Regional Control

I didn't know there is oil in Somalia. Or the potential --

Yesterday (or today, maybe) a bill backed by the president of Somalia split the parliament -- According to an article on All Africa.com there was an even split and the speaker voted to break the tie. "President Muse's bill, entitled the "The Oil and Minerals Law of Puntland State Government," aims to award the regional administration the constitutional authority to sign agreements with foreign companies intent on exploring for oil in Puntland."

I did some reading about the history of the place. There have been ideas of oil there for a long time -- there have been suspected oil reserves for many years in Somalia -- all the war and the crisis there has deterred most speculators.

An article last year in the Financial Times explained:

"In the late 1980s exploration concessions were held by companies including Conoco and Phillips, which have since merged; Amoco, now part of BP; and Chevron. They fled the country after dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown during civil war in 1991.

The data collected by oil companies has formed the basis of interest in Somalia today. Range Resources, an oil group listed in Sydney, estimates that the Puntland province – which includes the Mudug region – has the potential to yield 5bn-10bn barrels of oil."

I didn't see Blackhawk down -- I guess I should. It seems that oil had everything to do with American involvement in the area.

So the question is, who will have the future stakes in the country -- and who will decide.

In 2005 the president of Somalia, whose bill was in question, "unilaterally signed an exploration contract with a small Australian company to explore for oil and minerals in Somalia's Puntland region."

Local tribes are against it. Parts of the government.

A split vote. It's a tough call -- who makes the decisions for a people -- for which people do they speak and who are the beneficiaries -- victims...

A Piece of Paper

This morning I'm looking at a story in the International Herald Tribune about a Texas oilman suing a Russian state owned gas company for breech of contract -- they are hoping to have the case heard in a German court.

It's a breech of contract suit -- what it looks like is that the guy from Texas said he would partner with the Russians back in the early days after the fall of the Soviet Union. It was a risky time to do business there, and the American obtained financing, in effect backing the government and the exploration and distribution of what is thought to be the largest natural gas field in the world.

What I don't see is any investment actually made on the part of the American -- not any major investment, anyway -- I'm sure it all cost a lot of money -- there were flights to Moscow and lots of expensive vodka, no doubt. But nothing to really support his claim to 40% of a 12 billion dollar location.

A piece of paper.

I've been sort of interested -- looking at the news for these months -- in just this sort of thing. All over the world much of the oil and gas is controlled by state owned operations. And they often partner with foreign investors. Venezuela, The Middle East, China -- all of these countries hold hold stakes, benefit and look out for their citizens (to varying degrees of success) in relation to their profits and holdings. I thought about the alternative here in the States -- well, one side is that foreign investors are free to come in and begin to obtain controlling interests in many delicate endeavors here -- we saw this last fall when:

Yesterday, Wednesday, Nov. 28, The Abu Dhabi Investment Corp. firmed plans to spend $7.5 billion and become the largest single share holder in Citigroup. I wrote about it then.

Another is that it might be argued that the oil companies run Washington, and it might be better the other way around -- the guy who's suing, his name personally came up in a meeting between Bush and Putin. I for one don't want to think that the Russian government is going to put a promise to any Texas oilman ahead of what is right for the people of Russia -- I've been fairly mortified to learn of the oilman impingement on American interests myself...

I don't know -- it just brings up all kinds of questions for me. Of course, foreign investment and aid are crucial when things are falling apart -- they are also big bargains -- can one who makes an agreement under duress really ever be expected to maintain that oath a decade later?

Really, when should a contract be binding?
Who should it be binding to?
What should we be allowed to take advantage of?
Is some global court of law really what we want in this world?
Wouldn't that likely get the US sued for all sorts of things?

But you promised.

I lied.

You can't lie.

So sue me.

I needed a loaf of bread to feed my starving family.
I needed to get through the day the year the decade.
I needed to get back on my feet.

But I was there for you --
You said you needed me --
You said we were in it together --

I thought you were the love of my life...

Thanks anyway.

"This is about bringing out the facts about our claim," Moncrief ((said oilman)) said during an interview. "We do not view our agreement with Gazprom as a memorandum of understanding. We view it as a binding contract."

Unwearied In That Service

I used to be really cynical -- it was kind of my thing.
I get less so in spurts, and sometimes I'm downright optimistic these days... faith in humanity, love, poems -- Yesterday a student asked me what was the point of understanding literature... I think I might have really said because literature can save you -- or someone you care about. "To see into the life of things..."
Art too. Me, every day.


Ansel Adams

To say I don't learn anything through any story I write about ... that's the most cynical thing I've said through this project, and it's almost like opening a pipeline...

On the other hand...

Yesterday evening Ted Stevens said he would run for his 7th term as Alaska's senior senator. He's 86 years old. The Washington Post story said:

He told reporters he decided to run again to battle Alaska's high unemployment and energy costs. He said he thinks the state's development has been stymied by "extreme environmentalists."

Stevens is currently under investigation for accepting kick backs from the oil industry. Last summer his house was raided and the government seized a bunch of stuff... Steven's denies allegations of wrong doing.

