Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R)

In the first quarter of 2013, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) raised about $2.4 million for his gubernatorial campaign. Of that, a huge portion came from oil and gas interests — likely impressed by his long record of active climate denial.

A ThinkProgress review of data from the Virginia Public Access Project reveals that, by far, his largest donor in the period was the Republican Governors Association — a 527 political committee that works to aid Republican governors and gubernatorial candidates. While it is impossible to know the exact origin of the RGA’s $1 million contribution, the group receives a significant portion of its money from polluter interests.

In 2012, Koch Industries contributed more than $2 million, $800,000 from Devon Energy, and more than $639,000 from CONSOL Energy. According to a Center for Public Integrity investigation, oil and gas interests used the RGA to as a conduit for millions in donations in 2010, allowing them to circumvent campaign finance laws and invest heavily in electing candidates who supported fracking and other drilling expansion.

More directly, Cuccinelli accepted about $200,000 from energy companies and executives. These included:

1. Murray Energy Corporation, $50,000
2t. CONSOL Energy Inc., $25,000
2t. Dominion Political Action Committee (Dominion Resources, Inc.), $25,000
4t. Marvin Gilliam (retired VP of Cumberland Resources Corp.), $25,000
4t. Koch Industries Inc., $25,000
6t. American Electric Power Committee for Responsible Government (American Electric Power), $10,000
6t. William B. Holtzman (president and owner of Holtzman Oil), $10,000
6t. Range Resources Corporation, $10,000
9t. Thomas Farrell (CEO of Dominion Resources, Inc.), $5,000
9t. Michael G. Morris (President and CEO of American Electric Power), $5,000
9t. Baxter F. Phillips Jr. (an executive with Alpha Natural Resources, Inc.), $5,000
9t. Clyde E. Stacy (an executive with Pioneer Group/Rapoca Energy.), $5,000

Between these donations and the RGA’s funds, about half of Cuccinelli’s contributions over the reporting period were tied to oil, gas, and coal.

Their support is unsurprising given Cuccinelli’s record as Attorney General. As part of his efforts to cast doubt on climate-change science, he used his position to launch an inquisition against a former University of Virginia climate scientist. Citing possible “fraud against taxpayers,” Cuccinelli demanded the university provide him with a wide range of records relating Dr. Michael E. Mann’s grant applications.

A circuit judge and then the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the Attorney General was incorrect in believing he had the legal authority to undertake such a fishing expedition. When he blasted the ruling, newspapers blasted him for wasting Virginia tax dollars. He also failed in his federal lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas — a unanimous appeals court upheld the agency’s regulations as based on an “unambiguously correct” reading of the law.

Since his legal efforts for climate-change denial failed, he often relies on mockery, asking audiences to exhale carbon dioxide in unison, during his speeches, to annoy the EPA .

According to Greenpeace, he also worked with coal companies to roll back Virginia’s clean energy program. In the “energy” section of his campaign website, Cuccinelli says that we “need oil, natural gas, and coal to power our homes, cars, and economy and Virginia could be doing more to provide that to the world while growing job opportunities for our middle class.” To get that, he says, Virginia should safely take advantage of “all of the resources” it has on- and off-shore, “with as little government intervention as possible.”

President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2014 would eliminate $39 billion of special tax breaks for Big Oil companies over the next decade as part of comprehensive business tax reform. These companies earned billions of dollars in recent years due to high oil and gasoline prices and do not need additional support from taxpayers.

These tax breaks emerged over the past 100 years to help the then-nascent industry develop, and they relieved the oil and gas industry of $466 billion in tax payments to the federal treasury between 1918 through 2009, according to DBL Investors. Now that the oil and gas industry is fully developed and mature, President Obama’s budget would end this century of largesse.

