Environmental Activists, Not Oil Companies, Blocking Domestic Drilling

foxnews.com ^ | August 14, 2008 | Ben Lieberman

[kellynla]

It’s true: Hundreds of promising oil leases on federal lands are being stonewalled, contributing to lower supplies and higher prices at the pump. But the blame lies not with the oil companies, but with environmental activists.

Much of America’s energy potential lies underneath federally controlled lands and waters, but some of those areas are off-limits to oil exploration and drilling. In response to high gasoline prices, several Washington lawmakers want to open these areas, including some of the 85 percent of our territorial waters that are restricted, as well as a small portion of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Polls show that the public endorses this step, but the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, fearing a loss of support from anti-drilling environmental activists, has thus far blocked these measures.

Their argument? The oil companies don’t need new leases in restricted areas because they aren’t diligently pursuing leases in areas that are currently open to them. “Why should we be giving big oil additional leases when they have 68 million acres under lease already that they’re not drilling on right now?” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked.

Sounds damning. But the charge of industry dawdling is totally without support, and proponents of the “use it or lose it” bills that seek to punish delays have yet to produce a single credible example of an oil company dragging its feet on a green-lighted project.

[kellynla]

Ben Lieberman is senior policy analyst in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation

[Dinah Lord]

Bump.

[DJ MacWoW]

Well we knew the 10 year figure to get oil quoted by the Dems included red tape and jumping through hoops.

[NavyCanDo]

If they really cared about the environment they would be saying drill here drill now. Drill in the country that has the tightest controls and regulations to prevent spillage and environmental catastrophes. Here in the U.S.

But instead the rest of the World has to drill more to fill the void we leave. Countries that don't even have a means to empty there toilet bowls safely, much less drill for oil without destroying the landscape and whole ecosystems.

[JasonC]

A fair point, but of course they don't care about the enviroment to start with, they just oppose capitalism, industry, technology, the modern world, human life, etc. They were a pagan taliban and it is long past time we tell them to stuff it. It is absolutely insane that anyone ever listened to them, at all.

[mouse1]

We need a vote
Nazi Pelosi AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
202-425-4965

We need emergency session
President Bush comments@whitehouse.gov
202-456-1111

John Boehner invited McCain to join them
McCain needs to get his a$$ to Washington where he belongs
It will bring the much needed media attention
http://www.johnmccain.com/Contact/

[Carry_Okie]

Ben Lieberman is an idiot. True, it is not the oil companies causing the shortage; it is the owners of the oil companies who use their tax-exempt "charitable" foundations to fund the environmentalists.

I've been telling people this for eight long years on this forum and they still don't get it.

[tobyhill]

Yesterday while I was pumping my $3.62 a gallon gas in my work truck some little college girl drives up to the pump on front of me in a little souped up Suzuki with the stereo blasting. She gets out of the car still with the noise thumping. I went over there to tell the little bitch to turn down the noise. When I got up to her I noticed she had a shirt on the read, “If you're not Green, you're mean”. She saw me coming and turned down the stereo while smiling at me and then apologized. I then told her that I would much rather listen to that noise than to see another brainwashed young person falling all over the Global Warming crap and causing the gas prices to go through the roof. She realized that I wasn't real happy about this global warming game and in half tears apologized “for the way I feel”.
I want these little punks to start realizing that their actions are causing their parents to pay through the roof for their gas when they should be paying for a REAL education.

[Southack]

Nice post.

[Southack]

You’re way out of line in post #7. You are so far over the edge that your words appear to *excuse* environazis and blame “big oil.”

You need a reality check from your radicalism.

[Carry_Okie]

You’re way out of line in post #7. You are so far over the edge that your words appear to *excuse* environazis and blame “big oil.”

Hardly. I've written an entire book on the topic that was hand carried by Senator Malcolm Wallop into the White House to give to Dick Cheney. It's rather well documented.

You are so far behind on this curve, that it's staggering to think you could be so whacked after this long on FR. Do you really think there limousine liberals only because of ideology? Start here, here, and then read this post to learn some of this history. Else STFU.

ccg, he STILL hasn't learned a damned thing since shilling for Arnold.

Ignorance must be bliss.

[Southack]

Now you’re getting personal on me...for me pointing out that you are out of line. You’ve compounded your error.

My complaint is with your post #7 above in which you call Ben an idiot. Then you blame oil companies instead of environazis.

You take exception to me pointing out the above. That’s bad form.

Are you perfect? You never make a bad post? Never admit that you are wrong? Is that where you are going?

What’s next, you’re going to call me (more) names for giving you a reality check?

Do you need a vacation? Are you stressed?

[TChris]

...it is the owners of the oil companies...

