Many feel Sen. Manchin has been an agent for fossil fuels

From an Article by John Bachtell, People’s World, August 3, 2022

Senate Democrats appear on the verge of passing historic legislation to accelerate a national transition to clean energy, reduce energy costs, create tens of thousands of union jobs, and address environmental injustice.

The surprise agreement, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), was brokered by Sens. Joe Manchin, W.Va, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, N.Y. All 50 Democratic senators, including Arizona Sen. Krysten Sinema, must support the IRA to pass. Every Republican, fossil fuel driller, and big corporation fiercely oppose it.

Environmental, labor, and social justice organizations, climate scientists, policymakers, and federal, state, and local Democratic lawmakers hailed the deal. They called for swift passage despite shortcomings and concessions to the fossil fuel industry.

The turn of events happened after Manchin torpedoed the Build Back Better (BBB) legislation while a record heat wave baked much of the planet, sparking wildfires and causing flash flooding in Kentucky. Most assumed climate legislation was dead for the remainder of this Congress.

The result was a bitter backlash directed against Manchin, protests, a sit-in by Congressional staffers, and calls for Biden to declare a National Emergency on climate. Guarantees for fossil leasing, extending financing of the Black Lung Trust Fund, separately expediting the permitting process for the Mountain Valley Pipeline across West Virginia, and convincing Manchin the bill would reduce inflation may have convinced him to agree.

The IRA marks the biggest investment in clean energy in U.S. history and is the result of decades of movement-building and battles to pass transformative climate legislation against entrenched opposition. “We’re going to look back in 50 years and say this was the beginning of a great transition,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.

“Rhodium Group modeling shows the IRA can absolutely cut carbon pollution by 40% by 2030. With additional executive and state action, we could be back on track to hit President Biden’s critical goal of a 50% cut this decade,” said Dr. Leah Stokes, leader of Evergreen Action and a climate policy maker involved in crafting the BBB legislation.

According to climate scientists, the world must reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 and 100% by 2050 to avoid surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius and triggering far more catastrophic changes.

The bill strips from the BBB some provisions like the child tax credit. However, it retains most of the original bill’s critical programs, although at lower funding levels. They include $369 billion in funding and tax credits to accelerate the transition toward clean energy technologies, reduction in methane gas emissions, and investments in agriculture, rural economic development, and restoration.

It establishes environmental, labor, and equity standards in public investment. It directs about $60 billion in funding to historically discriminated and vulnerable communities suffering the worst climate change consequences.

One such mechanism is a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to make community renewable energy investments. The climate bank would lend $28 billion for “low-interest loans across the country. A small town in Ohio could say we want to do over our public housing stock completely. Okay, come to the climate bank. Or a community that wants to install solar panels on their town dump. Okay, we’ll help finance it,” said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.

The bill contains tax credits for consumers to purchase new and used electric vehicles and partially funds the conversion of the USPS truck fleet to electric vehicles. It provides corporate tax credits to produce solar and offshore wind farms, geothermal infrastructure, batteries, and green technology production facilities.

The bill makes it easier for working-class households to winterize their homes and buy electric heat pumps and induction stoves. Studies show the more renewable energy, electric vehicles, and other products manufactured, the cheaper they become, which is not the case with fossil fuel energy production.

The bill also allocates $64 billion to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies through 2024 and allows Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices with Big Pharma.

Lawmakers maintain transitioning to renewables would also reduce energy costs and address Manchin’s stated concern about inflation. “Fossil fuels have driven 41% of inflation,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. “So, when we talk about investments in clean energy, that is one of the biggest components of price increases consumers face. Households will save on average about $1,800 a year in energy bills.”

Lawmakers drafted the bill to bypass Republican obstruction through the budget reconciliation process. It needs every Democrat on board, and with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote, only 51 votes are required rather than the 60 votes under the Senate filibuster rule.

Sinema has been silent on her support and is under enormous pressure from giant corporations to kill the bill. Her concerns seem to revolve around taxes on the wealthy and corporations, which raise $739 billion in revenue to cover the bill’s costs. The IRA does not raise taxes on workers making less than $400,000 annually.

Sinema has repeatedly expressed opposition to the “carried interest charge,” a tax on profits hedge fund managers make insisted on by Manchin. The far more significant issue is corporate opposition to a minimum 15% tax on corporate profits over $1 billion. Sinema has previously supported the tax, but the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, which shower her with contributions, wants it defeated.

“If Sinema, a one-time Green Party activist, derailed the most significant federal climate bill ever while Arizona faces mounting impacts of climate change, it would be an incredible repudiation of everything she’s stood for her entire life,” tweeted Atlantic columnist Ronald Brownstein. Markey also indicated senators would work with Sinema and get the deal done one way or another.

