Mississippi Katrina victims get okay to sue polluters over rising sea level

A group of Mississippi landowners can pursue their lawsuit against more than 30 major oil, electric and coal companies they say have created global-warming pollutants that contributed to rising sea levels and increased Hurricane Katrina's destruction, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

The central question before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was whether the plaintiffs could demonstrate that their injuries were “fairly traceable” to the actions of the oil, electric and coal companies. A lower court had ruled they could not, but the Fifth Circuit disagreed.

In its ruling, the three-judge panel cited the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, since that opinion “accepted as plausible the link between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and global warming” along with the fact that “rising ocean temperatures may contribute to the ferocity of hurricanes.”

Gerald Maples, lead attorney for the landowners in the class-action lawsuit, said he filed the suit 22 days after Katrina to get the attention of energy officials about greenhouse gas emissions. The case still has a long way to go, however. 

The Wall Street Journal talked to a legal expert who predicted that the ruling will invite more climate-change litigation in the future.“With this decision,” he says, “you are now pretty well assured of seeing others file these kinds of claims.”

The ruling is the second time in recent weeks an appeals court has allowed a similar lawsuit to move forward, notes the Times-Picayune. In September, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Connecticut and other states to proceed with a suit aimed at forcing American Electric Power and other utilities to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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Study: Hidden health costs from energy consumption top $120 billion

The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academies of Science, released a report today that attempts to estimate the hidden costs of energy production and the use of coal, oil and other sources, such as the impact of air pollution, on human health.

The estimate: $120 billion in 2005.

And that's just a partial estimate, the council notes. The number "reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation," a news release on the study says. "The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security. ..."

Here's the breakdown:  

"Coal accounts for about half the electricity produced in the U.S.," the release notes. "In 2005 the total annual external damages from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter created by burning coal at 406 coal-fired power plants, which produce 95 percent of the nation's coal-generated electricity, were about $62 billion."

And then there are all the cars and trucks on the highway spewing pollution from their tailpipes. In 2005, motor vehicles produced $56 billion in damage to human health, the study found.

The committee that wrote the report tried to figure out the hidden costs in terms of climate change impact too, but it ran into lots of problems quantifying an amount for those impacts. Nevertheless, it found that "coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., emitting on average about a ton of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced. ...Climate-related monetary damages range from 0.1 cents to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour."

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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Florida solar energy industry now backing offshore oil drilling too

Backers of a drive to open up Florida's near-shore waters to offshore drilling picked up a new ally today: the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association.

Yes, you read that right. Solar backs Oil. The reason for these strange bedfellows: Money. The revenue that the state could reap from allowing drilling for oil five miles off Florida's gulf beaches could act as a bridge to help the state promote alternative energy for the future, the association said in a press release.

"“We believe the proposal to tap these energy resources, with stringent environmental protections, can help move our state toward renewable energies that will reduce our country’s dependence on fossil fuels,” explained association executive director Bruce Kershner. Here's the full text of the announcement: Download FlaSEIA rls 10-1-09

--Craig Pittman

G-20 ready to pull the plug on fossil fuel subsidies

The Group of 20, meeting in Pittsburgh this week, has a draft agreement ready to phase out government subsidies for oil and other fossil fuels in the "medium term,"reports Reuters today.

Countries such as China, Russia and India subsidize coal and oil to keep prices artificially low, which boosts demand for hydrocarbons.

The G-20 draft says the subsidies "encourage wasteful consumption, distort markets, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with climate change.” According to the Wall Street Journal, cutting those subsidies could cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 10% by 2050.

You may recall that President Obama promised to work toward that goal during his speech to the U.N. earlier this week. Reuters says that getting agreement approved by the G-20 meeting is a victory for his administration.

But the WSJ notes that removing those subsidies could have an unintended side effect: "Consumption subsidies distort demand; in the Middle East and Asia, demand for oil kept rising even when crude hit $140, because many consumers didn’t pay market prices." Getting rid of the subsidies would raise prices in those places, and thus cut demand and "smooth out the violent price swings that have characterized the oil markets in recent years—and which helped galvanize public attention and appetite for alternative energy."

--Craig Pittman

Who's pushing to drill off Florida's coast, and what does Florida get in return?

After months of controversy over the proposal to overturn Florida's longtime ban on oil drilling in state waters, a pair of stories in today's St. Petersburg Times explore who's pushing to drill, and what Florida might get out of it.

Florida Energy Associates LLC, the secretive group behind the effort, has mounted an expensive lobbying effort to convince state lawmakers to overturn the ban. Incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, and incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, say they favor lifting the ban -- although critics are quick to point out that neither represents a district that would be affected by oil spills like the one still going on off Australia.

So far the only oilman identified as part of the group is M. Lance Phillips (pictured), 49, of Mexia, Texas, who in addition to running an oil business is a Republican Party official, trophy hunter, exotic-game rancher, high school coach and avid fisherman. He says: ""We really do want to do for Florida what oil and gas has done for Texas."

--Craig Pittman

Shell Oil's hiring of former Interior Secty now focus of federal corruption probe

A day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told Congress he's scrapping a scandal-plagued oil royalty program that ensnared a third of the employees at the Denver office of the U.S. Minerals Management Service comes word of a new oil-related scandal -- involving one of Salazar's predecessors, who's also from Denver.

"The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her," the Los Angeles Times is reporting.

The investigation centers on the Interior Department's decision in 2006 to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Two months later, Norton resigned as the head of the agency -- and then wound up hired by Shell as in-house counsel to its unconventional fuels division, which includes oil shale.

