The Good Human » Oil

Documentary: The Pipe – Community Fighting Against A Shell Pipeline.

david — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:02:39 +0000

The Pipe is a documentary telling the story of the Rossport community in Ireland which has taken on the might of Shell Oil and the Irish State. The discovery of gas off this remote coastal village has led to the most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland. The rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the world’s most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their State to protect their rights, they find that the government has put Shell’s right to lay a pipeline over their own. Already 5 locals have spent 94 days in jail rather than let the proposed Shell pipeline cross their lands.

With the imminent arrival of the world’s largest pipelaying vessel, the Solitaire, a massive security operation is put into action by the State to ensure that the pipe is laid without interference. When all hope seems lost, events take a dramatic turn… Following the personal experience of three main characters at the height of local tension, The Pipe is a story of a community tragically divided, and the prospect of a pipeline that can bring economic prosperity or destroy of a way of life shared for generations.

Here’s the trailer for the film:

The film will be available on iTunes, Amazon, CinemaNow, Vudu, Xbox and Sony Playstation, and you can find where else to watch it on the film’s website. I recommend you check it out.

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Oil Companies Profit While You Foot The Bill

david — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:30:24 +0000

From 2008 – 2010 “ExxonMobil reported $9,910 million in pretax U.S. profits. But it enjoyed so many tax subsidies that its federal income tax bill was only $39 million, a tax rate of only 0.4 percent.” Yes, you read that right — a tax rate of only 0.4%, says Citizens for Tax Justice (PDF). I don’t know how high your tax rate was on your income in past years, but I am guessing it was a lot higher than 0.4%, right?

“… the discrepancy between Exxon Mobil’s rates and those of most American breadwinners. The company’s effective rate of 17.6 percent is nearly 16 percent below the average individual federal tax rate, which according to the Congressional Budget Office was 20.4 percent as of 2007. Individuals in the highest quintile pay an average tax rate just over 25 percent in the United States. Exxon Mobil, meanwhile, paid approximately the same effective tax rate as Americans in the fourth income quintile which includes Americans earning from $62,000 to $100,000 a year” says Think Progress.

Oil company profits have been a de-facto dinner table conversation for a few years now, what with the biggest few companies reaping wildly huge profits. In the 1st quarter of 2011 alone, Exxon/Mobil made $11 billion, Shell made $6.9 billion, BP made $7.1 billion, Chevron made $6.2 billion, and ConocoPhilips made $3.0 billion. That’s a lot of profit, even if the oil companies had to pay their fare share of taxes on it like the rest of us do. However, not only do they not pay their fare share but the government gives them about $4 billion in annual tax subsidies. Yes, our government, i.e. you and I, pay for the oil companies to get a $4 billion tax break when they are showing billions in profits. You and I effectively reduce their taxable income by $4 billion dollars each and every year. When was the last time the government, or your fellow tax-paying neighbor, handed you boat loads of money and told you they were going to help you pay your taxes, even as you were reporting record profits year after year?

Never, that’s when.

While the figures are sketchy and incredibly difficult to pin down (the oil companies like it that way), the fact remains that the average taxpayer in the United States pays a larger percentage of their income in taxes than a company making billions in profits every year. Not income, mind you. Billions in profits. And when the oil companies attempt to explain how much they pay in taxes, they forget to leave out the taxes that, wait for it, you and I pay at the pump that they have to forward on to the state and federal governments. They actually include those figures as tax dollars they themselves are paying, but that’s not them paying taxes at all — that’s us.

Angry yet?

In a time when our economy is in a recession and budget cuts are being implemented by federal, state, and local governments, you would think that it would be high time to cut the billions in subsidies that have been handed out to oil companies year after year in a time of record profits. At least, that would be the sensible thing to do, right? To be fiscally responsible? Well, at least one side of the political aisle (and even a few Dems) doesn’t seem think so, because as they are busy trying to get cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, education, and Social Security passed, the GOP doesn’t think the oil companies should pay their fare share to help out.

“Last month the House GOP voted unanimously to protect taxpayer-funded subsidies to big oil. All of the belt tightening, you see, has to be done by Medicaid and Medicare recipients, not by those poor beleaguered oil company execs.”

Think what you want about the policies of Republicans vs. Democrats, but something here stinks. Too often I hear consumers complain about the price of gas or the tax per gallon they have to pay at the pump, but the real scam here is that the oil companies are making out like bandits, not the local gas station owner or your local town government. Whether you vote blue or vote red, no company making billions and billions of dollars in profits should be receiving free taxpayer money from our government. I don’t have an issue with them making money; I have an issue with all of us having to then send them even more. They have plenty of their own money to support drilling or oil exploration and should be paying their fair share in taxes like the rest of us. Before we go cutting services to the needy, the elderly, or the education of our children, I think we need to look at where our tax dollars are going and demand they be appropriated to places they are needed and not to billion dollar corporations with money to burn.