The five largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — earned a combined total of $255 billion in 2011 and 2012, largely a result of higher oil prices. Meanwhile, these companies are producing less oil, have $72 billion in cash reserves, and are using one-quarter of their profits to buy back their own stock to enrich their largest shareholders (see Table 1). Reuters reported last year that Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil — the three largest American oil companies — paid half or less of the standard corporate tax rate. President Obama’s budget recognizes that oil companies no longer need tax relief.

In contrast, the House of Representatives would continue to provide tax subsidies for one of the richest industries in the world. It passed an FY 2014 budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) that retains these existing special tax preferences and provides yet another tax break on top of them. What’s more, the House budget cuts the corporate tax rate by nearly one-third, which would provide more than $2 billion annually in additional tax relief to the five largest oil companies.

The American Petroleum Institute, or API, serves as Big Oil’s lobbying arm and is spending tens of millions of dollars on ads and lobbying to pressure Congress to retain these special tax breaks. API equates eliminating special tax breaks with tax increases, when in actuality such legislation would simply make Big Oil pay its fair share of taxes. Economists recognize that tax breaks are simply federal government spending through the tax code, which also contributes to the budget deficit.

Read more

Twice a year, a group of experts release a ranked list of the world’s most powerful computers called TOP500. It is likely that the new list in June will have a new member of the Top 10 of the Top 500: a computer dubbed Pangea. Its output is is 2.3 petaflops. A petaflop is a quadrillion “floating-point operations per second.” Today’s desktop computers deal in gigaflops, or billions.

The system is the fastest commercially-owned computer in the world. The other faster computers on TOP500′s list are owned by governments or academic institutions and therefore used for research.

Pangea is owned by Total SA, the fifth-largest oil and gas company in the world. So the supercomputer will not be changing the future of health care IT like former Jeopardy champion Watson or revolutionizing climate projections and weather research like supercomputers at NCAR and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It will be searching for oil and gas, according to Reuters.

Pangea helped analyze seismic data from Total’s Kaombo project in Angola in just nine days, instead of the four and a half months it would have taken with its previous computer, Philippe Malzac, IT director at Total’s Exploration division, told Reuters:

Total trumps British rival BP with the 2.3-petaflop supercomputer. BP said last December it was building a 2 petaflop supercomputing facility in Houston, Texas.

“Our competitors are also working on these kind of algorithms, but we think this is giving us a head start,” Malzac said.

The price of the system is undisclosed, but it will cost nearly $20 million per year just to run Pangea. The technological achievement may be impressive, but the reality is that oil and gas reserves are finite and getting more expensive to extract, while renewable fuels like wind and solar are getting cheaper to utilize.

Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, a lead author on the third IPCC Assessment Report, explained last month in Slate that it is getting harder and more expensive to squeeze oil out of the ground.
Read more

This weekend, Senate Democrats passed a federal budget for Fiscal Year 2014. In order to do so, Senate rules allow for consideration of any amendment that is brought to the floor. Senators introduced hundreds of amendments, which resulted in a “vote-o-rama.”

Many conservatives offered amendments to undermine existing and potential public health safeguards, particularly those that would attempt to reduce climate pollution. Below are seven deadly amendments to curtail protection for our children’s health and heritage. As usual, these conservatives are focused on protecting dirty energy companies profits at the expense of public health.

