Repost from MapLightCelebrating 10 years of Revealing Money’s Influence on Politics
Railroads and Oil Companies Deliver Contributions to Subcommittees Overseeing Crude By Rail Legislation
By Daniel Stevens, May 12, 2015
Scott Prokop/Shutterstock
May 13, 2015 — On May 1, the Department of Transportation issued new regulations requiring railroad cars that transport crude oil to meet a new safety standard. The rules will require rail companies to, among other things, stop using the most at risk rail cars by 2018. Safety groups and members of Congress have been calling on the Department to issue new rules for years. Several members of Congress havesaid that the new regulations are still not strong enough. Meanwhile, railroads and oil companies have said the new rules will hamper their industries. The two industries have contributed heavily to the congressional subcommittees that oversee the regulation of railroads and that are responsible for legislationrelating to the safety of crude oil trains. Campaign Contributions Data: A MapLight analysis of campaign contributions to the principal campaign committees of members of Congress from the political action committees (PACs) of the Association of American Railroads and Class I Railroad companies (BNSF, CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific); the American Petroleum Institute, and the top five oil companies (BP America, Chevron U.S.A., ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Shell Oil Company) that lobbied about “crude by rail” during the first quarter of 2015. Contributions data source: Federal Election Commission. Lobbying data source: Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.House of Representatives
The PACs of the top railroad and oil companies, as well as their trade associations, contributed, on average, 2 times more money ($30,621) to members of the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials compared to the average member of the House ($15,244) during the 2014 election cycle (January 1, 2013 – December 31, 2014).
During the first quarter of 2015 (January 1, 2015 – March 31, 2015), the PACs of the top railroad and oil companies, as well as their trade associations, contributed, on average, 2.9 times more money ($5,210) to members of the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials compared to the average member of the House ($1,808) .
Senate
The PACs of the top railroad and oil companies, as well as their trade associations, contributed, on average, about the same amount ($19,000) to members of the Senate Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security compared to the average member of the Senate ($18,868) during the 2014 election cycle (January 1, 2013 – December 31, 2014).
During the first quarter of 2015 (January 1, 2015 – March 31, 2015), the PACs of the top railroad and oil companies, as well as their trade associations, contributed, on average, 1.8 times more money ($3,118) to members of the Senate Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security compared to the average member of the Senate ($1,740).
Campaign Contributions Methodology: MapLight analysis of campaign contributions to the principal campaign committees of members of Congress from the political action committees of the Association of American Railroads and Class I Railroad companies (BNSF, CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific); the American Petroleum Institute, and the top five oil companies (BP America, Chevron U.S.A., ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Shell Oil Company) that lobbied about “crude by rail” during the first quarter of 2015 from recently available FEC data from January 1, 2013 – March 31, 2015.
MapLight is a 501(c)3 research organization that tracks money’s influence on politics.
US taxpayers subsidising world’s biggest fossil fuel companies
Shell, ExxonMobil and Marathon Petroleum got subsidises granted by politicians who received significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, Guardian investigation reveals
By Damian Carrington and Harry Davies, 12 May 2015 07.00 EDT
Marathon Petroleum refinery in Canton, Ohio, got a job subsidy scheme worth $78m when it started in 2011. Photograph: PR
The world’s biggest and most profitable fossil fuel companies are receiving huge and rising subsidies from US taxpayers, a practice slammed as absurd by a presidential candidate given the threat of climate change.
A Guardian investigation of three specific projects, run by Shell, ExxonMobil and Marathon Petroleum, has revealed that the subsidises were all granted by politicians who received significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.
The Guardian has found that:
A proposed Shell petrochemical refinery in Pennsylvania is in line for $1.6bn (£1bn) in state subsidy, according to a deal struck in 2012 when the company made an annual profit of $26.8bn.
ExxonMobil’s upgrades to its Baton Rouge refinery in Louisiana are benefitting from $119m of state subsidy, with the support starting in 2011, when the company made a $41bn profit.
A jobs subsidy scheme worth $78m to Marathon Petroleum in Ohio began in 2011, when the company made $2.4bn in profit.
“At a time when scientists tell us we need to reduce carbon pollution to prevent catastrophic climate change, it is absurd to provide massive taxpayer subsidies that pad fossil-fuel companies’ already enormous profits,” said senator Bernie Sanders, who announced on 30 April he is running for president.
Sanders, with representative Keith Ellison, recently proposed an End Polluter Welfare Act, which they say would cut $135bn of US subsidies for fossil fuel companies over the next decade. “Between 2010 and 2014, the oil, coal, gas, utility, and natural resource extraction industries spent $1.8bn on lobbying, much of it in defence of these giveaways,” according to Sanders and Ellison.
