Everybody hates Trump’s coal and nuclear bailout plan

ThinkProgress

Everybody hates Trump’s coal and nuclear bailout plan

Except the president’s favorite coal industry executive and a bankrupt nuke company.

Mark Hand June 7, 2018

A truck delivers coal to a Pacificorp’s coal-fired power plant on October 9, 2017. Credit: George Frey/Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s fixation on bailing out the coal and nuclear power industries has proved confounding to renewable energy advocates and climate activists. But other sectors of the energy industry, including one that Trump purportedly wants to help, are also questioning the need for the radical intervention in energy markets proposed last week.

The White House issued a statement last Friday that said Trump has directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to “prepare immediate steps to stop the loss” of what the administration described as “fuel-secure power facilities,” a thinly veiled reference to coal and nuclear power plants. Also last Friday, Bloomberg News released a leaked draft proposal from the Energy Department that cited national security concerns as a reason for allowing Trump to require regional grid operators or electric utilities to purchase enough power from coal and nuclear plants to prevent them from closing.

But most of the energy industry concedes there’s no emergency that requires the federal government to intervene on behalf of coal and nuclear power.

Speaking earlier this week at an industry conference, Chris Crane, the CEO of Exelon Corp, the nation’s largest owner of nuclear plants, said the retirement of coal and nuclear plants is not a grid emergency that warrants urgent intervention from the federal government.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), one of the president’s biggest industry supporters, also opposes Trump’s directive. The powerful oil and gas lobbying group has joined a diverse coalition that includes wind, solar, and energy storage trade groups to fight any proposed bailout of the coal and nuclear industries that may come from Trump’s Department of Energy.

The renewable energy industry worries about the bailout plan’s potential negative impact on its finances. Investment banks and private equity firms may become skittish about investing in energy sectors that are not on the receiving end of Trump’s handouts.

“It’s a very confused and conflicted and backward-leaning policy that is finding support in no quarters apart from the coal industry,” John Morton, senior fellow at the Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council, told ThinkProgress. “It seems like a Hail Mary pass and a dangerous political gesture at best. There’s no support for it, not simply from the renewables industry but from most parts of the nuclear industry.”

Trump plan to bail out coal industry punishes red states the most

Morton was one of the speakers at an event on Thursday in Washington, D.C. — that offered a status update on the global move to a clean energy economy — sponsored by the Atlantic Council, the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century. Founded in 1961, the Atlantic Council is a think tank that focuses on international affairs.

In his interview with ThinkProgress, Morton asked why the Trump administration would seek to interfere in an electric power marketplace that is functioning fairly efficiently. “There is only one answer,” Morton said in response to his own question. “And it’s pure politics and it’s pure politics to a relatively small base. In the long run, it’s going to set us back in this race to a clean energy future.”

Tom Kiernan, CEO of of the American Wind Energy Association, pointed out at the event that despite claims of a pending catastrophe, the nation’s electric grid operators “are on the record saying that the orderly phaseout of some of these very expensive coal and nuclear plants does not constitute an emergency.”

Kiernan emphasized that coal and nuclear plants do not necessarily improve grid resilience, even though they have onsite fuel supply. During the polar vortex of early 2014, huge amounts of coal-fired plants stopped operating due in large part to frozen equipment.

Of the approximately 19,500 megawatts of capacity lost due to cold weather conditions, more than 17,700 megawatts was due to frozen equipment, according to a report on the polar vortex issued by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. There were also reports of frozen onsite supplies of coal that forced coal-fired generating facilities to shut down.

In 2011, a terrible cold snap in Texas led to frozen coal supplies and prevented equipment on some coal plants from operating properly, forcing coal units to shut down.

More recently, Hurricane Harvey knocked out two coal-fired power plants in Texas “because that wonderful onsite fuel was flooded,” Kiernan pointed out. Operators had to shut down a few wind farms in Texas due to tropical storm-strength winds. But other wind farms “powered right through” the storm, producing large amounts of electricity from the high wind speeds, he said.

Nuclear plants also often face unscheduled outages due to equipment failures or extreme weather, calling into question whether their continued operation creates a more resilient electric grid.

“The notion of promoting nuclear power on the basis of resilience is playing to its weakness,” argued Greg Wetstone, president and CEO of ACORE. “The one thing that history has demonstrated about nuclear power is that it is not resilient, and you can talk to the people at Fukushima about that.”

Morton also fears the Trump administration’s pro-fossil fuel policies are skewing policymakers’ views on renewable energy. The transition to a low-carbon economy is occurring at an extraordinarily fast clip, and one that is faster than most people realize, he told the audience.

David Livingston: “Making policy without good data is inefficient, sub-optimal and, when comes to climate and clean energy, dangerous.” Today at @AtlanticCouncil , @ACGlobalEnergy‘s John Morton kicks off our US launch of the @ren21 Global Renewables Status Report 2018, in partnership with @ACORE

There is “a dangerous gap currently between the perception of where we are in this transition to a low-carbon economy and the reality of how quickly that transition is occurring,” he said.