• Blunt #261: This amendment would have blocked future legislation to impose a carbon tax or fee to reduce industrial carbon pollution and raise revenue. Specifically, the amendment would create a “point-of-order” against any carbon tax measure that could only be overcome with a three-fifths vote of legislators. While it would have been a mostly symbolic move, the fossil fuel industry’s friends in the Senate are reiterating their opposition to government action on climate pollution. However, the impacts of climate change have already been felt across the country — in 2011 and 2012, the United States suffered from 25 climate related storms, floods, heat waves, drought, and wildfires that each caused at least $1 billion in damages, with a total price tag of $188 billion. The Blunt amendment would allow these damages and costs to grow unchecked. Result: FAILED 53-46
• Coats #514: This amendment would have struck down key Clean Air Act protections by authorizing the President to exempt any industrial facility from complying with air toxics standards for two-year periods. Essentially, the amendment would have given a free pass to coal-burning power plants from EPA’s 2011 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which were put in place due to the well-documented health risks of mercury, arsenic, and the millions of pounds of additional hazardous chemicals. Methylmercury from coal pollution accumulates in fish, poisoning pregnant women and small children. Mercury can harm children’s developing brains, including effects on memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills. Upgrades to the aged and dirty coal plants will also significantly reduce harmful particle pollution, preventing hundreds of thousands of illnesses and up to 17,000 premature deaths each year. “The ‘monetized’ value of these and certain other health benefits would amount to $37–90 billion per year,” the Environmental Protection Agency determined. Republicans are once again trying to protect the dirty energy industry over our children’s health. Result: FAILED 46-53
• Alexander #516: This would “repeal … the wind production tax credit.” The PTC provides a tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity to encourage investment in clean wind energy. A CAP analysis determined that “wind power helps lower electricity prices.” Along with state renewable portfolio or electricity standards, the PTC has enabled “the wind industry … to lower the cost of wind power by more than 90% [and] provide power to the equivalent of over 12 million American homes.” A Navigant Consulting analysis predicted that eliminating the PTC would cost 37,000 jobs. Some argue that we should end tax provisions for clean technologies, including wind. However, this ignores the fact that the oil and gas industries have received $80 in support for every $1 for wind and other renewable energy sources over the past 95 years. In addition, the Alexander amendment would ignore the annual $4 billion in special tax breaks for big oil companies. Result: Did not come to the floor for a vote.
• Inhofe #359: This amendment would “[prohibit] further greenhouse gas regulations for the purpose of addressing climate change.” This would have prevented the EPA from enforcing the Clean Air Act as interpreted by the Supreme Court, which ruled that EPA is required to regulate carbon and other climate change pollutants that endanger public health and welfare. EPA proposed the first carbon pollution standard for new power plants in 2012. After it is finalized, EPA must set limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants — responsible for two-fifths of U.S. carbon pollution. Such reductions are essential to stave off the worst impacts of climate change. Result: FAILED 47-52

Read more

By a vote of 221-207, Republicans passed Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget for the third consecutive year. The House Republican budget slashes funding for poverty programs and dramatically transforms Medicare for seniors, all while it grants tax breaks to special interests like Big Oil.

Ryan’s budget could mean a $2.3 billion additional tax break for the five biggest oil companies, according to a Center for American Progress analysis. Republicans would still maintain the industry’s $4 billion annual tax breaks at the same time they slash research and investment in clean energy.

According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, Republicans who voted for Ryan’s budget have received more than $38 million from oil and gas over their careers. On average, the “yeas” received over four times the career oil cash as the “nays”:

Career contributions:

221 Yeas (221 Republicans) – $38,056,766

207 Nays (197 Democrats and 10 Republicans) – $7,830,295

The 221 members who voted yes received more than $12,400,000 in the 2012 cycle alone, compared to nearly $2 million for the no votes. The vote makes the 113th Congress no different from the 112th, when House members voting for a polluter energy package received $38.6 million.

Big Oil hardly needs the help from taxpayers. While consumers faced record gas prices in 2012, the oil industry earned an outstanding $118 billion profit (and a trillion dollars over a decade).

The planet we live on is valuable only as a repository for natural resources, according to Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX). Stockman, a lawmaker best known for bringing Ted Nugent to the State of the Union and opposing the Violence Against Women Act because it protected “change-gender” individuals, went on an extended Twitter rant Thursday afternoon accusing environmentalists of hating science.

His commentary included several dubious assertions about the planet:

 

The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.

— Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013

There is reportedly $1 trillion in oil off the coast of California. But liberal hatred of science and human progress keeps them bankrupt

— Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013

 

The offshore drilling moratorium Stockman refers to largely does not cover the majority of federal land. The moratorium was originally imposed after a massive oil spill off of the coast of Santa Barbara caused three million gallons of oil to leak into the ocean.

