Also,
Engineers warned BP of Alaskan crisis two years ago
By Saeed Shah
Published: 25 August 2006
http://www.independent.co.uk//eceRedirect?articleId=1221310&pubId=55
...which leads me to restate a query I posted yesterday...
Where ARE the capital expenditures on infrastructure? Why aren't oilco
investors requiring the companies to invest in equipment to keep the
source of profits flowing?
.
I don't think it's too crass to suggest that the energy sector is
plagued by profit-looting.
The "efficient market" is apparently efficiently insufficient.
Here's the problem, at least one or two of them... no regulation of
profit-taking, no requirements for infrastructure improvement on our
national energy resources. Hell, the oilcos don't even pay royalties for
their use of public lands. <http://leighm.net/blog/?p=131>
Here's why: <http://www.priceofoil.org/oilandstate/> (Find out how much
money your elected officials are getting from the oil industry, courtesy
of OilChange International)
Leigh
Baltic pipeline will lead to disaster, Sweden warns
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
The Independent: 24 August 2006
http://www.independent.co.uk//eceRedirect?articleId=1221310&pubId=55
An ambitious project to build a 750-mile long gas pipeline beneath the
Baltic Sea has run into trouble after Sweden's Prime Minister warned
that the project could trigger an ecological tragedy.
The Baltic Sea is in effect a cemetery for discarded chemical weapons
and Goran Persson argued that it would be foolhardy to lay a pipeline in
such an area. His comments have been echoed by worried
environmentalists.
But the £3.4bn pipeline project, a joint venture between Russia's
Gazprom and Germany's BASF and E.ON, shows little sign of being put on
hold. Onshore construction of the so-called North European Gas Pipeline
(NEPG) has already begun in Russia and the first gas is due to be
transported in 2010.
The scheme has the approval of President Vladimir Putin and the former
German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is now chairman of the
consortium's shareholders' committee. Russia says the project is vital
for Europe's future energy needs. The pipeline is expected to carry
billions of cubic metres of Siberian gas to Germany, the UK, the
Netherlands, Belgium and France.
But Mr Persson said that construction would stir up a deadly cocktail of
chemicals and spread them over a much larger area. "When you build such
a large pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, you stir up a lot of
sediment at the bottom, where there are mines, poisons and other things
that have been dumped over decades," he said. "You risk setting off a
major environmental disturbance on top of all the other environmental
problems the Baltic Sea has." He wants the consortium building the NEGP
to consider putting most of the pipeline on land instead.
A spokeswoman for the Swedish government, Anna Helsen, said yesterday
that negotiations with the NEGP consortium concerning a full
environmental impact assessment had not yet begun but that the matter
was already being actively discussed by working groups.
She said Mr Persson was concerned that the sea off the Swedish island of
Gotland (56 miles from the mainland) would be destroyed and that the
pipeline would not be good for the environment.
Ivan Blokov of Greenpeace Russia said that the Soviet Union had dumped
tens of thousands of tons of German Second World War chemical weapons
and ammunition in the area in the late 1940s. "Some of the chemical
weapons were dumped in the hulls of sunken ships and we know where they
are," he said. "But others were just thrown off the sides of ships.
There could be 60,000 tons of chemical weapons down there." Mr Blokov
said that the location of more than one million "units" of Soviet
chemical weapons were unknown and could be in the Baltic Sea.
Irina Vassilieva, a spokeswoman for the pipeline consortium, played down
fears of a disaster. She said careful research had been carried out and
that the environment would actually benefit since the seabed would be
cleaned before construction began.
"We have worked this route out over several years and it is the optimal
one. The route did not come close to known ammunition dumps," she said.
"We are certainly determined to observe all ecological, maritime and
legal requirements during planning, construction and operation."
An ambitious project to build a 750-mile long gas pipeline beneath the
Baltic Sea has run into trouble after Sweden's Prime Minister warned
that the project could trigger an ecological tragedy.
The Baltic Sea is in effect a cemetery for discarded chemical weapons
and Goran Persson argued that it would be foolhardy to lay a pipeline in
such an area. His comments have been echoed by worried
environmentalists.
But the £3.4bn pipeline project, a joint venture between Russia's
Gazprom and Germany's BASF and E.ON, shows little sign of being put on
hold. Onshore construction of the so-called North European Gas Pipeline
(NEPG) has already begun in Russia and the first gas is due to be
transported in 2010.
The scheme has the approval of President Vladimir Putin and the former
German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is now chairman of the
consortium's shareholders' committee. Russia says the project is vital
for Europe's future energy needs. The pipeline is expected to carry
billions of cubic metres of Siberian gas to Germany, the UK, the
Netherlands, Belgium and France.
But Mr Persson said that construction would stir up a deadly cocktail of
chemicals and spread them over a much larger area. "When you build such
a large pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, you stir up a lot of
sediment at the bottom, where there are mines, poisons and other things
that have been dumped over decades," he said. "You risk setting off a
major environmental disturbance on top of all the other environmental
problems the Baltic Sea has." He wants the consortium building the NEGP
to consider putting most of the pipeline on land instead.
A spokeswoman for the Swedish government, Anna Helsen, said yesterday
that negotiations with the NEGP consortium concerning a full
environmental impact assessment had not yet begun but that the matter
was already being actively discussed by working groups.
She said Mr Persson was concerned that the sea off the Swedish island of
Gotland (56 miles from the mainland) would be destroyed and that the
pipeline would not be good for the environment.
Ivan Blokov of Greenpeace Russia said that the Soviet Union had dumped
tens of thousands of tons of German Second World War chemical weapons
and ammunition in the area in the late 1940s. "Some of the chemical
weapons were dumped in the hulls of sunken ships and we know where they
are," he said. "But others were just thrown off the sides of ships.
There could be 60,000 tons of chemical weapons down there." Mr Blokov
said that the location of more than one million "units" of Soviet
chemical weapons were unknown and could be in the Baltic Sea.
Irina Vassilieva, a spokeswoman for the pipeline consortium, played down
fears of a disaster. She said careful research had been carried out and
that the environment would actually benefit since the seabed would be
cleaned before construction began.
"We have worked this route out over several years and it is the optimal
one. The route did not come close to known ammunition dumps," she said.
"We are certainly determined to observe all ecological, maritime and
legal requirements during planning, construction and operation."
--30--
