Category Archives: energy policy

energy policy, fossil fuels

Several articles about Seismic testing in Gulf of California and beached whales, including lawsuit to stop NSF-owned ship from testing

Leave a comment

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-stop-whale-harming-research/

BySUE CHANAPOctober 16, 2002, 4:56 PM

Judge: Stop Whale-Harming Research

A federal judge ordered the National Science Foundation on Monday to stop firing sound blasts into the Gulf of California because it harms whales. Magistrate Judge James Larson sided with conservationists who said sound blasts used to map the ocean floor have disrupted marine life in the ocean between Baja California and mainland Mexico. Larson ordered such aspects of a $1.6 million research project undertaken by the foundation to end immediately.

The Center for Biological Diversity asked the court last week to stop the research, saying two dead whales found on the Mexican coast last month likely beached themselves because of noise from air guns aboard the government vessel. Government lawyers argued environmentalists had proven no connection between the beached whales and noise from the air guns. James Coda, assistant U.S. attorney for Northern California, said the government may appeal.

A mass stranding of 15 beaked whales happened Sept. 24-25 in Spain’s Canary Islands, where naval maneuvers were taking place. One of the biologists who found the dead whales in Mexico said preliminary tests had linked the Spanish beaching to underwater noise from the maneuvers.

“When we heard they were using high-intensity sounds offshore (for the mapping), I think all our heads clicked onto the possibility that this could have been caused by the research,” the biologist, Jay Barlow, a National Marine Fisheries Service scientist in San Diego, said Tuesday. He said some scientists suspect intense underwater sounds like a warship’s sonar may confuse beaked whales, which emit sound waves to search for food.

The National Science Foundation owns the vessel from which the researchers are sending out the sound signals, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University is operating the ship. Lamont-Doherty officials said they have taken additional steps to limit the impact of the work, including reducing the intensity of the sound signals, restricting the research area, limiting operations to daylight, and enlisting Mexican researchers to monitor marine mammal activity. Mexican President Vicente Fox has declared all of his nation’s waters a preserve for whales. Of the 81 known species of whales, 39 are found in Mexican waters, and some breed off the Baja California peninsula.

© 2002 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

____________________

http://www.geotimes.org/jan03/NN_whales.html

January 2003

Oceanography
Whales beach seismic research

On Sept. 25, five vacationing marine biologists sailing in Mexico’s Gulf of California came across two recently beached Cuvier’s beaked whales. Surprised by the find, the biologists wanted to contact a Mexican colleague to perform necropsies to determine why the whales had died – but the radio on the sailboat was not strong enough to reach the researcher, 40 miles away. The biologists hailed a nearby ship, hoping to use its satellite phone.

The ship was the Maurice Ewing operated by Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The biologists quickly learned that the ship, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), had been pulsing the ocean with high-powered sound waves to map the lithosphere beneath the ocean floor. Aware of recent correlations between Navy sonar exercises and beaked whale deaths, the biologists immediately suspected the sound waves had fatally disoriented the whales.

Environmental lawyers got wind of the incident and took the issue to court. On Oct. 30, the Northern California District Court issued a temporary restraining order halting the surveys. The Court found that it was likely that both the acoustic blasts were irreparably harming marine mammals and that NSF had violated U.S. environmental laws – criteria strong enough to grant a temporary stop. While important legal questions remain, the restraining order shut the door on a major research initiative more than 10 years in the making.

“It was a huge blow,” explains geophysicist Steven Holbrook, from the University of Wyoming, who was one of the four primary investigators on board the Ewing at the time of the strandings.

The geophysicists were working in the Gulf of California because it is one of the two best places in the world to study a complete rift complex that is actively driving continents apart, explains Michael Purdy, director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Understanding rifting is a major scientific objective within the NSF-funded MARGINS program that supported the Ewing cruise. The other prime candidate for studying rifting is the Red Sea, but no cruises to that location have been funded.

The powerful air guns on the Ewing generate high-resolution images of the lithosphere that read like deep roadcuts into Earth, detailing the shapes and distributions of rock layers five miles or more below the ocean floor. “This is a methodology that has evolved over several decades, and we use it because it is the best,” Purdy says.

The marine biologists initially suspected that the Ewing was to blame because the strandings fit a pattern, explains John Hildebrand, a whale and acoustics specialist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Beaked whale strandings in Greece in 1996 and again in the Bahamas in 2000 occurred at the same time that NATO and the U.S. Navy, respectively, were using high-powered sonar in nearby waters. “If you look at all the recent strandings incidents, about half a dozen, you see a good correspondence between a ship track and the timing of the strandings. And it is consistently beaked whales that is the species most affected,” Hildebrand says.

When researchers on the Ewing first heard of the strandings, they halted all air gun activity. But as evidence came in, it looked unlikely that the Ewing caused the beachings, and so they resumed, Holbrook explains. Spurred by the Bahamas incident, the Navy has done tests concluding that sounds below 180 decibels do not damage marine mammals; intensities above 180 can damage lungs and tissues. The intensity of sound generated by the Ewing air guns falls steeply with distance so that it goes below 180 decibels at 3.2 kilometers from the ship. According to Holbrook, the Ewing was at least 80 kilometers from the whales when they beached, casting doubt on a causal link. When the researchers did resume the seismic profiling, they took several steps to minimize the possibility of harming marine mammals. They reduced sound levels, increased efforts to spot whales and stopped working at night. These steps complemented the Ewing’s standard procedure of slowly ramping up the intensity of the air guns when beginning a seismic survey – allowing any marine mammals in the immediate vicinity to leave before being exposed to dangerous levels of sound.

The additional mitigation efforts limited productivity, explains Holbrook. “From the actual restraining order, we lost six days of work outright. But there was a much greater impact from the voluntary measures we undertook.” The research crew ended up completing little over half of the four transects across the rift that they had intended.