Most people probably believe the best thing about the Earth is that it has a stable biosphere and climate that sustains life — unique among all the planets we have observed. And while Stockman asserts that liberals hate science, he refers to the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change — something that could kill millions of people in the next two decades alone and ultimately destroy our livable climate — as “the new fad thing.”

Stockman’s number one source of corporate campaign donations in the 2012 election was the oil and gas industry.

Royal Dutch Shell drilling rig Kulluk aground off Alaska 1/2/13. Image: U.S. Coast Guard

Kiley Kroh and Howard Marano via CAP.

In order to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change, enormous fossil-fuel reserves will need to remain in the ground untouched.

2012 was supposed to be a banner year for Royal Dutch Shell, as the company planned to embark on the first Arctic offshore exploratory drilling activity in decades and set itself up to make billions of dollars prospecting for oil in the far-flung region off Alaska’s North Slope. But that’s not how things turned out.

Instead, beginning with efforts to prepare for operations, the company experienced one setback after another. Shell struggled to meet the government’s safety requirements for its oil spill response equipment, experiencing multiple technical failures and permit violations. Mother Nature weighed in and kept the drilling sites choked with sea ice. Yet despite these setbacks and others, Shell received permits from the federal government in August to begin preparatory drilling, albeit not deep enough to actually strike oil in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

The coup de grace came on New Year’s Eve when Shell’s Kulluk rig ran aground near Kodiak, Alaska — a fiasco that required a 500-plus person response effort, led by the Coast Guard, working for more than a week in dangerous conditions to secure the rig. This final calamity prompted the Obama administration to launch a high-level 60-day review of Shell’s entire Arctic drilling program, and after assessing its equipment and determining that both Arctic drilling rigs were too damaged to operate in 2012, caused Shell to announce on February 27 that it would not seek to drill in the remote and challenging region in 2013.

In presenting the results of the Department of the Interior’s review on March 14, outgoing Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar admitted, “The government still has a lot to learn. The Arctic is a very difficult environment to operate in. … Shell is one of the most resource-capable companies in the world (and) they encountered a whole host of problems in trying to operate up there.” The review concluded that Shell would have to develop a “comprehensive plan” for its operations before it would be allowed to move forward. This begs the question: What exactly did the permit process consist of before all these mishaps?

Shell spent seven years and an estimated $5 billion getting ready for its chance to tap the reserves of fossil fuels thought to be stashed beneath the Arctic seabed, and the result was irrefutably a failure. Neither the oil and gas industry nor its regulators are adequately prepared for Arctic offshore drilling operations.

Furthermore, climate change is already wreaking havoc in the region, melting it at an alarming rate and setting off a domino effect that will ripple through the entire global system. The trends so plainly on display in the Arctic are merely a preview of what awaits the rest of the planet if serious action isn’t taken soon to aggressively curb our carbon emissions. If we allow corporate interests to tap the reserves of additional fossil fuels that have been exposed by the rapid onset of global climate change, we’re missing the clear message about the future of our environment on a planetary scale. Slowing the devastating steamroll of climate change requires slashing the amount of greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere, not opening up vast new sources of carbon.

In President Barack Obama’s most recent State of the Union address, he reiterated his commitment to addressing the urgency of climate change for the sake of future generations. The president’s will, however, is matched by the utter intransigence of Congress and what has been called the most antienvironmental House of Representatives in history. Looking forward, the Obama administration will face some big decisions early on in the second term: the fate of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, regulating pollution from existing coal-fired power plants, and whether or not to move forward with offshore drilling in the fragile Arctic.

America’s Arctic outer continental shelf will be undisturbed by drilling rigs in 2013, but the battle over oil and gas exploration in its frigid waters is far from over. Shell made clear that it sees this latest announcement to pause operations as a hiatus, not a cancellation of its plans to tap the Arctic Ocean’s reserves. Marvin Odum, Shell’s director of Upstream Americas, said, “Our decision to pause in 2013 will give us time to ensure the readiness of all our equipment and people following the drilling season in 2012.”