The IRA comes with difficult compromises to gain the vote of Manchin. The bill mandates onshore and offshore lease sales, but they are to be more restricted and carry higher royalty costs. Ultimately, the plummeting production costs of renewables will make oil drilling unnecessary.

Besides, the total impact of the new leasing on the climate could be minimal, according to one study. “For every ton of emissions increases generated by [the bill’s] oil and gas provisions, at least 24 tons of emissions are avoided by the other provisions,” concludes Energy Innovation.

NOTE ~ See the original Article (here) for four more paragraphs of political commentary.

Frack well pads & pipelines disturb hundreds of people and thousands of acres

Letter to Editor, Charleston Gazette (Opinion Section), August 4, 2018

Last month, our elected officials were hard at work to fund the Public Employee Insurance Agency (PEIA).

West Virginia Senate President Mitch Carmichael led 22 senators to vote down a proposal from Sen. Richard Ojeda that would have funded teachers’ health care through an increased severance tax on natural gas extraction. Their justification? The natural gas market is “too volatile” to provide adequate, secure funding into the future. What foresight!

Acknowledging this legitimate concern (which may or may not be connected to the fact that these 22 state senators have collectively received over $140,000 from oil and gas companies in the form of campaign contributions, according to the secretary of state), Delegate Mick Bates is proposing a production fee for natural gas extraction, which would not be at the mercy of the market, in contrast to gas prices and a subsequent severance tax.

Revenue from this fee could then be deposited in a West Virginia Trust Fund, such as Ted Boettner of the West Virginia Center for Budget & Policy advocates, where it could compound over time, securing this funding stream in perpetuity.

For years, West Virginians neglected to reap the full financial benefit of the black gold extracted so painstakingly from our hills. Let’s not make this mistake again

Just as the people of West Virginia should be fairly compensated for these resources, our teachers must be compensated for the time, energy and talent they invest in our children, who are our future.

What are they worth?

>>>> Moira Reilly, Morgantown

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Marcellus Shale companies say proposed permit fee hike is too high

From an Article by Laura Legere, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, August 15, 2018

Marcellus Shale companies are resisting a proposal by Pennsylvania regulators to more than double the price of drilling permit applications.

The PA state Department of Environmental Protection says it needs to raise permit fees from $5,000 to $12,500 per shale well to keep the state’s oil and gas oversight program from running out of money by next summer.

In response, shale companies and trade groups that have backed past fee increases now argue in public comments that the department has not sufficiently justified the need for this one.

Other funding sources — including the impact fee on shale companies and the department’s share of the taxpayer-supported general fund — should be tapped first, they say.

Pennsylvania would impose the highest well permit fee in the nation if the proposal is adopted, the Robinson-based Marcellus Shale Coalition said.

PA-DEP’s oil and gas program reviews permit applications, inspects well sites and develops policies to improve oversight of the industry.

The monthlong public comment period on the proposal closed Monday. Common industry complaints in the comments included that past fee hikes did not lead to faster permit reviews, which dragged on well past mandated deadlines last year amid a shortage of reviewers, and that there is no guarantee the new proposal will have a different outcome.

Also, shale companies say they are being asked to subsidize oversight of the state’s conventional, storage and legacy wells, which take up about 40 percent of the agency’s workload.

While none of the industry commenters recommend raising fees on conventional drillers — and the department is not proposing any changes in conventional well fees — “it is readily apparent that PA-DEP is looking at the unconventional industry as a ‘cash cow,’” the Wexford-based Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association said.

A statewide environmental group, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, said it is clear that state regulators and lawmakers need to identify other options to “provide more stable funding for the agency while maintaining protections and balancing costs for the regulated community.”

Department officials acknowledge that one-time shale well permit fees are not a sustainable funding source for a broad program of oil and gas oversight, and they have pledged to advocate for a more balanced funding mix.

One goal would be to pursue funding “that doesn’t require someone else” — meaning, other PA-DEP programs or state agencies — “to get shortchanged for our benefit,” Scott Perry, the deputy secretary for the department’s office of oil and gas management, said at an advisory board meeting last week.

“I welcome everyone’s good ideas on how to do that,” he said.

It generally takes more than a year for a PA-DEP regulation to take effect after it is first proposed. The review process includes scrutiny by committees in the Republican-led General Assembly, which also determines the agency’s annual general fund appropriation in conjunction with the governor.

Thirty-two Republican state representatives wrote to criticize the permit fee proposal and questioned whether the department has the authority “to propose such a disproportionate share of funding responsibility upon one segment of industry.”