Bill Allen, the former head of VECO Corp., an oil field service company, who has pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska state legislators, testified in trials that he oversaw extensive renovations at the home and sent VECO employees to work on it.

Stevens also made a slightly infamous speech I've listened to on youtube this morning railing against the internet...

I think the internet is pretty amazing. Researching this post, sitting on my green velvet couch, I read articles in the Times, the AP, The Washington Post and The Anchorage Daily News. Somewhere there was a small sidebar box that linked to "other stories about corruption in Alaska."

Former Alaskan Speaker of the House Pete Kott was sentenced in December to 6 years in prison "for his role in a corrupt scheme to push an industry-backed oil tax."

A federal jury in September convicted Kott, 58, of bribery, conspiracy and extortion for his role in advocating an oil tax pushed by Veco Corp. executives and favored by North Slope oil producers. He received nearly $9,000, a political poll for his re-election campaign and the promise of a lobbying job, all from Veco executives, according to testimony.

The stakes in Juneau during the 2006 legislative session were huge. Kott and other Veco allies were trying to keep the proposed new oil tax on profits at 20 percent, as the industry wanted. But others were pushing for a higher rate. Even a 1 percent change in the tax rate meant tens of millions to the state, if not even more.

Just to repeat...

"He said he thinks the state's development has been stymied by "extreme environmentalists."

The Alaskan indigenous tribes? The protectors of the polar bears and walrus and albatross...The Alaskan explorations?
Ansel Adams?



Mary Shelly?
We could call Wordsworth an "Extreme Environmentalist," couldn't we?

from:
COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798

If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence--wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love--oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

Keep Your Mouth Shut

I started out today reading about -- trying to figure out how to write about -- a rather discouraging court case.

Appeals Court Overturns EPA on Mercury Emissions By Sandy Bauers, The Philadelphia Inquirer Feb. 8--A federal appeals court ruled today that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wrongly exempted power plants from curtailing mercury emissions, which means the agency must now develop new rules to fight mercury pollution.

According to the article, the EPA was set to impose some regulations, the exemptions within the new law were too great to allow. It seems that energy producing plants were exempt from the legislation. For one thing, when coal is refined, mercury is released as a vapor.

Mercury becomes airborne when coal is burned. Once it falls into waterways, it becomes methylmercury, which is more toxic and works its way through the food chain into fish. It can cause nervous-system damage in a developing fetus and young children.

...

"Ironically, with their aggressive litigation posture, the environmental community and their state allies have again caused uncertainty and delay in regulating mercury," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council. The EPA "essentially must return to the drawing board in developing a new mercury rule," he said.

In college I wrote about the propaganda art of the Soviet Union -- how it communicated strength and power. Dictatorships need to communicate this way to keep order among the masses.



Keep your mouth shut!
N. Vatolina, N. Denisov, 1941

Strength and power and fear.
A few months ago I was tired of listening to myself talk. I think today I'm tired of listening to everyone else talk. The language of propaganda seems to attempt to elicit emotion -- but seems today to me to be more an imposer of powerlessness...

This from George Bush Sr. -- on my birthday in 1988:

Vice President Bush, campaigning in the Northwest, has been urging greater domestic oil production and arguing that it can be achieved without endangering the environment.

For the end of this post I wanted to find a quote where George Bush Jr. said something nice about the environment, but I couldn't find one.

Justice Is Blinded 2

I'm going to cheat today.

The article that caught my eye this morning is about a coal company. In my defense, I never do this -- in my other defense, this relates to a post earlier this week that was about oil -- and in my other other defense, coal and oil are inexorably linked, as the use of coal begins to rise based on the threat of oil supplies tightening...

Furthermore, it's about a court case -- and I don't think any discussion of a court case and an energy law stands alone against the backdrop of the Supreme Court, which this spring is slated to hear the damages case against Exxon Mobil for the Valdez crash.

“In West Virginia, there is a proverb that says that everything is political except politics, and that is personal,” said Conni Gratop Lewis, a retired lobbyist. -- The New York Times.

The story comes out of West Virginia, and has to do with a case that was thrown out in November -- a $50 million dollar fraud case against Massey Energy Corp. That judgment was declared on a 3-2 vote. The case is being reopened after photos surfaced of the chief justice and the CEO playing golf.

On Thursday, several plaintiffs in the case — mining companies that say they were driven out of business by Massey — filed a separate motion seeking the disqualification of a second judge in the original majority, Justice Brent D. Benjamin. Justice Benjamin was elected to the court in 2004 with the help of more than $3 million in advertisements and other support from Don L. Blankenship, Massey’s chief executive and Chief Justice Maynard’s dining companion in Monte Carlo.

The judges don't think there's a problem. They say they remain impartial -- and that the scrutiny is unwarranted. Two weeks ago, Massey settled another suit:

CHARLESTON, W.Va., Jan. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Massey Energy Company (NYSE: MEE) today announced that it has settled a Clean Water Act lawsuit filed in May 2007 on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The $20 million settlement avoids expensive litigation, resolves questions about the company's potential liability and enhances Massey's environmental protection efforts.