I'm admittedly pretty ignorant on this subject, but aren't oil companies owned by stockholders? This comment makes it sound as though each oil company is owned by a rich tycoon who is funding his own enemies. That just makes no sense to me.

[Carry_Okie]

Consider, for example, the Natural Resources Defense Council. who are these guys at the NRDC? It’s an interesting list.

Natural Resources Defense Council Board of Trustees
Chairman	Frederick A. O. Schwartz, Jr.	Partner, Cravath Swaine & Moore; (a British Law Firm) Former New York City Corporation Counsel (under Mayor Ed Koch)
Executive Director	Frances Beinecke	Co-founder, The New York League of Conservation Voters (with RFK Jr.)
Trustee	Laurance Rockefeller	Private philanthropist; Former Chairman, Rockefeller Brothers Fund; Former chairman, Citizens Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality; Trustee, the Laurance Rockefeller Charitable Trust
Trustee	Thomas A. Troyer	Partner, Caplin & Drysdale; Former Chairman, the Foundation Lawyers’ Group; Former member of the IRS Commissioner’s Advisory Group on Tax-exempt Organizations; (no conflict of interest there?) Board member, the Carnegie Corporation of New York
Pres & Co-founder	John H. Adams	Former Assistant US Attorney (New York)
Vice Chair	Adam Albright	Board member, Redefining Progress; Board Chair, Population Communications International; Program Chair, Conservation International
Vice Chair	Alan Horn	Chairman & Chief Operating Officer, Warner Brothers
Vice Chair	Burks Lapham	Chairman, Concern Inc.; Director, Chesapeake Bay Foundation (a relatively benign group)
Vice Chair	George Woodwell	Founding Director, Woods Hole Research Center; Co-founder, Environmental Defense Fund (they banned DDT, Alar, etc.)
Co-founder & Treas	Richard E. Ayres	Partner, Howrey & Simon; Former Chairman, National Clean Air Coalition
Trustee	Patricia Bauman	Member, Pew Environmental Health Commission; Former Manager, National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences; Co-Director, The Bauman Foundation
Trustee	William Richardson	Former US Secretary of Energy; Former US Ambassador to the United Nations; Former US Congressman (D-NM)
Trustee	Michael Finnegan	Managing Partner, J.P Morgan Securities

 

Is this "Natural Resources" defense, or natural resource SUPPLIERS defense?

Now, let’s look at who gives the NRDC money, shall we?

Top Funders of NRDC
Funder	Total Donated	Comments
		Descriptions in bold are major energy investors
Pew Charitable Trusts	$11,568,000.00	Sunoco money
Blue Moon Fund	$7,818,735.00	This is W. Alton Jones Money (Citgo)
Energy Foundation	$6,965,000.00	Launched by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and The Rockefeller Foundation. The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation joined as a funding partner in 1996, and The McKnight Foundation joined in 1998. In 1999, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation joined to support two programs: the U.S. Clean Energy Program (now the Climate Program) and the China Sustainable Energy Program. In 2002, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation joined to support advanced technology transportation and clean energy for the West.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation	$5,636,500.00	Bankers Life and Casualty money (investment portfolio unknown)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency	$4,681,097.00	Your tax dollars at work subsidizing the interests of whom?
Turner Foundation	$3,795,167.00	CNN, and a lot more
Public Welfare Foundation	$3,500,000.00	Too confounded to determine
Joyce Foundation	$3,309,445.00	Timber Wealth
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation	$3,022,340.00	General Motors
Ford Foundation	$2,733,300.00	Ford
Beinecke Foundation	$2,150,000.00	Major player at Yale.
J. M. Kaplan Fund	$2,057,500.00
William Bingham Foundation	$1,995,000.00
Homeland Foundation	$1,733,000.00
San Francisco Foundation	$1,654,739.00
Rockefeller Brothers Fund	$1,377,510.00	Them again
McKnight Foundation	$1,365,500.00
Robert Sterling Clark Foundation	$1,310,000.00
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation	$1,310,000.00
Bauman Family Foundation	$1,226,000.00
Nathan Cummings Foundation	$1,220,000.00
Educational Foundation of America	$1,210,000.00
Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund	$1,205,000.00
Mertz Gilmore Foundation	$1,201,000.00
Carnegie Corporation of New York	$1,200,000.00
Park Foundation	$1,198,010.00
New York Community Trust	$1,186,821.00
Overbrook Foundation	$1,182,585.00
Surdna Foundation	$1,147,000.00
Bullitt Foundation	$1,122,675.00
William & Flora Hewlett Foundation	$1,075,000.00	Note also the participation with the Energy Foundation

