Oil

Nearly half of US corn devoted to fuel production

August 19, 2012 By Ian Crossland Leave a Comment

Originally posted by share.banoosh.com on August 19, 2012

Author: Mr.H

The U.S. policy, according to which gasoline must contain ethanol, is leading the U.S. to devote 40 percent of its corn harvest to fuel production.

The policy, ostensibly aimed at reducing the country’s dependence on foreign oil and at improving the environment, has been a bonanza for farmers.

Land planted with corn soared by a fourth after Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which required that gasoline producers blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol into the nation’s gasoline supply by 2015.

With this year’s crop expected to be the smallest in six years, corn prices have jumped 60 percent since June. The ethanol requirements are aggravating the rise in food costs and spreading it to the price of gasoline, which is up almost 40 cents a gallon since the start of July.

Researchers at Texas A&M University have estimated that diverting corn to make ethanol forces Americans to pay $40 billion a year in higher food prices. On top of that, it costs taxpayers $1.78 in subsidies for each gallon of gasoline that corn-based ethanol replaces, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

More than 150 House members and 25 U.S. senators, as well as the director general of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, have asked Obama to temporarily suspend the ethanol mandate in order to check the rise in food prices. He should listen to them, and Congress should permanently roll back the ethanol requirements.

This isn’t to say ethanol doesn’t have a place in the U.S. energy mix. Gasoline needs to be combined with agents that carry oxygen to help cars and trucks run more efficiently. Ethanol fits the bill. But the government should let the demand for ethanol obey the laws of the market, rather than the desires of the agricultural lobby. Huffington Post

FACTS & FIGURES

Corn stalks are being disked under as the extensive drought in the corn belt causes concern over the United States government’s ethanol mandate. brainerddispatch.com

This year gasoline refiners will use some 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol, which will consume some 40 percent of the corn crop. CNBC

According to a Financial Times opinion piece published on August 10, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Director General had said Washington should shelve a mandate siphoning 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop for ethanol and use the corn for food and feed. UPI

The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration mandate, known as the Renewable Fuel Standard, requires 13.2 billion gallons of biofuel to be blended into gasoline by 2012 to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and U.S. foreign-oil dependence. UPI

Source: https://share.banoosh.com/2012/08/19/nearly-half-of-us-corn-devoted-to-fuel-production/

Filed Under: Environment, Food, Health, Monsanto, Oil, Science

Syrian Peace Deal: UN’s Cloak to NATO’s Dagger

April 10, 2012 By Aaron Jackson 1 Comment

Turkey begins fabricating “cross border” incidents to justify Brookings prescribed “safe havens” inside Syria.
by Tony Cartalucci on April 9, 2012

From the very beginning, US policy makers admitted that Kofi Annan’s “peace mission” to Syria was nothing more than a rouse to preserve NATO’s proxy forces from total destruction and create “safe havens” from which to prolong the bloodshed. It was hoped that with established “safe havens” in Syria, protected by Turkish military forces (Turkey has been a NATO member since 1952) violence and pressure verses the Syrian government could be perpetually increased until it finally collapsed and the carving up of Syria could commence.

Photo: Annan is a trustee of Wall Street speculator George Soros and geopolitical manipulator Zbigniew Brzezinski’s International Crisis Group (ICG), along side Neo-Conservative corporate lobbyist and warmonger Kenneth Adelman, US State Department-listed Iranian terror organization MEK lobbyist - General Wesley Clark, Wall Street-backed color revolution leader- Mohammed ElBaradei of Egypt, and Brookings Institution’s Samuel Berger. Serving as “advisers” to the International Crisis Group include, Neo-Conservative warmonger Richard Armitage, former Foreign Minister of Israel Shlomo Ben-Ami, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bank of Israel Governor Stanely Fischer, and President of Israel Shimon Peres. While Annan poses as a representative of the “United Nations” he is in reality representing the pro-regime change agenda of the ICG and the special interests that fund its work.

….

This has been confirmed by Fortune 500-funded, US foreign-policy think-tank, Brookings Institution which has blueprinted designs for regime change in Libya as well as both Syria andIran. In their latest report, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” it is stated (emphasis added):

“An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership.This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.” -page 4, Assessing Options for Regime Change, Brookings Institution.

