Gov. Hickenlooper fails to fine company responsible for toxic Parachute spill

May 16, 2013 by Leave a comment

Yesterday, Gov. Hickenlooper’s department of public health and environment (CDPHE) announced that they won’t levy fines against Williams Cos. for spilling 10,000 barrels of natural gas and toxic waste into Parachute Creek and the surrounding area in western Colorado.

Earlier this month, the Governor lobbied to water-down legislation to toughen fines for oil and gas companies who pollute, despite Colorado’s well-documented problems of spills, and lowest in the nation fines. The Governor’s actions ultimately led to the death of the legislation.

The Parachute spill, which occurred in the winter but wasn’t reported until the spring, has polluted water with cancer-causing benzene. In early May, benzene levels in the creek exceeded the federal safe drinking water standard.

In their statement, CDPHE said that they aren’t fining Williams because the spill “was not due to negligence but to accidental equipment failure.” So now Gov. Hickenlooper’s department of public health and environment only “protect[s] and improve[s] the health of Colorado’s people and the quality of its environment” part of the time? We didn’t find that caveat in their mission statement.

This isn’t the first time that the Hickenlooper Administration has failed to hold polluters accountable. A 2011 Suncor spill that polluted the South Platte River is still being cleaned up nearly two years later – and yet Suncor hasn’t been fined for dumping toxic levels of benzene into the river.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Hickenlooper Administration is fine with oil and gas companies polluting our water and communities with waste and toxins – otherwise, why not hold them accountable for polluting by enforcing fines?

Filed under Colorado, Fines, Fracking, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

Gov. Hickenlooper’s ‘order’ to oil and gas commission to review fines an empty gesture

May 10, 2013 by Leave a comment

Recently, Gov. Hickenlooper put on a masterful show of playing a politician who cares about Coloradans. Unfortunately, it was just an act to distract from the fact that Gov. Hickenlooper successfully killed efforts to set mandatory minimum fines and increase caps on fines for oil and gas companies that pollute.  

After killing these measures, aimed at holding polluters accountable, Gov. Hickenlooper put out a press release ordering his oil and gas commission to ‘review enforcement, fines.’ In other words, he directed his commission to take a look into their abysmal record and get back to him. That’s not leadership, it was an empty gesture to cover his tracks.

Gov. Hickenlooper’s press release doesn’t do anything to strengthen Colorado’s woefully outdated laws, which include the lowest fines in the nation for polluters.  And it’s doubtful that the governor’s oil and gas commission, which includes oil and gas industry employees, will suddenly become competent at holding oil and gas polluters accountable.  An analysis by the Denver Post found that Colorado rarely fines oil and gas companies who pollute. According to the Coloradoan, less than 7 percent of industry violations since 1996 have resulted in fines.

Site of Parachute spill Source: ecoflight

Site of Parachute spill
Source: ecoflight

Last year, the industry reported 402 spills, of which 20 percent contaminated water. Six companies alone accounted for 85 percent of all the spills that contaminated groundwater – Anadarko, Noble Energy, Encana, PDC Energy, WPX Energy and Pioneer Natural Resources.

Not only are polluters not held accountable, but Gov. Hickenlooper has routinely rewarded some of the biggest oil and gas polluters in the state. In 2010 and 2011, Noble Energy caused more spills than any other operator in Colorado – 126.  Yet, Hickenlooper’s oil and gas commission gave Noble an ‘Outstanding Operator’ award.

Gov. Hickenlooper also gave Anadarko an ‘Outstanding Operator’ award in 2011, while last year, Anadarko subsidy Kerr-McGee was linked to 70 spills – more than any other operator – of which, 38 percent resulted in water contamination. With these awards, Gov. Hickenlooper has once again made it clear that he isn’t that interested in holding oil and gas companies accountable when they pollute.

Gov. Hickenlooper used the power of his office to kill stronger standards that would have held the oil and gas industry accountable when they pollute. He chose to put the interests of the industry ahead of what’s best for Colorado families and that’s a shame. Now, Gov. Hickenlooper is insulting Coloradans by acting as the concerned politician.