“Subsidies to fossil fuel companies are completely inappropriate in this day and age,” said Stephen Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, an NGO that analyses the costs of fossil fuels. OCI found in 2014 that US taxpayers were subsidising fossil fuel exploration and production alone by $21bn a year. In 2009, President Barack Obama called on the G20 to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies but since then US federal subsidies have risen by 45%.
“Climate science is clear that the vast majority of existing reserves will have to stay in the ground,” Kretzmann said. “Yet our government spends many tens of billions of our tax dollars – every year – making it more profitable for the fossil fuel industry to produce more.”
Tax credits, defined as a subsidy by the World Trade Organisation, are a key route of support for the fossil fuel industry. Using the subsidy tracker tool created by the Good Jobs First group, the Guardian examined some of the biggest subsidies for specific projects.
Shell’s proposed $4bn plant in Pennsylvania is set to benefit from tax credits of $66m a year for 25 years. Shell has bought the site and has 10 supply contracts in place lasting up to 20 years, including from fracking companies extracting shale gas in the Marcellus shale field. The deal was struck by the then Republican governor, Tom Corbett, who received over $1m in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry. According to Guardian analysis of data compiled by Common Cause Pennsylvania, Shell have spent $1.2m on lobbying in Pennsylvania since 2011.
A Shell spokesman said: “Shell supports and endorses incentive programmes provided by state and local authorities that improve the business climate for capital investment, economic expansion and job growth. Shell would not have access to these incentive programmes without the support and approval from the representative state and local jurisdictions.”
ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge refinery is the second-largest in the US. Since 2011, it has been benefitting from exemptions from industrial taxes, worth $118.9m over 10 years, according to the Good Jobs First database. The Republican governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal has expressed his pride in attracting investment from ExxonMobil. In state election campaigns between 2003 and 2013, he received 231 contributions from oil and gas companies and executives totalling $1,019,777, according to a list compiled by environmental groups.
A spokesman for ExxonMobil said: “ExxonMobil will not respond to Guardian inquiries because of its lack of objectivity on climate change reporting demonstrated by its campaign against companies that provide energy necessary for modern life, including newspapers.”
The Guardian is running a campaign asking the world’s biggest health charities, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, to sell their fossil fuel investments on the basis that it is misguided to invest in companies dedicated to finding more oil, gas and coal when current reserves are already several times greater than can be safely burned. Many philanthropic organisations have already divested from fossil fuels, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund whose wealth derives from Standard Oil, which went on to become ExxonMobil.
A spokesman for Marathon Petroleum said: “The tax credit recognises the enormous contribution we make to the Ohio economy through the taxes we pay and the well-paying jobs we maintain. We have more than doubled the 100 new jobs we committed to create.” The spokesman said the company paid billions of dollars in income and other taxes every year across the US.
“Big oil, gas, and coal have huge influence on politicians and governments and they get that influence the old fashioned way – they buy it,” said Kretzmann. “Through campaign finance, lobbying, advertising and superpac spending, the industry has many ways to influence candidates and government officials seeking re-election.”
He said fossil fuel subsidies were endemic in the US: “Every single well, pipeline, refinery, coal and gas plant in the country is heavily subsidised. Big Fossil’s lobbyists have done their jobs well for the last century.”
Ben Schreiber, at Friends of the Earth US, said. “There is a vibrant discussion about the best way to keep fossil fuels in the ground – from carbon taxation to divestment – but ending state and federal corporate welfare for polluters is one of the easiest places to start.”
Schreiber also defended subsidies for renewable energy: “Fossil fuels are a mature technology while renewable energy is nascent and still developing. It makes sense to subsidise technologies that are going to help solve climate change, but not to do the same for those that are causing the problem.”
By Todd Paglia, Executive Director, May 1, 2015
New Oil Train Rules (Photo/NOAA)
In the first three months of 2015 four oil train accidents sent emergency responders scrambling, crude oil spilling into drinking water supplies, and fireballs blasting into the sky. The string of accidents in February and March demonstrate the severe threat from Bakken crude and Alberta tar sands moving on mile-long oil trains. These derailments and explosions set a bar we can use to measure the new oil train standards announced today by the US and Canadian governments.
Would the new rules have prevented any of the 2015 accidents and, ultimately, will they reduce the threat of oil train catastrophes like the 2013 Lac Megantic, Quebec, explosion that killed 47 people? The answer is no, and the reason is speed: the regulations move too slow and the trains continue to move too fast.
The rules announced at a joint press conference today by US and Canadian officials arrive decades late and with the sticky fingerprints of the oil and rail industry all over them. The administration has slowed down and narrowed the scope of the rules so the most dangerous tank cars stay on the rails for at least two and a half years. Other unsafe tank cars have five or seven years before they must meet new higher standards.