“If the U.S. pretends that we are playing in a world in which renewables is 2 percent of annual new energy installations and not 70 percent, which it was last year, you make a very different set of policy decisions about how to position your industry,” he said.

The lack of awareness of renewable energy’s rapid growth — and a bias toward fossil fuels — is ingrained in the thinking of Trump administration officials.

But Morton also cautioned that the current trajectory of the clean energy movement is still not occurring fast enough. “We’re not on a 2-degree pathway [set] in the Paris agreement goals,” he said. “And, of course, there are many people, myself included, that agree a 2-degree pathway is insufficient to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change.”

Those who do support Trump’s directive last week have telling motivations.

Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray, one of the few supporters of Trump’s bailout plan for the coal-fired generation, revealed the real reason he supports the initiative in an interview on Fox News Business on Thursday.

He pointed to the fact that coal’s share of the nation’s electric generation capacity is projected to drop from its peak of 58 percent three decades ago to 27 percent by 2020. This will undoubtedly have a negative impact on Murray Energy’s domestic revenues, even though the company is one of the most financially stable coal companies in the nation.

Top energy regulator points to problematic wartime language in Trump’s coal bailout plan

On Wednesday, E&E News shed new light on the close relationship between Murray and the Trump administration. The news service reported that Murray presented Trump administration officials with half a dozen draft executive orders in 2017 aimed at exiting the Paris climate agreement and reducing coal regulations.

Another one of the few supporters of Trump’s plan is FirstEnergy Solutions, the bankrupt nuclear plant-owning company that petitioned Perry earlier this year to use the emergency powers of the Federal Power Act to order regional grid operator PJM to bail out a long list of nuclear and coal power plants. At the time, NRG Energy, one of FirstEnergy’s competitors in the region, described the request as a “manufactured crisis.”

A new filing in FirstEnergy Solutions’ bankruptcy case detailed how lobbyists at Akin Gump, a powerful law and lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., spent hundreds of hours in April working on a renewed campaign to secure bailouts for the utility’s coal and nuclear power plants from the Trump administration and state lawmakers in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Emails indicate Pruitt tried to recruit oil execs for EPA jobs

The Hill

Emails indicate Pruitt tried to recruit oil execs for EPA jobs

By Morgan Gstalter June 25, 2018

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt tried to recruit top executives from oil and gas trading groups to jobs within the agency, according to emails obtained through an Freedom of Information Act request.

The emails, by the Sierra Club, show that oil company ConocoPhillips reached out to the EPA after Pruitt met with the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) board of directors.

Kevin Avery, a manager of federal government affairs at ConocoPhillips wrote to then-EPA aide Samantha Travis on March 27, 2017, describing Pruitt’s recruitment “plea.”

“I understand that Administrator Pruitt met with the API executives last week and he made a plea for candidates to fill some of the regional director positions within the agency,” Avery wrote in an email. “One of our employees has expressed interest. He is polishing up his resume. Where does he need to send it?”

A few days later, on April 4, Avery emailed Travis again with the resume of a company employee as well as a friend of one of the executives.

The resumes were reportedly never sent to the EPA.

“We are not aware of that ‘recruiting plea’ but EPA has sought a diverse range of individuals to serve in the Agency and help advance President Trump’s agenda of environmental stewardship and regulatory certainty,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill.

However, Michael Brune, executive director of Sierra Club, blasted Pruitt’s attempt to outsource the position.

“This is Scott Pruitt trying to outsource his job to protect our air and water to the exact people responsible for polluting them. Pruitt’s corrupt tenure at EPA has been a dereliction of the duties he swore to uphold. He’s gotten sweetheart deals from corporate lobbyists and then turned around and pushed their agenda, all while trying to enrich himself at the expense of taxpayers,” Brune said in a statement.

Dozens of CEOs from the oil industry were in attendance for the March 23 dinner at the Trump International Hotel.

Avery offered up the resumes of Brad Thomas and Kim Estes shortly after the dinner, according to Buzzfeed News.

Avery praised Thomas in the email as someone who is “very knowledge on a host of EPA regulations and policies” in Alaska, where he worked for ConocoPhillips.

“The other candidate is recommended by our Vice President for State and Federal Government Affairs, John Dabbar,” Avery wrote in the email. “He is a personal friend of Mr. Estes’ and would be willing to give you any additional information you might need.”

Estes’s consulting company, the Estes Group LLC, works on environmental health and safety issues and emergency response in California.

Estes confirmed to the outlet that he his name had been submitted as a candidate to possible lead the EPA’s Region 9 office in San Francisco.

Dabbar did tell him about the position but Estes said he never submitted a formal application or have an in-person interview.

Why are migrants fleeing their home countries?

USA Today

Thousands of immigrants pass through the Southern border. Why are they fleeing their home countries?

