Clinton's sudden announcement, made without even consultation
with the state of Utah's lone Congressional Democrat, Bill Orton,
in whose district the Kaiparowits basin is found, basically
eliminates the competition for the Lippo group, enabling it to
become the sole readily available source of the high quality
coal for the entire world.
The Lippo corporation founder, billionaire Mochtar Riady, his
family members and associates gave hundreds of thousands
of dollars to Clinton and the Democrats. Earlier in December,
Bill Clinton admitted that he received a letter from Riady urging
him to "normalize" trade relations with Vietnam at a time when
Riady was moving its $6.9 billion real estate and investment
empire into the country. Shortly thereafter, in 1994, over protests
from veterans and family members of American soldiers missing
in action in the Vietnam War, Clinton ended the 30-year
Vietnam trade embargo.
"In the Utah connection, Andalex Resources, a U.S. mining
company owned by a British family, was nearly ready to break
ground on a Kaiparowits mine that would produce about 3
million tons of coal. It reversed course with Mr. Clinton's
announcement in September," the Associated Press report
noted today. "Our position is that the monument designation
makes the coal mine project unfeasible," said David Shaver,
project manager at Andalex. The now un-mineable coal is
known as "super compliance" coal because its properties
meet Clean Air Act standards.
"The whole industry was expecting to move into Kaiparowits,
" Lee Allison, director of Utah's geological survey said.
Allison noted that, while cleaner burning coal is also found
in other deposits in Columbia, Wyoming and South Africa,
the Utah and Indonesia coal are the cleanest burning
deposits which are immediately marketable. Clinton's
actions have created a worldwide monopoly for the Lippo
Conglomerate coal, while leaving Utah without a source
of clean burning coal to provide the state's energy needs
when its present mines are depleted, twenty-five years
from now.
Although labor costs are low in Indonesia and much of
the Lippo coal is extracted by surface strip mining, the
Kaiparowits coal would still be very competitive, although
is would not be strip mined. Andulux would use modern
environmentally sensitive mining methods in Utah which,
combined with lower transportation costs for customers
such as the Atlanta based Southern Company, would
make the Utah coal a worthy competitor. The Southern
Company purchases Indonesia coal for its plant in Chili.
The 62 billion tons of coal in southern Utah's Kaiparowits
Plateau would provide thousands of jobs, billions of dollars
in school funds under the State's 1896 agreement with
the Federal Government under the Utah statehood enabling
act, and enough coal to keep Utah power plants burning for
another 400 years.
According to the Associated Press article today, "In the
Vietnam connection, a key player in the Democratic Party
contributions scandal - who left Lippo with a $780,000
bonus to join the Commerce Department - is linked to an
effort to help companies, including Lippo, expand into
Vietnam. John Huang began aggressively arguing for a
new U.S. trade policy toward Vietnam only one day after
his July 1994 appointment as a top Commerce official.
Several Congressional committee chairman plan congres-
sional investigations of campaign financing irregularities
and the apparent "sale" of American foreign policy favors
to Lippo in exchange for campaign contributions to the
Clinton presidential campaign. The new "Vietnam" favors
to the Lippo groups are especially disturbing in view of
Clinton dismissing the concerns of families and friends of
American soldiers who may still be incarcerated in Vietnam
or whose bodies have not been returned by the Communist
government. |