The Obama administration will also need to decide on ConocoPhillips’ applications to begin exploratory drilling in 2014. The company said its plans remain on track and it will submit remaining information to the Department of the Interior this spring, despite Shell’s problem-filled year.

As CAP’s John Podesta and Carol Browner articulated in a recent Bloomberg op-ed, Shell’s string of mishaps and failures provide overwhelming evidence that the oil and gas industry is not prepared for the enormous challenge and incalculable risk that accompanies any operations in the Arctic. In light of that reality, they wrote, “The Obama administration shouldn’t issue any new permits to Shell this year and should suspend all action on other companies’ applications to drill in this remote and unpredictable region.”

Below we examine in further detail the risks and potential consequences of offshore drilling in the Arctic region.

Read more

Earth Day is April 22, and today is the last day children in Utah can send in their submissions for the state-sponsored Earth Day poster contest lauding fossil fuel production.

This year’s theme is “Where Would WE Be Without Oil, Gas & Mining?”

Last year’s theme was “How Do YOU Use Oil, Gas, and Mining?”

The contest is literally made possible by fossil fuel interests. This year’s sponsors include the Salt Lake Petroleum Section of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining. Last year’s sponsor list was longer, including Arch Coal, Anadarko Petroleum, and Rio Tinto/Kennecott Utah Copper.

Any child in Utah between Kindergarten and sixth grade is eligible. The contest’s primary objective is “to improve students’ and the public’s awareness of the important role that oil, gas, and mining play in our everyday lives.” Last year’s contest winners made posters that detailed how dependent we have become on fossil fuels. To their credit, the grand prize winner detailed both ways we use products created by fossil fuels and ways we can reduce our consumption.

The children were not asked to make posters about the climate impacts caused by those same fossil fuels: drought, wildfires, and warmer winters.

Some parents are not happy, as this letter to the editor by Colby Poulson makes clear:

Why is the state backing an “Earth Day” contest that celebrates fossil fuels, while completely ignoring the adverse effects that their use and extraction can too often have on our air quality, water quality, public lands and the other organisms we share the world with? Shouldn’t Earth Day be about championing things that can help reverse the negative impact of our dependence on fossil fuels?

Frankly, I’m disgusted that the state is backing propaganda like this in our schools.

Why allow a contest like this to run two years in a row? The state could be taking its cues from its Congressional delegation, one of whom runs the House Science subcommittee and denies the reality of human-caused climate change. Or its state legislature, which in 2010 adopted a resolution doubting the reality of climate change.

Perhaps they missed the Salt Lake Tribune‘s editorial, “A killing climate: Global warming unchecked,” or those Utah scientists who reported:

Based on extensive scientific research, there is very high confidence that human-generated increases in greenhouse gas concentrations are responsible for most of the global warming observed during the past 50 years. It is very unlikely that natural climate variations alone, such as changes in the brightness of the sun or carbon dioxide emissions from volcanoes, have produced this recent warming. …

Utah is projected to warm more than the average for the entire globe and the expected consequences of this warming are fewer frost days, longer growing seasons, and more heat waves.

Appropriately, the winners of the Earth Day poster contest will be notified on April Fool’s Day.

Colorado's North Fork Valley, sitting on top of fossil fuels.

If an oil and gas company has proposed to drill on federal lands near you, shouldn’t you be able to find out the name of that company?

Common sense says, “you bet.” But common sense is sometimes a stranger at the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is fighting a legal battle in federal court on behalf of its pals in the oil and gas industry who want that information kept under wraps.

A federal judge has ruled against the BLM and in favor of a western Colorado citizens group, Citizens for a Healthy Community, that has been fighting a proposed 20,000 acre oil and gas lease sale in the rural North Fork Valley and thinks it ought to be able find out who the companies are that want to drill their backyard.

