Titans of Industry category archive

Perhaps some of you have seen Buccaneer Petroleum’s ad campaign portraying the Gulf Coast as cleaner than a computer manufacturer’s clean room. (I saw one and found it rather cloying.)

Facing South takes a look at the reality behind the flackery. A nugget:

(According to the ad campaign) (t)he oil is gone and the seafood is safe. End of story.

Except it isn’t.

(snip)

And every storm in the Gulf brings a fresh wave of tar balls and oily gunk onto the beaches and bayous. Where do you think that’s coming from? Experts say plenty of oil is still sunk on the bottom, some of it in thick tar mats lying just offshore. It’s not clear what will happen to it.

So this brings us back to BP’s ads. Just in case anyone is out there with a sympathetic ear, a producer or reporter looking for a different version of reality to explore, here are some people who won’t be part of BP’s latest promotional onslaught. These are all people I’ve blogged about over the past year, folks who hardly any local politician, tourism official, seafood distributor or oil industry exec wants to promote. But they are there if you want to find them. And they won’t be silenced.

Get the facts. Read the rest.

A series of earthquakes in northeastern Ohio, the latest and largest on New Year’s Eve, has prompted that state’s Department of Natural Resources to close or suspend development by natural gas drillers of five deep wastewater disposal wells pending an investigation into well impact on increased seismic activity in the area.

The latest earthquake, registering a magnitude of 4.0, was centered five miles northwest of Youngstown and very close to the 9,000-foot-deep Northstar No. 1 disposal well owned by D&L Energy, which receives most of its brine and fracking wastewater from Marcellus Shale drilling operations in Pennsylvania.

The fracking industry, of course, is claiming that it’s all for public safety, this was an isolated event, it wasn’t even home, it didn’t see anything, it was in a sports bar watching a football game or a parade or something and someone must have slipped it a roofy.

Balloon Juice.

I nominate the title as best blog post title ev-vuh.

Facing South reports on the frackers P. R. efforts. A nugget:

But just as opponents of fracking are making political gains, the gas industry is turning to harsh tactics for dealing with them — including the admitted use of counterinsurgency strategies and psychological operations borrowed from the U.S. military.

The disturbing revelations came during an oil industry conference held last month in Houston, in remarks recorded by attendee Sharon Wilson, director of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project at Earthworks.

(snip)

During a session titled “Understanding How Unconventional Oil and Gas Operators Are Developing a Comprehensive Media Relations Strategy to Engage Stakeholders and Educate the Public,” Matt Carmichael, manager of external affairs for Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum, said:

If you’re a P.R. representative in this industry in this room today, I recommend you do three things. … Download the U.S. Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual. Because we are dealing with an insurgency. There’s a lot of good lessons in there, and coming from a military background I’ve found the insight in that extremely remarkable.

In other fracked up news,

The provision in a proposed Colorado rule for public disclosure of the ingredient of fracking fluids that allows oil and gas companies to unilaterally declare some chemicals “trade secrets” drew fire from the public at a hearing today.

“Disclosure isn’t for the industry, they know what they are using,” Gwen Lachelt, of Durango, told the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission. “Disclosure is for the public.”

What you don’t know can’t hurt them.

Walmart enhances its business model of moving jobs abroad and abusing employees, this time by cutting back on health benefits for employees:

In the video, one of the employees says of Walmart, “They don’t see us suffering.”

Like that would make a difference.

I am certain this tour will be as fair and balanced as a Fox News show:

A group of North Carolina lawmakers is in Pennsylvania today on a fact-finding mission about the controversial method of extracting natural gas known as fracking — and their tour guide is Chesapeake Energy, one of the nation’s biggest fracking companies.

From El Reg:

Microsoft has filed a patent for a system that monitors the behavior of employees via computers, phone calls, and physical gestures, and alerts human resources if anyone is behaving outside of preferred norms.

Having a “bad day at work” is henceforth verboten.

This could only have been an attempt to muddy the waters (or oily the waters), then escape before the mud cleared.

Transocean Ltd. (RIG) can’t sue the U.S. government for partial fault in the 2010 blowout of BP Plc (BP/)’s Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico and subsequent oil spill, a judge said.

“The U.S. has sovereign immunity here,” U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier said today at a hearing in New Orleans in dismissing a claim brought by Transocean in a lawsuit. The company can still present evidence of such allegations at trial in an effort to limit any damages against it, Barbier said.

It’s like Willy Sutton suing the banks.

How is this not kidnapping and extortion?

Airlines have already begun charging for food, drinks, seat assignments and baggage. Now one is demanding that passengers cough up extra cash on board for fuel.

Hundreds of passengers traveling from India to Britain were stranded for six hours in Vienna when their Comtel airline flight stopped for fuel on Tuesday. The charter service asked them to kick in more than 20,000 pounds ($31,000) to fund the rest of the flight to Birmingham, England.

