To: Catfish who wrote (338 ) 8/4/1998 3:24:00 AM From: Shawn Donahue Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 13994
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.