Click to enlarge

Image: Also out of the Brookings Institution, Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that the humanitarian “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change.

….

And while “peace” was being peddled by Soros-funded International Crisis Group trustee Kofi Annan, the US, UK, France, and members of the West’s proxy Arab League simultaneously called for Assad to stand down and withdraw troops from secured cities while openly declaring that arms and cash would continue to flow to the rebels. The “Friends of Syria” summit would even ludicrously declare that “wages” would be paid to rebels to continue their battle to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Clearly the label “peace deal” is inappropriate for a proposal that seeks to empower and indeed see one side prevail militarily over another whose hands are purposefully tied. It is an unconditional surrender to foreign-funded terrorists simply labeled as a “peace deal.”

The Brookings Institution’s “safe havens” and “humanitarian corridors” are meant to be established by NATO-member Turkey, who has been threatening to partially invade Syria for weeks in order to accomplish this. And while Turkey claims this is based on “humanitarian concerns,” examining Turkey’s abysmal human rights record in addition to its own ongoing genocidal campaign against the Kurdish people both within and beyond its borders, it is clear they are simply fulfilling the agenda established by their Western patrons on Wall Street and in the city of London.

Photo: Turkish tanks entering Iraq to raid Kurdish towns and hunt suspected rebels in 2008. More recently, Turkey has been bombing “suspected” rebel bases in both Turkey and Iraq, as well as conducting mass nationwide arrests. Strangely, as Turkey verifiably does what Libya’s Qaddafi and Syria’s Assad have been accused of doing, in all of their hypocrisy, are now calling for a partial invasion of Syria based on “humanitarian concerns.”

….Now, Turkey is fabricating stories involving Syrian troops “firing across” the Turkish-Syrian border. The New York Times published these bold accusations before admitting further down that “it was unclear what kind of weapons caused the injuries on Sunday around six miles inside Turkish territory,” and that “there were conflicting accounts about the incident.” As are all the accusations used by NATO, the UN, and individual member states to justify meddling in Syria’s affairs, these tales involve hear-say from the rebels themselves.

It is clear that Turkey, NATO, and the UN are attempting to set the pretext for the establishment of “safe havens” and “humanitarian corridors” intended to circumvent the UN Security Council which has seen attempts to green-light military intervention vetoed twice by Russia and China. As the UN “peace deal” deadline of April 10 comes and goes, we can expect an ever increasing din of propaganda purporting Syrian violations against Turkish sovereignty, the continued propaganda campaign accentuating the “victimization” of NATO’s death squads, and the public roll-out of Brookings’ Turkish established “safe haven” within Syrian territory.

Image: Some of the corporate sponsors behind the Brookings Institution, from whose playbook Kofi Annan is being directed in his disingenuous “peace mission” to Syria. (click image to enlarge)

Image: Just some of the corporate and “institutional” sponsors of the International Crisis Group, upon which Kofi Annan sits as a “trustee” with other dubious personalities including George Soros, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Egypt’s Mohammed ElBaradei, and Neo-Cons Richard Armitage and Kenneth Adelman. (click image to enlarge)

….The UN “peace deal” was a rouse from the beginning. The West has no intention of leaving Syria intact and will seek all means by which to prevail in toppling the government, carving up the country along sectarian lines, plunging it into perpetual violence as it has Libya, and moving next toward Iran. While it is essential to expose the truth behind Syria’s unrest, is also important to identify the corporate-financier interests driving this nefarious agenda and boycott them entirely while seeking out viable local solutions to support instead. If none exist, it is our duty to use our time, money, attention, and resources to create such alternatives instead of perpetuating the self-serving agenda unfolding before us.

Ultimately it is “we the people” paying into this current paradigm that allows it to continue moving forward, therefore it by necessity must be “we the people” who undermine and ultimately replace it.

Source: https://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/syrian-peace-deal-uns-cloak-to-natos.html

Filed Under: Africa, British Petroleum, China, Corporations, France, Genocide, Human Rights, Iran, Libya, Military Industrial Complex, NATO, Russia, Safety, Syria, Terrorism, Turkey, United Kingdom, United Nations

Iran Threatens To Send ‘OIL’ To $200 A Barrel

December 13, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Are you ready for ‘OIL’ to skyrocket to $200 a barrel? Iran is! And, they’re prepared to play their trump card to send it there.