Instead, they suggested PA-DEP use part of its general fund appropriation to support the oil and gas program.

WV teachers at the State Capitol

Dear Friends, ……. Date: March 4, 2018

There’s a revolution happening here in West Virginia. I’ve been fighting for working families in West Virginia my entire life.

For the last 10 days, we’ve been standing arm-in-arm with the teachers and support personnel who have been on strike in all 55 counties of our state. They seek only what all workers deserve: dignity and respect. And right now, that means a living wage and stable health care premiums.

We’ve been livestreaming daily massive protests at the state Capitol and doing all we can to support the courageous teachers who’ve been standing up to threats, standing strong for what’s right, and who are changing the political landscape in West Virginia before our eyes.

The situation for our teachers and support personnel in West Virginia is bad.

Our state is ranked 48th in the nation for teacher pay. More than 700 teaching positions remain open, because the pay and benefits are so low. And because the state legislature has failed to fully fund the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA), teachers in West Virginia have seen their premiums and deductibles skyrocket.

West Virginia doesn’t recognize the right of public employees to bargain collectively. When they walked out, these workers opened themselves up to great risk for themselves and their families.

I remember standing on the line with my mom and her colleagues, and my teachers and friends’ parents, back in 1990, the last time West Virginia teachers went on a statewide strike. It was my first lesson in solidarity and standing up for what’s right. It’s why I continue to stand with our teachers and public employees during this current crisis.

Our teachers are joining a fight for the soul of West Virginia that started a century ago, when coal miners fought and died for the right to unionize. Now these striking teachers have captured the attention of the nation, and are serving as an inspiration for public workers and teachers around the country.

This has been a truly been a grassroots-driven movement, and I have no doubt that it will change West Virginia for the better. One of the most powerful outcomes has been how emboldened people have become, realizing that direct action produces results. We are already actively identifying and recruiting new leaders across the state.

After our governor and union leaders announced a hastily made deal last week that was heavy on promises, teachers came back to the Capitol angrier than ever. We want to make sure they have the support they need to keep up the fight for as long as it takes.

In Solidarity, Ryan Frankenberry,
State Director, WV Working Families Party

>> See also the Jacobin article by WVWFP co-chair Cathy Kunkel on how we are working to transform West Virginia politics. And follow the hashtag #55strong.

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LETTER: What are we willing to pay?

Letter to the Washington PA Observer-Reporter, March 4, 2018

What are we willing to pay? What are we willing to pay to be safe and prosperous?

In real budget terms, how much are we willing to pay for being safe? How much more in taxes are we willing to pay to improve school safety?

How much more are we willing to pay for better roads?

How much more for better jobs? Would you pay to have an industry bring in new jobs?

Each month as I do my monthly budget, I wonder what these things cost. So I began look at some simple things.

According to studies done in the last few years, citizens never break even, or receive any benefit, on many of these issues. Corporate giveaway projects, like stadiums or attracting industry, fail to bring the benefits touted by elected officials.

This is not new. Let’s take the coal industry, for example. Some studies indicate Pennsylvania citizens never received a fair share from coal being removed and sold to the world. The Marcellus Shale industry looks the same. The question might be, should the commonwealth’s citizens receive some benefits from folks that extract our resources, or our work effort? Yes, a small group of folks do get paid big for this, but is that enough to balance the cost of schools or infrastructure?

As I write a bigger check to pay my school taxes because the state has trimmed its education budget, or ride down the road and break a tire hitting a pothole caused by a 40-ton water truck, I am angry.

We have the second-largest state government in the U.S., and as far as I can see our state motto should be, “Bring money, we will sell anything.”

John Andrews, Jefferson, Greene County, PA

State of Delaware

Delaware Corporate Taxes Are Very Low

By Steve Horn, DeSmogBlog, 08-03-12

The New York Times story also demonstrated that the shale gas industry has become an expert at utilizing the “Delaware Loophole” tax haven to dodge taxes, just as it is a champion at dodging chemical fluid disclosure and other accountability to the Safe Drinking Water Act, thanks to the Halliburton Loophole. The latter is explained in great detail in DeSmogBlog’s “Fracking the Future.”

Utilization of the “Delaware Loophole” is far from the story of a few bad apples gone astray for the industry. As Wayne explains, the use of this “onshore tax haven” is the norm.

More than 400 corporate subsidiaries linked to Marcellus Shale gas exploration have been registered in Delaware, most within the last four years, according to the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a nonprofit group based in Harrisburg that studies the state’s tax policy.

In 2004, the center estimated that the Delaware loophole had cost the state $400 million annually in lost revenue—and that was before the energy boom.

