Environmentalists Criticize Obama's Steps to Improve Interior Dept & MMS's Oil Industry Policing

[amborin]

US to Split Up Agency Policing Oil Industry


.....In announcing his plan to split up the minerals service, Mr. Salazar said it had become clear that the agency’s two missions were often in conflict. He said that he had undertaken a number of steps to improve ethics and tighten safety enforcement at the agency but that he decided more radical steps were needed.
Mr. Salazar also announced that he had asked the National Academy of Engineering to conduct an investigation of the causes of the Deepwater Horizon accident, a task that now falls solely on the minerals management agency and the United States Coast Guard.
And he said he was seeking a change in the law to provide more time for regulators to review safety and environmental plans for new wells. The law now requires government to act within 30 days on an application for a new well; Mr. Salazar would lengthen that to 90 days or longer if needed.
The proposal to divide the agency reflects a shift in attitude by the Obama White House since the spill began.


..............Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group, said Mr. Salazar’s changes were unlikely to significantly alter the culture and practices of government oil regulators.

“Salazar’s proposed reform doesn’t commit to separating M.M.S.’s revenue and environmental permitting arms,” Mr. Suckling said. “Thus it ignores the true scandal and allows the worst abuses to continue. M.M.S. will still have a conflict of interest, still waive environmental reviews and still rubber-stamp drilling plans.”

Some environmental groups have also objected to BP’s role in the joint information center and the Web site about remediation efforts. BP, said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, “is spinning the agencies and spinning the public.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/us/12interior.html?pagewanted=2&ref=todayspaper

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[blindpig]

2. How much more evidence do we need?

The US government is entirely beholden to the great economic interests, nothing else matters, we are all 'externals' in their scheme of things.

[amborin]

3. corporations are running the gov't

[TransitJohn]

4. MMS and MSHA are both still filled with Bush cronies and hacks

who don't take worker safety or environmental protection seriously.

[amborin]

5. when do we stop saying Obama hasn't had time to address this? O gave out 27 new exemptions since the

catastrophe

Obama also selected BP for a safety award recently, despite BP's horrific record

[ProSense]

6. "Kieran Suckling...said Mr. Salazar’s changes were unlikely"

Does Suckling approve of anything? Why is separating the agencies and strengthening oversight a bad thing?

<...>

Australia, for example, created a separate agency — the National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority — in 2005. Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority was created a year earlier to specifically address the inherent regulatory conflicts between resource management and workplace safety.

<...>

The director general of Norway’s P.S.A., Magne Ognedal, was asked about the creation of the P.S.A. in a recent interview with Elmer P. Danenberger — chief blogger at Bud’s Offshore Energy and as it happens, the recently retired chief of offshore regulatory programs for the M.M.S.

The exchange:

Mr. Danenberger: In 2004, Norway separated its safety and resource management functions. The U.K. had done this after Piper Alpha, and Australia recently established a separate offshore safety regulator. Can you comment on the pros and cons of being an independent offshore safety regulator?

Mr. Ognedal: This is a good example of the influence of the political system of a country on safety regulatory matters. Not that I disagree, but the change made to separate safety and petroleum administrative matters was probably also aimed at reducing political risk. We have had no problems relating to that fact. Our role and mandate has now become much clearer and we have been given all the necessary authority to fulfill our mission. However, it has placed a big responsibility on the PSA. We must ensure we make the right decisions and be able to defend them. For myself, I think our oversight of safety in the petroleum industry has become both better and stronger because of this change. But others shall have to judge that.

Britain similarly severed these functions after a 1988 oil rig explosion in the North Sea, known as the Piper Alpha incident, that killed 167 people. It remains the world’s worst offshore oil rig accident in terms of lives lost.

A subsequent investigation resulted in a recommendation that responsibility for safety oversight be moved from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive, the independent watchdog agency for work-related health, safety and illness. A separate division was created within the H.S.E. to monitor safety of the offshore oil and gas industry.

link

[amborin]

7. bashing environmentalists & truth is not good; Suckling correctly notes these steps are superficial

and ineffective; this catastrophe highlights the major changes needed

but given that Obama just issued new exemptions after the spill.....