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Keystone XL Environmental Impact Consultant’s Cozy Relationships with Fossil Fuel Interests

March 31, 2013 by Leave a comment

ERMFossilRelationshipsBlogEnvironmental Resources Management (ERM), the consulting firm hired to perform the supplemental environmental analysis of the Keystone XL pipeline works for and has worked for fossil fuel companies with a stake in the Canadian Tar Sands. Mother Jones’ Andy Kroll exposed the conflicts of interest in an exclusive story, which included unredacted documents that show the recent work history of ERM’s consultants.

It’s no surprise that ERM painted a rosy picture of Keystone XL’s environmental impact. Their business depends on it. ERM’s major clients in the fossil fuel industry would steer clear of an environmental consulting company that determines fossil fuel projects are not environmentally responsible. ERM claimed in the report that the Keystone
XL pipeline would not lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions or significantly impact the environment along its route.

Last week, Steve Horn from DeSmogBlog documented major problems with another pipeline (the 1,300 mile-long Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC)) determined by an ERM environmental assessment to be “environmentally and socio-economically sound.” Horn wrote, “An Aug. 2008 Wikileaks cable discusses a BTC explosion in a mountainous area of eastern Turkey …which spewed 70,000 barrels of oil into the surrounding area.” The BTC
pipeline caused enormous environmental damage and failed to live up to the jobs hype created by the project developers, which included BP, State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni and Total.

Horn goes on to quote Mik Minio-Paluello, co-author of The Oil Road - a new book documenting the slew of destructive impacts of BTC saying, “Supposedly an environmental consultancy, in practice ERM operated more like aPR firm representing BP and now they’re fulfilling a similar role for TransCanada.”

So why does ERM operate more like a PR firm than an environmental consultancy?

Let’s say ERM provided a review claiming a fossil fuel project was skirting safety precautions or moving too quickly to ensure quality seals on the pipeline (see Keystone XL’s faulty welding here). Would a fossil fuel company, whose financial interest is building more fossil fuel infrastructure, want to hire a consultant that results in delays and increased costs for developing that infrastructure?

Checks & Balances Project contacted ERM’s Global Head of Communications Simon Garcia multiple times over the past week without any response.  We requested comment on the following question: Has ERM ever determined that a proposed fossil fuel project was not “environmentally sound” in an assessment?

The answer is probably “no.”

 

 

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Center for Western Priorities documentary series tells stories of drilling impacts on communities

January 8, 2013 by Leave a comment

The nonpartisan Center for Western Priorities (CWP) released its new LookWest interview series, today. According to a CWP release:

“Colorado communities struggling to balance their quality of life and local economies with industrial drilling and fracking operations are the focus of a new mini-documentary series by the Center for Western Priorities (CWP).”

The videos include interviews with residents and local business owners in Rifle and Paonia. People living in the Western Slope community of Rifle already have drilling in their midst, and are experiencing air and water challenges, explosions and truck traffic that make some of them wish they’d never moved there.

Farmers, ranchers and local business owners in Paonia talk about Colorado BLM’s plans to make 20,000+ acres in their area available for oil and gas leasing. Agriculture is a staple of the North Fork Valley, and the farmers and ranchers are scared of the impact drilling will have on their livelihoods.

“It’s an unknown practice,” said Jeff Schwartz, a Paonia farmer. “The risk that we’ve learned, that I’ve learned, about around the country is that there is a high risk of water contamination, and that’s a high risk to my family making a living.” Schwartz continued, “Anything that threatens the safety of our food crops threatens everything we do.”

Watch the Rifle video.

Watch the Paonia video.

CWP says that LookWest will continue visiting western communities to give people affected by oil and gas drilling a platform to have their stories heard. The videos will on the CWP website (www.westernpriorities.org) and YouTube page.

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Issa continues to lead oil crusade against renewable energy

May 31, 2012 by Leave a comment

Champions oil above everything else for campaign donors

Matt Garrington, Denver-based co-director of The Checks and Balances Project, offered the following statement and facts regarding today’s hearing on Thursday’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on an all of the above energy policy:

“Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Cal.) own words show that his idea of an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy strategy is all about oil and gas. Issa has called government investment in renewable energy ‘reckless bets with taxpayer funds,’ but you never hear him speak against the billions in taxpayer dollars that every year pour into “traditional energy products” like oil and gas.

