That’s right, profits at the “Big 5″ U.S. oil companies in 2011 exceeded $130 billion, even as they continued to receive taxpayer-funded corporate welfare from the government. To read more about “the big, the bad and the subsidized,” please click here.
At Get Energy Smart! NOW!, Adam Siegel points us to a letter “Greenpeace has sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) making a case that TransCanada is potentially in violation of security laws due to its use of inflated job figures as part of a strategic influence campaign to drive the Obama Administration into supporting this misguided and risky venture.” According to the letter:
[TransCanada] has consistently used public statements and information it knows are false in a concerted effort to secure permitting approval of KXL from the U.S. government. In the process, it has misled investors, U.S. and Canadian officials, the media, and the public at large in order to bolster its balance sheets and share price. We think these statements violate U.S. securities disclosure laws, notably SEC Rule 10b(5) – Employment of Manipulative and Deceptive Practices. It is incumbent on TRP to immediately and publicly correct this information – or be forced to do so by the Securities and Exchange Commission…
…Specifically, TRP has asserted that each mile of KXL pipeline constructed in the U.S. would create American jobs at a rate that is 67 times higher than job creation totals given by the company to Canadian officials for the Canadian portion of the pipeline.
How misleading TransCanada has been was highlighted recently by Cornell University researchers, who have published the only independent study done to date of the net economic impact of Keystone XL. The main findings of that report were clear: “The company’s claim that KXL will create 20,000 direct construction and manufacturing jobs in the U.S is not substantiated.” In fact, the Cornell report adds, “By helping to lock in US dependence on fossil fuels, Keystone XL will impede progress toward green and sustainable economic renewal and will have a chilling effect on green investments and green jobs creation.”
The fact is, Keystone XL is simply a bad energy investment. As the Globe and Mail explains, “getting this resource out of the ground and ready for refining is expensive, by some estimates the planet’s most costly major oil source.” How expensive? According to the Globe and Mail article, Canada’s National Energy Board “recently pegged the minimum price needed for new projects to be commercially viable at $85 to $95 (U.S.) a barrel.” With current oil prices around $95-$100 per barrel, this means that the economics of tar sands are “relatively marginal,” and that it wouldn’t “take a lot to slip them into the red.”
As if the questionable economics of tar sands weren’t bad enough, there’s also the fact that it’s an environmentally disaster, with no benefit in terms of kicking the U.S. oil import addiction. As Oil Sands Truth explains, tar sands “are already slated to be the cause of up to the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet behind the Amazon Rainforest Basin,” while “[h]uman health in many communities has seriously taken a turn for the worse with many causes alleged to be from tar sands production.” And, as the Carnegie Council points out, “the idea that Keystone XL will decrease America’s dependence on foreign oil is demonstrably false,” as this is an export pipeline (with the oil headed to China and Europe), but instead will “feed the growing trend of exporting refined products out of the United States, thereby doing nothing to enhance energy security or to stabilize oil prices or gasoline prices at the pump.”
The bottom line is clear: the Keystone tar sands export pipeline would not help the United States economically, environmentally, or in any other way. To the contrary, investment in clean, domestic, inexhaustible wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources would boost the U.S. economy, strengthen U.S. national security, and do so without polluting the air and water we rely on. To put it mildly, this is not a difficult choice.
Yesterday afternoon, the White House issued a statement rejecting – at least for now – the proposed Keystone XL tarsands pipeline from Alberta, Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. That was the correct, even courageous, decision, pushing back against the powerful forces that support this expensive, risky, and job-killing project.
In fact, as at least one unbiased analysis has pointed out, Keystone XL would not reduce dependence on foreign oil, would not create jobs, would not help lower gasoline prices, would not guarantee the safety of fresh drinking water supplies for millions of people, would not protect the environment of western Canada from devastation, and would not do anything to defuse “North America’s biggest carbon bomb.” Instead, it would make matters worse in all those areas.
In spite all these inconvenient truths, leading politicians in Congress – including at least one with a major financial conflict of interest on the matter – have been pushing hard to force President Obama to approve this Big Oil Boondoggle, while fighting tooth and nail to keep the taxpayer-funded gravy train rolling for extremely profitable coal, oil, and natural gas companies. In doing so, they make wildly fallacious claims, such as the American Petroleum Institute’s ad and its claim that “The Keystone XL pipeline is ready to be built, bringing energy from Canada to power our country safely and responsibly, and employing thousands immediately.” False.
