Unions, Buffett, Robber Barons and Cronies Now Have Our Oil, Oh My
They tried it previously with Al Gore’s Climate Exchange. I’m still waiting for a thank you from environmentalists for stopping that scam.
Under President Jim Little, TWU has been a leader in advocating for major “New Deal” type investments in infrastructure modernization and repair, public transportation, energy conservation and climate protection as a means of putting people to work and laying the foundations of a more sustainable economic future for the United States. This is a transition that sound science and sound economics tell us we must make today, not in some far off future, in order to prevent irreversible harm to our planet’s climate, and to provide good jobs now for the millions of Americans who desperately need them. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would take us in the opposite direction, increasing our reliance on dirty bitumen sands oil and stalling critical efforts to create the jobs we need to transition to a more sustainable economy.The pipeline appeared to be on a fast track to approval, but thanks to the efforts of TWU and a handful of other unions allied with millions of climate justice activists, in November the State Department delayed its decision on the project, and President Obama has said that if Republicans again try to force him to make a premature decision by tying the pipeline’s fate to another payroll tax cut extension early in 2012, he’ll kill the project for good.
John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil used trains to help solidify the power of his trust. (A paper written by two professors on the history of Standard Oil and rail put it this way: "The charge leveled most consistently against Standard Oil is that it secured unfair competitive advantages by negotiating advantageous rates with the railroads over which it shipped crude from the 'Oil Regions' of Pennsylvania and Ohio to its Cleveland refineries and sent kerosene and other refined petroleum products to markets on the East Coast.")
In your current newsletter Phil submiited an item titled "
Unions, Buffett, Robber Barons and Cronies now have our oil, oh my.......
Perhaps you would like to read the following. It just might be possible
that Obama's advisors showed some backbone, for once. Not that I like Obama,
just want to keep the record straight.
Regards
David
Insider reveals concealed "error" in pipeline safety equipment that could
blow away the GOP's XL pipe dream
For Firedoglake
by Greg Palast
"They threatened me. Last night I got a call and they threatened me. If I
talked."
"Pig Man #2," a pipeline industry insider, had a good reason to be afraid.
He was about to blow the whistle on a fraud, information that could blow
away the XL Keystone Pipeline project.
His information: The software for the crucial piece of pipeline safety
equipment, the "Smart PIG," has a flaw known to the industry but concealed
from regulators.
****
Investigative reporter Greg Palast will join the Fire Dog Lake book salon
today at 5pm Eastern time to discuss his new book, Vultures' Picnic: in
Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores.
Palast is "twisted and maniacal" [Katherine Harris] and "The most important
reporter of our time." [The Guardian UK.]
****
The flaw allows cracks, leaks and corrosion to go undetected - and that
saves the industry billions of dollars in pipe replacements. But there's a
catch. Pipes with cracks and leaks can explode - and kill.
Federal law requires the oil and gas industry to run a PIG, a Pipeline
Inspection Gauge, through big oil and gas pipelines. The robot porker,
tethered to a GPS, beeps and boops as it rolls through, electronically
squealing when it finds dangers.
But whistleblowers told us at Channel 4 Dispatches (the "60 Minutes" of
Britain) that the software is deliberately calibrated to ignore or minimize
deadly problems. They know because they themselves worked on the software
design team.
This week, President Obama refused to issue a permit for the Keystone XL
Pipeline, but invited its owner, Trans-Canada, to re-apply. The GOP has gone
wild over Obama's hesitation, screeching that slowing the Canada-to-Houston
pipe for a full safety review is a jobs killer.
But it's the Pipeline that's the killer. Here's what Pig Man #2 told me, on
camera, his face in shadow:
When his team found the life-threatening flaw in the program, they
immediately created a software patch to fix it. But then their supervisor
ordered them to bury the fix and conceal the problem.
With the PIG calibrated to the danger sensitivity required by law, oil and
gas companies would have to dig up, inspect and replace pipe at a cost of
millions per mile. That's not what the oil companies wanted from their
contractor that designed the PIG program.
The programmers' bosses took no chances. "We had to sign nondisclosure
agreements." They were required to conceal "any problems of this sort or the
nature of the software we worked." It could not "be made public at all.
Under threat of lawsuit." Nice.
With the error left in place, he said, "People die."
Pig Man #2 was shaking a bit when he said it. On September 9, 2010, a gas
pipeline exploded, incinerating 13-year-old Janessa Greig, her mom and six
others.
A PIG - an honest PIG - would have caught the bad welds in the old pipe.
Trans-Canada says that Keystone XL won't contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer,
the Plains states' crucial water source. Keystone's permit application
boasts that we can rely on XL's "full pigging capability."
Sure. Last summer, an ExxonMobil pipeline burst and poisoned parts of the
Yellowstone River - only months after it had been "pigged."
The danger of a muzzled PIG goes beyond Keystone XL. New gas fields opened
by hydraulic fracking will require over 100,000 miles of new transmission
pipe.
This week, Newt Gingrich called Obama's temporary block on the XL Pipeline,
"stunningly stupid"; and Mitt Romney said Obama's decision threatened
America's "energy independence." (Mitt, the oil is from, uh, Canada.)
But the real question is, can we trust these pigs? And not just the ones in
the pipeline.
****
Greg Palast, whose reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight, is the
author of the New York Times bestsellers, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy"
and "Armed Madhouse." His latest book, Vultures' Picnic, includes Palast's
investigation of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, vulture capitalism, and
"the pig in the pipeline."