Boondoggle
| Gaming the system is what “smart” businesses do these days. The report quoted below is from the ICN Sunday Morning newsletter. Read and weep. —————————— Liquefied natural gas vessels are fueled by their cargo—they’re built specifically to make use of the gas boiling off from their tanks. But Cheniere Energy, the largest U.S. exporter of LNG, requested “alternative fuel” tax credits for that. The claim baffled shipping experts, because what Cheniere Energy is doing isn’t, in any real sense, an alternative. It also provides little climate benefit over fueling the vessels with diesel and uses the credit in a way that tax specialists say was never intended. Yet the Internal Revenue Service approved a $370 million payout to the company, a huge windfall that Phil and Peter predicted in an exclusive investigation earlier this year. Now, a group of seven Senate Democrats have launched a probe over the controversial tax credits and financial boon to Cheniere Energy. Phil and Peter explain the debate over the tax credits, the complicated calculations they used to estimate Cheniere’s payout, and how this case fits into their larger investigation into the hidden climate costs of exporting liquefied natural gas. |
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20 Years of Radioactive Waste
The Problem of Contaminated Water
Fracking contaminates the water used to fracture the fuel bearing layers. This contamination is permanent, so disposal of the water is a cost that the industry would like to “externalize” which means they’d like to have others deal with it. They have various schemes, which don’t clean it, they make it the base for another product such as snow-melting-brine. This, of course, doesn’t clean it up it just spreads it over a large geographical area where it gets back into streams and rivers. The report which follows give some statistics. The big guys with deep pockets are shifting the hot potato to lots of little guys.
It’s easy to imagine that this nasty water could end up labeled as something else, losing its toxic identification and then being released into the environment as benign. If sold to AI data centers for cooling, will it later be discharged into a sewer or evaporator?
Energy Demand Increase Stokes Fracking
What’s new?
PA Oil & Gas Weekly Compliance Dashboard – Nov. 22 to 28: $3.3 Million Penalty; 10,000 Gallon Spill Into Mine Voids, For 4th Time; 21 More Abandoned Conventional Wells; Wet Fracking Sand ‘Escapes’ Containment
From November 22 to 28, DEP’s Oil and Gas Compliance Database shows oil and gas inspectors filed 369 inspection entries, plus older inspect…
Documentary: Fracking’s Toll in New Mexico
New Documentary Exposes Fracking’s Heavy Toll on New Mexico
Center for Biological Diversity: LAS CRUCES, N.M.— The Land of Sacrifice, a new documentary released today by filmmaker Annie Ersinghaus, shows how New Mexico’s fracking boom is heaping health and environmental burdens on frontline communities.
Ohio’s Bad Guys
The energy industry continues to push the limits and externalize the damage fracing does.
Toxic secrets buried in Ohio: Lawsuit exposes how fracking waste threatens drinking water
Environmental advocates challenge Ohio’s use of outdated safety standards for fracking waste disposal sites containing “heavy metals and radioactive material” that sit dangerously close to the Ohio River and municipal water supplies
