US Oil Companies now exporting more fuel than it sells here. From our Dept of WTF?

A humble thank you to my bud RJ for this maddening tidbit of information. From the FinancialTimes (subscription req'd):

The US has become a net exporter of fuel for the first time for nearly 20 years as drivers struggle with high petrol prices. 

Energy department data show the world’s largest oil consumer in February shipped out 54,000 barrels more petroleum products each day than it purchased on the global market. 

*snip* 

The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, reported US refined product exports rose 24.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2011 from a year ago, to 2.49m barrels per day. Imports declined 14.4 per cent to 2.16m b/d. The export increase is led by diesel and finished petrol, data from the Energy Information Administration show.

So why in the blue hell are we paying more each month for our gasoline and fuel oil if Big Oil has enough to sell on the open market to other countries and still fill our national needs? This my friends, is total bullshit and we are getting hosed without a doubt. If they wanna screw the consumer, let them fuck over the countries they export to, not the United States as we are still giving these mutha fuckers subsidies up the friggin wazoo, along w/tax breaks and other perks. 

This should be price gouging, without a doubt. Paging Eric Holder...

77 Drilling leases canceled in Utah

Good News! One of BushCo’s Midnight Regs has been stopped. From MSNBC:

The 77 leases were for areas near Arches and Canyonlands national parks, Dinosaur National Monument, and Nine Mile Canyon, which is sometimes called the world’s longest art gallery for its collection of ancient rock-art panels.

In its first action to overturn Bush administration policies on energy, the Obama administration on Wednesday said it will cancel oil drilling leases on more than 130,000 acres near two national parks and other protected areas in Utah.

“In the last weeks in office, the Bush administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases near some of our nation’s most precious landscapes in Utah,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters. “”We need to responsibly develop our oil and gas supplies to help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but we must do so in a thoughtful and balanced way that allows us to protect our signature landscapes and cultural resources.”

Below is one of the areas where leases had been sold to drill nearby..Canyonlands National Park.

Oil up, Dollar down.

Now I get it..the price of oil is tied to the value of our Dollar. So with the Buck hitting an all time low, everyone is investing in Oil? From the IHT writeup:

The immediate catalyst for the spike in energy prices is the drop in the value of the dollar. Currency traders are selling dollars and buying euros to take advantage of the difference in interest rates between the United States and Europe.

The dollar weakened, continuing its steep decline of last week, and the euro rose to a record $1.5274 in early New York trading. The dollar also fell to its lowest level in three years versus the yen.

"The question for oil is where is the dollar going," said Roger Diwan, a managing director at PFC Energy, a consulting firm in Washington. "That's going to the main market mover in the short term."

The question really is..when does it all come screeching down around our heads?

Consumption of gasoline hits 16 year low

My first knee-jerk response to the title of the RawStory writeup was this:

No shit sherlock.

Seriously..when the price of everything we use or need to live is rising and wages are stagnant or non-existent if your on unemployment..you will use only what you need to use of anything..including petrol. From the RawStory article:

In the last six weeks, US gasoline consumption has fallen 1.1% from 2007, despite the ever-present increase in cars on the road -- the largest drop in 16 years, excepting declines that followed 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

Fearing inflation, investors have poured money into commodities, pushing oil prices close to their adjusted value high of $103.76 in 1980, the Wall Street Journal Monday notes.

Katrina was a blip on the screen because such a huge section southern portion of the US was under water and quite a few refineries were hit by Katrina or the resultant deluge of water. The rest of the writeup:

"As refiners pay more for the oil they use, gasoline prices have gained sharply in recent weeks to an average of $3.13 a gallon in the week ended Feb. 25, up 40% from $2.24 a gallon in January 2007," adds the Journal. "That's stoking worries that prices will rise even more sharply as demand gets a boost from the approaching vacation season, when more Americans take to the road. Some experts predict gasoline could cost as much as $4 a gallon this summer."