[amborin]

8. Int Dept Secy Salazar filed special court motion to exempt BP's Deepwater Horizon Project:

"................Within days of the 2009 approval, the Center for Biological Diversity and its allies won a court order vacating the Bush Five-Year Offshore Drilling Plan. Rather than use the court order as a timeout on new offshore oil drilling to develop a new plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar filed a special motion with the court to exempt approved oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. He specifically identified BP’s operation as one that should be released from the vacature.

In July 2009, the court agreed to Salazar’s request, releasing all approved offshore oil drilling — including the BP operation — from the vacature.

3. BP. BP has the worst environmental and safety record of any oil company operating in America. Even after the 2005 Texas City Refinery blast that killed 15 people, BP has continued to rack up safety violations. Despite the dangerous nature of all offshore oil drilling and BP’s own egregious safety record, BP’s exploration plan downplayed possibility of a spill, repeatedly asserting that it was unlikely or virtually impossible. Amazingly, Secretary Salazar’s Minerals and Management Service approved BP’s exploration plan without any consideration of the environmental consequences of an oil spill. "


http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/energy/dirty_energy_development/oil_and_gas/gulf_oil_spill/index.html


Obama chooses BP for safety award:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/30/in-ironic-twist-bp ...

[amborin]

9. relatedly: US Climate Bill Is a Gift to Polluters

Climate Bill Is a Misnomer: It’s a Nuclear Energy-Promoting, Oil Drilling-Championing, Coal Mining-Boosting Gift to Polluters

Statement of Tyson Slocum, Director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program

WASHINGTON - May 12 - After half a year of delay, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are set to release their nuclear energy/cap-and-trade bill today. Until we see legislative text, we can comment only on the broad outline made available yesterday and an additional summary being circulated among legislative staff.

It's not accurate to call this a climate bill. This is nuclear energy-promoting, oil drilling-championing, coal mining-boosting legislation with a weak carbon-pricing mechanism thrown in. What's worse, it guts the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) current authority to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Here's our take on what we know is in the new bill:

Nuclear Power Incentives

At its core, this legislation is all about promoting nuclear power and handing taxpayers the bill. Consider: - Sections 1101 and 1105 would prioritize the needs of nuclear power corporations over the rights of citizens to have full, public hearings about the risks and dangers of locating nuclear power plants in their communities. - Section 1102 increases loan guarantees primarily for nuclear power to a jaw-dropping $54 billion. These loans are a terrible deal for the taxpayer, especially considering the high risk of default that even the government acknowledges. - Section 1103 provides $6 billion in taxpayer-subsidized risk insurance for 12 new nuclear reactors. - Section 1121 allows nuclear power plant owners to write off their depreciation much faster. Section 1121 provides a 10 percent investment tax credit for new reactors. - Section 1123 extends the Advanced Energy Project credit to nuclear reactors. - Section 1124-6 allows municipal power agencies to derive certain tax, bond and grant benefits from investing in nuclear power.

Oil

Apparently oblivious to the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the legislation expands offshore drilling. In fact, all new offshore drilling, leasing and permitting should be halted.

Section 1202 allows states to keep 37.5 percent of oil and gas royalty money. That's like saying because more rich people live in California and New York compared to Mississippi and New Mexico, those higher-income states should be able to keep more federal dollars raised from income taxes. Royalty revenue sharing is patently unfair - especially because the disaster in Gulf shows that an oil spill does not respect state boundaries.

Coal

Section 1412 establishes a carbon tax paid by ratepayers and collected by utilities to fund carbon capture and storage (CCS) - with no money allocated to rooftop solar or energy efficiency investments. Section 1431 will provide valuable emissions allowances for free to coal utilities pursuing CCS - an untested, risky strategy that benefits the coal industry and is gobbling up a lion's share of subsidies that otherwise could go to renewable energy development.

Merchant coal power plants (whose rates are not regulated) will get roughly 5 percent of the free allowances, which will provide opportunities for them to gouge consumers.