According to the LAT, the Interior Department's own inspector general's office -- led by ex-Secret Service agent Earl Devaney, whose investigators also exposed the sex-and-drugs scandal at the Denver office of the Minerals Management Service -- first launched the Norton investigation. Devaney turned it over to the Justice Department "after concluding that there was sufficient evidence of potential illegal conduct," the paper reported.

This is not the first time scandal has touched Norton's five-year tenure at Interior during the Bush Admnistration. Two years ago her second-in-command, Steven Griles, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress to cover up his connection with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Griles, a former lobbyist, had resigned in 2004 after allegations surfaced that he pushed policy decisions favoring his former oil and gas industry clients.

--Craig Pittman

Interior Department to end oil royalty program that led to sex and drug scandal

The Interior Department is going to scrap a scandal-plagued royalty-in-kind program that let companies that drilled on public land provide oil and gas to the federal government as payment, Congressional Quarterly reports.

Testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he intends to phase out the program as a first step in a series of broader reforms of oil and gas royalty collection, CQ reports.

“The royalty-in-kind program has been a blemish on this department, especially after the revelations of sex and drugs,” Salazar told the panel.

And what a lot of revelations they were! "Alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf, ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees," the Denver Post reported last year. They took cocaine and marijuana with them too, the agency's inspector general found.

The bribery wasn't isolated, either. The IG found that between 2002 and 2006, nearly a third of the 55-person staff in the Denver office received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies, including Chevron, Shell, Hess Corp. and Denver-based Gary-Williams Energy Corp.

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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EPA, DOT unveils new emissions, fuel economy standards for cars, trucks

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation at last unveiled the government's tough new emissions and fuel economy standards for cars and trucks today.

"The standards would push corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards to a fleetwide average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, four years ahead of the schedule Congress laid out in a 2007 energy law," the New York Times reports. "The carbon dioxide limit under the plan -- which will apply to passenger cars, light-duty trucks and medium-duty passenger vehicles -- would reach an average of 250 grams per mile per vehicle in 2016."

Notes the Associated Press: "The proposal is expected to increase vehicle fuel efficiency by about 5 percent annually and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons. The plan would also conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil."

“American drivers will keep more money in their pockets, put less pollution into the air, and help reduce a dependence on oil that sends billions of dollars out of our economy every year,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said.

President Obama, speaking at a General Motors plant in Ohio, said the new rules were the result of negotiations among groups that in the past would have had a hard time finding any common ground: "Unlikely allies came together -- automakers, the UAW, environmental advocates, Democrats and Republicans, California and more than a dozen other states -- all of them pledging to set aside the quarrels of the past for the sake of the future."

Jackson told USA Today that the next step would be regulating emissions from power plants and other industrial sources -- although she would still prefer Congress pass a new law taking that step.

--Craig Pittman

Huge oil spill off Australia cited by opponents of drilling off Florida

On Aug. 21, oil began bubbling out from an offshore rig about 90 miles from Australia's coast. The leak, which apparently started as a blowout 11,500 feet below the surface, soon coated 1,800 square nautical miles of surface of the Timor Sea. It's still going. Every day it's spewing out another 300 and 400 barrels of oil.

The rig's owner, PTTEP Australasia, says it could take another six weeks before it can drill a new well and cap off the old one, and there's no telling how much larger the spill will get in the meantime. The Australian Broadscasting Corporation is already reporting on fears that the slick is moving toward continent's western coast, known for being a wilderness full of endangered species.

Expect to start hearing a lot about this spill as state legislative leaders and Gov. Charlie Crist discuss using next month's special session to vote on allowing similar rigs to start drilling in the Gulf of Mexico a mere five miles off Florida's gleaming white beaches.

Opponents of drilling such as the Surfrider Foundation are posting pictures of the spill online and citing it as an example of why Crist and the Legislature should reject this latest bid for drilling, despite a secretive but well-funded oil industry lobbying effort.

This spill, and one from a Louisiana offshore pipeline, were reason enough for the Pensacola News Journal's editorial page to oppose Crist and the Legislature, concluding: "No doubt today's drilling and production rigs are more advanced than in the past. But it still takes only a single spill to spread disaster across Florida's beaches."

However, according to a spokesman for the unnamed California and Texas-based energy interests lobbying to open up Florida's near-shore waters to drilling, the Australian spill means the exact opposite. "This incident on the other side of the world  provides a real time example of one reason why Florida should lift the ban and impose rigorous standards," said Ryan Banfill of Ron Sachs Communications. "It is important to remember the Cubans and Bahamians will be drilling next door likely requiring weaker standards. Florida has to take action, lift the ban and establish high standards. Then we will be able to lead by example and strengthen our hand in demanding high standards from those countries."     

[Photo: Perth Now]

--Craig Pittman

BP makes deep "discovery" in Gulf of Mexico

U.K-based oil company BP (British Petroleum) says it has made a "giant oil discovery" at its Tiber Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, operated jointly with Petrobras of Brazil and ConocoPhillips (US).

Located about 250 miles southeast of Houston, the discovery is one of the deepest oil wells ever drilled, reaching down to more than 35,000 feet, BP said in a press release.

It remains to be seen how commercially viable such a deep water discovery may be. But BP says recent discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico will support its offshore US business "into the second half of the next decade." BP says it is the largest producer of oil and gas in the gulf, with net production of
over 400,000 barrels of oil per day.

- David Adams, Times staff writer