Christal Hayes, USA Today June 25, 2018

Government provided video shows more than 1,100 people inside metal cages in a warehouse that’s divided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children. USA TODAY

Every day thousands of migrants pass through the U.S. Southern border.

(Photo John Moore, Getty Images)

Some travel as far as 1,000 miles, walking through deserts and carrying water jugs and the small possessions they need to start a new life. It is a perilous journey that isn’t for the faint of heart: More than 400 died trying to make it to the U.S. last year, according to the United Nations’ migration agency.

So why are they risking their lives and the possibility of being separated from family?

While Mexico is the country most-often talked about in the immigration debate, many of those crossing the border are traveling from Central American countries synonymous with corruption, crime and poverty. These root problems have been a driving force for years for immigrants to make the journey to the U.S.

President Donald Trump enacted a “zero-tolerance” policy when it came to those trying to cross the border illegally, hoping to dissuade migrants. He’s also talked about ending aid to already impoverished countries where these migrants are traveling from to reduce the numbers of travelers.

But that hasn’t stopped immigrants. While totals on borders crossings are down, the number of families coming through the Southwest border jumped six-fold in May to 9,485 compared with the same month in 2017. There are now an estimated 11 undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

More: Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ border prosecutions led to time served, $10 fees

Since October, more than 58,000 have arrived, the bulk from Guatemala, followed by Honduras and El Salvador.

While Republicans and Democrats debate what to do with those seeking a new life in America and future immigration policies, those making the trek have several key motivations.

Violence

It doesn’t take much to understand why those living in the so-called Northern Triangle countries — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — would want to leave.

El Salvador was the murder capital of the world with a staggering rate of 104 people per 100,000 in 2015. The country still has a higher homicide rate than all countries suffering armed conflict except for Syria, according to the most recent global study by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey.

Similarly, residents of Honduras live in fear because of extortion and criminals demanding a “war tax,” which, if not paid, could mean death.

More: Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy sparks outrage in Central America

More: Families fleeing violence keep coming to US illegally despite Trump zero tolerance policy

“This isn’t about immigrants chasing the American dream anymore,” Sofia Martinez, a Guatemala-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, told the Associated Press. “It’s about escaping a death sentence.”

Those fleeing Mexico also are hoping to get away from the violence.

Georgina Ayala Mendoza, her husband and their three kids fled Michoacán, a state along the west coast of Mexico, on May 3. One day earlier, gunmen — Ayala believes they were members of a cartel — entered her mother-in-law’s home and killed two of her husband’s brothers, she said.

More: Along California-Mexico border, more Mexicans fleeing violence seek asylum

She worried the cartel would try to recruit her husband to work with them — or face the same fate as his brothers.

In March, the U.S. State Department listed Michoacán as one of five Mexican states to which U.S. citizens should not travel. Violence in the country has been on the rise, and last year more homicides were recorded than in any year since the government started tracking them, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Poverty

More than half of all residents in Guatemala and Honduras are living in poverty, according to CNN, which cited data from the World Bank Group.

Honduras is considered the second-poorest country in Central America where 60 percent of its population is in poverty. The conditions are echoed in Guatemala, where even though it has the largest economy out of other Central American countries, poverty rates have also nearly hit 60 percent.

Border Patrol detains immigrant families crossing US-Mexico border

Border Patrol agents take a group of migrant families to a safer place to be transported after intercepting them near McAllen, Texas, on June 19, 2018. More than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents at the border as a result of the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy, creating a deepening crisis for the government on how to care for the children. Courtney Sacco, Caller-Times via USA TODAY NETWORK

Border Patrol detains immigrant families crossing US-Mexico border

The president’s crackdown on illegal migrants could end up worsening the security and economic situation in Central America, Martinez said, leading even more people to flee in the future.

Earlier this year, Trump ended temporary protected status for 57,000 Hondurans and 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants, some of whom have been living in the U.S. for decades. If deported, they’ll return to countries ill-equipped to absorb them and generating too few jobs to provide opportunities to work.

Gangs and drug cartels

Lawlessness rules many of these countries where immigrants flee, and drug cartels, gangs and bribes are part of everyday life that runs similar to war zones in some areas.

The groups enforce informal curfews, demand taxes and force recruitment on young people.

Last year, 35 bus drivers, passengers and fare collectors were killed while riding buses into gang-controlled neighborhoods, while those that were spared a bullet were extorted to the tune of $19 million, according to the Salvadoran public transport owners’ association.

More: DOJ: Trump’s immigration crackdown ‘diverting’ resources from drug cases

The number of people displaced in the nation of 6.5 million by turf battles between El Savador’s two biggest gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, skyrocketed last year to 296,000, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

In Mexico, the government has been fighting drug cartels for years, which when combined with the battle between cartels over territory has left behind a trail of destruction and blood. Homicide rates have broken records recently, which many believe is tied to the arrest and extradition of former drug boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

His arrest caused an instability in Mexico’s drug trade and allowed other groups to move in, thus causing a behind-the-scenes battle for territory and the killings of both criminals and innocents throughout the country.