And while the nuclear and coal industries will receive a lot of taxpayer money and loan guarantees, Section 1604 states that "voluntary" renewable energy markets are "efficient and effective programs" and states that "the policy of the United States is to continue to support the growth of these markets." This is backward: Renewable energy should be getting the guarantees, rather than the coal and nuclear industries.

Offsets

The legislation allows entities to "reduce" their domestic greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing offsets from projects located in the U.S. and around the world. The recent offset crisis in Europe, where the offset market collapsed due to fraud, underscores the lack of accountability and transparency with offsets.

Consumer Protections Rather than follow President Barack Obama's cap-and-dividend plan, which would have required polluters to pay and would have distributed 80 percent of the money directly to families through the Making Work Pay tax credit, or the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR Act, which calls for distributing monthly checks to households, the Kerry-Lieberman approach relies on distributing valuable free allowances to utilities from 2013-2029, then requiring that utilities use the money "exclusively for the benefit of the ratepayers." But Congress won't be defining "benefit"; rather, 50 different state utility commissions will. Some will do a great job, but most will allow utilities to structure expensive energy efficiency programs that benefit shareholders more than ratepayers.

Wall Street

It appears that Wall Street may not have gotten everything it wanted - yet. The legislation appears to incorporate elements of S.1399, sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), which creates an Office of Carbon Market Oversight at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), giving the agency authority to regulate spot and futures emission markets. It requires all entities seeking to trade emissions derivatives to register and be approved by the CFTC, and all transactions must be cleared through a CFTC-regulated Carbon Clearing Organization. This is a good start to ensure that Wall Street plays no role in gambling on climate policy.

Danger remains, however, in creating carbon trading markets open to non-energy producers. Strong regulations in place today may be easily subverted tomorrow, leaving Wall Street positioned to control our climate future.

Conclusion

The Kerry-Lieberman bill represents a missed opportunity. By meeting behind closed doors, the lawmakers empowered corporate polluters to play an oversized role in influencing the legislation to the detriment of the climate and consumers. President Obama had it right when he successfully campaigned on a theme of making polluters pay and delivering benefits directly to households.

We need a bill that does not incentivize failed and dangerous technologies like nuclear power and does not enrich utilities at the expense of consumers.

[amborin]

10. White House Plans to Use Gulf Spill Disaster to Win Votes for Climate Bill:

White House Aims to Use Deepwater Disaster to Win Votes for US Climate Bill

US Senators prepare to roll out legislation after oil spill 'tragedy heightens interest in energy and wanting a different plan'

by Suzanne Goldenberg

Senators are set to take a last run at producing a climate and energy law tomorrow, betting on the spectre of environmental disaster raised by the BP oil spill to build support for a comprehensive overhaul of America's energy strategy.
But despite a strong push from the Obama administration, there are concerns the debate about the energy future could be lost in the wrangling about offshore oil drilling permits.

Independent Senator Joe Lieberman (L) and Democratic Senator John Kerry, pictured in 2009. The two Senators deliberately gave a boost to offshore drilling under a strategy that saw the Obama administration and the White House working to build support among Republicans and industries that stood to be affected by the new regulations. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Chip Somodevilla) The official roll-out by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman caps eight months of negotiations with political figures and industry executives aimed at getting broad support in Congress for shifting the economy away from coal and oil and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Climate legislation passed by the US Senate could unblock a major obstacle which prevented agreement on a binding global deal at last year's Copenhagen summit.

"We are more encouraged today that we can secure the necessary votes to pass this legislation this year in part because the last weeks have given everyone with a stake in this issue a heightened understanding that as a nation, we can no longer wait to solve this problem which threatens our economy, our security and our environment," Kerry and Lieberman said in a joint statement.

The White House is also trying to use the disaster to make a case for a bill. "This accident, this tragedy, is actually heightening people's interest in energy in this country and in wanting a different energy plan," Carol Browner, the ....."

commondreams.org

[Bluebear]

11. Like they care