These people are energy investors who use federal money and their own tax-exempt "charitable" donations to fund lawsuits that manipulate access to resources, control processing of energy feedstocks, and set attainment targets in a manner preferential to their own investments. ALL of the resulting capital gains in their trusts are tax-exempt. You may be surprised to find the Hewlett and Packard fortunes listed as energy investors, but they just gave over 130 million to Stanford to research extraction of methane hydrates and are directly tied in with Exxon/Mobil in that effort. Keeping it in the family they've put Lynn Orr, who is married to Susan Packard, in charge of the global energy project. The idea is that they can use the energy revenues and the carbon credits for removing a principal source of atmospheric methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. They need Kyoto or this will be a big loser of an investment. Curiously, if they disturb those nodules foolishly, they may end up releasing a great deal of methane to the surface which would release the gases into the atmosphere. You don’t think that they might need protection from the NRDC in case they screw up, do you?

Did anybody sue the NRDC for the cleanup costs of MTBE?

They can’t be sued. Clinton EO 12986 indemnified them from such lawsuits as members in good standing at the IUCN, the United Nations' equivalent of the EPA.

Using a charitable foundation, to use the law to force people to use your product, to use regulatory power to keep competitors out of the market or force them into selling or go bankrupt, and to protect you from liability for your product in order to reap a guaranteed profit is tax-exempt racketeering, and on a grand scale.

[Carry_Okie]

My complaint is with your post #7 above in which you call Ben an idiot.

If he doesn't know to follow the money behind the environmentalists, he is an idiot.

Then you blame oil companies instead of environazis.

I see that you have a need to mis-characterize what I plainly said. I didn't blame the oil companies; I blamed the principal stockholders who've figured out this game.

Do you need a vacation? Are you stressed?

Do you always attack the poster when you have nothing to offer? Rich liberals have a reason for giving money to these groups. Is that really so hard to fathom?

[TChris]

Rich liberals have a reason for giving money to these groups. Is that really so hard to fathom?

Even if all the flows of money are as you have described, how can you be so sure of their intent?

It's not hard for me to fathom. But the I have to ask: Therefore, what?

What should be done about it? Liberals, environmentalists, etc. are all legally permitted to own stock in oil companies, and to serve on committees and boards. Other than pointing out the liberal hypocrisy, it's a big "so what?"

[Southack]

You aren’t being clever. The author’s point in the article for this thread is that:
#1: there is a popular myth that oil companies aren’t drilling for oil in 68 million acres of federally leased land

#2: in reality, the oil companies are being **blocked** from drilling for oil in many federal areas by environmental activists.

So why aren’t you being clever?

Because you are confusing issues, and confusing casual readers, by claiming that oil companies (your post #7) are funding enviro-activists who are blocking oil drilling.

What you need is your own thread. You have a complaint that some rich oil heirs are funding green causes and activism. That’s valid.

But injecting your complaint into this thread dilutes the author’s key point that oil companies are being blocked from drilling on federal lands by enviro-activists.

That’s unclever.

And calling Ben an idiot in your post #7 was poor form, especially since you did it just because Ben wasn’t making your own point above. That’s a cheap shot.

Ben is making the point that something is going on that isn’t being reported...that oil companies are being blocked from drilling by the very people who are complaining that “oil companies aren’t drilling on 68 million acres, so we don’t need to lease them more offshore oil drilling regions...”

That’s a newsworthy point. It’s not idiotic. In fact, it is fact-based and independently verifiable. Yet you call Ben an “idiot.”

And then you went off on your own tangent, posting links to your own book.

For all of the above and more, I gave you a reality check. You need it. If my 6 year old daughter threw such a whiny temper tantrum as you’ve thrown in this thread, she’d be disciplined.

One wonders if such corrections were omitted from your own upbringing, considering how you are carrying on. Which is to say, you act so unreasonably, with so little self-awareness, that you appear to have led a spoiled life.

[Carry_Okie]

What should be done about it? Liberals, environmentalists, etc. are all legally permitted to own stock in oil companies, and to serve on committees and boards. Other than pointing out the liberal hypocrisy, it's a big "so what?"

So what? Using tax exempt money to fund fraudulent data to use unconstitutional powers of government to manipulate markets is tax fraud, racketeering, and manipulation my good fellow.

I want them in jail.

What we should be doing is educating smart ambulance chasers to run for positions as auditors, District Attorneys, and Federal prosecutors. I can't think of a better thing for Patrick Henry College to be doing.

[TChris]

I want them in jail.

Yeah, good luck with that.

If anything near the level of justice you seek really existed, the Clintons would be rotting away in a dungeon somewhere.

Welcome to the 21st century. Some are truly untouchable.

[Southack]

You want people to be jailed for donating their own money to green causes?

That fascist. You’ve gone off the deep end. My reality check has failed to save you in time, I fear.