I said in the older post that the judgments in these cases were so high, they dwarfed the price of elections... it worse than that -- the profits of these energy companies dwarf the expenditure of governments. Massey alone holds $3 billion in assets -- with sales in the neighborhood of $200 million. Exxon Mobil made 39.5 billion in profits in 2006 -- and that was before the increases in oil prices last year. Annual numbers should post soon for 2007...

It makes me really dizzy. It's one thing not to think of our politicians as justice oriented, but to think of how political our judges are -- it's a level of undermining the authority in this country I simply don't know how to reconcile.

Justice. A justice. Language again -- just the title "justice" trains us from the beginning of our education to expect good from them.

I am thinking this morning -- what if everyone walked around as the personification of their job -- that which they are charged to impart. We could call a teacher "a knowledge," a doctor could be, rather than a healer, "a healing." A poet would have to be called " a truth." Geez I'm glad that's not my title. We argue about the nature of truth all the time...

What can we really expect of each other? What can we really expect from them?

Justice is Blinded.

During the height of the cold war, Braxton Berkley -- now Rev. Braxton Berkley -- worked on military planes for Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest defense companies in the country. Berkley, and a few dozen other of his former colleagues have been involved in a law suit claiming toxic waste handled during that job was an extreme health detriment. Yesterday the case was thrown out of the California Supreme Court -- not because of the merits of the case, but

because too many justices had holdings in the oil companies named in the case.

Read an article from the Washington Post and an editorial in the Times if you don't believe me.
ExxonMobil Corp. and Unocal Corp. were the companies named.

"It's not as if they didn't have their day in court," George said. That would be CA Chief Justice Ron George. Ummm...

In October, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case against Exxon for the 1989 Valdez oil spill -- that case has to do with the punitive damages awarded against the oil giant.

A federal jury in Alaska awarded $5 billion in punitive damages in 1994. A federal judge later reduced it to $4.5 billion. A U.S. appeals court in December further cut the amount to $2.5 billion.

Exxon Mobil, the largest U.S. company by market capitalization, appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the $2.5 billion award still was too high. -- Reuters

Exxon is arguing they shouldn't be held responsible for damages because they have already spent billions on clean up.

Backtracking for just a minute, when all the election confusion of 2000 hit, the hardest thing for me was the dawning understanding that the Supreme Court was in fact not the pillar of justice I had always believed it to be. The golf games, the political ties -- I had no idea. Now that same court is going to hear a case with the potential to change the future of judgment against oil companies. Even if there is (and I sure hope there is) a better standard of blind investment for that court, I for one have no faith that they are in any position to be unbiased on such a matter so close to the wallets of the people running this country.

I want to bring in one more story that caught my eye this morning. The AP reports this morning that profits at another major oil company increased 37% in the fourth quarter thanks to the rising price of oil.

All this stuff is swirling around today -- the way it does sometimes when it all feels too big to even want to look at.

Money.
Pollution.
Need.
Power.

How things are governed -- and how things are going to go -- is something we should be talking about more. For the record, reporters who report on these matters, are not allowed to own stocks, or are required to have them in blind trusts.

My Attack

A French court ruled Wednesday that the company Total was partly liable for the oil spill their cargo was witness to. The issue was simply that the ship used, The Erika, was in horrible disrepair, and Total employed it anyway. December 12, 1999, the Cargo ship broke in two, spilling roughly 20,000 tons of oil.

This from the original reporting back in 2000:

France is still investigating what happened to the Erika. A preliminary report issued last week found that the spill had probably been caused by a rusty bulkhead. At first the crew, all citizens of India, were detained. But they have since been absolved of blame and released.

The criticism has focused instead on the French company TotalFina for hiring the Maltese-registered boat. Investigators found that at least one other oil company, Shell, had rejected the boat as unseaworthy.

The case appears groundbreaking in the pursuit of broadening responsibility in the case of such disasters. According to today's story:

Edward Bran, a lawyer who specializes in international environmental law, said that under international oil pollution conventions, claims usually are not permitted against parties other than the ship owners unless it can be proved that the damage stemmed from acts of omission.

So, I assume, you could never lie or cheat -- but now you have to do due diligence. That's a big shift. I'm thinking about the things that I check -- I would look at a school bus my kids were going on for a field trip; I would look at a dialyses machine my mother was pouring her blood through -- we check when the cargo is precious -- when the result of failure would be devastating. So Companies must now consider oil precious and environmental disaster personal harm...

... The court also recognized the principle of ecological harm “resulting from an attack on the environment.”

I'm intrigued by this last line. The principle of ecological harm resulting from an attack on the environment. Isn't that what we are doing every day? With our products and our travel and our habits? Don't get me wrong, I think the ruling is terrific, and it certainly seems like they are making environmental strides in Europe we likely will never reach -- but it's a little scary too.

And accidents do... clearly there was gross negligence in this case, but do we really know what we are partaking in? It's aggressive language. Maybe it's true -- I am not passive when I take a plastic bag or wear nylon... in the decisions that I make I am attacking the environment. That is a hostile way to think about this world.

While I want to live in a world where oil spills are taken seriously, and the environment is treated as a victim of our lives, I don't know if I can breathe or heal or help inside the life of a lanuguage of attack...