Meanwhile, many of those same politicians have been reliable opponents of incentives for clean energy, which offers the greatest hope for a prosperous, livable future for our country and our planet. Which raises a question: why is it that the prospect of losing tens of thousands of real jobs, ones that exist right now in the clean energy sector, but that could be lost due to the expiration of the Production Tax Credit, doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone in the House of Representatives’ “leadership?” Especially when those same people appear obsessed with ramming through the Keystone XL pipeline, which an independent, non-oil-industry-funded study by Cornell University found would either create no net jobs or “may actually destroy more jobs than it generates.” Clearly, this is a clash between the world of reality – one in which jobs in the solar sector are booming – and the world of obsession – one in which dirty energy players, in this case Big Oil, pay off politicians to turn them into rabid, zombie-like proponents of their industry.
Well, sorry, but it’s not acceptable to have bought-and-paid for, pro-Keystone Boondoggle politicians running the public rhetoric table with their nonsensical arguments. Especially when the bottom line is that this project is a gigantic giveaway to the tar sands industry, which will use the pipeline to ship refinery products to China and Europe, with little to no job growth in the U.S.
Sadly, with all the propaganda and hot air floating around out there, the facts no longer speak for themselves. Which is why, in coming months, supporters of clean energy and a health environment will need sustained messaging to continue making the case against Keystone, to get the facts out there, and to fight off the well-funded, incessant efforts by Big Oil interests to get their way, regardless of the adverse consequences for our country and our planet.
In a recent editorial, the New York Times makes the same argument we’ve also been making for a long time now, that “Congress should end the subsidies to Big Oil and redeploy the money saved to support truly new energy technologies, like wind and solar power…” Why? According to the Times, because they are “arcane and unnecessary,” costing taxpayers “ roughly $4 billion a year.”
We’d add that these subsidies continue, even though Big Oil’s raking in enormous profits on $100 per barrel oil prices. In the third quarter of 2011, for instance, the five largest U.S. oil companies made $33 billion in profits. This comes on top of huge profits in the 1st and 2nd quarters, and means that “BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell made a combined $101 billion in profits during the first nine months of 2011.” What are they doing with this money?
…four of the companies are using an average of one-third of their profits to buy back their own stock. That enriches their shareholders but it doesn’t add to oil supplies or investments in alternative fuels or other new technologies.
That’s right, these super-wealthy companies are using taxpayer money to further enrich themselves, including through buying back their own stock. Does that make any sense at all? The New York Times certainly doesn’t think so, and neither do we.
To understand why it’s time for everyone to “vote for energy,” check out the above video (source). Yes, that’s a parody – and a funny one at that – of a new ad campaign by our friends at the American Petroleum Institute. This article explains what’s going on:
The American Petroleum Institute – the lobbying arm of big oil and gas companies – yesterday announced its “Vote 4 Energy” campaign that will promote its policy agenda in key electoral states including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. This campaign will more loudly promote the Big Oil agenda of more drilling, fewer safe guards, and retention of Big Oil tax breaks.
API’s members, including the five largest public oil companies which could earn record profits in 2011, will likely provide major funds this program. These funds come from profits that are due to record high oil prices, which led American families to pay the highest average annual gasoline price ever.
[...]
Adding insult to injury, American taxpayers provide $4 billion in annual tax breaks to Big Oil companies, half of which go the big five.
The bottom line: Americans are subsidizing big oil’s campaign that is designed to convince them to support policies that will ultimately increase oil company profits — at the public’s expense.
Outrageous, huh? So, how do those of us who prefer clean energy to dirty oil counter this propaganda campaign? For starters, we can tell everyone we know what Big Oil’s up to, and that nobody shouldn’t be fooled by it for one minute. In addition, we can help spread parody videos and websites around as widely as possible, as mockery can be a highly effective tool against the powerful and well-to-do. Finally, we can vote for people in 2012 who support wind, solar, energy efficiency, geothermal, and other forms of clean energy, while voting against tools of the oil and coal industries. In other words, the exact opposite of what API wants us to do.