“We’re already seeing record oil drilling, and it’s not enough. A true ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy includes proven, renewable technologies like solar and wind. Chairman Issa’s energy strategy will make us more dependent on oil and more vulnerable to price shocks at the pump.

“Instead of using his position as head of the House’s government reform arm to help modernize our nation’s energy infrastructure, Chairman Issa prefers to give oil executives, mouthpieces and front group pundits a chance to speak on the record.”

“You won’t see representatives of successful solar and wind companies, auto manufacturers building high-tech vehicles, or cutting-edge researchers creating the next generation of renewable fuels testifying at Chairman Issa’s hearing. These stakeholders don’t fill Issa’s campaign coffers, so they don’t get a seat at the table.”

Today’s witnesses include:*

  • Charles Drevna, President of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, who in 2010 gave $1,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee;
  • Michael Krancer, Secretary Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, who since 2008 has given $7,750 to Republicans, most of that to Congressional candidates;
  • Peter Glaser, partner at Troutman Sanders LLP, who since 2007 has given $4,300 to Republican candidates, and
  • Kathleen Sgamma, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas-funded group whose PAC has given $71,337 to Republican politicians since 2007.

*All contribution amounts according to FEC records at http://www.fec.gov

Facts about American energy production:

  • Drilling activity reached its highest level under the Obama administration than at any point since the Reagan administration.
  • According to a May 2012 Interior Department report, the oil and gas industry had conducted production or exploration activities on just 56% of public lands leased in the U.S. In fact, the oil and gas industry is sitting on more than 20 million acres of idle lands already leased for development.
  • As of January 25, 2012, the oil and gas industry had 6,500 unused drilling permits for federal lands and a total of 7,000 unused drilling permits for both federal and Indian lands.
  • Renewable energy such as wind and solar power has nearly doubled since 2008.
  • This summer, the White House is expected to finalize an agreement with automakers to set an unprecedented fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks by 2025. This plan will save car and truck drivers $1.7 trillion at the pump or about $8,000 per vehicle.

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Announcing the Western Lands and Energy Dashboard!

January 27, 2012 by Leave a comment

The sheer scale of the Big Oil rhetoric-fest that was unleashed after President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) address was tremendous. But as we read through clips and blogs, we realized there is a lot of poetry out there, but no prose. So we decided to create a one stop shop of easily accessed, easily read facts and figures about American oil and gas development and extraction on western lands. And so the Western Lands and Energy Dashboard was born.

President Obama spoke at length about our domestic energy resources and plan during his SOTU. He talked about how the federal government has opened millions of acres for oil and gas development over the last three years, how oil production is at its highest level in eight years. He informed Americans that in 2011, the U.S. relied less on foreign oil that in the last 16 years. This was all great news.

In fact, he said, “We’ve subsidized oil companies for a century.  That’s long enough.  (Applause.)  It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been more profitable…”

You could almost here the collective gasp from the executive offices of BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell. I’m sure that wherever Rep. Doug Lamborn was – he boycotted SOTU, but his absence didn’t negatively affect the evening – his cell phone started ringing. In fact, Big Oil’s entire spin machine went into overdrive.

Kathleen Sgamma at Western Energy Alliance talked about obstacles; API representatives called the President’s speech a smokescreen. Ron Arnold, executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, used the words “delay, obstruction and obfuscation” in a column in the Washington Examiner.

The new dashboard is an impartial counter to the rhetoric of industry lobby groups such as API and Western Energy Allaince, and the politicians who have deep industry ties as a result of major oil and gas contributions to their campaigns.

The facts and figures of the oil and gas industry and public lands development are presented in a simple and clear way for media and policymakers alike.

Last year, under the Obama administration, oil companies reported $104 billion in profits and benefited from the highest level of drilling activity since the Reagan era. This is the sort of information the oil and gas industry and their supporters in Congress neglect to mention. The goal of this project is to set the record straight.