Yet those voluntary measures were not enough, explains Hildebrand, who had informally asked the Marine Mammal Commission to review the planned cruise before it left, after he had discovered that air guns would be used. “The problem is that from visual surveys you only see about 20 percent of these animals because they are deep diving,” he says. That means many whales could be within 3.2 kilometers of the Ewing – the danger zone – without researchers knowing it.

Hildebrand and colleagues presented their concerns at the annual meeting of the Marine Mammal Commission in San Diego, which happened to be scheduled soon after the strandings. Brendan Cummings, an attorney for the California-based Center for Biological Diversity who attended the meeting, quickly saw a need for action. “It was clear to me that the scientists wished the government would do something, but the agency people were not sure they had the right jurisdiction. It was also clear to me that indecision would mean nothing would happen.”

After some digging, Cummings and colleagues found that the National Science Foundation had not applied for permits under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) to do their research. Nor had NSF gone through the environmental assessment procedure required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These alleged violations became the crux of the Center’s law suit.

NSF contended that no evidence connected the Ewing to the beached whales. Furthermore, the Ewing was operating in Mexican waters and therefore was not subject to the U.S. environmental laws. In a letter to the Center for Biological Diversity, Anita Eisenstadt, Assistant General Counsel to NSF, wrote, “Before the cruise began, we obtained all required permissions from the Mexican government because the vessel is operating in Mexican waters.”

While the court decision sided with the environmental lawyers, the restraining order is temporary and does not set a precedent for future cases. It will stay in effect until a more extensive court trial, which will likely happen within the year, determines whether to make the order permanent. The judge may decide that the point is moot, because the temporary restraining order has already stopped the research, and the Ewing has no plans within the foreseeable future to return to the Gulf of California.

Several key questions remain unresolved that will likely come up if another hearing is held. Each side has a different interpretation of the exact timing of the beachings and how close the Ewing was to the whales when they beached. A second question is whether the strandings linked to Navy sonar provide any guide for interpreting the cause of the strandings in this case. The air guns from the Ewing produce acoustic pulses that, at their source, are more intense than the Navy’s sonar. However, whales respond to specific frequencies of disturbance, as well as magnitude, and the air guns operate at a much lower frequency (about 100 hertz) than the Navy sonar (several kilohertz), Holbrook says. Also, the Navy sonar continuously sweeps the ocean with sound waves, while the air guns only fire short acoustic pulses once every 20 to 60 seconds.

A larger question is over the jurisdiction of U.S. environmental laws – do they apply to federally funded ships operating in the waters of other countries? “There is a horrible dearth of legal certainty on this matter,” says Curt Suplee, director of the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs at NSF. “If you are in the Gulf of California, where every cubic inch of water is in territorial waters or the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Mexico, do these laws apply? The Center for Biological Diversity has the perfect right to seek a different interpretation.” One reason that question has not been fully resolved is that EEZs were established after the NEPA and MMPA laws.

A final court ruling could help resolve these scientific and jurisidictional questions. In the meantime, this case has put the spotlight on NSF, Purdy says. “It is clear that this case has brought the issue into the public scrutiny, and it is clear that we are going to be scrutinized very carefully in the future, and we need to continue to show that we are operating legally and responsibly.”
Greg Peterson

A recent court order stopped the Maurice Ewing from conducting seismic surveys in the Gulf of California on the grounds that the survey’s loud acoustic pulses may have been harming marine mammals. Photo courtesy of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Division of Marine Affairs.

_________________

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6984/full/428681a.html

Nature, April 2004

Nature 428, 681 (15 April 2004) | doi:10.1038/428681a

Push to protect whales leaves seafloor research high and dry
See associated Correspondence: Stocker, Nature 430, 291 (July 2004)
Rex Dalton

A prestigious US research ship’s schedule is in disarray after geophysicists were forced to abandon two recent projects because of concerns that they would harm marine mammals.The Maurice Ewing – a 2,000-tonne vessel operated by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, New York state – has been docked in Mobile, Alabama, for the past two months after the cruises were blocked.

To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).

_____________________

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v430/n6997/full/430291a.html

Nature, July 2004

Nature 430, 291 (15 July 2004) | doi:10.1038/430291a; Published online 14 July 2004

Ocean noise could injure more than mammals
Michael Stocker1

Geologists should wait until more is known about the harm their work may do to fish.

Your News story “Push to protect whales leaves seafloor research high and dry” (Nature 428, 681; 200410.1038/428681a) reports that the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory survey of the 65-million-year-old Chicxulub meteorite crater, coordinated by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), was cancelled because of concerns that the airguns used could harm marine mammals.

To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).

_____________________

Sea Shepherd

February 2005

http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/2008/11/07/whale-harassment-vessel-damages-reef-off-mexico-1061

February 24, 2005

Whale Harassment Vessel Damages Reef off Mexico

On February 15, 2005, the U.S. National Science Foundation vessel Maurice Ewing struck a reef some 30 miles off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula. The grounding damaged 30 square meters of the reef – 10 meters of the damage was to coral.

The reef was clearly marked. The skipper of the Maurice Ewing was clearly negligent. The ship now faces heavy fines for running aground on a protected reef. “The fines will be based on the amount of damage done,” said Mexico’s Attorney General for Environmental Protection Jose Luis Luege. “I can’t say offhand what the fine will be, but it will be sizeable.”

The grounding of the Maurice Ewing is the most recent negative environmental activity of this U.S. National Science Foundation ship. Just prior to the reef damaging incident, the vessel was engaged in deploying seismic waves to search for traces of the asteroid impact that occurred 65 million years ago. This seismic activity represented a significant harassment to marine wildlife populations. Several strandings of cetaceans in the Caribbean area during this activity are believed to be a result of this research.

The Maurice Ewing is currently moored off the end of Progresso Pier and will stay there until whatever fine imposed is paid. Their work permit has also been suspended until the fine is paid and there is also a move underway in the Mexican Senate to permanently ban the Maurice Ewing from Mexican waters.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society applauds the government of Mexico for seizing the Maurice Ewing until a legal judgment determines what the fine will be and is paid.