Faced with a rash of mysterious explosions, military drones caught flying overhead, and renewed promises to end their nuclear ambitions, the Iranians are threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz — otherwise known as “the economic jugular vein of the world” — again.

As Iranian lawmaker Parviz Sarvari said yesterday, “Soon we will hold a military maneuver on how to close the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure.”

The announcement came just weeks after Iran’s energy minister told Al Jazeera television that Tehran was prepared to use oil as a political tool in any “conflict over its nuclear program.”

Given Iran’s dominance over this bottleneck for oil exports from the Persian Gulf, this is a promise they can likely keep…

Today’s price of $100 a barrel doesn’t even come close to pricing in the geopolitical calamity closing the Persian Gulf would present.

Just 34 miles wide, thirteen tankers carrying 15.5 million barrels of crude oil pass through the Strait each day, making it one of the world’s most important waterways.

In all, 33% of the oil shipped via tankers passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait is so vital to the world economy, its closure would be considered an act of war that only the U.S. Navy has the power to fix…

Source: https://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/iran-threatens-to-send-oil-to-200-a-barrel/3335

Filed Under: Iran, Oil, USA

It’s On: Iran Closes Straits Of Hormuz, Oil Explodes

December 13, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

By Tyler Durden

Iran has closed the Straits of Hormuz for military training as was expected yesterday, according to RanSquawk. Oil, and all other commodities, are soaring.

And for those curious about more, RanSquawk speculates that the source of the data is a report in the Tehran Times saying that Iran will hold War Games in which it would close the Straits. Unclear if this is what Ran referenced when they said the Straits were already closed.

TEHRAN - MP Parviz Sorouri of the Majlis National Security and
Foreign Policy Committee has said that Iran plans to practice its
ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most
strategically important chokepoints, which accounts for about 30% of the
world’s seaborne oil shipments.

“Currently,the Middle East region supplies 70 percent of the world’s energy needs,
(most of) which are transported through the Strait of Hormuz. We will
hold an exercise to close the Strait of Hormuz in the near future. If
the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world
insecure,” ISNA quoted Sorouri as saying on Tuesday.

Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/its-iran-closes-straits-hormuz-oil-explodes

Filed Under: Banks, Iran, Oil, Politics Tagged With: Prices

As Chinese President Advises Navy To Prepare For War And Iran Readies Its Missiles, Is $250/barrel Crude Oil Near?

December 12, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Iran’s foreign minister had earlier warned of a $250/bbl Crude Oil in the event of attempting to harm the country. With China preparing for military combat and Iran readying its missiles, $250/bbl does not seem like a distant possibility.

The smell of war

-Yahoo News reported Chinese President Hu Jintao as saying that the Chinese Navy should “make extended preparations for warfare” and urged his navy to prepare for military combat. This follows statements by China’s Major General Zhang Zhaozhong who said that China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War in order to safeguard its domestic political needs.

-The Telegraph meanwhile has reported that Gen Mohammed Ali Jaafari, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has raised the operational readiness of status of country’s forces, initiating preparations for potential strikes and covert operationswhile also initiating plans to disperse long-range missiles, high explosives, artillery and guards units to key defensive positions

Crude oil aims for the sky

-Iran is the third largest exporter of crude oil in the world. Much bigger than Libya. Problems in Libya had pushed prices to $110 and even though it declined, later on, oil is still at $100/bbl because of the tight physical market. So obviously the loss of oil from a much larger oil exporter like Iran could easily push up prices to scary levels.

-However, the most important reason prices could spike to $250/bbl and even above is the fact that Iran nearly controls the Strait of Homruz through which almost 18% of the world’s daily oil flows from the Middle East. It is the single most important oil waterway in the world. Conflict in the area will result in a loss of millions of barrels of oil which will definitely propel prices to unseen levels.

Cracks in the economy
Even at current prices, $100 oil is terribly expensive. Imagine the case of a $250/bbl scenario! That’s a 150% rise in fuel prices alone together with rising cost of food, consumables and every form of products that requires transportation. And this will happen at a time when personal income will remain stable/unchanged!

In a world where economies are contracting,growth is slowing, unemployment is increasing, public dissent is rising and governments are becoming nearly bankrupt and insolvent, a $250/bbl oil is the last thing the world needs. Combined with the trillions of war dollars (possibly funded by even more debt) that will be spent, a war will easily set back the economy by decades!

