In the Pipeline: 10/2/12

Yesterday, we noted that the United Arab Emirates bankrolled the Matt Damon movie/propaganda against affordable, American-produced natural gas.  Now we note that the Russians are doing the same thing.  The reporter was kind enough to point out that the Sierra Club and its fellow travelers are useful idiots, which saves us the trouble. AP (9/30/12) reports: “The Kremlin is watching, European nations are rebelling, and some suspect Moscow is secretly bankrolling a campaign to derail the West’s strategic plans. It’s not some Cold War movie; it’s about the U.S. boom in natural gas drilling, and the political implications are enormous.”

I guess times are not tough enough in Michigan. Daily Tribune (9/29/12) reports: “A proposal to require that Michigan utilities steadily boost their use of renewable energy sources over the next dozen years is stirring a whirlwind of competing claims about costs, jobs and spinoff issues that could leave voters dizzy with confusion.”

We kind of dig the idea of building powerplants in New York.  But it is very possible, in fact, it is very likely that Canadian power will be cheaper than power generated in New York.  Of course, the real answer is that New York needs economic growth, which will mean more demand for electricity.  But that it is not the sort of thing that corrupt, declining States talk about. Buffalo News(9/27/12) reports: “Business and labor officials agreed Tuesday that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s proposal to build new electricity lines to send locally produced power downstate would be preferable to importing that electricity from Canada.”

No power when the wind isn’t blowing. No power when the wind is blowing really hard. What is the point of these things? Daily Mail(9/30/12) reports: “Wind farm operators were paid £34million last year to switch the turbines off in gales. Two days last week saw householders effectively hand £400,000 to energy firms for doing nothing. The arrangement compensates wind farms for the National Grid’s inability to cope with the extra energy produced during high winds.”

How does this dude figure the concrete was made? Common Dreams(10/1/12) reports: “A Tar Sands Blockade protester has stopped the destruction of a small family farm in East Texas by locking himself in front of oncoming Keystone XL clearing equipment. Houston resident, Alejandro de la Torre, 28, is taking action to stop the Keystone XL pipeline from destroying the home of yet another Texas family threatened by TransCanada’s poisonous tar sands slurry.”

This has bad mojo written all over it. Environment & Public Works (10/1/12) reports: “In the wake of the Obama – Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) being sued in federal court for allegedly conducting illegal human experiments – exposing people to concentrated high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and diesel exhaust – Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, wrote a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, to request that the committee hold hearings to get to the bottom of what exactly happened at EPA.”

You can’t really hang around for 200 years unless you provide substantial value over time. Christian Science Monitor (9/26/12) reports: “But markets are a fickle mistress.  The lust for profits is a basic human business animal spirit. So a story recently in Bloomberg BusinessWeek caught my eye. It said that European power producers planned to open six times more coal fired generating plants than gas-fired generators by 2015.  The story said profits at coal plants were expected to double repeating an analysis released September 13 by Goldman Sachs.”