Officials with Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which operates the Maurice Ewing, have refused to comment on the incident.
Sea Shepherd is calling for the cessation of the research by the Maurice Ewing on the grounds that the crew conducting the research are incompetent. “Here we have a ship full of scientists arrogantly disregarding the welfare of living whales and dolphins in their efforts to seek the cause of the mass extinction of dinosaurs,” said Captain Paul Watson. “They claim they have the technology to detect evidence on the sea floor of an event 56 million years, yet they can’t even avoid a reef that is clearly identified on nautical charts.”

Please write to PROFEPA (Procuraduria Federal de Protección al Ambiente) and encourage the Mexican government to permanently confiscate this ship which has caused so much damage to marine habitat and wildlife:
Luis Fueyo Mac Donald
Director General de Inspección de los Recursos Marinos y Ecosistemas Costeros
Nivel KA1
Edificio AJUSCO
Carretera Picacho-Ajusco 200
Col. Jardines en la Montaña
Deleg. Tlalpan, C.P. 14210, México D.F.
Tel: +54-49-63-00 ext. 16323
Fax: 26152093
E-mail: lfueyo@correo.profepa.gob.mx

__________________________

see online version for illustrations:

http://www.anp.gov.br/meio/guias/sismica/biblio/Environmentalnews.PDF

Judge Halts Baja Research After
Two Whale Deaths

SAN FRANCISCO, California, October 30,
2002 (ENS) – A federal district court judge
ordered the National Science Foundation to stop
using high decibel airguns in the Gulf of
California yesterday, citing concern over possible
harm to whales that environmentalists believe the
research project has caused.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) had been
using the airguns to fire high energy acoustic
bursts at the sea floor to help map a fault in the
earth’s crust.

It is these high energy acoustic bursts that The
Center for Biological Diversity believes is the
likely cause of the death of two beaked whales,
which found stranded on September 25 at Isla San
Jose in the Gulf of California which separates
Mexico’s Baja Peninsula from mainland Mexico.

The whales were
discovered by National Marine Fisheries Service
scientists, who were on vacation at the time. After
examining the dead animals, the scientists
determined the activities of the NSF project were
probably responsible for their deaths.

After NSF refused its request to stop its work, the
Center filed suit in federal district court in San
Francisco on October 18 to halt the research
project, citing concern for marine wildlife and
accusing the National Science Foundation of not
having the correct environmental permits for its
activities.

On Monday, U.S. Magistrate James Larson found
that NSF was likely violating both the National

Environmental Policy Act and the Marine
Mammal Protection Act and has ordered
suspension of the use of the airguns.

“We’re delighted that the judge ordered a halt to
this dangerous and illegal project,” said Brendan
Cummings, an attorney with the Center for
Biological Diversity. “We had hoped that such a
renowned scientific institution as the NSF would
exercise some concern over the environmental
effects of its actions. Unfortunately, the NSF has
displayed the same disregard of environmental
laws that we have come to expect from this
administration.”

The ruling has effectively terminated the NSF’s
research project, which began on September 18
and was scheduled to conclude by November 4.
The science foundation is unlikely to challenge
the decision, but it does not believe that it in any
way endangered marine wildlife nor disregarded
environmental laws in carrying out its research,
which was funded by a $1.6 million grant from
the National Science Foundation.

“We lost a huge amount of the science,” said NSF
spokesperson Curt Suplee. “It will be better than
nothing, but it wouldn’t be what they needed. Will
it justify the cost of the cruise? Probably not.”

The agency is convinced it did not need to
complete an environmental impact statement
under the National Environmental Policy Act
because it was operating in Mexican waters.
NEPA, however, is applicable to “major federal
actions,” and as a federally funded project using a
federal agency’s resources, this research fits the
bill.

“If any agency should know better, it is the NSF,”
Cummings said, noting that NSF was party to a
seminal case involving application of NEPA to
waters outside the U.S. The Marine Mammal
Protection Act applies, Cummings explained, for
several reasons, primarily, the use of a sound
source loud enough to potentially impact marine
wildlife.

In order to map and study the underwater plate
boundaries of the earth’s crust, scientists have to
bounce sound off the ocean floor. The R/V
Maurice-Ewing, a research vessel owned by the
National Science Foundation, is equipped with 20
airguns designed for this kind of project.
According Suplee, the vessel has been in use for
12 years and has mapped hundreds of thousands
of miles without incident.

“To the best of NSF’s knowledge, there has never
been a reported incident of injury or death to a
marine mammal,” Suplee said. “We still believe
that is the case. This is not new technology that
we started for the first time on this cruise to
torment marine wildlife.”

True, said Cummings, but NSF should have taken
into consideration the possibility that marine
mammals might have been affected. The decibel
levels of the array of airguns on the R/V
Maurice-Ewing can be louder than the
techonology used by the Navy, he added.

The technology used on the R/V Maurice Ewing
is not the same as what the U.S. Navy’s high
intensity, low frequency, active sonar, Suplee
added. But that type of sonar is not the only kind
that is damaging to whales. U.S. Naval operations
involving quieter, medium intensity sonar have
been directly linked to beaked whale strandings in
the Bahamas in 2000. NATO naval exercises were
linked to the deaths of a dozen whales in the
Canary Islands in September.

NSF also argues that the R/V Maurice-Ewing was,
at a minimum, 40 miles from where the whales
were found. In addition, NSF immediately halted
the project when it learned of the deaths, only
restarting a week later after what Suplee called
extensive efforts to ensure the research activities
were not the cause.

“We waited an entire week until the scientists
conducting this were all satisfied that we were not
involved in this unfortunate stranding,” Suplee
said. “We promised everyone in sight that if there
was even the remotest indication that this was
dangerous, that we’d shut it down. We’ve not only
been legal. Legal is easy. We’ve done everything
that is morally and ethically responsible in this.”

Cummings does not argue that NSF did not take
this seriously once the issue with the whales had
come up. The problem is that NSF failed to take
the possibility of damage to marine mammals into
consideration during the funding and planning of
the project.

