services to the United States in the days after the Deepwater Explosion – but the US turned them down. Even though foreign technology far eclipsed our own, and would have resulted in far less oil polluting our shores, we nonetheless rejected it because the clean water it produced did not quite meet EPA standards. Chalk this up as yet another example of regulations accomplishing the opposite of their intended purpose: instead of benefitting the American public, they magnified the harm.

Life Imitates The Simpsons – again

by Iain Murray on June 25, 2010

in Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Global Warming

The Politico reports that Sen. Harry Reid (D.-NV) has hit on a new scheme for passing the chronically unpopular climate legislation that has been languishing since the House passed the Waxman-Markey bill over a year ago.  He’s going to attach it to a bill to impose restrictions on drilling:

The Democratic leader’s floor plan addresses a growing desire by the Obama administration to take swift action on any legislation that could prevent a future disaster like the Gulf Coast oil spill. Republicans who once would have resisted legislation that would impose new safety and environmental restrictions on the oil industry are now lining up in favor of such measures, in part to avoid being seen in the same light as Rep. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who drew intense pressure from his own caucus after publicly apologizing to BP.

But Reid may also be playing with fire by pushing climate change provisions that nearly all Republicans have painted as an expensive new taxes and moderate Democrats see as an unpopular vote they’d rather avoid.

How could this go wrong?  I cannot help but be reminded of the Simpsons episode ‘Bart’s Comet”:

Kent: With our utter annihilation imminent, our federal government has snapped into action.  We go live now via  satellite to the floor of the United States congress.

Speaker: Then it is unanimous, we are going to approve the bill to evacuate the town of Springfield in the great state of –

Congressman: Wait a minute, I want to tack on a rider to that bill: $30 million of taxpayer money to support the perverted arts.

Speaker: All in favor of the amended Springfield-slash-pervert bill?

[everyone boos]

Speaker: Bill defeated.  [bangs gavel]

Kent: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: democracy simply doesn’t work.

Senator Reid could go down in history as the man who couldn’t get drilling restrictions passed following a massive oil spill.  If he does, it will be his own fault.  The irony is that the Gulf Coast economies will have to thank him for it.

New Federal Interference With Oil-Spill Clean-Up: Feds Stop Louisiana From Dredging Needed to Create Protective Sand Berms

by Hans Bader on June 23, 2010 · 2 comments

in Agriculture, Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Ethanol, Global Warming, International, Labor, Legal, Mobility, Natural Resources, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade, Zeitgeist

A TV station in New Orleans reports that “the federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.”   Louisiana planned to create the sand berms to prevent the massive BP oil spill from polluting its coastline.

Earlier, a federal judge blocked Obama’s drilling ban on offshore drilling, citing deception by Obama administration officials.  The ban applied mostly to oil companies with radically better safety records than BP.  (BP’s executives gave lots of money to Obama and lobbied for his legislation.)

Obama delayed the clean-up of the Gulf of Mexico by blocking foreign crews from operating sophisticated clean-up vessels.  The Jones Act bans foreign vessels and crews from working in U.S. waters, but it gives the President the authority to completely waive that ban if he wishes.  Obama refused to lift the ban, even though American shippers who generally support the ban said they wouldn’t object to lifting it to fight the spill.  As a result of the ban, the U.S. rejected a lot of foreign aid from counties with expertise in fighting oil spills, and accepted only a small amount of foreign equipment to fight the spill.

The federal government has routinely been a thorn in the side of Louisiana as it seeks to fight the huge oil spill.  It recently used red tape to force Louisiana to stop using 16 barges that were cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico by sucking thousands of gallons of oil out of Louisiana’s oil-soaked waters.  Earlier, four oil skimmers needed to clean the Gulf were blocked by EPA officials.

The oil spill has been called “Obama’s Katrina,” but Gulf Coast resident Paul Rubin says this is unfair to George Bush, who was not nearly as incompetent as Obama has been in dealing with the spill at BP’s Deepwater Horizon.  In the Wall Street Journal, Rubin notes that the oil spill occurred in federal waters and thus was a federal responsibility, while Hurricane Katrina occurred mostly on state land and thus was largely a state, not federal, responsibility, enabling incompetent local officials in cities like New Orleans to “interfere” with federal relief efforts:

In many respects, the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Katrina are mirror images of each other. The harm from Katrina was on state land—mainly Louisiana, but also Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. As a result, President George W. Bush and the federal government were limited in what they could do. For example, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wanted to take command of disaster relief on the day before landfall, but Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco refused. Federal response was hindered because the law gave first authority to state and local authorities.  State and local efforts—particularly in New Orleans, and Louisiana more broadly—interfered with what actions the federal government could actually take. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was late in ordering an evacuation and did not allow the use of school buses for evacuation, which could have saved hundreds of lives. President Bush had no power to change that decision.  The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is on federal offshore territory. The federal government has primary responsibility for handling the situation, while state and local governments remain limited in what they can do. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly changed its mind regarding the chemical dispersants that Louisiana is allowed to use. . . .As opposed to Katrina, state and local attempts to address the oil spill have been hindered by an ineffectual and chaotic federal response.

Obama is now using the BP oil spill to push a corporate-welfare-filled global-warming bill crafted partly by BP’s lobbyists.  Obama’s global warming legislation expands ethanol subsidies, which cause famine, starvation, and food riots in poor countries by shrinking the food supply, and also result in deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution. Subsidies for biofuels like ethanol are a big source of corporate welfare: “BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels . . . that cannot break even without government support.”

The $800 billion stimulus package is using taxpayer subsidies to replace U.S. jobs with foreign green jobs. It is also destroying jobs in America’s export sector.

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