Photo By brownpau

Is Tar Sands Oil From Canada Coming To The US?

david — Sun, 29 May 2011 14:30:53 +0000

Dear EarthTalk: What is “tar sands oil” and what is the controversy over possibly building a pipeline for it from Canada into the United States?

Tar sands oil (or “tar sands”) is slang for bituminous sand, a mixture of sand, clay, water and an extremely gooey form of petroleum known as bitumen, which resembles tar in appearance. Extracting commercially viable crude oil from tar sands is especially difficult because the thick and sticky mixture won”™t flow unless it is heated or diluted with other hydrocarbons. Turning the extracted bitumen into liquid fuel requires large inputs of energy; the process also uses, pollutes and wastes large amounts of fresh water.

Research has shown that these processes alone generate as much as four times the amount of greenhouse gases per barrel of final product as the post-extraction production of conventional oil. Taking the entire life cycle of both final products into account, the extracting, processing and burning of liquid fuel from tar sands emits between 10 and 45 percent more greenhouse gases overall than conventional crude. Extraction of oil from tar sands also damages land to the point where it can no longer sustain forestry or farming.

Despite the environmental pitfalls of harvesting oil from tar sands, those countries that have them are making the most of them. More than half of Canada”™s relative sizable oil production comes from the tar sands of Alberta and other areas, while Venezuela is also a big producer of tar sands oil.

Tar sands have been in the news of late because green groups and many U.S. public officials are worried that the construction of a new pipeline to transport tar sands crude from northeastern Alberta into the U.S. ””TransCanada”™s Keystone XL project””would greatly increase American consumption of this carbon-intensive fuel and jeopardize U.S. efforts to reduce its oil consumption and overall carbon footprint.

Plans call for running the 2,000-mile-long pipeline all the way from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. On the way it will carry as much as 900,000 barrels of oil per day, passing through six U.S. states and possibly jeopardizing the integrity of farmland, public water sources and wildlife habitat.

In June 2010, 50 members of Congress signed a letter asking Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to block approval of Keystone XL because it would “undermine America’s clean energy future and international leadership on climate change.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency subsequently announced that the State Department”™s draft environmental impact study for Keystone XL was in need of revision because it didn”™t sufficiently take into account oil spill response plans, safety issues and greenhouse gas concerns.

In December 2010, several concerned U.S. nonprofits””including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club””launched the No Tar Sands Oil campaign to urge President Obama to halt Keystone XL, which is scheduled for completion by 2013. In March 2011 some two dozen U.S. mayors got into the act, asking Secretary Clinton to stop approval on Keystone XL as it could “undermine the good work being done in local communities across the country to fight climate change and reduce our dependence on oil.”

CONTACTS: TransCanada”™s Keystone Project, www.transcanada.com/keystone.html; No Tar Sands Oil, www.dirtyoilsands.org.

EarthTalkÂ® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E – The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Stories From The Gulf One Year After The BP Oil Disaster

david — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:32:56 +0000

As we approach the one year anniversary of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf on April 20th, the NRDC wants to remind us that life along the Gulf of Mexico has not returned to normal, that the oil keeps rolling in with the tide, and the damage done continues undercutting people”™s lives. By partnering with StoryCorps and Bridge the Gulf to record, share, and preserve the stories and experiences of those living through the BP oil disaster, we can ensure that neither the stories of this disaster nor the lessons we can learn from it are lost. We need to keep this disaster in the forefront of our minds and in our policy decisions, as after watching some of these videos we realize just how damaging this oil spill was when it happened and continues to be to this very day.

The stories range from a mother who runs several businesses out of her house to support her family and questions how they will now scrape by–to a family already living on their boat unable to make the rent for their house–to a mother and daughter of the Atakapa Tribe, a community native to the bayous of Louisiana, threatened by the oil disaster”™s reach into their community.

“It hurts to see how something like this can divide your community.”
Fisherman Acy Cooper talks about BP hiring practices, seafood safety, and the affect the oil disaster has had on his community. Recorded in Buras, LA on October 19, 2010.

You can watch all 11 video clips and stories at nrdc.org/storycorps/, and please be sure to share this with those friends and family who are interested in the survival of the Gulf after the disaster. We cannot forget the damage that came from the BP oil spill, and hearing the stories of those still living with it will keep the issue alive.

And also, while you are here thinking about it, tell Congress to implement the recommendations of the presidential oil spill commission to prevent another Gulf oil disaster.