“They did the research first and then once the
whale issue became a concern, were scrambling to
try to justify how it wasn’t impacting whales
rather than trying to do that first,” Cummings said.

“We’ve perhaps only scratched the surface, and
there may be other NSF funded projects out there
where they’ve ignored their obligations to carry
out environmental review before funding them or
carrying them out,” said Cummings. “Our goal is
not to stop this research, it is to make sure NSF
looks at the possible effects of the research before
carrying it out.”

___________________

and from 2005:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/118981/activists_call_sound_wave_research_harmful/

Activists Call Sound Wave Research Harmful
January 14, 2005

MEXICO CITY (AP) – Scientists working off the Yucatan Peninsula are preparing to use sound waves to search for information about an asteroid that may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

But environmental activists are trying to shut the project down, saying the technology could harm whales, sea turtles and several varieties of fish that provide a livelihood for thousands of Mexicans along the gulf coast.

Marine seismologists from the University of Texas Institute of Geophysics, the Geophysics Institute at Mexico’s Autonomous National University and Cambridge and London universities will use underwater seismic pulses to learn more about the Chicxulub (pronounced Sheek-shoo-LOOB) Crater, a depression measuring about 120 miles in diameter and centered just outside the port of Progreso, 190 miles west of Cancun.

The same technique is routinely used by scientific research vessels around the world to study earthquake faults, tsunami dangers and climate change, scientists say. It is used in Mexico by the state oil monopoly, Pemex, to search for new energy reserves.

But Rosario Sosa, president of the Yucatan-based civilian Association for the Rights of Animals and their Habitat, said the sound waves “damage the brain, or damage the cochlea of the ear, and disorient the animals so that they beach themselves or crash into boats.”

“They are no longer capable of looking for food using their sonar,” she said.
Scientists acknowledge there’s evidence that points to Navy sonar causing whales to beach themselves. But they say there’s no proof that seismic pulses have harmed marine animals, though much more research is needed to draw firm conclusions.

Thus far “there has not been any significant evidence that there is any harm being done to the marine animal population,” said Maya Tolstoy, a research scientist with Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The observatory is in charge of operating the Maurice Ewing, the research vessel from which the scientists will work, about 50 miles offshore. The boat is owned by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Located half-onshore and half-offshore, the Chicxulub Crater is believed to have been carved by a comet or asteroid 65 million years ago, and occurred simultaneously with the mass extinction of species, including the dinosaur.

It is the largest and best-preserved “impact” crater on Earth, said Gail Christeson, a University of Texas marine seismologist involved in the project.

Researchers will send sound waves into the seabed via compressed-air guns to try to create the three-dimensional structure of the crater and learn the speed of the asteroid or comet, the angle at which it hit the Earth, and its effects on the environment.

The information could lead to knowledge of how to respond to possible future asteroid hits, Christeson said. She said the research also will help scientists to better understand the aquifer system of the Yucatan because the crater controls the water supply.

But Sosa says that after the Maurice Ewing conducted research in the waters between the Baja California peninsula and mainland Mexico in October 2002, two beached whales were found in the area with evidence of damage to their ears.

She also says activists have come across dead dolphins and turtles in the gulf coast state of Campeche, where Pemex uses seismic pulses to explore for oil. An additional concern is that the sound waves could threaten fish stocks – the livelihood of about 30,000 families along the Gulf coast.

Christeson says she has participated in at least four seismic cruises, “and we have never seen any effect on marine life.”

“It has been observed that the Navy sonar may have contributed to strandings of marine mammals,” said Christeson. “Our sounds source is different from navy sonar. The amplitude is less and we also fire intermittently, so we will put a short burst of sound in water every 20 seconds. The Navy sweeps through different frequencies.”

Mexico’s national Environment Department granted the Maurice Ewing permission to operate after the scientists agreed to take along independent specialists to monitor sea animals; allow flight and underwater acoustic monitoring; work only during the day when it is easier to notice the animals; and maintain a 3,800-yard safety radius around the ship. The government will conduct its own monitoring flights as well, officials said.

The scientists also have agreed to stop testing when the presence of marine mammals is detected, and will gradually raise the sound wave decibels to warn the animals and give them a chance to leave the area.

The activists, who claim to represent 100 national and international organizations, say that’s not good enough.

Benjamin White of the Washington-based non-governmental Animal Welfare Institute initially planned to tie himself with a rope to a fishermen’s boat that would ride alongside the Maurice Ewing to prevent it from conducting the tests.

Now faced with orders banning them from approaching the boat, the protesters are considering peaceful weekend demonstrations in front of Yucatan state offices.
“I’m here as long as it takes to shut them down,” White said.
–
On the Net:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/
www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/oma/ewing
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news/2005/01_05_05.htm

Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/118981/activists_call_sound_wave_research_harmful/#pY0XoOkgXmyBbjft.99

Special thanks to Richard Charter

energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, Uncategorized

RESCHEDULED: Oversight Hearing on “Energy Independence: Domestic Opportunities to Reverse California’s Growing Dependence on Foreign Oil”

Leave a comment

Friday, April 4, 2014 9:30 AM
Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources
1334 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515HEARING RESCHEDULED * * *
Oversight Hearing on:

“Energy Independence: Domestic Opportunities to Reverse California’s Growing Dependence on Foreign Oil”

Witnesses and Testimony:
PANEL I
A witness list will be posted here once it has been confirmed.
Background:
Since 2000, California has experienced a surge in foreign oil imports. Today, California gets 50 percent of its oil from foreign sources and half of those imports come from the Middle East through the Strait of Hormuz. California’s unemployment is higher than the national average at 8.7 percent, energy prices in California are among the highest in the nation, and California is in the midst of a fiscal crisis. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that California’s Monterey Shale contains over 15 billion barrels of oil – more than estimates of North Dakota’s Bakken Shale. Federal lands off the coast of California contain energy reserves estimated to contain at least 9.8 billion barrels of oil and 13.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas according to the Interior Department. And, as California is the primary recipient of Alaskan exports, no state stands to benefit more from increased production in Alaska. If the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A) were open for production, it could add an additional 13.1 billion barrels of crude oil to the domestic market.
Related Documents:

Subcommittee Hearing Notice – September 10, 2013
Updated: Subcommittee Hearing Postponement Notice – September 12, 2013
Updated: Subcommittee Hearing Notice – March 13, 2014

Special thanks to Richard Charter

climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking

Chesapeake Climate Action Network: National Environmental Leaders Tell President Obama: Pell-Mell Rush to Export Gas Would Significantly Undercut U.S. Climate Action

Leave a comment

For Immediate Release
March 18, 2014

Contact:
Kelly Trout, 240-396-2022, kelly@chesapeakeclimate.org
Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org

Leaders of 16 national and regional groups call on the president to reverse course-and order a full review of the ‘Cove Point’ LNG export project in Maryland as a first step in the right direction

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Leaders of 16 national and regional climate advocacy groups sent a letter to President Obama today, calling on him to revisit proposals to radically expand U.S. exports of fracked and liquefied natural gas, which would significantly undermine his administration’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis. As a first step in the right direction, the letter urges the president to ensure a comprehensive federal environmental impact review for one of the most controversial liquefied natural gas export proposals currently before his administration-the Cove Point facility proposed by Dominion Resources just outside of Washington, D.C. on the Chesapeake Bay.

“President Obama, exporting LNG is simply a bad idea in almost every way. We again implore you to shift course on this disastrous push to frack, liquefy, and export this climate-wrecking fossil fuel,” the letter states.

“As a first step, tell [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] to drop its shameful and unacceptably weak permitting process for Cove Point in Maryland. Demand a full Environmental Impact Statement for this massive $3.8 billion project just a short drive from your house. An EIS will put more facts on the table and, we believe, will persuade you and the nation that a pell-mell rush to export gas is a pell-mell rush to global climate ruin,” the letter continues.

Groups signing the letter included 350.org, CREDO, Food & Water Watch, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and Earthworks, all sponsors of a weekend rally in California that was the largest anti-fracking protest in the state’s history, as well as the Sierra Club, the Energy Action Coalition and Earthjustice. National leaders Bill McKibben and Michael Brune joined a tele-press conference to release the letter.

“From Maryland to California, Americans are taking to the streets to say that climate leaders don’t frack,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder and president of 350.org.

Emerging and credible analyses show that significant expansion of fracking and gas export infrastructure could cripple global efforts to solve climate change, which Secretary of State John Kerry recently called perhaps the “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” In fact, the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of the LNG export process-including drilling, piping, compressing, liquefying, shipping, re-gasifying, and burning-likely make it as harmful to the climate, or worse than, burning coal overseas. Analysis shows the $3.8 billion Cove Point plan could alone trigger more lifecycle climate change pollution than all seven of Maryland’s existing coal-fired power plants combined.

“President Obama has told us many times that failure to address the climate crisis amounts to the betrayal of our children and future generations, so it would be contradictory for the president to allow the LNG export facility at Cove Point to start operating without a full environmental review,” said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. “We can’t cut climate pollution and simultaneously expand the use of dirty fossil fuels, and we must fully understand the consequences of liquefying fracked natural gas for export. Building new fossil fuel infrastructure keeps America tied to the past. We should be exporting clean energy innovation, not the dirty fuels of the 19th century.”

The Cove Point project has faced particularly fierce regional and local resistance in recent months, including a record-large environmental protest in downtown Baltimore in late February and a string of three civil disobedience protests over the past three weeks resulting in arrests across Maryland.

Cove Point would be the first export facility to open fracking operations across the Marcellus Shale to Asian export markets. It would also be built in an area in southern Maryland that is by far the most densely populated human community in the vicinity of any proposed gas export facility in the nation. Despite calls from Maryland health, environmental and community leaders as well as Maryland’s attorney general for a full Environmental Impact Statement on Cove Point, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced last week that it would release a more limited and less participatory Environmental Assessment on May 15 of this year.

“Marylanders would certainly have President Obama’s back if he steps in to demand a full federal environmental review of Cove Point-81 percent of state voters expressed support for this more protective type of review in recent polling,” said Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “Ultimately, President Obama can and should abandon support for more fracking infrastructure and concentrate on locking in a legacy of new wind turbines and solar panels criss-crossing Maryland and the country-a plan that would create far more jobs than fracking and exporting climate-harming gas.”

View a PDF of the full text and signers of the letter to President Obama: http://org.salsalabs.com/o/423/images/LNG-Export-PresidentObama-Climate-Letter31814.pdf

View the news release online at: http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=3879:national-leaders-to-obama-rush-to-export-gas-would-significantly-undercut-us-climate-action&Itemid=23

For more information: www.stopcovepoint.org
###

FULL TEXT AND SIGNERS OF THE LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA:

350.org Å° Center for Biological Diversity Å° Center for Health, Environment and Justice Å° Chesapeake Climate Action Network Å° CREDO Å° Earth Day Network Å° Earthjustice Å° Earthworks Å° Energy Action Coalition Å° Environmental Action Å° Environment America Å° Food and Water Watch Å° Friends of the Earth Å° Green America Å° Sierra Club Å° Waterkeeper Alliance

March 18, 2014

The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

A LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: STOP THE DISASTROUS RUSH TO EXPORT FRACKED GAS AT COVE POINT AND NATIONWIDE

Dear Mr. President,

We write as Americans who are grateful that you have taken steps to elevate the urgency of the climate crisis over the past year. We agree with you that, as you said in your June 25th climate action speech at Georgetown University last year, “the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late.”

However, we are disturbed by your administration’s support for hydraulic fracturing and, particularly, your plan to build liquefied natural gas export terminals along U.S. coastlines that would ship large amounts of fracked gas around the world. We call on you to reverse course on this plan and commit instead to keeping most of our nation’s fossil fuel reserves in the ground, in line with the recommendations of most of the world’s leading climate scientists.And as a good-faith test case in this direction, we ask you to hold your Federal Energy Regulatory Commission accountable to completing a full Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed “Cove Point” LNG export facility, located just 65 miles from your home on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Lusby, Maryland.