But the BLM has another month to decide whether to appeal the decision by U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch. In both this Colorado case, which has national implications, and as it finishes up a new set of rules on hydraulic fracturing on public lands, the BLM should come down firmly on the side of more rather than less public information.

The decision on whether to appeal could prove to be a critical juncture for the Colorado BLM and its director Helen Hankins, who until some recent reversals have been earning a well-deserved reputation for being too cozy with the oil and gas industry they are supposed to regulate.

As the Checks and Balances Project recently noted:

Since assuming her post in 2010, Dir. Hankins has executed her job as if she were a real estate agent for oil and gas companies. She has proposed allowing drilling on lands near national parks, Denver’s watershed in South Park, agricultural communities … anywhere that industry asked for it.

In addition to the controversy over proposed drilling in the North Fork Valley, a prime area for organic agriculture and viniculture, Hankins has fueled protests with other plans to drill near Mesa Verde National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, and parts of a 1,000 square mile region of Colorado called South Park that supplies municipal water to the cities of Denver and Aurora.  While decisions on those plans have been deferred in the face of vigorous protests, they could still be revived in future lease sales.

The public’s frustration with the Colorado BLM office was on display last month at meetings of the agency’s resource advisory councils. In comments delivered to the BLM, some 2,000 South Park residents and more than 11,000 Colorado residents called on the BLM to do more careful planning and evaluation of oil and gas impacts on wildlife, recreation economies, and water supplies before making drilling decisions.

In the court case, the BLM has argued that oil and gas companies that nominate federal land parcels for development should not be identified because it would give their competitors an unfair advantage in subsequent lease sales.

In his decision, Matsch reminded the BLM what a “public sale process” means, that competition helps get “a fair price for a lease of publicly-owned minerals.” The BLM ought to consider its responsibilities to the public rather than the industry and take a pass on any appeal.

Tom Kenworthy is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Winterization installs energy-efficient windows

The recently released Senate and House budget resolutions for fiscal year 2014 reflect diametrically opposed visions of American’s energy and climate futures. The Senate budget invests in clean energy technologies that reduce carbon pollution responsible for climate change. The House budget, on the other hand, ignores climate change and defunds clean energy technologies.

The proposed Senate budget resolution — “Foundation for Growth: Restoring the Promise of American Opportunity,” authored by Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) — would boost the United States into the 21st century by investing in the clean energy industry, which will be a $1.9 trillion market from 2012 through 2018. In addition, the Senate resolution would attack the carbon pollution that is responsible for climate change.

Michael Linden, Director for Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress, noted that Sen. Murray’s overall budget “would promote immediate job creation, lay the foundations for future broad-based growth, and responsibly pursue deficit reduction.” The Murray budget’s funding proposals would also help address the fundamental challenges of clean energy development and slow climate change.
Meanwhile, the House budget resolution — “The Path to Prosperity: A Responsible, Balanced Budget,” written by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) — would continue investment in the dirty fossil fuels of the past while disinvesting in clean energy. And it ignores the looming disruptive and expensive threat of climate change.

Reducing oil dependence and carbon pollution from transportation

Traffic congestion in the United States, partly due to damaged roads and inadequate access to public transit, wastes 2.9 billion gallons of gasoline annually, or nearly 196,000 barrels of oil per day, according to the latest Urban Mobility Report published by the Texas A&M University Transportation Institute. The study also estimated that “additional carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions attributed to traffic congestion: 56 billion pounds—about 380 pounds per auto commuter.”

Sen. Murray’s budget would eliminate some of this oil waste and carbon pollution by investing $50 billion in “repairing our nation’s highest priority deteriorating transportation infrastructure … [including] fixing crumbling roads, bridges … [and] updating our mass transit.” Her budget would also provide “$10 billion to create an infrastructure bank that will leverage investment from the private sector” for additional road and transit projects.

Conversely, the Ryan budget would increase oil use and carbon pollution by slashing investments in transportation below current levels.

Fighting climate change and investing in clean energy technology

Read more