Source: https://www.commodityonline.com/news/as-chinese-president-advises-navy-to-prepare-for-war-and-iran-readies-its-missiles-is-$250barrel-crude-oil-near-44248-3-1.html

Filed Under: China, Economy, Imperialism, Iran, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Oil, USA

Iran Oil Sanctions Set to Shrink the Circle of Foreign Buyers

December 3, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Iran faces new hurdles to getting paid for its oil as the U.S. tightens financial sanctions to deter buyers from the world’s third-largest crude exporter.

The U.S. approved additional curbs on Iran’s banking system and oil industry on Nov. 21, hoping to thwart the country’s nuclear program, and the European Union may follow. Current sanctions have led Indian importers to route payments for Iranian crude through a Turkish bank. These refiners, concerned Turkey may stop cooperating amid the latest U.S. rules, are asking banks in Russia to arrange alternatives, said three people with direct knowledge of the situation.

“The idea of the sanctions is to shrink the circle of buyers and so increase their ability to extract discounts from Iran,” said Robin Mills, an analyst at Dubai-based Manaar Energy Consulting, who worked for a decade at Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) in the Middle East.

The U.S. is stepping up pressure after a Nov. 8 report from the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran was working on a nuclear weapons program. At stake is crude supply from the OPEC nation, whose exports last year were exceeded only by those of Saudi Arabia and Russia. Oil is Iran’s main source of income, earning it $56 billion in the first seven months of 2011, according to U.S. Energy Department estimates.

The country pumped 3.6 million barrels a day last month, a Bloomberg survey showed, and exported an average 2.58 million barrels a day in 2010, according to Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries statistics.

European Pressure

“On Iran, we need to step up pressure,” EU President Herman Van Rompuy told ambassadors today in Brussels. “The EU is preparing new restrictive measures,” he said.

France has proposed that the EU ban Iranian oil, French Budget Minister Valerie Pecresse said Nov. 23. Maja Kocijancic, an EU spokeswoman, said the same day that European foreign ministers will discuss the topic at a meeting scheduled for tomorrow. Iran, which is already subject to some UN and EU sanctions, denies it is developing nuclear weapons.

Iranian protesters broke into and vandalized the British Embassy’s compound in Tehran yesterday. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, in a statement, called the attack “outrageous and indefensible” and said all staff had been accounted for. Britain today ordered the closure of Iran’s embassy in London.

Financial Impact

“The latest measures will make it even harder for people to finance trade with Iran,” said Nick Grandage, a London-based partner at law firm Norton Rose LLP, who specializes in trade finance. Sanctions have stifled trading of Iran’s oil in London, Europe’s financial hub, and may have forced importers to pay for crude in non-dollar currencies, he said in a Nov. 22 interview.

Should Europe adopt more formal restrictions on Iranian crude, the Persian Gulf nation would likely be forced to offer oil more cheaply to refiners in Asia, its biggest market, Olivier Jakob, managing director at Oberwil, Switzerland-based Petromatrix GmbH, said in a Nov. 28 note to investors.

By targeting financial transactions and stopping short of sanctioning international trade in Iranian oil, the U.S. aims to pressure Iran without risking a surge in crude prices at a time of global economic fragility, said Mills of Manaar Energy.

Russia Option

Indian refiners, which got 11 percent of their imported oil from Iran in 2010, are trying to arrange a conduit for payments via Russia, said the three people familiar with the matter, declining to be identified because the talks are private.

Vladimir Lavrov, a spokesman for Russia’s central bank, declined to comment this week about the Indian effort. The U.S. sanctions against Iran are “unacceptable and violate international law,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Nov. 22. Turkey, which gets half its oil imports from Iran, also criticized the U.S. action.

Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS (HALKB), the Ankara-based lender Indian refiners have used to transfer cash to Iran, declined to comment on its transactions other than to say Halk complies with UN rules, according to a bank official, who cited company policy for declining to be identified.

Iran’s past flexibility over payment terms makes it an attractive supplier. The country gives Indian refiners 90 days to pay their bills, compared with 30 days from Saudi Arabia, according to the people with knowledge of those purchases. When Indian importers were unable to pay on time because of sanctions, Iran kept supplying them even as they amassed $5 billion in unpaid invoices.