Visit our dashboard and see for yourself. We intend for the it to be an unbiased source of facts and figures. And help yourself to any of the slides; you’ll notice we didn’t even brand them.

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Checks and Balances Project launches Western Lands and Energy Dashboard

January 27, 2012 by Leave a comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

January 27, 2012

Checks and Balances Project launches
Western Lands and Energy Dashboard

In wake of State of the Union energy debate, watchdog group works to counter claims
by API, Western Energy Alliance

Denver – Today, the Checks and Balances Project launched its Western Lands and Energy Dashboard examining oil and gas development and public lands access in the West.

The dashboard is an impartial counter to the rhetoric of industry lobby groups such as American Petroleum Institute and Western Energy Alliance as well as politicians with deep industry ties as a result of oil and gas campaign contributions.

The dashboard presents the facts and figures of the oil and gas industry and public lands development in a simple and clear way, with links to original sources.

“After the State of the Union address, we saw a pile-on by industry lobbyists and Big Oil politicians to spread misinformation about the health of America’s oil and gas industry,” said Matt Garrington, Denver-based co-director of The Checks and Balances Project. “Our research demonstrates that business is booming for the oil and gas industry, and that those companies continue to underutilize existing access to public land while demanding taxpayer handouts.”

“Last year, under the Obama administration, oil companies reported $104 billion in profits and enjoyed the highest level of drilling activity since the Reagan era. This is the sort of information the oil and gas industry and their supporters in Congress neglect to mention. We want to set the record straight,” continued Garrington.

The dashboard contains a series of slides that focus on specific areas of interest. Every fact in the slides is cited to original sources, including government agencies, industry data, and nonpartisan think tanks.

“The Checks and Balances Project is committed to providing accurate data regarding our nation’s energy production and land use,” said Garrington. “This is why we created the Project, to counter industry spin with cold, hard facts.”

The organization plans to add new research over time and update existing slides as new data becomes available.

Among the key findings are:

  • Drilling activity is at its highest level in 25 years.
  • The oil and gas industry saw windfall profits of $104 billion in the first three quarters of last year, due primarily to a dramatic rise in the price at the pump.
  • The oil and gas industry receives $9.4 billion every year in special tax breaks and subsidies.
  • Over 20 million acres of public lands leased for energy development remain idle.
  • The oil and gas industry has failed to develop 6,500 drilling permits issued by the BLM.
  • The oil and gas drilling industry employed 615,900 people in 2010, adding over 40,000 jobs during President Obama’s first two years in office.
  • The U.S. is now a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time since 1949.

The dashboard can be found at: www.checksandbalancesproject.org/dashboard

30 – 30 – 30

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Wall Street rings in the New Year for oil speculators

January 12, 2012 by Leave a comment

Matt Garrington

Wall Street started 2012 by ringing in the New Year for oil and gas speculators.  On Tuesday, Ralph Hill, the CEO of WPX Energy Inc., rang the opening bell for the first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

The evidence of speculation’s effect on the price at the pump has piled up over the last couple of years. In 2011 especially, as gas prices hit near-record highs in the first half of the year, analysts and financial reporters explained how price increases had less to do with supply and demand than Wall Street trading.

Commissioner Bart Chilton of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission endorsed this view in a speech to the High Frequency Trading World in Amsterdam.  Chilton told a room full of traders, “Researchers at Oxford, Princeton, and many other private researchers say that speculators have had an impact on prices—oil prices and food prices most notably.”

Even Goldman Sach acknowledged the impact of speculation on energy prices. In a little-publicized study conducted issued last year, the investment world’s flagship firm estimated oil prices to be $20 higher per barrel as a result of speculation.

When you consider the effect this speculation has had on the checkbooks of American families, it’s telling that the NYSE still chose an oil and gas CEO to open the new year. It can be viewed as an admission that speculators understand the role they’ve played in energy costs, and are looking forward to another banner year.

Unfortunately, that prosperity won’t be passed down to American consumers. After all, in just the first three quarters of 2011 oil and gas companies reported over $101 billion in profits. They passed cost of speculation directly on to the consumer, even though many of those companies were engaged in speculation themselves.