The rising price of gasoline has also pushed some consumers into fuel-efficient vehicles.

"Pinched consumers also are speeding up their shift to more fuel-efficient cars," the article notes. "Sales of large cars dropped by 2.6% in 2006 and by 10.5% in 2007. In January, they plummeted 26.5% from a year earlier, according to Autodata Corp.

Dealers are also selling fewer minivans and large SUVs. Small car sales in January were up 6.5% from 2007, according to a survey by Autodata, the article notes.

I hope the idiots in Detroit are paying attention now too..quit making those fucking huge SUV's and gas guzzling mofo's ok? Big Oil can bite me..those bastards will still make record profits..

Repubs Block Energy Bill while Dems stand and watch

The Dem's have a majority right? So how is it that they can NOT override a filibuster by the freaking Repubs? From WaPo via TruthOut:

By a narrow margin, the Senate today failed again to block a Republican-led filibuster on an energy bill as GOP leaders made a stand against a $21.8 billion, 10-year tax package that would have extended incentives for wind and solar energy and reduced some tax breaks for oil companies.

Such horseshit indeed! The Dem's are the most unorganized bunch of dipshits I have ever seen. They can't find their arses with both hands half the friggin time.

Ah..the catch was the tax part of it. Seems the Rethugs support corporate welfare for those big Oil companies. From the WaPo piece:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he would introduce another version of the energy bill, without the tax package, perhaps as soon as today. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the revised bill would get wide bipartisan support.

So, they just cave in once again to the Rethugs..I am so sick of this shit I could scream my dear reader. I am losing my patience. I can not support a party that gets their dicks knocked in the dirt time after time again. God forbid the corporate welfare wagon come to the end of the line. Again from WaPo:

The 59-40 vote -- one vote short of the margin needed to end debate and clear the way for a vote on the measure -- came after warnings from the White House and Sen. Pete V. Domenici (N.M.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, that President Bush would veto the bill because of the tax component.

At least we can count on BushCo to stand with their cronies as usual..lovers of all things corporate welfare-ish. Oh, and the one vote short? Democrat, Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.), voted against ending the filibuster.

Fucking DINO.

"The biggest environmental crime in history"

That, my dear reader, is the title of the Independent article I read Sunday evening in my inbox. Somehow, I wasn't surprised to see that it was about British Petroleum..aka BP. It's the description of a Canadian drilling project which environmentalists and people with a modicum of common sense brand BP's method of 'extraction'. From the Indy article:

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move "Beyond Petroleum" by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its "green sheen" by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the "biggest global warming crime" in history.

The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called "oil sands" that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world's second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Producing crude oil from the tar sands – a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay – found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta – an area the size of England and Wales combined – generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling. The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK's entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists.

For decades, technology has tried to figure out a way to extract the oil from these tar sands. Evidently someone is tired of waiting wouldn't you say? Another precious resource will be sucked up in order to extract this oil:

The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers – up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas. The industry, which now includes all the major oil multinationals, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil. BP insists it will use a less damaging extraction method, but it accepts that its investment will increase its carbon footprint.

BP is lying its collective ass off when it says anything about using a 'less damaging' method of extraction. It would cost them more money and BP is nothing if not cheap when it comes to safety and environmental concerns, judging from their past history of fuck-ups and..ahem..accidents. GreenPeace's climate and energy guru has said this about BP and the tar sand extraction plans:

"It takes about 29kg of CO2 to produce a barrel of oil conventionally. That figure can be as much 125kg for tar sands oil. It also has the potential to kill off or damage the vast forest wilderness, greater than the size of England and Wales, which forms part of the world's biggest carbon sinks. For BP to be involved in this trade not only flies in the face of their rhetoric but in the era of climate change it should not be being developed at all. You cannot call yourself 'Beyond Petroleum' and involve yourself in tar sands extraction."