Saudi Crude

Saudi Arabia will increase oil shipments to Indian refiners next year, four people with knowledge of the plans said Nov. 15. India’s Petroleum Ministry Media Director R. C. Joshi didn’t answer two calls for comment to his mobile phone yesterday.

Refiners in Europe, collectively the second-largest market for Iranian oil after China, may also face difficulties from tighter constraints on transactions with Iran.

“Europe has been importing crude oil from Iran, and it certainly hasn’t lowered amounts recently,” Jakob of Petromatrix said by telephone Nov. 22. “Greece is importing most of its crude oil from Iran.”

A potential EU ban on Iran’s oil would have a smaller financial impact on European companies than the recent Libyan crisis because state-run entities control oil output, Fitch Ratings said in a note today. Still, European companies “would feel the impact of a ban through their refining operations as they would have to replace Iranian crude,” it said.

Greek Refiners

Motor Oil Hellas SA Chief Executive Officer Petros Tzannetakis said on a conference call yesterday that a potential ban would not affect it because the Greek refiner sources crude from other nations such as Saudi Arabia and Russia. Hellenic Petroleum SA (ELPE), Greece’s biggest refiner, declined to comment on Nov. 25 on its exposure to Iran.

Oil prices rose this year as political turmoil in the Middle East stoked concern about the reliability of supply. The price of European benchmark Brent crude rose to more than $125 barrels a day in April as exports from Libya dwindled because of the rebellion in that country. Brent has risen 18 percent this year and traded at $111.63 a barrel at 1:59 p.m. in London.

Iran’s three biggest national customers — China, Japan and India — together buy more than half its exported oil, according to U.S. Energy Department data. This concentration of customers and Iran’s reliance on oil sales for income make the country vulnerable to disruptions, Jakob said.

China Wins

An unintended consequence is that China, a critic of the latest U.S. sanctions, may benefit from any price discounts, said Mills, the Dubai-based consultant. “It will favor non-U.S. allies who will be able to get oil somewhat more cheaply.”

China accounted for 22 percent of Iran’s export volumes in the first half of this year and increased its purchases by 27 percent over the same period of 2010, U.S. data show. The EU, Japan and India bought 18 percent, 14 percent and 13 percent of Iran’s oil, respectively.

China’s economic ties don’t violate UN Security Council resolutions, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said Nov. 24.

Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said in a Nov. 19 television interview with Al Jazeera that any disruption to his nation’s oil exports would create “severe problems” for global markets. Iran abuts the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about one-fifth of the world’s traded oil supplies.

“If Iran were to respond to outside aggression by sealing off the Straits of Hormuz, this would severely hamper exports from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,” researchers led by David Wech at Vienna-based JBC Energy said in a Nov. 23 report.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-29/iran-financial-sanctions-set-to-shrink-circle-of-foreign-buyers-of-crude.html

Filed Under: Iran, Oil, Politicians, USA

Gulf Coast Stories: Oil, Chemicals, And Illness Part 1

December 1, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&

Filed Under: British Petroleum, Corexit, Health, Ocean, Pollution, Rights, USA

Yellowstone Oil Spill Disaster 63,000 Barrels 240 Miles Estimated

November 30, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

The Lies continue:

And just imagine with an election coming up the rest of the lies that will follow.

ExxonMobil and the Obama administration faced a growing credibility gap on Thursday over their management of a pipeline break that has fouled the Yellowstone river.

Clean-up crews have yet to reach the site of the pipeline break nearly a week after the rupture, which leaked 42,000 US gallons (159,000 litres) of oil into the Yellowstone, one of the last undammed rivers left in America.

State officials in Montana criticised oil company executives for offering conflicting accounts of the pipeline breach and its safety record.

SkyTruth, which came to prominence last year for satellite maps tracking the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has also questioned Exxon’s initial estimates of the size of the leak. SkyTruth’s founder, John Amos, said his calculations suggested a leak of 63,000 US gallons, or nearly half again as much as Exxon’s estimate of about 42,000 US gallons.

Environmental organisations, meanwhile, accused federal government regulators of failing to ensure safe operation of the pipeline until it was too late.

“We don’t need regulators to tell us that a pipeline gushing oil into our rivers is not operating safely. We need them to create rules and standards that ensure pipelines don’t do that in the first place and we don’t seem to have that,” said Anthony Swift, energy campaigner at the Natural Resources Defence Council.