Immigrant families in the spotlight

An immigrant child looks out the window of a bus as protesters try to block a bus carrying migrant children out of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Detention Center on June 23, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. Dozens of protesters blocked the bus from leaving the center resulting in scuffles with police and Border Patrol agents before the bus retreated back to the center. Spencer Platt, Getty Images

BNSF: Estimated 230,000 gallons of oil spilled in derailment

Orlando Sentinel

BNSF: Estimated 230,000 gallons of oil spilled in derailment

Associated Press, Doon, Iowa June 24, 2018

Des Moines Register

An estimated 230,000 gallons (870,619 liters) of crude oil spilled into floodwaters in the northwestern corner of Iowa following a train derailment, a railroad official said Saturday.

BNSF spokesman Andy Williams said 14 of 32 oil tanker cars just south of Doon in Lyon County leaked oil into surrounding floodwaters from the swollen Little Rock River. Williams had earlier said 33 oil cars had derailed.

Nearly half the spill — an estimated 100,000 gallons (378,530 liters) — had been contained with booms near the derailment site and an additional boom placed approximately 5 miles (8.05 kilometers) downstream, Williams said. Skimmers and vacuum trucks were being used to remove the oil. Crews will then use equipment to separate the oil from the water.

“In addition to focusing on the environmental recovery, ongoing monitoring is occurring for any potential conditions that could impact workers and the community and so far have found no levels of concern,” Williams said.

Officials still hadn’t determined the cause of Friday morning’s derailment, but a disaster proclamation issued by Gov. Kim Reynolds for Lyon and three other counties placed the blame on rain-fueled flooding. Reynolds visited the derailment site Saturday afternoon as part of a tour of areas hit by recent flooding.

Some officials have speculated that floodwaters eroded soil beneath the train track. The nearby Little Rock River rose rapidly after heavy rain Wednesday and Thursday.

A major part of the cleanup work includes building a temporary road parallel to the tracks to allow in cranes that can remove the derailed and partially-submerged oil cars. Williams said officials hoped to reach the cars Saturday.

The train was carrying tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to Stroud, Oklahoma, for ConocoPhillips. ConocoPhillips spokesman Daren Beaudo said each tanker can hold more than 25,000 gallons (20,817 imperial gallons) of oil.

Beaudo said Saturday that the derailed oil cars were a model known as DOT117Rs, indicating they were newer or had been retrofitted to be safer and help prevent leaks in the event of an accident.

The derailment also caused concern downstream, including as far south as Omaha, Nebraska, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the derailment site. The spill reached the Rock River, which joins the Big Sioux River before merging into the Missouri River at Sioux City.

Omaha’s public water utility — Metropolitan Utilities District — said it was monitoring pumps it uses to pull drinking water from the Missouri River.

Rock Valley, Iowa, just southwest of the derailment, shut off its water wells within hours of the accident. It plans to drain and clean its wells and use a rural water system until testing shows its water is safe.

For the latest information about the derailment: https://bit.ly/2K1wIAZ

Story has been corrected to show that 32 oil tanker cars derailed, not 33.

Vote against the GOP this November

The Washington Post – Opinion

Vote against the GOP this November

By George Will, Opinion writer June 22, 2018

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) meets with reporters at the Capitol on Thursday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Amid the carnage of Republican misrule in Washington, there is this glimmer of good news: The family-shredding policy along the southern border, the most telegenic recent example of misrule, clarified something. Occurring less than 140 days before elections that can reshape Congress, the policy has given independents and temperate Republicans — these are probably expanding and contracting cohorts, respectively — fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which they should vote.

The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers. They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them.

Consider the melancholy example of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), who wagered his dignity on the patently false proposition that it is possible to have sustained transactions with today’s president, this Vesuvius of mendacities, without being degraded. In Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons,” Thomas More, having angered Henry VIII, is on trial for his life. When Richard Rich, whom More had once mentored, commits perjury against More in exchange for the office of attorney general for Wales, More says: “Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . But for Wales!” Ryan traded his political soul for . . . a tax cut. He who formerly spoke truths about the accelerating crisis of the entitlement system lost everything in the service of a president pledged to preserve the unsustainable status quo.

Ryan and many other Republicans have become the president’s poodles, not because James Madison’s system has failed but because today’s abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it. As explained in Federalist 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” Congressional Republicans (congressional Democrats are equally supine toward Democratic presidents) have no higher ambition than to placate this president. By leaving dormant the powers inherent in their institution, they vitiate the Constitution’s vital principle: the separation of powers.

Recently Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is retiring , became an exception that illuminates the depressing rule. He proposed a measure by which Congress could retrieve a small portion of the policymaking power that it has, over many decades and under both parties, improvidently delegated to presidents. Congress has done this out of sloth and timidity — to duck hard work and risky choices. Corker’s measure would have required Congress to vote to approve any trade restrictions imposed in the name of “national security.” All Senate Republicans worthy of the conservative label that all Senate Republicans flaunt would privately admit that this is conducive to sound governance and true to the Constitution’s structure. But the Senate would not vote on it — would not allow it to become just the second amendment voted on this year .