Meanwhile, Big Oil executives and the politicians they support fought tooth and nail to protect the billions in government handouts oil companies receive every year. For the record, many of those same politicians were far less vocal in protecting the 2 percent payroll tax cut that House Republicans held hostage at the end of the year.

If you’re looking for an explanation for their actions, you need look no further than Ralph Hill, the CEO who opened the NYSE. Before WPX Energy split off from Williams, Hill was that company’s President of Exploration and Production. During his time there, Hill gave thousands of dollars to the company’s political action committee.

That PAC turned around and funded the election campaigns of many of the politicians who over the past year have protected corporate welfare to oil companies, especially some of the key players on the House Natural Resources Committee.

No wonder these same Congressmen voted time and time again to protect special tax breaks on oil and gas subsidies, and we still don’t have legislation cracking down on oil speculators.

Wall Street continues to prove it is politically tone deaf by bringing in the very example of the 1 percent to kick-off the New Year – an oil and gas CEO whose company gets bigger profits when America’s working families are forced to pay more at the pump.

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From ‘Astroturf’ to Drilling in the West: Tim Wigley heads to WEA

January 5, 2012 by Leave a comment

Yesterday, the Western Energy Alliance (WEA) announced that it had selected former lobbyist Tim Wigley as its new president. Wigley comes from the oil-and-gas lobbying firm, PAC/West where he managed its DC operations.  The experience will come in handy when managing WEA’s $70,000 to $85,000 yearly spending habit of lobbying the federal government.

According to Think Progress, Wigley has an extensive background in DC and is no stranger to dirty energy campaigns:

Wigley has spent much of his career lobbying on behalf of corporate interests. But perhaps most interesting is his previous role as campaign manager for two “astroturf” groups — those that purport to be grassroots when really they are just front groups for industry. According to a 2007 investigation by Public Citizen, Wigley headed up two major astroturf campaigns while working for Pac/West:

  • Project Protect (logging): “This group spent $2.9 million on media purchases and other efforts to lobby for President Bush’s ‘Healthy Forests’ initiative. The group, which billed itself as ‘a grassroots coalition of western communities, natural resource groups, labor organizations, and conservationists,’ refused to disclose its donors. It listed an address at Mailboxes, Etc., in 2003. In 2004, it listed an address identical to that of the American Forest Resource Council, a group that lobbies for public land management policies that favor industry.”
  • Save Our Species Alliance (endangered species issues): “This group sought to gut the Endangered Species Act…The campaign manager for Save Our Species Alliance was Tim Wigley…[who] told a reporter that the Save Our Species Alliance was a grassroots group of farmers, labor groups and others. Wigley did not divulge the identities of the group’s funders. ‘I think this line of questioning is misleading,’ he said to the reporter who asked.”

The Western Energy Alliance is a trade group with lobbying and PAC arms whose “Blueprint for Western Prosperity” is a hit list against public health and environmental safeguards and calls for policies like a “moratorium on new federal regulations.” WEA is notorious for accusing the Obama administration for blocking drilling on public lands, despite evidence that oil and gas drilling in America is higher than ever before.

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Having your cake and eating it too…

October 18, 2011 by Leave a comment

Ted Zukoski at unEarthed compares the oil and gas industry to a hungry, angry baby in his blog post today examining Secretary Salazar’s and the BLM’s latest decision to protect Colorado’s Vermillion Basin while allowing drilling on the vast majority of lands in the area.

“Meet the oil and gas industry in Colorado, the crybaby of the West’s public lands debate,” is his line following a metaphorical intro involving cake that made us briefly think he was recreating the old Bill Cosby parenting bit. Ted delivers a clear view of the facts surrounding the oil and gas industry’s insatiable appetite for land.

In spite of a 24-year high in drilling activity and the availability of 7,000 unused drilling permits with a green light to drill, the oil and gas industry still says that allowing drilling on 90 percent of a 2.4 million acre parcel is a “conservation-only approach.”

We recommend giving Ted’s post a read.

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