The pipeline safety authority ordered Exxon to make safety improvements to the pipeline on Tuesday — four days after the breach.

The oil company and federal government officials believe that severe flooding eroded the riverbed in which the pipeline was buried, exposing the structure to damage. Ken Olson, the mayor of the nearby town of Laurel, Montana, said the Exxon crew were at work two weeks ago trying to protect the pipeline. He said he saw crews building a berm around a valve.

“We’ve experienced erosion last year, and again this year we saw even more. The amount of erosion we experienced this year I would consider, as an amateur, to be a 100-year event. I never saw anything like it,” Olson said.

The record erosion has turned the focus towards the depth of the pipeline below the riverbed.

In filings with the pipeline safety authority last December, Exxon claimed that the pipeline was at least 5 feet (1.5 metres) beneath the riverbed. The pipeline authority had faulted the oil company for a series of other probable violations in July 2010.

After a temporary shutdown of the pipeline last May, following safety concerns being raised by local officials, Exxon reported on 1 June the line was at a depth of 12 feet. However, ExxonMobil Pipeline Company president Gary Pruessing said on Wednesday he could not verify that figure.

It was the third discrepancy in Exxon’s account of the pipeline. The oil company had initially claimed that it took 30 minutes to shut off the pipeline, when it fact it took 56 minutes.

The company was also forced to acknowledge that oil from the ruptured pipeline had caused far wider damage than its initial claims of a 10-mile stretch of the river. The pipeline authority said aerial surveillance had detected oil as far as 240 miles away from the breach.

A spokesman for the pipeline authority refused to confirm Exxon’s claims to have buried the pipeline at the greater depth of 12ft. He also gave no indication that the safety authority had directed Exxon to increase the amount of earth shielding the pipeline, despite forecasts of an unusually heavy flood season.

“Exxon made two relatively reckless moves. One was building a pipeline that shallow in a flood prone river. The second was to restart the pipeline in May despite heavy flooding,” said Alex Swift, the pipeline safety campaigner for the Natural Resources Defence Council. “But again a key issue here is that it was allowed to do that by the regulators.”

Filed Under: Censorship, Corporations, Corruption, Environment, Health, Oil, Propaganda, USA, Water Tagged With: Exxon, Yellowstone Oil Disaster

BP to Pay $426,500 Penalty and Secure Funds to Properly Close Facilities and Clean Up Contaminated Sites

November 29, 2011 By T Kelly 2 Comments

By Stacy Kika on November 29, 2011

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced that several subsidiaries of BP America Inc. have agreed to pay a $426,500 penalty and ensure that more than $240 million in funds are secured to resolve violations of hazardous waste, drinking water and Superfund financial assurance requirements. Financial assurance protects public health and the environment by ensuring that companies have the financial resources available to properly close facilities and clean up pollution at contaminated industrial sites.

“Financial assurance protects taxpayers from having to foot the bill for costly cleanups,” said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Today’s settlement will ensure that BP’s subsidiaries have the funds available to cover any necessary cleanup costs today and into the future.”

BP produces, refines and markets oil and gas. Upon receipt of information from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and BP, EPA determined that between 2006 and 2010 BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., BP Products North America Inc., and BP West Coast Products LLC failed to meet their Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) financial assurance requirements.

On July 14, 2010, EPA sent notices of violation to BP notifying the companies that they were not in compliance with applicable financial assurance requirements and that they needed to obtain qualifying financial assurance for these obligations.

As part of the two administrative agreements, BP has obtained replacement financial assurance instruments in the form of letters of credit, standby trusts, and insurance policies for more than $149.1 million in obligations. Specifically, BP has provided assurances covering $129.8 million for its RCRA hazardous waste facilities and $19.2 million to address the closure, plugging, and abandonment of underground injection control wells under the SDWA. BP has also agreed to pay a civil penalty of $411,500 and has agreed to maintain compliance with the financial assurance requirements under RCRA and SDWA.

EPA found that financial assurance provided by BP subsidiaries, Atlantic Richfield Company and BP Products North America Inc., at several Superfund sites was also inadequate. BP has resolved these issues by providing compliant financial assurance mechanisms covering $98.8 million in Superfund obligations and agreeing to pay a penalty of $15,000.

