Why does Dominion Energy have SO MUCH MONEY?

From an Article by Sarah Rankin, Associated Press, March 8, 2018

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Civic leaders in town after town along the 600-mile (966-kilometer) route of a proposed natural gas project have posed for similar photographs, smiling and accepting poster-sized checks from the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Dominion Energy says it’s being a good neighbor by handing out $2 million in grants of around $5,000 to $10,000 in communities affected by its joint venture with fellow energy giants Duke Energy and Southern Co.

But critics say Dominion is buying support on the cheap to outflank opponents of the project, which would carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia into Virginia, North Carolina, and potentially further south at a cost that’s swelling to as much as $6.5 billion.

“It continues to astonish me how tiny these grants are and how ready people are to sell their souls,” said Hope Taylor, executive director of Clean Water for North Carolina, a nonprofit fighting the pipeline.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press as well as interviews with company officials, supporters and opponents, show the considerable lengths Dominion has gone to as it builds support for its largest capital project. The company says its grant program is charity, and not part of what it calls its largest outreach program in Dominion history.

“We wanted to make sure our side is adequately told,” said Bruce McKay, who as senior energy policy director for Richmond-based Dominion oversees the project’s public affairs. He calls the outreach necessary in part because of the pipeline’s complex, multijurisdictional nature and growing opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure.

Dominion is the leading percentage owner of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, responsible for its construction and operation. So far, only some trees have been cleared, but the project aims to go online as early as late 2019, according a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Supporters say the pipeline will meet a critical need for natural gas — primarily for power generation — in a region with constrained supplies. They say it will create jobs, boost economic development and support a shift from coal.

Opponents say it will harm the environment, and contend developers are overstating the need to build a project for which regulators will allow them to recoup a handsome return on their investments.

Even federal regulators (FERC) were divided on whether it’s in the public interest, voting 2-1 for approval in a rare split decision.

Publicly announced in September 2014, the pipeline quickly gained bipartisan backing. By 2015, one executive with a pipeline partner told South Carolina’s regulators at a commission hearing that the public support was “about as good as you can get.”

But Dominion was just getting started: It says its largest-ever outreach program has included 225,000 direct-mail pieces; community meetings; TV, radio and print ads; and social media use to reach more than 35,000 followers, according to an October presentation posted on Dominion Energy Transmission Inc.’s website.

McKay, who wouldn’t reveal the program’s overall cost, delivered some “lessons learned” in the presentation, including this advice: “Must create and maintain a political environment which allows permitting agencies to do their work,” and, “If you want fair media coverage you need to pay for it.”

McKay also denies any quid pro quo for campaign donations, saying Dominion simply gives to candidates who support sound energy policy.

The five Virginia lawmakers who signed a letter last year urging regulators to approve the pipeline have together taken more than $1 million from Dominion for themselves or their PACs during their careers, according an AP accounting of records maintained by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.

Dominion also has worked closely with local officials and generated plenty of local media coverage through its Community Investment Program. In an interview, McKay insisted the grants to health foundations, land trusts, charities and other local groups shouldn’t be considered lobbying.

But at least some communications have acknowledged the optics.

Gary Brown, economic development director of Northampton County, North Carolina, emailed a pipeline public-relations manager working on the grant program to suggest that a poster-size check should show three grants’ combined total.

“As it is a show piece, how about a prop check written to ‘Northampton County’ for the total of all grants — larger total — bigger image — greater perceived impact,” Brown wrote in an email obtained by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League through a public-records request and provided to AP.

Brown, who testified in favor of the pipeline at public hearings, is board president of an automotive research center that received a $1,680 grant, the progressive news outlet NC Policy Watch reported.

In at least three other instances, grants have gone to organizations run by or affiliated with pipeline boosters.

For example, after the Boys & Girls Club of Lumberton received a $10,000 grant that helped repair hurricane damage, Executive Director Ron Ross testified in support of the pipeline at a North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality meeting. He said his support had nothing to do with money. “We didn’t ask them if they wanted to give us money — they asked us,” Ross said.

In one North Carolina county, Dominion representatives planned a helicopter tour of a northern Virginia compressor station for two commissioners, documents obtained by AP show. In another, the county manager and other “supporters” were invited to dinner at a swanky former plantation, emails show.

Other emails obtained through a public-records request show an administrator in Buckingham County, Virginia, frequently alerted a Dominion employee to news or complaints. In one, the administrator predicted an outspoken pipeline critic would “be a problem.”

Another email says Dominion wrote a letter for a county supervisor to sign supporting the conversion of conservation easements — which are supposed to forever protect land from development — for use for the pipeline. The emails suggested printing it on Buckingham County letterhead for a Dominion worker to hand-deliver to the decision-making agency.

McKay says opposition from organized, well-funded environmental groups made all this outreach necessary.