Not that the new standards will help much: All four 2015 accidents involved CPC-1232 cars, the newer tank cars that are supposedly safer than the dangerous DOT-111s. But to be clear, neither the upgraded cars or new cars built to the new standard will prevent an explosion if the train is moving at normal speeds.
So we can begin to look for new and upgraded cars (like the ones that exploded in recent months) in the years to come, but those living along the tracks can still expect to see the worst cars continue to roll by their homes for a very long time. The administration effectively allows rail companies to keep antiquated tank cars on the rails in trains with fewer than 35 crude oil tank cars (or 20 in a row.) That means oil trains hauling up to a million gallons of explosive crude oil in the most dangerous tank cars will keep rolling through a downtown near you FOREVER.
The administration trumpets new electronically controlled pneumatic brakes for oil trains. While it’s good news that oil and rail companies will use state-of-the-art technology, the administration is giving them until 2021 to install the new better brakes. That’s six years too long to require what should be a basic minimum safety requirement.
And while these upgrades to the tank car fleet creep slowly into place, the trains will continue flying down the tracks at reckless speeds. The new rule allows oil trains to travel at more than twice the rated “puncture velocity” of even the new tank cars that they will (in some cases) eventually require. That means that oil trains carrying three million gallons of explosive crude will continue to travel at 50 mph across North America, except in a small number of “high threat” urban areas where they must go 40. The new speed limits offer little comfort because three of the four of the explosive accidents in 2015 occurred at speeds below 35 mph. (The accident in Gogama, ON, occurred at 43 mph, just three mph over the “high-priority” speed limit.) The Galena, Illinois, derailment occurred at only 23 mph, proving that the speed limits in the rule are inadequate to protect anyone.
In the final insult to injury, the administration walked too quickly away from notification standards in an earlier draft of the rule, leaving citizens and emergency responders in the dark about where these trains are running and when.
The Obama Administration took its time developing new rules for hazardous materials on trains that run through the heart of America: they looked at the threat of exploding oil trains, but heavy industry lobbying made them flinch. The administration failed to learn the lessons of Lac Megantic or the four explosive oil train accidents we’ve seen so far in 2015 alone. They have given public safety the cold shoulder, instead embracing the oil and rail industry lobbyists peddling this dangerous cargo.
We were fortunate that none of the 2015 accidents caused fatalities. ForestEthics and our many partners will continue pushing the administration to do a lot better and hope that our luck holds while we stop these dangerous trains from crisscrossing North America. But it shouldn’t be a matter of luck. Secretary Foxx and President Obama have chosen to roll the dice instead of writing strong rules that protect the 25 million of us living in the blast zone.
Press Release from Friends of the Earth [Editor: As you might expect, this travesty was passed on a nearly complete party line vote, with 230 Republicans and 10 Dems in favor. Dems voting FOR the bill included: A. Dutch Ruppersberger MD, Ami Bera CA, Brad Ashford NE, Collin Peterson MN, Doris Matsui CA, Filemon Vela TX, Gene Green TX, Henry Cuellar TX, Jim Costa CA, and William Keating MA. Republicans voting AGAINST the bill included: Christopher Gibson NY, James Sensenbrenner Jr. WI, Joseph Heck NV, Justin Amash MI, Mo Brooks AL, Thomas Massie KY, Walter Jones Jr. NC. Track the bill here. – RS]
House approves $279 million renewable energy cut
By: Kate Colwell, May. 1, 2015
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House of Representatives passed H.R. 2028, “The Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2016,” by a vote of 240-177.
The bill sets funding levels for important programs within the U.S. Departments of Energy, Interior, and the Army Corps of Engineers. While staying within the limits set by the sequester, the bill manages to raise funding for fossil fuel research by $34 million from 2015 levels while cutting renewable energy and efficiency research by $279 million. Simultaneously, it is packed with policy riders that undermine bedrock environmental laws like the Clean Water Act and limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to study the dangers of hydraulic fracturing.
Friends of the Earth Climate and Energy Campaigner Lukas Ross issued the following statement in response:
Shoveling more of our tax dollars into the pockets of ExxonMobil and the Koch Brothers while defunding clean energy is climate denial at its worst. Fossil fuel interests don’t need more money. Solutions to the climate crisis do.
From hobbling the Clean Water Act to limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to even study fracking, House Speaker John Boehner is continuing his assault on the air we breathe and the water we drink.
Campaign Contributions Data: A MapLight analysis of campaign contributions to the principal campaign committees of members of Congress from the political action committees (PACs) of the Association of American Railroads and Class I Railroad companies (BNSF, CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific); the American Petroleum Institute, and the top five oil companies (BP America, Chevron U.S.A., ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Shell Oil Company) that lobbied about “crude by rail” during the first quarter of 2015. Contributions data source: Federal Election Commission. Lobbying data source: Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. House of Representatives
Senate
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