If none of this pisses you the hell off...consider the logic of BP's PR executive regarding the project:

"These are resources that would have been developed anyway."

Sumbitches.

Take a gander at the remains of the BP plant in texas after BP cut corners on safety and employees were killed because BP knowingly allowed safety problems to go uncorrected in order to pad their...bottom line.

I wrote about the original refinery explosion here which killed 15..count em..15 employees. BP eventually only had to ante up $373 million for the lives of their employees lost in this TX refinery explosion and subsequent coverup. I wrote about that here in October of this year.

Now, the bastards are going to kill an area the size of Wales and England combined..and get paid handsomely to do it. So people can drive their big friggin SUV's and have gas to put in them among other things..

Tags: BP, Tar Sands Oil extraction, Alberta Canada

Oil and Water don't mix...

H/T to CMD for linking to this Washington Post article. Seems the Smithsonian has put a hold on a donation of $5 Mil. The donor: American Petroleum Institute. From the WaPo writeup:

The Smithsonian Institution has taken the rare step of putting on hold a $5 million donation from the American Petroleum Institute after two members of the museum complex's Board of Regents, including a U.S. senator, balked at accepting oil-industry money for a major initiative on the world's oceans.

The longtime chairman of the regents' executive committee, Roger W. Sant, and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), one of the six congressional regents, raised objections when the donation appeared on the board's agenda. Sant, a former energy industry executive who has donated millions of dollars to ocean conservation, said he is worried that the oil-and-gas money could taint the showcase "Ocean Initiative," which is scheduled to include a major exhibit hall and a multimedia Web site.

Good on ya gents! It warms the cockles of my lil black heart to hear this. No corporation should be able to buy good press by giving money to places like the Smithsonian. Sure, the Smithsonian needs donations of this magnitude..but still, you can't let these fuckwits from the Oil Industry play politics by generating 'good press' all because they tossed what amounts to for them, a few bucks at an Environmental exhibit. The exhibit in question is called "Ocean Hall" and its a Web site to showcase ocean research, a Sant Chair for Marine Science and related programs. The hall, which will be the largest exhibition space at the National Museum of Natural History, is to open next fall.

Why don't the mutha fuckas donate that money to the towns in Alaska that were financially wiped out because of the Valdez Oil Spill? Seems the pricks at Exxon refuse to pay the judgement rendered against them and have spent decades running it through the court systems..it's now going to be heard by the rightwing cartel known as the US Supreme Court.

Or put their money where their friggin mouths are and set up a fund to rehabilitate the animals caught in their damn oil spills. Tell the oil men you don't want their 'blood money'.

Bastids..

Tags: American Petroleum Industry, Smithsonian, Ocean Hall

Hightower,Iraq and Oil

BP saves money, kills 15 people..all in a day’s profit margin.

March 23, 2005: Explosion kills 15 people and injures more than 170 in the worst accident in the nation's gas and chemical industry in nearly 15 years. This explosion was at the British Petroleum (BP) plant in Texas City, TX. As noted, this explosion happened 2 years ago this week.

The investigative arm of the Federal Government for this type of explosion, the U.S. Chemical Safety Investigation Board(CSB), released it’s report final report today on the Texas City explosion. Its 374 pages long, which should give you an idea of the detail involved in this report,or…the amount of bullshit they are laying on since it seems they might have been paid by the page, I must admit I haven’t slogged through the entire report. The man that headed this 11-member group? Why none other than James Baker! You remember Jimmy..he headed the Iraq Study Group, but I digress.

Thankfully, the CSB released something a lot shorter in their press release today. A couple of small blurbs from there:

In a 335-page final report released today, federal investigators from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) conclude that "organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation" caused the March 23, 2005, explosion at the BP Texas City refinery, the worst industrial accident in the United States since 1990. The report calls on the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to increase inspection and enforcement at U.S. oil refineries and chemical plants, and to require these corporations to evaluate the safety impact of mergers, reorganizations, downsizing, and budget cuts.—Please bear in mind that the Shrub has cut OSHA’S budget yearly and oversight abilities every chance he gets since he took office.