This is because the amendment would have peeved the easily peeved president. The Republican-controlled Congress, which waited for Trump to undo by unilateral decree the border folly they could have prevented by actually legislating, is an advertisement for the unimportance of Republican control.

Trump’s policy of family separation was part of a broader pattern of attacks against immigrants and should never have existed, argues Elias Lopez. (Kate Woodsome , Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

The Trump whisperer regarding immigration is Stephen Miller, 32, whose ascent to eminence began when he became the Savonarola of Santa Monica High School . Corey Lewandowski, a Trump campaign official who fell from the king’s grace but is crawling back (he works for Vice President Pence’s political action committee), recently responded on Fox News to the story of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome taken from her parents at the border. Lewandowski replied: “Wah, wah.” Meaningless noise is this administration’s appropriate libretto because, just as a magnet attracts iron filings, Trump attracts, and is attracted to, louts.

In today’s GOP, which is the president’s plaything, he is the mainstream. So, to vote against his party’s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation’s honor while quarantining him. A Democratic-controlled Congress would be a basket of deplorables, but there would be enough Republicans to gum up the Senate’s machinery, keeping the institution as peripheral as it has been under their control and asphyxiating mischief from a Democratic House. And to those who say, “But the judges, the judges!” the answer is: Article III institutions are not more important than those of Articles I and II combined.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive

Dana Milbank: Paul Ryan has been living in a cave

Jennifer Rubin: This is why Paul Ryan and the GOP need to be ‘discharged’

Kathleen Parker: Good night, GOP of Trump

The Post’s View: The Trump administration created this awful border policy. It doesn’t need Congress to fix it.

Workplace Deaths Are Rising. Trump-Era Budget Cuts Could Make It Worse.

In These Times

Workplace Deaths Are Rising. Trump-Era Budget Cuts Could Make It Worse.

By Bruce Vail June 18, 2018

A worker carries lumber as he builds a new home on January 21, 2015 in Petaluma, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

In an alarming development in the world of workplace safety, the latest statistics reveal that the number of accidental deaths on the job in America is on the rise, reversing the longer-term trend toward fewer fatal incidents.

The number of deaths hit a total of 5,190 in 2016, up from 4,836 in 2015, according to an April 2018 report by the AFL-CIO. That’s about 14 deaths each day from preventable worker accidents. It’s also the third year in a row that the number has inched up, and the highest death rate since 2010, the labor federation reported.

Workplace safety systems are “definitely in the failure mode,” says Peter Dooley, a consultant with the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health who was worked closely with labor unions over the years. “In the last two years it is getting dramatically worse. It’s just outrageous.”

The precise reasons for the rise are not simply stated, adds Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO’s long-time director of occupational safety and health. Overall patterns such as very high rates of injury in the logging and construction industries are consistent over time, she says, and there is no single employment trend that accounts for the recent rise. “The numbers are actually down in construction, but they are up almost everywhere else,” she says.

Inadequate enforcement of existing safety rules is the most commonly cited explanation for the rise, Seminario tells In These Times. A Jan. 8 report from NBC News estimates that the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) employs only about 1,000 inspectors to cover all workplaces in America—and that the number of inspectors has declined four percent since President Donald Trump took office. The number of inspectors is far too low to be effective, Seminario suggests, and OSHA has been “under resourced” for years, including during the Obama administration years.

“Construction is a good example. OSHA has a big focus on construction and construction deaths are down. The areas where OSHA has less interest are up,” she says

The figures cited by Seminario and Dooley are taken from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries published annually by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The way the figures are compiled is a problem in itself, Dooley says, because it zealously protects the anonymity of employers. That diverts attention from specific workplace behavior that needs close examination and corrective action to reduce accidental deaths over time, he says.

The National Council’s answer to this problem is to publish its own “Dirty Dozen” list of employers notable for health and safety problems among their workforces. The Council uses a standard of measurement that includes non-fatal injuries and other factors, but the list stands out in that it names some very well-known companies. For example, the online retailer Amazon is on the list because it has seen seven of its warehouse workers killed since 2013. And the largest garbage disposal company in the United States, Waste Management, has had an excessive number of OSHA citations and fines. Other companies on the list are Tesla Motors and Dine Brands Global (owner of IHOP and Applebee’s restaurants).

“There is injustice in the Bureau of Labor Statistics as a totally anonymous database. There is no public record of who is dying and who the employers are,” Dooley says. The information actually does exist deep in the Labor Department files, he adds, but government policy is to keep this information out of public hands, or for use by safety experts. “This needs to be changed,” he says.