Cove Point is emblematic of the irrational and fast-track strategy of the gas industry to export U.S. fracked gas and then ask questions later. The truth is that Cove Point, like other proposed LNG export terminals, will raise U.S. gas prices – harming virtually all Americans – while becoming a historic catalyst for more fracking across the mid-Atlantic and triggering a huge new pulse of climate pollution. Yet despite all this, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – part of your federal government – does not intend to even conduct a full and customary Environmental Impact Statement on the $3.8 billion project. Please, Mr. President, demand that FERC conduct an EIS. Given a full and fair accounting of the facts, we believe the clear economic and climate reality will become clear to you and the nation: Cove Point and the general push for LNG exports is NOT in America’s best interest or the world’s.

The life cycle of exported fracked gas, from drilling to piping to “liquefaction” to shipping overseas and eventual burning, results in huge levels of carbon emissions and widespread leakage of methane, a greenhouse gas much more powerful than CO2. Emerging and credible analyses now show that exported U.S. fracked gas is as harmful to the atmosphere as the combustion of coal overseas – if not worse. We believe that the implementation of a massive LNG export plan would lock in place infrastructure and economic dynamics that will make it almost impossible for the world to avoid catastrophic climate change.

In a report published in 2011 by the International Energy Administration, experts referred to plans for a major expansion of natural gas production and usage worldwide: “This puts emissions on a long-term trajectory consistent with stabilising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at around 650 ppm, suggesting a long-term temperature rise of over 3.5°C.” (Are We Entering a Golden Age of Gas?, June 6, 2011)

Given that the world’s nations have agreed that we need to limit temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius to have a decent chance of making a successful transition to a low-carbon economy, we call upon you to immediately change course when it comes to LNG export terminals.

Such a course would be consistent with the public statements made by your Secretary of State John Kerry in recent weeks. In Jakarta, Indonesia on February 16 he stated that: “Climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction. … Industrialized countries have to play a leading role in reducing emissions.” And just a few days ago, in a personal message to State Department personnel, he wrote, “The scientific facts are coming back to us in a stronger fashion and with greater urgency than ever before. This challenge demands elevated urgency and attention from all of us.”

President Obama, exporting LNG is simply a bad idea in almost every way. We again implore you to shift course on this disastrous push to frack, liquefy, and export this climate-wrecking fossil fuel. As a first step, tell FERC to drop its shameful and unacceptably weak permitting process for Cove Point in Maryland. Demand a full Environmental Impact Statement for this massive $3.8 billion project just a short drive from your house. An EIS will put more facts on the table and, we believe, will persuade you and the nation that a pell-mell rush to export gas is a pell-mell rush to global climate ruin.

Instead of a gas rush, we ask you to double down on your ongoing efforts to improve energy efficiency and expand wind and solar power nationwide. Let that be your legacy, not a reckless dash to gas that will harm all future generations.

We need your leadership, President Obama.

Sincerely,

Bill McKibben
Co-founder and President
350.org

William Snape
Senior Counsel
Center for Biological Diversity

Lois Marie Gibbs
Executive Director
Center for Health, Environment and Justice

Mike Tidwell
Executive Director
Chesapeake Climate Action Network

Becky Bond
Political Director
CREDO

Kathleen Rogers
Director
Earth Day Network

Deborah Goldberg
Managing Attorney
Earthjustice

Jennifer Krill
Executive Director
Earthworks

Maura Cowley
Director
Energy Action Coalition

Jesse Bacon
Field Organizer
Environmental Action

Margie Alt
Executive Director
Environment America

Wenonah Hauter
Executive Director
Food and Water Watch

Erich Pica
President
Friends of the Earth

Fran Teplitz
Policy Director
Green America

Michael Brune
Executive Director
Sierra Club

Mark Yaggi
Executive Director
Waterkeeper Alliance

—
Mike Tidwell
Director
Chesapeake Climate Action Network
240-460-5838

Special thanks to Richard Charter

BP Spill, energy policy, gulf of mexico clean-up, Gulf restoration, national ocean politics, offshore oil

New York Times ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT U.S. Agrees to Allow BP Back Into Gulf Waters to Seek Oil

Leave a comment

By CLIFFORD KRAUSSMARCH 13, 2014

HOUSTON – Four years after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, BP is being welcomed back to seek new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

An agreement on Thursday with the Environmental Protection Agency lifts a 2012 ban that was imposed after the agency concluded that BP had not fully corrected problems that led to the well blowout in 2010 that killed 11 rig workers, spilled millions of gallons of oil and contaminated hundreds of miles of beaches.

BP had sued to have the suspension lifted, and now the agreement will mean hundreds of millions of dollars of new business for the company. But even more important, oil analysts said, it signifies an important step in the company’s recovery from the accident, which has been costly to its finances and reputation.

“After a lengthy negotiation, BP is pleased to have reached this resolution, which we believe to be fair and reasonable,” said John Mingé, chairman and president of BP America. “Today’s agreement will allow America’s largest energy investor to compete again for federal contracts and leases.”

That prospect elicited sharp criticism from environmental groups. “It’s kind of outrageous to allow BP to expand their drilling presence here in the gulf,” said Raleigh Hoke, a spokesman for the Gulf Restoration Network, based in New Orleans.

Under the agreement, BP will be allowed to bid for new leases as early as next Wednesday, but only as long as the company passes muster on ethics, corporate governance and safety procedures outlined by the agency. There will be risk assessments, a code of conduct for officers, guidance for employees and “zero tolerance” for retaliation against employees or contractors who raise safety concerns.

An independent auditor approved by the E.P.A. will conduct an annual review and report on BP’s compliance with the new standards. The agency said in a statement that it would also have the authority to take corrective action “in the event the agreement is breached.”
“This is a fair agreement that requires BP to improve its practices in order to meet the terms we’ve outlined together,” said Craig E. Hooks, the E.P.A.’s assistant administrator of administration and resources.