BP also had inadequate financial assurance coverage for RCRA facilities covered by state orders and regulations and for SDWA wells for which the states have primary enforcement responsibility. EPA worked with its state partners to obtain from BP a total of $76.4 million in compliant financial assurance coverage for these obligations.

More information on the settlement: https://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/cases/civil/rcra/bpalaskainc.html

Source:

https://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/BEA3C5D6D4E8A8248525795700602217

Filed Under: British Petroleum, Corexit, Environment, Health, Money, Ocean Tagged With: Penalty

Attorney Says Macondo Well Still Leaks Oil From Seafloor

November 22, 2011 By T Kelly 1 Comment

NEW ORLEANS (CN) - An environmental attorney said oil is still leaking from BP’s Macondo Formation more than 16 months after the well was declared sealed. The attorney said the only explanation for fresh oil bearing the Macondo fingerprint that’s washed ashore on barrier islands is that the seafloor was damaged during the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and oil is seeping through.

The April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 people and dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, until the well was declared capped, on July 15, 2010.

But attorney Stuart Smith told Courthouse News that new oil is washing up on barrier islands in Louisiana and Mississippi.

“There’s a deafening silence on the issue,” from the Coast Guard and from BP, Smith said.

“We’ve been doing environmental testing, we’ve been spending a lot of time and resources doing what’s called ‘fingerprinting’ the oil,” Smith said.

”Oil from different reservoirs contains different concentrations of various stuff, and so each reservoir has a fingerprint. If you test it, you can tell where it’s coming from. The Macondo well was the only well that was completed into that particular reservoir.

”In the spring of this year, we did some sampling and when we got the results back, it was a fingerprint match to fresh Macondo oil,” Smith said.

“That was very interesting to us. We couldn’t understand why. Then again, we did some more testing this summer and it came back the same way. We’re finding fresh Macondo oil washing up on beaches on the barrier islands. And then, through sources that I have, we heard that their [BP's] well was leaking, and that there was oil in the Gulf, and that they had research vessels there at the site.

“We covered that, and then there was a big push back from BP, denying it. And so Bonny Schumaker [a pilot and founder of Wings of Care] flew out there in late August, and lo and behold, there’s fresh oil bubbling up to the surface and this is still in the vicinity of the well. We don’t know how much oil it is.”

Wings of Care is a California-based nonprofit whose pilots, boat captains, scientists, veterinarians and other professionals work on environmental projects, including surveys, research, rescues and rehab.

Smith said Schumaker has done several flights since August. In each case, he said, she identified oil in the area of the Macondo Prospect well.

A story Smith posted on his blog last week details Schumaker’s Nov. 12 flight over the Macondo well: “Macondo Mystery Deepens: Nine Large Vessels Spotted Working in Vicinity of Deepwater Horizon Site.”

Smith said BP and the Coastguard sent investigators to the well in August, and they came back saying no oil was leaking.

“They said they sent remotely operated vehicles down there which found no oil leaking from the well itself. And then there was speculation that it might be leaking from the equipment that has fallen to the seafloor. Transocean did a submersible dive and they found nothing leaking from the equipment.

“So the question becomes: Where is it coming from?

”We know that fresh oil is washing up to this day. It’s a fingerprint match to the Macondo crude. That’s even been admitted by Ed Overton, who is a research scientist at LSU that’s been hired by the Coast Guard to do these tests.

“The only explanation is that there has been damage to the seafloor because of the blowout, which has allowed oil to come from that formation,” Smith said.

In an emailed statement late Friday, a representative from BP verified that several vessels are in the vicinity of the Macondo well: “There are several vessels there participating in a study of natural oil seeps. This study has been ongoing for the past month or so. Data continues being collected and we provided an update on the natural oil seeps at the SETAC [Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry] conference in Boston this week. … The study is documenting the specific locations of these seeps and is seeking to track oil flow from seabed to surface,” BP wrote.

Smith responded to BP’s statement: “If there are seeps in this area they are not natural. BP was required to do a seafloor survey prior to applying for a permit to drill. If these seeps were not discovered at that time, they are clearly related to the disaster and the methods used to try to seal the well,” Smith said.

BP was not immediately available for further comment.

Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/2011/11/21/41602.htm

Filed Under: British Petroleum, USA