Seminario and Dooley agree that the worker safety signals coming from the Trump administration are troubling, even if the statistics are not up-to-date enough to make a direct link to increased workplace deaths. Trump’s budget proposal last year called for a 21 percent cut in Department of Labor spending, and the initial proposal for this year call for a 9 percent cut. Congress pared back last year’s proposed cut, and is expected to do so again this year, but it is clear that current Labor Department officials have no plans to take the initiative against the rise in workplace deaths, Dooley charges.

In issuing its report, the AFL-CIO noted: “The Trump administration has moved to weaken recently issued rules on beryllium and mine examinations and has delayed or abandoned the development of new protections, including regulations on workplace violence, infectious diseases, silica in mining and combustible dust.”

“At the same time, Congress is pushing forward with numerous ‘regulatory reform’ bills that would require review and culling of existing rules, make costs the primary consideration in adopting regulations, and making it virtually impossible to issue new protections.”

The reference to workplace violence represents one of the most troubling statistics buried in the government reports. According to a press release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Workplace homicides increased by 83 cases to 500 in 2016, and workplace suicides increased by 62 to 291. This is the highest homicide figure since 2010 and the most suicides since the National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries began reporting data in 1992.”

“It’s a very complicated problem,” observes Seminario. “You can devise safety regulations to avoid common and predictable accidents. But how do you do that with a homicide?”

Bruce Vail is a Baltimore-based freelance writer with decades of experience covering labor and business stories for newspapers, magazines and new media. He was a reporter for Bloomberg BNA’s Daily Labor Report, covering collective bargaining issues in a wide range of industries, and a maritime industry reporter and editor for the Journal of Commerce, serving both in the newspaper’s New York City headquarters and in the Washington, D.C. bureau.

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Shame on Them!

Where is the Grand Old Party? No one in the Republi-con controlled congress has the courage to stand up to this sociopathic tyrant. This little girl puts them all to shame! JH

Farm Bill With Huge Giveaways to Pesticide Industry Passes House

EcoWatch

Farm Bill With Huge Giveaways to Pesticide Industry Passes House

Olivia Rosane June 22, 2018

A farm bill that opponents say would harm endangered species, land conservation efforts, small-scale farmers and food-stamp recipients passed the U.S. House of Representatives 213 to 211, with every House Democrat and 20 Republicans voting against it, The Center for Biological Diversity reported.

A similar farm bill failed to pass the House in May when it was caught in the crossfire over immigration reform, but the new bill retains its most controversial provisions.

The bill, officially titled H.R. 2, the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018, is a major win for the pesticide industry, which spent $43 million on lobbying this Congressional season. It would ax a requirement that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assess a pesticide’s impact on endangered species before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approves it and relax the Clean Water Act’s provision that anyone releasing pesticides into waterways obtain a permit.

“This farm bill should be called the Extinction Act of 2018,” Center for Biological Diversity Government Affairs Director Brett Hartl said. “If it becomes law, this bill will be remembered for generations as the hammer that drove the final nail into the coffin of some of America’s most vulnerable species.”

The bill would also be devastating for land conservation efforts. It would allow logging and mining in Alaskan forests, including the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, the Tongass, and get rid of the Conservation Stewardship program, which funds farmers who engage in conservation on their land, according to Environment America.

Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who opposed the bill, also said it favored agribusiness over ordinary farmers.

“The Farm Bill rewards mega-agribusinesses and Wall Street, while slashing funding for nutrition, rural agriculture development, and clean energy programs, cutting key agricultural research and development efforts critically needed to help fight invasive species like the coffee berry borer, macadamia felted coccid, and more,” she said in a statement reported by Big Island Now.

The bill is also controversial because of proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps, Reuters reported. House Republicans have pushed for measures that would increase the number of recipients who must work in order to receive food stamps, including limiting states’ abilities to waive those requirements in areas with poor economies.

Reuters noted that the Senate version of the 2018 farm bill does not include any changes to the SNAP program and that the House bill is unlikely to pass into law because of those provisions.

Environmental groups also prefer the Senate version of the bill.

“House Republican leaders have decided to gamble with farmers’ crucial government support by attaching dangerous policy riders to the farm bill. These would put Americans’ health at risk, pollute our waters, and imperil bees, monarch butterflies, and other bedrock species,” Federal Affairs Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Brian Siu said in a statement.

“For the most part, the Senate is pursuing a serious, bipartisan measure that would support farmers and those needing help buying food. We look forward to working with lawmakers to help pursue that approach,” Siu said.

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Deep-Water Drilling Is Back

Bloomberg

Deep-Water Drilling Is Back

With Trump set to revive offshore exploration, Big Oil is developing cheaper ways to drill.

By Kevin Crowley June 21, 2018

Pipes and mooring lines rise from the Gulf of Mexico beneath Chevron Corp.’s Jack/St. Malo deep-water oil platform about 200 miles off the coast of Louisiana on May 18, 2018. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

On a hot, sunny May afternoon, flying fish leap out of the Gulf of Mexico’s brilliant blue waters near the steel legs of a Chevron Corp. oil platform, pursued by deep-water predators. “Is that a shark chasing them?” asks barge supervisor Jamie Gobert, peering over a rail. “Think it’s yellow-fin tuna or maybe dolphin fish,” says Emile Boudreaux, his colleague.

