A Free-Market Energy Blog

A Tale of Three Pipelines (Part I: Remembering Tide-Water Pipe Line)

By -- December 21, 2011
Consider: the Tide-Water Pipe Line Company … built an “impossible” [crude-oil] pipeline in three months. And it was open for business in May 1879–a mere six months after the company was formed. In today’s American industry, in six months it can be difficult to get permission to lay down mats to teach Yoga on; a state of the art industrial project is inconceivable.
If oil is the lifeblood of a mobile civilization, then oil pipelines are its arteries.
TransCanda’s Keystone XL pipeline, a potential source of highly secure Canadian oil for U.S. refineries all the way to the Texas Gulf Coast, was proposed back in 2008. Despite the fact that pipelines are the safest way of transporting oil, and that this proposed pipeline went to borderline bizarre lengths to prevent the slightest momentary oil leakage, TransCanada endured more than three years of dealing with the “green” regulatory establishment–wrangling with permits, environmental impact statements, secondary environmental impact statements, and the like.
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Al Gore Reinvention? (From 'climate change' to 'sustainable capitalism')

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 20, 2011

“Business that is everything to everyone is not anything at all in itself.”

 – Elaine Sternberg,  Just Business: Business Ethics in Action. Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 33.

No doubt his handlers have given Al Gore the word: go easy on climate warming (aka climate change). The issue has little traction. You are the wrong voice for the cause. Solyndra. Climategate 2.0. Winter snows…. Not now, Al.

Take it up a notch! they must be telling him. Think bigger. Subsume the issue…. And so Gore’s new piece in the Wall Street Journal barely mentions his pet issue of (man-made) climate change but something much larger and amorphous.

“A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism,” coauthored with David Blood, calls for “abandoning short-term economic thinking for ‘sustainable capitalism’.” Such is code for that subjective, holistic, anything goes doctrine of corporate social responsibility, which I elsewhere questioned as follows:

The discipline of business ethics should be reoriented around a more sophisticated understanding of capitalism proper.

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Enron Romm: History Should Not Forget

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 19, 2011

It is a common refrain in headlines at Joe Romm’s Climate Progress:

Smearing and innuendo is hardly fair play. But in this case, Joe Romm has something embarrassing to hide. Just as Koch Industries might be his least favorite company, Enron was his darling company.

Specifically, Romm was not only a cheerleader of Enron (Enron is “a company I greatly respect,” Romm would say). He was also an unpaid consultant and collaborator with the infamously fraudulent division, Enron Energy Services (EES), purveyor of energy efficiency service in (gamed) long-term contracts.…

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Scientific Communication: Preach or Engage? (Judith Curry vs. AGU climate bias)

By Chip Knappenberger -- December 16, 2011
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Solar Subsidies: Misdirecting Industry and Consumers

By David Bergeron -- December 15, 2011
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Anatomy of a Debate: Rejecting Renewable Energy at THE ECONOMIST (Part II)

By Jon Boone -- December 14, 2011
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Anatomy of a Debate: Rejecting Renewable Energy at ECONOMIST Magazine (Part I)

By Jon Boone -- December 13, 2011
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"THIS AGREEMENT WILL BE GOOD FOR ENRON STOCK!!" (Enron's infamous Kyoto memo 14 years ago)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 12, 2011
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The Perils of the Mixed Economy: Rejecting 'Starter Regulation'

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 9, 2011
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U.S. Rejection of CO2 Emission Cuts: Just Do the Math (16% and falling ….)

By Chip Knappenberger -- December 8, 2011
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