It’s always a “remote chance,” right up until it becomes “who could have predicted?”

Last week, the Mobile Press-Register reported that federal officials excluded the BP oil blowout from their economic risk calculations for future oil drilling operations in the Gulf. According to an economic analysis, BOEMRE, the federal agency responsible for drilling safety and oversight, focused on an earlier period of drilling in the Gulf, striking “a rough balance between the remote chance of another (Deepwater Horizon) event and the otherwise much safer performance” before the BP spill, the newspaper reported.

Click for the rest.

Fracked veterans describe their experiences:

Two Pennsylvania farmers who leased land to shale gas drillers in their state and dreamed of a big payoff painted a bleak picture of the gas industry Thursday.

Carolyn Knapp and Carol French warned that if North Carolina permits drillers to explore here, residents can expect conflicts with neighbors, lawsuits with gas companies, health complaints, a spike in crime and ruined property values.

Good corporate citizens all.

The companies involved in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history are trying to prevent government investigations blaming them for the disaster from being used against them by the people and businesses who are suing them.

(snip)

BP, Transocean and cement contractor Halliburton filed motions late Monday in federal court in New Orleans seeking to keep certain government oil spill reports out of the civil case. BP also wants a judge to bar plaintiffs’ lawyers from using past criminal, civil and regulatory proceedings against the British firm in the civil case.

This should be interesting:

The (South Fayette, Pennsylvania–ed.) township has filed for an injunction against its own zoning hearing board, saying a majority of the board members and their families have financial ties that warrant a forced recusal in hearing a challenge by energy company Range Resources to the township’s drilling regulations.

The legal appeal could shake up decision-making across the commonwealth, where the combination of small towns and a big industry make the occurrence of officials holding leases nearly inevitable. Now, in South Fayette’s case, taxpayers are paying solicitor fees on both sides.

Can you imagine an American energy company admitting responsibility for anything?

A controversial method of extracting gas from the ground known as fracking was the “highly probable” trigger of earth tremors along England’s coastline this year, according to findings published Wednesday.

British energy firm Cuadrilla Resources said a study of its drilling along Lancashire’s Fylde coast, northwest England, concluded “it is highly probable” that the fracking “did trigger a number of minor seismic events.”

The Denver Post examines the effects of cutting back on federal food inspectors and replacing them with private “auditors.”

Many of the most notorious food-illness outbreaks in recent years were preceded by glowing private safety audits of the producers, prompting calls for oversight of auditors and forcing grocery chains to tighten screening of cantaloupes and other food.

An inspector hired by Jensen Farms gave the cantaloupe operation a “superior” safety rating the same month contaminated melons were sorted by an unsanitary potato machine and sent to stores. Probing the subsequent listeria outbreak that has killed 28, Food and Drug Administration inspectors found multiple problems, and experts say an auditor should have flagged the issues.

It was only the latest incident when a “third-party” audit — slammed as an inherent conflict of interest by safety experts — failed to note deadly mistakes in a food operation.

Read the whole thing.

You will want to start a garden and raise your own livestock.

“Job creators” my anatomy.

Whirlpool Corp. (WHR), the world’s largest maker of household appliances, said it will cut more than 5,000 jobs and reduce capacity by six million units after lowering its earnings targets as consumers rein in spending.

Axel Caballero on Cuentame’s Immigrants for Sale campaign, and the politicians and corporations that profit from detention centers.

Verizon sells your soul:

Verizon has posted changes to its privacy policy stating that it will now share user location data, Web browsing history and demographic information with marketers.

While Verizon insists that it will not provide third parties with any information identifying users on a personal basis, it will give them a wide array of its users’ information, including websites they frequent on their Verizon devices, places where their devices have been, and demographic categories such as gender and age range. Verizon will also share user interests with marketers, such as whether they’re a sports fan, own a pet or what sort of restaurants they frequent.

If you think that someone who has your age, sex, and where you go and when you go there can’t figure out who you are and where your children attend school in a matter of minutes, you need to think again.

If you are unlucky enough to use Verizon, follow the link above for information on how to opt out of this.

Via GNC.

Three years after residents first noticed something wrong with their drinking-water wells, tanker trucks still rumble daily through this rural northeastern Pennsylvania village where methane gas courses through the aquifer and homeowners can light their water on fire.

One of the trucks stops at Ron and Jean Carter’s home and refills a 550-gallon plastic “water buffalo” container that supplies the couple with water for bathing, cleaning clothes and washing dishes. A loud hissing noise emanates from the vent stack that was connected to the Carters’ water well to prevent an explosion Ñ an indication, they say, the well is still laced with dangerous levels of methane.

Recent testing confirms that gas continues to lurk in Dimock’s aquifer.

Pennsylvania has started monitoring their gas Galtian overlords more closely, despite the best efforts of their wingnut governor, because the public demands it.

The industry continues to claim it saw nothing, it was not there, it did not even get up that morning.