“The independent Baker panel, formed and funded by BP in response to an urgent CSB safety recommendation, issued its final report in January 2007. It found "material deficiencies" in the safety of BP's five U.S. refineries in Texas, California, Indiana, Ohio, and Washington. The 11-member panel also issued ten safety recommendations, including calling on BP's corporate board to closely monitor safety performance at its facilities. The Baker panel was not charged with determining the root causes of the March 2005 explosion.”-Notice my dear reader that they have the nads to call it an “independent” panel but in the same sentence says it was funded by BP. One can only hope that this panel was truly independent and not just a shill for the Oil Business and their best friend..George Bush.

CSB chairman Carolyn Merritt delivers the bottom line to us:

"The combination of cost-cutting, production pressures and failure to invest caused a progressive deterioration of safety at the refinery," – BP was making billions prior to the explosion but could not put a dime into rehabbing the plant. BP chose to put lives at risk, ultimately causing the deaths of 15 and injury to over 170 people and keep their money in their ‘pocket’.

Failure to invest in safety and working conditions could also be called willful homicide in my opinion. But we know that’s not going to happen..afterall, it’s a Big Oil Corporation and BushCo would never find a business culpable in killing their workers would they? It’s just the cost of doing business…no more, no less.

Beginning in 2002, BP commissioned a series of audits and studies that revealed serious safety problems at the Texas City refinery, including a lack of preventative maintenance and training, but the CSB found that senior executives ordered 25 percent cost cuts in 1999 and another 25 percent in 2004, the year before the blast.

British Petroleum was cutting costs and allowing the Texas refinery to slip into disrepair. And THEY KNEW IT. They, my dear reader, did it on purpose. Bear in mind that in 2005 BP had reported a 25% increase in annual profits. In 2004, their profit was a paltry $17.5 BILLION dollars. It should also be noted that BP was bitchslapped with a record $21.4 million fine after finding more than 300 willful violations resulting from the explosion, but even that fine is a drop in the profit bucket. You know what stands out to me?

It was cheaper to get fined than fix the problems prior to the blast, I mean really..look at their profit margin for the year prior to the blast my dear reader.

Now, BP has released their statement on the CSB report. As expected, they..ahem..disagree with substantial parts of the CSB report as witnessed by this little blurb:

Notwithstanding the Company’s strong disagreement with some of the content of the CSB report, particularly many of the findings and conclusions, BP will give full and careful consideration to CSB’s recommendations, in conjunction with the many activities already underway to improve process safety management. BP and its employees are ready, willing and able to achieve the goal of becoming an industry leader in process safety management. I am biting a hole in my lip to keep from screaming at this point at the obvious bullshittery in the last sentence.

Now, you might ask..as I did..why in the blue hell would BP allow this refinery to go to shit when they had some *cough*decent*cough* profits within the last 6 years and it’s the third largest plant of its kind in the U.S.?

Money..it’s all about the money for Big Oil.. As for workers lives..they can be replaced by the folks in Human Resources by placing a new ‘help wanted” ad in the newspapers and the local unemployment office.

As for OSHA having the funds to police all these huge industrial plants and enforce fines and work stoppage until they are fixed..once again..say it with me now people..

Money, its all about the money that BushCo keeps cutting from their budget. Oh, and having a pro-Oil “bidness” President doesn’t hurt either. The last line in the Houston Chronicle article I link to earlier is scary too:

"This report has a lot of implications beyond chemical processing," said Meshkati, human factors consultant to CSB investigators. Among the industries that could benefit are transportation and nuclear energy, he added.

Don’t get me started on the nuclear industry..I am warning you now.

Crossposted at

Tags: Politics, BP, Oil Industry, British Petroleum, Texas City Refinery