We can do better, we need to do better, let’s try harder!

Press Release from Karuna Jaguar, Center for Biological Diversity & Peter Hart, Food & Water Watch, July 29, 2022

WASHINGTON— More than 350 conservation and community groups, representing millions of people, called on President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer today to reject fossil fuel expansion during negotiations over a reconciliation package.

The groups also urged Biden to use the full suite of his executive authority to stop issuing federal fossil fuel leases and deny permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure, and to declare a climate emergency, which would unlock powerful tools to combat the climate crisis.

“Permitting new fossil fuel projects will further entrench us in a fossil fuel economy for decades to come — and constitutes a violent betrayal of your pledge to combat environmental racism and destruction,” the groups’ lettersaid. “New fossil fuel projects will also lock workers into a dying industry and delay the growth in sectors that will support jobs of the future.”

Two provisions buried in the Inflation Reduction Act would require massive oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, reinstate an illegal 2021 Gulf lease sale and mandate that millions more acres of public lands be offered for leasing before any new solar or wind energy projects could be built on public lands or waters. These leasing provisions lock in decades of additional fossil fuel pollution and continue a racist legacy of sacrificing environmental justice communities.

Greenlighting new fossil fuel extraction is incompatible with climate science and the administration’s climate goals. The science is clear that the president cannot approve any new fossil fuel leases and still stay within the U.S. carbon budget for keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Communities at the front lines of the climate emergency are already dealing with and dying from ever-worsening fires, hurricanes, flooding, heat waves and drought. A recent analysis showed that more than 40% of Americans lived in areas hit by climate disasters last year, a number that would grow if the fossil fuel-friendly provisions in the IRA become law.

Letter signers, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Climate Justice Alliance, Food & Water Watch, Greenpeace USA, Indigenous Environmental Network, Our Revolution and Sunrise Movement, are urging Democratic leaders to reject fossil fuel expansion and stand with the communities that voted them into office.

>>>>> COMMENTS AND QUOTES TELL MORE ABOUT IT!

“We can’t let the renewable energy transition be held hostage by fossil fuel companies,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Manchin bill is a devil’s bargain that ignores science and locks us into at least a decade of new oil and gas extraction. There’s a way forward that doesn’t spew more greenhouse gas pollution into the air and harm frontline communities, and it means eliminating these giveaways to the fossil-fuel industry.”

“This bill should not be considered a climate victory,” said Jim Walsh, policy director for Food & Water Watch. “Locking in more drilling and fracking on public lands and waters, billions in subsidies for the myth of carbon capture, and fast-tracking permit approvals for gas pipelines and exports are exactly the policies fueling the climate crisis and harming public health with increasing pollution in our air and water. Lawmakers who support real climate solutions should reject this deal until the fossil fuel handouts are removed.”

“The Inflation Reduction Act may be the most Washington can offer right now, but it’s a far cry from what’s actually needed to address the climate crisis,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. “The investments in renewables, energy efficiency and Superfund clean-ups will make a difference, but communities and the climate continue to be sacrificed to Sen. Manchin’s fossil fuel demands.”

“Of all the bills that we saw during [the legislative session], they’re starting with the weakest one,” said David McMahon after today’s meeting of the Select Committee on Marcellus Shale.  The joint House/Senate committee is working to write the legislation that should have been passed during the regular legislative session earlier this year.   Senate Bill 424, the weaker of the two bills that were drafted, is being used as the basic framework.  The house passed a larger bill with stronger regulations, but it failed to pass the senate on the final day of the session.

Read more in the Charleston Gazette…

Sen. Brooks McCabe (D-Kanawha), lead sponsor of SB 465

The Marcellus Gas and Manufacturing Development Act was passed out of the the Senate Energy, Industry and Mining Committee on Feb. 17th.   The purpose of the Act contained in Senate Bill 465 is to encourage and facilitate “the development of oil and gas wells and the downstream uses of natural gas in this state and the economic development in this state associated with the production and various downstream uses.”   It intends to do that by using tax credits and incentives for industrial expansion (particularly for fractionation and ethane cracker plants) and promoting natural gas as an alternative energy fuel.  It also encourages the West Virginia Economic Development Authority, that agency that oversees TIFs, and the WV Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council to provide public assistance to this private industry sector, Marcellus shale gas, and it’s correlative industries fractionation and ethane cracking.

The bill contains tax breaks geared toward subsidizing both the planned Dominion fractionation plant and an anticipated, but as yet unannounced, cracker plant.  (See  Special Report: Task Force Charged with Opening Door to Chemical Industry in Kanawha Valley, FrackCheck Feb. 18.) The  bill also lowers the bar for the amount of investment qualifying for special privileges to certain manufacturing businesses to enjoy a 95% break on county property taxes.  So if a cracker plant costs $10 million, the owner or ownership entity pays county property taxes on an adjusted appraised value of only $500,000.  There’s a little whip-snapper provision that adds a small penalty if the investment occurs after July 1,2011; the cost of the real estate acquired for expansion is deducted from the basis for computing the credit.

The bill also adds fractionation and cracker plant investments to the list of industrial expansions which qualify for the Manufacturing Tax Credit (up to 5% of the cost of new manufacturing property).

Currently WV Code 11-13A-5a calls for 10% of oil and gas severance fees to be distributed back to the counties, with the majority directed to the counties in which the fees were generated. The bill amends that to allow for distribution of the severance fee to fund permitting and inspection of gas wells as well as highway funds.  Of the excess above the 10% of severance fees that is redirected back to counties, a $2 million Marcellus Shale Permit Fund is established to fund the WVDEP in permitting and inspection of gas wells.  A baseline of $64.8 million must be distributed from severance fees to counties and municipalities for highway maintenance under this bill.

Incentives for investing in natural gas powered vehicles and other alternative fuel powered vehicles (but not ethanol) and investing in the equipment to fuel those vehicles are also included in the bill.

The sponsors are Senators McCabe, Kessler (Acting President), Browning, Unger, Snyder, Stollings, Plymale, Wells, Palumbo, Beach, Klempa, Yost and Foster.  The bill goes to the Finance Committee next.  Story of bill’s introduction , Feb. 9.   Story of bills passage

Text of the Marcellus Gas and Manufacturing Development Act.

Further light reading:

ARTICLE 6F. SPECIAL METHOD FOR APPRAISING QUALIFIED CAPITAL ADDITIONS TO MANUFACTURING FACILITIES

ARTICLE 13S. MANUFACTURING INVESTMENT TAX CREDIT

ARTICLE 13R. STRATEGIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT TAX CREDIT

§11-13A-5a. Dedication of ten percent of oil and gas severance tax for benefit of counties and municipalities (must scroll down)