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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (77064)	6/2/2010 7:00:18 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 149317

We can dramatically increase our NG. Half of some states ARE coal. For a decent price they simply develop massive coal bed methane. Add Alaskan gas to that and that is a lot of gas. Not if we are importing NG now. Much of our NG reserves are difficult to access like with the Marcellus Shale formation. From what I understand, at $4, NG is too cheap to justify shale and CBM mining. Maybe later as oil and NG prices go up. Then we need to put together a well laid out national plan that explores all the possibilities and then condenses them into goals to be reached over a defined period of time.

To: koan who wrote (77064)	6/3/2010 12:19:57 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

BP and the Bankers usatrends.info

To: koan who wrote (77064)	6/3/2010 12:57:29 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

Reckoning in the Gulf ______________________________________________________________ Lead Editorial The New York Times June 2, 2010 The criminal and civil investigations announced by the Justice Department this week into the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are clearly necessary. The spill, the worst in United States history and growing more damaging by the day, cries out for accountability and appropriate punishment. Attorney General Eric Holder did not name specific targets, but BP, Transocean — the rig operator — and other important subcontractors like Halliburton are obvious candidates. Justice’s investigation will run parallel to an inquiry by a special commission appointed by President Obama to discover the causes of the disaster, assess the performance of federal oversight agencies and recommend ways to prevent similar calamities. The White House must take special care that both are allowed to do a complete job. Even though their missions are different — the Justice Department mainly concerned with lawbreaking, the commission with safety — overlap is inevitable. Both, for instance, will be talking to many of the same witnesses from government and industry. Unlike the Justice Department, the commission does not have subpoena powers. Congress should grant that power if only to make sure that witnesses from an industry that is accustomed to going its own way actually show up. As Mr. Holder knows, the legal journey will be long and arduous. Exxon did not finally settle up for damages related to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill — in addition to the billions it paid in cleanup costs — until a Supreme Court decision in 2008. BP is responsible for containing the gulf spill and cleaning it up, but the fines it must ultimately pay, as well as compensatory damages to injured parties, will depend in part on the whether the company can be shown to have broken the law. One relevant law is the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, enacted after the Exxon Valdez spill, which imposes monetary penalties for every barrel of spilled oil — even if negligence is not found, but more if it is. Another is the Clean Water Act, which carries both civil and criminal penalties for polluting waterways. BP could also be found negligent under the Marine Mammal Protection Act because it failed to obtain necessary federal permits to drill in areas inhabited by endangered whales. In addition, Mr. Holder said he would investigate potential liability under the Migratory Bird Act Treaty and the Endangered Species Act, which provide penalties for injury and death to wildlife and bird species. Exxon agreed in 1991 to pay $100 million to settle criminal charges under the various statutes, and later paid $1 billion in federal and state civil damages and $500 million in punitive damages. Senator Barbara Boxer, who was pressing Mr. Holder to act, raised one more ominous possibility: that BP may have made false and misleading statements to federal authorities in the 2009 exploratory drilling plan it submitted to the Minerals Management Service. The plan asserted that the company had “proven equipment and technology” to respond to a blowout. Given the ad hoc nature of BP’s response, Ms. Boxer has suggested, that assertion now seems misleading or even false. There are extraordinarily tough times ahead for the gulf and the region’s residents. That BP will also suffer does not trouble us in the least.

To: koan who wrote (77064)	6/3/2010 2:08:30 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Politics & the BP Oil Disaster: MoveOn.Org breaks it down bpoil.wordpress.com

To: koan who wrote (77064)	6/3/2010 2:51:30 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

EPA May Face Suit Over Use of Dispersants in Gulf Oil Spill By Jenna Greene The National Law Journal June 03, 2010 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is facing a potential suit by the Center for Biological Diversity for allowing the use of dispersants in an attempt to limit damage in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil spill. Dispersants are used to break down oil in the slick by isolating it into very small droplets, which in theory allows the oil to be eaten by micro-organisms. But the Center for Biological Diversity objects that the EPA allowed BP to pump nearly 1 million gallons of dispersants into the gulf without ensuring that the chemicals will not harm endangered species and their habitats. The group Wednesday sent the EPA an official notice of its intent to sue. The letter requests that the agency, along with the U.S. Coast Guard, immediately study the effects of dispersants on species such as sea turtles, sperm whales, piping plovers and corals and incorporate this knowledge into oil-spill response efforts. "The Gulf of Mexico has become Frankenstein's laboratory for BP's enormous, uncontrolled experiment in flooding the ocean with toxic chemicals," said Andrea Treece, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity in a statement. "The fact that no one in the federal government ever required that these chemicals be proven safe for this sort of use before they were set loose on the environment is inexcusable." According to the group, studies have found that oil dispersed by Corexit 9527 (one of the formulations used by BP) damages the insulating properties of seabird feathers more than untreated oil, making the birds more susceptible to hypothermia and death. The product is banned in the United Kingdom. At a news conference in Louisiana, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson on May 24 said the agency was not prepared to ban Corexit. "We should minimize it," she said, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "If I saw today any indication that that material was toxic, if I saw that we were having biodegradation, if I saw data, if I had science that told me that we were having an impact that was worse than allowing this material to just pile up on the surface, then I would stop it." For more coverage, see The National Law Journal's Gulf Spill Scorecard.