More than two-thirds of the companies in the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry alliance based in Pittsburgh, are registered to a single address: 1209 North Orange Street, according to the center.

These fiscal figures, as Wayne points out, predate the ongoing shale gas “Gold Rush” in the Marcellus. Service Employees International Union of Pennsylvania has calculated $550 million/year in lost tax revenue in the state from the shale gas industry due to the loophole.

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives set out to tackle the Delaware Loophole quagmire in the spring of 2012, but merely offered half-measure legislation that would have allowed corporations—including the frackers—to continue gaming the system. Coryn S. Wolk of the activist group Protecting Our Waters summarized the bill in a recent post:

In March, 2012, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives created a bipartisan bill, HB 2150, aimed at closing corporate tax loopholes. However, as the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center noted in their detailed opposition to the bill, the bill would have cost Pennsylvania more money by soothing corporations with major tax cuts and leaving the loopholes accessible to any clever accountant.

Tax cheating in Delaware goes far above and beyond the Marcellus Shale. All of the oil and gas majors, with operations around the world, take full advantage of all Delaware has to offer.

“Piping Profits”

If things in this sphere were only limited to shale gas companies operating in the Marcellus Shale, the battle would seem big. Big, but not insurmountable.

Yet, as the Norway-based NGO, Publish What You Pay points out in a recent report titled, Piping profits: the secret world of oil, gas and mining giants, the game is more rigged than most would like to admit.

How rigged? Overwhelmingly so.

The report shows that ConocoPhillips, Chevron and ExxonMobil have 439 out of their combined 783 subsidiaries located in well-known tax havens around the world, including in Delaware. All three companies maintain fracking operations, as well, meaning they benefit from both the Halliburton and Delaware Loopholes.

Adding BP and Shell into the mix, Publish What You Pay revealed that the five majors have 749 tax haven subsidiaries located in Delaware out of a grand total of 3,632 global tax haven subsidiaries. This amounts to 20.6-percent of them, to be precise.

These figures moved Publish What You Pay‘s Executive Director, Mona Thowsen, to conclude, “What this study shows is that the extractive industry ownership structure and its huge use of secrecy jurisdictions may work against the urgent need to reduce corruption and aggressive tax avoidance in this sector.”

Tax Justice Network: $21-$32 Trillion Parked in Offshore Accounts

A recent lengthy report titled The Price of Offshore Revisited by the Tax Justice Network reveals just how big of a problem tax havens are on a global scale, reaching far beyond Delaware’s boundaries.

As Democracy Now! explained,

[The] new report…reveals how wealthy individuals and their families have between $21 and $32 trillion of hidden financial assets around the world in what are known as offshore accounts or tax havens. The conservative estimate of $21 trillion—conservative estimate—is as much money as the entire annual economic output of the United States and Japan combined. The actual sums could be higher because the study only deals with financial wealth deposited in bank and investment accounts, and not other assets such as property and yachts.

The inquiry…is being touted as the most comprehensive report ever on the “offshore economy.” 

The Democracy Now! interview above is worth watching on the whole, as oil and gas industry “offshoring” is but the tip of the iceberg.

 Visit EcoWatch’s ENERGY and FRACKING pages for more related news on this topic.

Sean O’leary had an article on December 24^th in the Martinsburg Journal News entitled “Will our natural gas boom help us?” This is a timely question, and we wish there were a good answer. Let’s see what Sean O’leary had to say:

With the recent enactment of rules regulating the extraction of natural gas from Marcellus shale, a process known as “fracking,” some believe West Virginia will experience an economic boom. Newspapers have called our Marcellus shale deposits “a godsend” and Bill Maloney, the recent Republican candidate for governor, described them as “the biggest opportunity for lasting growth and prosperity that West Virginia has seen in decades.”

But, what if it’s not true? Set aside for a moment the real and legitimate environmental concerns surrounding fracking. What if the gas-drilling boom isn’t an economic game-changer for West Virginia?First, most of the wealth generated by gas won’t go to West Virginians. As with coal, almost all of West Virginia’s gas will be extracted by out-of-state companies that will repatriate the profits elsewhere. Second, the royalties West Virginia residents will receive won’t be overwhelming.

Finally, gas drilling’s contribution to the state budget through severance taxes will be offset in large measure by added costs for inspectors and the maintenance of roads and infrastructure necessary to the industry. In fact, if gas turns out to be like coal, the costs may equal or exceed the tax revenue.

The most likely outcome of West Virginia’s natural gas boom will be the enrichment of a small number of property owners and industry workers, a burst of revenue and expenditures for the state, but, little change from the depressed status quo for most West Virginians.

There is more information in the original article from the Martinsburg Journal News.