Fadel Gheit, an oil company analyst at Oppenheimer & Company, said it was “a moral victory for BP.” He added: “It will be the best news BP has gotten since the accident. BP has to get back into the hunt in order for them to score.”

Critics of the agreement noted that nearly four years after the spill, the cleanup has not been completed. Oil still washes up in places, particularly during storms, as happened in October with Tropical Storm Karen.

“They still haven’t really made it right when it comes to the gulf,” Mr. Hoke said.
Public Citizen, a consumer activist group, also expressed outrage, saying in a statement that the settlement “lets a corporate felon and repeat offender off the hook for its crimes against people and the environment.”

The accident continues to mire the company in lawsuits and court hearings. BP settled criminal charges with the Justice Department two years ago for $4.5 billion in penalties, but the oil company faces billions of dollars more in costs from a federal civil trial in New Orleans to determine how much it will be required to pay in Clean Water Act fines.

The company is also arguing that a separate settlement it made with businesses and individuals who suffered losses because of the accident has been misinterpreted. But a federal appeals court ruled this month that the company would have to abide by its agreement and pay some businesses for economic damages without their having to prove the damages were caused directly by the spill.

BP initially estimated that the costs of the settlement would run to $7.8 billion, but it now says the cost could rise well above that.

BP, which employs 2,300 people in the Gulf of Mexico, continues to explore on leases in the gulf from before the 2010 accident. At the end of 2013, the company had 10 drilling rigs in the deep waters of the gulf, and it reported a significant new discovery 300 miles southwest of New Orleans. BP said last year that it intended to invest at least $4 billion on average in the gulf each year for the next decade.

Oil production in the gulf remains below records set in 2009, and the industry continues to recover from a yearlong drilling moratorium that the federal government set after the spill. But several large oil companies, including Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell, are flocking back to the gulf. There were only about a dozen rigs working in the gulf three months after the disaster, and that increased to more than 60 by the end of last year.

When the E.P.A. issued the original ban, it cited BP for “lack of business integrity” because of its role in the accident and said the suspension would remain until the company could provide sufficient evidence that it met federal business standards.

The ban prohibited BP from selling fuel to the Pentagon and prevented the company from expanding its oil and gas production to new leases in the gulf, a major center of its worldwide operations. The company’s older leases make BP one of the most important oil and gas producers in the United States.

BP’s suit, filed last year in federal court in Texas, said that the ban was unjustified and that the agency had neglected to consider safety improvements the company had made.

David M. Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor and former chief of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section, said it was not unusual for corporate monitors to be appointed any time a corporation was convicted of criminal activity, especially in environmental cases. “What is unusual is BP was suspended from government contracting for such a long time,” he added.

Senator Mary L. Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat in a tough race for re-election, hailed the settlement, although she added that E.P.A. should never have enacted the ban in the first place.

“The good news is that BP will now be able to participate in next week’s lease sale that will bring much-needed revenue to Louisiana and other oil-producing states along the Gulf Coast, as well as boost business for the region’s small and independent service and supply companies,” she said in a statement.

Campbell Robertson contributed reporting from New Orleans.

A version of this article appears in print on March 14, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Agrees to Allow BP Back Into Gulf Waters to Seek Oil . Order Reprints|Today’s Paper|Subscribe

Special thanks to Richard Charter

energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, Keystone XL, tar sands

Common Dreams via PRWatch.org: Oil Industry Conjures Illusion of Public Support for KXL Using ALEC Politicians

Leave a comment

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/12-7
Published on Wednesday, March 12, 2014 by
by Nick Surgey

keystone pipeline protestors
According to documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the American Petroleum Institute (API) and other oil industry groups have been directing state legislators to make public and legislative statements in favor of the pipeline project. Millions of U.S. citizens have voiced their opposition to the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline in recent months, with more than 2 million public comments opposing the project hand delivered to the State Department last week. At the same time, hundreds of state legislators have been lining up in favor of KXL, seemingly just as passionate and as heartfelt as those opposed to the project. But many legislators have been tasked with promoting the project by oil industry lobbyists who provide them with model bills, talking points and draft op-eds.

According to documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the American Petroleum Institute (API) and other oil industry groups have been directing state legislators to make public and legislative statements in favor of the pipeline project, and have provided legislators with draft legislation, language for op-eds and testimony to be presented as their own. Central to these efforts is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), through which lobbyists — such as those from API — can meet in secret with state legislators from across the country.
Consumer Energy Alliance Gives Marching Orders at ALEC

During the most recent annual ALEC meeting in August 2013, held in downtown Chicago, oil-industry lobbyist Michael Whatley provided legislators at the group’s International Relations Task Force meeting with a briefing on the KXL pipeline, urging legislators for their help in getting the project approved. Whatley — a lobbyist for the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) — has regularly attended ALEC meetings in recent years, and has presented to the organization on KXL in the past. CEA receives funding from the two leading U.S. oil lobby groups — the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) — and lists among its members leading oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell and BP amongst many others. Whatley’s lobbying firm HBW Resources also has a somewhat unexplained relationship with the Alberta Government – see Salon.

According to the internal minutes from the ALEC meeting provided to CMD, Whatley called on legislators to help push the pipeline project to approval. Much as environmental groups view KXL as being a line in the sand, as symbolic of how serious the Obama administration is about tackling climate change, the oil industry considers the project to be a possible harbinger of things to come. “We’re very concerned about the precedential impact of this refusal,” Whatley told the group.

Whatley and CEA have briefed ALEC legislators on Keystone before. When speaking at the group’s conference in Arizona in December 2011, Whatley gave a presentation to the International Relations task force, titled “Keystone XL – A Critical Project for America.”

At the 2013 meeting, Whatley explained to legislators that it was important for the State Department to hear their individual support for KXL. “It is crucial that they hear from state legislators” said Whatley. “We will have information for you to submit letters to the State Department.”

In recent months, state legislators seem to have heeded the industry’s marching orders.