Typically in the region, seeing so many deep-water creatures converging on a single spot would be unusual. But these denizens of the Gulf have a road map of sorts to Chevron’s huge Jack/St. Malo platform, a floating steel structure the size of three football fields about 200 miles off the Louisiana coast. The fish are following giant underwater pipelines that carry crude from three oil fields about 15 miles away in different directions from the Jack/St. Malo, like tentacles of an octopus. Unlike old-style platforms that suck oil from a field directly below, this web like arrangement lets the Jack/St. Malo pump more than 3,000 gallons of crude a minute from the trio of fields.

The three-for-one hub is part of a wave of innovation by oil majors including Chevron, BP Plc, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc that’s allowing deep-water production in the Gulf to bounce back from disasters both environmental (BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010) and financial (the oil price).

Oil production equipment onboard Chevron’s Jack/St. Malo platform. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

While U.S. shale production has been dominating markets, a quiet revolution has been taking place offshore. The combination of new technology and smarter design will end much of the overspending that’s made large troves of subsea oil barely profitable to produce, industry executives say. New projects are targeting costs of about $35 to $40 a barrel, which would compete with the lowest-cost shale assets. Cutting costs lets operators tap oil reserves that were previously uneconomic to exploit.

The Gulf of Mexico has been the vanguard of global experimentation for offshore oil, and success this time could encourage more drilling in the world’s hot new oil basins in countries including Brazil, Guyana, Mexico, and Mozambique. Further on, it could even encourage more U.S. offshore production, if President Trump is able to fulfill his plan to open much of the nation’s coastline to fresh exploration. “In the past, a lot of the cost of development has been new technology,” says Jeff Shellebarger, president of Chevron’s North American division. “With the types of reservoirs we’re drilling today, most of that learning curve is behind us. Now we can keep those costs pretty competitive.”

Two things drive drilling: crude prices and production costs. In the 2000s, higher prices spurred much of the growth in the Gulf. Operators fixated on building technically advanced production platforms that were the biggest, the deepest, and able to handle the highest-pressure wells—at almost whatever the cost. They demanded customized equipment including valves and pumps, even when standard models with practically the same specifications were cheaper. Shell had an encyclopedia of 100,000 engineering standards. In some lines of business, it has cut that back 95 percent, says Harry Brekelmans, Shell’s projects and technology director.

Complexity and cost didn’t seem to matter much when oil averaged more than $100 a barrel from 2011 to 2014. But when prices plunged to a 12-year low of $28 a barrel in 2016, the biggest drop in a generation, many projects and companies were generating big losses. “We knew there was incredible waste, but 2014 was the trigger,” Brekelmans says. “We knew there was no way we could put forward a project in the same way again.”

Platform supply vessel Kobe Chouest anchored alongside Jack/St. Malo. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

Take BP’s Mad Dog 2, designed in 2012 to be the biggest platform in the world. The initial plan was so large and complicated that a Finnish shipyard would need to be expanded to build it. The platform’s projected cost was $20 billion. BP executives realized that was outlandish, even before crude prices dropped. So they redesigned the platform, stripping out features and cutting the bill to $9 billion.

BP, the Gulf’s biggest operator, now wants to do more exploration around its existing platforms and pipe oil back to them, as is done at Jack/St. Malo, rather than build expensive new floating hubs. This approach is possible because the range of the so-called tiebacks—the pipes that carry the crude from the drill site to the platform—has increased markedly in the past few years due to new subsea pump technology. Chevron expects it will soon be able to use tiebacks as long as 60 miles, almost four times the length of those at Jack/St. Malo.

If an oil field is in range, tiebacks can save about $12 a barrel compared with the cost of building a new platform, according to researcher Wood Mackenzie Ltd. “The philosophy is around infrastructure-led exploration, maintaining capacity at those hubs and filling them up,” says Starlee Sykes, BP’s regional president for the Gulf of Mexico and Canada. “We’re focused on using technology to be safer and more efficient rather than to build the biggest ever.”

Chevron and BP have cut operating expenses in the Gulf by half since 2013, the companies say, by a combination of using standardized equipment, applying better technology, eliminating jobs, and selling higher-cost assets. Shell has also reduced spending substantially, Brekelmans says.

Chevron workers examine hydrocarbon samples on Jack/St. Malo. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

“People ask about the big hitter in terms of cost savings,” says Stephen Conner, general manager of Chevron’s Gulf of Mexico operations. “But in truth, it’s the one thousand little things we’ve done.”

Analysts remain skeptical about whether the industry is truly reformed. As oil bounces back—it’s up 62 percent in the past year—costs may rise again, especially as drilling and construction suppliers seek to increase their own prices, says William Turner, a Wood Mackenzie senior research analyst. “Margins for servicers are just not sustainable,” he says. “I see costs creeping up, albeit from a low base.”