David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, said that’s a false comparison. He said: “What ties all of these stories together is, Dominion is trying to con people, trying to con their own customers and policymakers and legislators, because the arguments don’t stand up on the merits.”

There is Deceit in Leasing as Practiced Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow?

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor and Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

We are learning that our society, at the top and now working down, goes on the old principle of “anything I can get away with.” Standards of ethics and behavior, which applied a generation or two previously, are largely forgotten. There has always been a crust of this at the top and a lager at the bottom of the social scale which practiced this ethic, but the middle is more and more crowded by them. One must be more self-protective.

Nowhere is this more conspicuous than in mineral leasing, both in what is written in the contract and how lease taking is done. The first John D. Rockefeller was quite religious, but his brand of Christianity didn’t have much, if any, sense of fairness. It involved a sort of social darwinism. He said, “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest.” Born the son of a con artist, his Standard Oil gained control over 90% of the U. S. oil business.

Standard Oil was broken up by the federal government as a trust (illegal monopoly). Five year later it was reorganized as a holding company (which owned the fragments of the previous Standard Oil) and had to be broken up again. Some of the worst features go back to that time and his company. One in particular is the habit of leasing not only the drilling target layer but also “all oil and gas” as long as any of either is produced on the leased property.

As a friend once described it to me, from “heaven high to hell deep.” Such leases, taken originally as much as 100 or more years ago still hold today, although the land ownership and the company ownership have changed and the original owners are beyond memory – only names on paper in the courthouse.

Then the idea of separating estates came into existence so the children of the original owners of the lands could receive the “royalty” from oil and gas extracted, but the surface was sold to someone else. The royalty was pure gravy and usually was divided among the original owner’s children, and they divided it when giving to the next generation, which causes several kinds of headaches, both for mineral owners and for producing companies.

If a lease runs out, mineral ownership is still divided. And all mineral owners must be looked up if it is to be leased again. Royalty checks get smaller each generation when divided this way, and have gotten difficult to handle. Record keeping and taxation are a headache for the state.

The situation on my farm is instructive. It was leased in 1934 by my predecessor’s predecessor, a highflying physician in Buckhannon. He was an absentee landlord who had gone broke, but whose father in law, one of the wealthy Bennett family in Lewis county, bought it back at the courthouse steps. I called his daughter, who was the spokesman for the ones who inherited it. She could not even figure out which of the farms her father owned that I was talking about!

This rentier (as the economists call it) mentality cares no more about what happens to the land or community than the blind investor who only cares about increase on his investment. There is a single value in their system of thinking. They will sign about anything the company puts in front of them to keep that easy money coming. Bad for the future, for the environment, for the community and bad for the present surface owner.

Friends and I thought about this situation many years ago and decided it might be a good thing anyway. If it hadn’t, northern West Virginia might have become like much of the southern part of it. There the land has few areas suitable for farming, so coal companies bought it all, and today there are many large company-owned land holdings, and in places the ordinary citizen can’t even find a place to have a residence.

Another long-standing complaint is leases that include other features than oil and gas extraction, particularly for pipeline rights of way. They need to be able to drive along the pipeline, but the description of their need is sufficient so if they need to put in a pump station later, they have a road to it along the right of way. They sometimes call for waterlines, telephone, telegraph and electricity lines!

The lease man is at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder. If you want something outside the company plan, such as to go around a spring, he has to go back to his boss, and he to his boss who knows how far. Time consuming at best, this is more like a screening your request has to go through. Minor changes in a lease can be made, though. Write it on the contract and the lessor and the leaseman must initial it. Beware of the lease man who claims to make a verbal agreement; if it is not written on the contract, they will just laugh at you later when you try to get what you were promised.

One of the big complaints now is what is called “pooling” A company will decide on a drilling plan that includes several tracts. Laws proposed by the industry would allow it to take the rest after getting a minimum of 80%. This is effectively the same as eminent domain used for private gain. If the supply of drillable land was running out, there might be some public good, but leased land is abundant at this time. If it has to be condemned should the driller be allowed to put the well on the condemned land for his convenience, too?

There are endless horror stories about how the leases are executed. Pipelines are laid at a bad time of the year, spoiling hay harvest, or finished up in the fall too late for ground cover to be established before the winter rain. Fences are not replaced, animals are killed. I know of one case where they broke the pelvis of a nursing cow, which, of course could not be sold or utilized and had to be shot and buried. The calf had to be sold immediately, rather than as a weanling. You hear about roads not rocked because the work was done in warm, dry weather is a common complaint. Wells drilled so close to schools the noise and odor is strong. Children are apt to be more vulnerable to toxic substances, too.

Lessors do it once in a lifetime, leasemen do it several times a day. Lawyers are constantly looking to get more for the company. People engaging with a drilling company need to talk to other people who they know are knowledgeable, and if they can find one that is not biased for the companies, consult a lawyer. It’s tricky business, and risky from top to bottom!

See also the recent article on the XTO landman who defrauded West Virginians.