On February 13, 2014, 75 state legislators from Michigan, led by ALEC member Aric Nessbit, wrote to the State Department calling for the pipeline to be approved. Then on March 4, 2014, a letter was sent from 29 State Senators in Nebraska, led by Senator Jim Smith, who has been a vocal and controversial figure in the fight for Keystone XL in his state. Smith was one of nine state legislators to attend a 2012 ALEC Academy trip to Alberta to view the tar sands — a trip organized by CEA through ALEC and funded by TransCanada.

Letters supporting Keystone were also sent from state elected officials from the Kentucky Senate, Ohio Senate, Ohio House of Representatives, Texas Assembly and the Wisconsin Assembly as well as letters from Governors in Wisconsin, Mississippi, Montana and Maine.
ALEC Pushes State Resolutions as Oil Industry Ghostwrites Opinion Pieces for Legislators

So far, in the 2014 session, legislative resolutions supporting the pipeline have been introduced in Kansas, Missouri and Florida. That’s in addition to resolutions introduced in Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and South Dakota during 2013.

ALEC has encouraged its members to introduce its own “model” legislation supporting KXL, titled the “Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline.” Since that language was written in 2011, ALEC told its members by email in 2012: “If you would like to introduce a similar resolution in your state legislature, we have suggestions to update it given all that has happened.” The bills that have appeared since then have varied in language somewhat, with the updated version alluded to in the ALEC email not yet made public. Many of the pro-KXL bills introduced in 2013 and 2014 closely follow a set of TransCanada’s own talking points, as CMD has previously reported.

Since many of these states do not allow for much disclosure through state public record laws, it is difficult to fully document the influence of oil industry lobbyists. However, what can be documented is extremely revealing of their role.

CMD previously reported on the pro-KXL resolutions in the 2013 session in a series of articles, including reporting about Rep. John Adams from Ohio who, after attending an ALEC/TransCanada trip to Alberta, was asked by ALEC to send “thank you notes” to the lobbyists who paid for the trip and took him for dinner. As CMD documented, not long afterward, Rep. Adams introduced a pro-KXL resolution provided to him by a TransCanada lobbyist.

In Florida, freshman representative Walter Bryan ”Mike” Hill sponsored a pro-Keystone resolution, HM 281 in December 2013. Laying the ground for his bill, in December Hill published an opinion piece in the Pensacola News Journal in Florida, his local newspaper.

According to emails obtained by CMD under the Florida Public Records law, the language for Hill’s opinion piece came directly from API lobbyist David Mica, who sent Hill’s staff member, Ryan Gorham, a draft version on November 26th. “I have ideas for distribution… please give me a holler,” wrote Mica attaching the draft.

An hour later, Gorham emailed the draft opinion piece to Hill. According to the exchange, the only change made by Hill and his staff was to spot a missing preposition in one sentence — the word “to” had been left out. The piece was published under Hill’s name on December 27, 2013. Staff from API and related projects funded by the organization such as “Energy Tomorrow” celebrated the piece on social media. A very proud — but oh so modest — David Mica tweeted: “@MikeHillfl nails his op-ed viewpoint! Way to go Representative Hill.”

This industry-legislator-opinion strategy was explicitly expressed in August 2013 by CEA’s Whatley at the ALEC conference in Chicago. According to ALEC’s own meeting minutes, obtained by CMD, Whatley called on ALEC legislators to publish op-eds in support of the project. “Put an op-ed in any paper in your district talking about the positive values of Keystone XL,” Whatley said. ALEC has also directly asked its members to publicly speak out in support of Keystone. In a 2012 email to members, Karla Jones, Director of International and Federal Relations, wrote: “Senator Pam Roach has been quoted in the media about Keystone, and I would like to encourage and provide information to any of you that would like to do the same.”
Politicians Parrot Industry Talking Points, “Part of a Nationwide Effort to Show Washington States Support the Pipeline”

In July 2013, Jim Snyder, who was writing for Bloomberg, reported on a dozen Republican federal and state lawmakers repeating the same talking points from CEA in letters they sent to the State Department during its previous review of the Keystone XL project in 2013:

“In doing so, they (the lawmakers) often pointed to the same facts and the used the same language. ‘Keystone XL will be critical to improving American energy security and boosting our economy,’ Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio wrote. So did Representative Jackie Walorski of Indiana. And Steve Daines of Montana. And John Carter of Texas. And Phil Gingrey of Georgia.

The wording similarities aren’t coincidental. The letters are all based on correspondence written by the Consumer Energy Alliance, a Washington-based coalition of energy producers and users, including Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) in Irving, Texas, and Dow Chemical Co. (DOW) in Midland, Michigan.”

Those talking points appeared again during a hearing for the pro-KXL resolution in Kansas HCR 5014. The bill sponsor, Rep. Hedke’s testimony to the Kansas State Senate Utilities Committee on February 13, 2014, parroted the same CEA language, writing: “Keystone XL will be critical to improving American energy security and boosting our economy.” CMD asked Hedke for a comment on the source of his testimony, but as of publication the representative had not responded.

When not working as a legislator, Hedke runs a company called Hedke-Saenger Geoscience, which according to the representative’s most recent financial disclosures feature a long list of oil industry clients including Hess Oil Company, Prospect Oil, Landmark Resources, and Trans Pacific Oil Corp.

Hedke told CMD by email that he was given the initial language for his resolution by a lobbyist from the Kansas API affiliate, before he “passed it out for reviews with numerous individuals, including a lobbyist representing TransCanada.”

At the hearing, Ken Peterson, Executive Director of the Kansas Petroleum Council (the API affiliate) stated as part of his testimony that “(t)his resolution is part of a nationwide effort to show Washington that states support the pipeline.” Truer words have never been spoken. API and the organizations that it funds including CEA have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to create the impression of a groundswell of passionate opposition to KXL.
© 2014 Center for Media & Democracy
Nick Surgey

Nick Surgey is director of research for the Center for Media & Democracy. He work has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and The Guardian.