It might seem unnecessary for companies to put so much money and effort into risky offshore projects when oil from onshore shale production is booming. Output from the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico will more than double over the next five years, to 5.4 million barrels a day, more than that produced by any OPEC member other than Saudi Arabia, according to IHS Markit Ltd.

But some companies such as BP lack significant shale assets, so they don’t have a choice. Even for those that do like Chevron, the advantage of drilling offshore is the sheer volume of oil that can be produced. In the Permian, a top-performing well produces about 2,000 barrels of oil daily for a few weeks before declining sharply. In the Gulf, fields can produce as much as 100,000 barrels a day for decades.

Activity in the region is picking up. Shell in April said it will build a deep-water platform named Vito, a project that had to be re-engineered after the 2014 oil-price crash. Chevron’s Big Foot is expecting to produce its first oil by the end of the year. BP’s Mad Dog 2 is also in development mode.

Not surprisingly, BP, Shell, and Chevron all support Trump’s plan to open up more than 90 percent of the U.S. outer continental shelf to drilling. But even if the administration is able to overcome strong environmental opposition by most of the coastal states, it would likely be the mid-2020s before any exploration activity could begin.

On Jack/St. Malo, Gobert and Boudreaux are showing off valves, pumps, enormous lifting chains, pipelines, safety choke points, and a three-turbine generator system that could power 58,000 houses, all floating on its giant frame. Taken together, the equipment cost $7.5 billion, and that figure excludes day-to-day running costs, taxes, and royalty payments. What makes it worth all the effort? Gobert watches as a colleague pours a sample of oil from a tap, as if from a beer keg, connected to a maze of pipes extending 14-feet high. “We call this the cash register,” he says.

Bottom Line – Rising production of oil from shale fields has reinvigorated the U.S. oil industry. But new technology to make offshore drilling more economical could have a longer-lasting impact.

Trump scraps Obama policy on protecting oceans, Great Lakes

Associated Press

Trump scraps Obama policy on protecting oceans, Great Lakes

John Flesher, Associated Press June 21, 2018

In this April 21, 2010, file photo, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns in the Gulf of Mexico following an explosion that killed 11 workers and caused the worst offshore oil spill in the nation’s history. President Donald Trump is throwing out a policy devised by his predecessor for protecting U.S. oceans and the Great Lakes, replacing it with a new approach that emphasizes use of the waters to promote economic growth. President Barack Obama issued his policy in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Trump says it was too bureaucratic. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Traverse City , Mich. (AP) — President Donald Trump has thrown out a policy devised by his predecessor to protect U.S. oceans and the Great Lakes, replacing it with a new approach that emphasizes use of the waters to promote economic growth.

Trump revoked an executive order issued by President Barack Obama in 2010 following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, it killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of crude that harmed marine wildlife, fouled more than 1,300 miles of shoreline and cost the tourism and fishing industries hundreds of millions of dollars.

Obama said the spill underscored the vulnerability of marine environments. He established a council to promote conservation and sustainable use of the waters.

In his order this week, Trump did not mention the Gulf spill. He said he was “rolling back excessive bureaucracy created by the previous administration” and depicted the Obama council as bloated, with 27 departments and agencies and over 20 committees, subcommittees and working groups.

The Republican president said he was creating a smaller Ocean Policy Committee while eliminating “duplicative” regional planning bodies created under Obama.

But he said federal agencies could participate in regional partnerships formed by states. His administration has encouraged a “cooperative federalism” approach that shifts more responsibility to state governments.

Trump’s order downplays environmental protection, saying the change would ensure that regulations and management decisions don’t get in the way of responsible use by industries that “employ millions of Americans, advance ocean science and technology, feed the American people, transport American goods, expand recreational opportunities and enhance America’s energy security.”

In another reversal of Obama policy, Trump earlier this year called for opening most coastal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling, drawing fierce opposition from many coastal states. His administration also is stepping up federal leases for offshore wind energy development.

“Domestic energy production from federal waters strengthens the nation’s security and reduces reliance on imported energy,” Trump said in his order, which also mentioned shipping, fishing and recreation as among industries standing to benefit from his plan.

The order drew praise from a group representing offshore energy producers.

Jack Belcher, managing director of the pro-industry National Ocean Policy Coalition, said the new approach would remove “a significant cloud of uncertainty” for marine commerce.

Environmentalists said it erases a national mandate to improve ocean health.

“In another attempt to reverse progress made under President Obama, the Trump administration is recklessly tossing aside responsible ocean management and stewardship,” said Arian Rubio, legislative associate for the League of Conservation Voters.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, a Republican and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Trump’s approach would “help the health of our oceans and ensure local communities impacted by ocean policy have a seat at the table.”

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat and ranking member of the committee, demanded a hearing and accused Trump of “unilaterally throwing out” years of conservation work.

Associated Press reporters Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine, and Matthew Daly in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story.