Negative Oil Prices Arrive: Koch Brothers' Refinery "Pays" -$0.50 For North Dakota Crude

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-18/negative-oil-prices-arrive-koch-brothers-refinery-pays-050-north-dakota-crude

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/18/2016 10:20 -0500

Do you have some extra space in your garage or attic? Or perhaps you own an oil tanker you aren’t currently using. Or maybe you have a storage unit that’s got a little extra room next to an old mattress and box springs.

If so, you may want to call up oil producers in North Dakota and ask if they’d care to send you some free oil, because the crude glut is now so acute that the Koch brothers are actually charging $0.50/bbl to take low grade oil at their Flint Hills Resources refining arm.

North Dakota Sour is a high-sulfur grade of crude and “is a small portion of the state’s production, with less than 15,000 barrels a day coming out of the ground,” Bloomberg notes, citing John Auers, executive vice president at Turner Mason & Co. in Dallas. “The output has been dwarfed by low-sulfur crude from the Bakken shale formation in the western part of the state, which has grown to 1.1 million barrels a day in the past 10 years.”

High-sulfur grades are more expensive to refine and thus fetch lower prices at market. As Bloomberg goes on to note, “Enbridge stopped allowing high-sulfur crudes on its pipeline out of North Dakota in 2011, forcing North Dakota Sour producers to rely on more expensive transport such as trucks and trains [and] the price for Canadian bitumen -- the thick, sticky substance at the center of the heated debate over TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline -- fell to $8.35 last week, down from as much as $80 less than two years ago.”

So there you have it. The global deflationary supply glut has now reached the point that the market is effectively forcing producers to pay to give their oil away or else see it sit in bloated storage facilities until Riyadh decides enough is enough and until the world comes to terms with the return of Iranian supply. In other words, for some US producers the business isn't just loss making, it's an exercise in sadomasochistic futility.

Meanwhile, MLP Plains All American is quoting Colorado Southeastern, Nebraska Intermediate, Eastern Kansas Common Special, and Oklahoma Sour at just $16.50/bbl, $16.00/bbl, $12.20/bbl, and $13.50/bbl, respectively.

The message for the Wells Fargos and Citis of the world: you're going to need a bigger loan loss reserve.

It's no wonder the Dallas Fed suspended mark-to-market on energy debts - there's no market to mark to.

Koch-Backed Group Calls For No More National Parks

by Claire Moser - Guest Contributor Jul 3, 2015 9:30 am

CREDIT: Shutterstock

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/03/3676816/happy-fourth-no-more-national-parks/

Just in time for the Fourth of July — when millions of people across the country will visit America’s national parks and other public lands — the Koch brothers are rolling out their latest campaign against these treasured places: pushing for no more national parks.
In an op-ed published in Tuesday’s New York Times, Reed Watson, the executive director at the Koch-backed Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), along with a research associate at the Center, call for no more national parks, citing the backlog in maintenance for existing parks.
“True conservation is taking care of the land and water you already have, not insatiably acquiring more and hoping it manages itself,” the op-ed reads. “Let’s maintain what we’ve already got, so we can protect it properly,” it concludes.
While the authors seem to push for “true conservation” from the federal government, in reality, PERC has a long history of advocating for the privatization of America’s national parks and other public lands, and has significant ties to the Koch brothers and fossil fuel industries.
PERC, which labels itself as “a property rights and environmental organization,” has received significant contributions from Koch-backed organizations, including from Donors Trust, which has been called the “dark-money ATM of the right.” Additionally, Watson, the lead author of the op-ed and current PERC Executive Director, previously worked at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and in a 2009 op-ed criticized a number of bipartisan bills to protect wilderness, arguing that “land management agencies [should] turn a profit” by removing restrictions on timber and energy development.
In addition to arguing for no new national parks, PERC’s op-ed also calls for an end to one of America’s best parks programs, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). LWCF is a budget-neutral program that uses funds from offshore oil and gas development fees to fund federal, state and local outdoor projects across the country. The program has been used to support some of America’s most iconic national parks, including the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, and has helped create tens of thousands of outdoor projects such as local parks and baseball diamonds in all 50 states.
Members of Congress from both parties have called for full funding and reauthorization of the LWCF before it expires permanently on September 30. However, PERC and a select few Republican leaders in Congress are instead advocating for diverting the funds to cover maintenance costs, despite continuing to cut the National Park Service’s budget.
PERC and its oil and gas allies have also ramped up involvement in an extreme right wing campaign to give control of America’s public lands to the states and sell them off to the highest bidder. In March, PERC released a study that claimed to provide economic evidence to support the transfer of national public lands to state control. The study was widely cited in a series of nearly identical op-eds written by a front group for the oil and gas-backed public relations firm of Richard Berman, nicknamed “Dr. Evil” by consumer-protection and organizations he has targeted.
However, an analysis by the Center for Western Priorities (CWP) shows that PERC’s economic analysis is “flawed,” ignoring billions of dollars spent every year fighting wildfires and “fail[ing] to account for the multiple values provided by national public lands,” beyond drilling, mining, and logging. The study’s “glaring flaws would suggest that the authors designed a study to specifically support the organization’s ideology, which prioritizes extractive industries, reduces public access through privatization, and ignores the benefits of balanced land management,” CWP wrote in April.
CWP also cites two recent studies in its analysis from economists in Utah and Idaho showing that states would not be able to afford to manage lands if they were transferred to state control. In addition to the serious economic concerns they raise for state budgets, these proposals to transfer America’s public lands to the states and sell them off to private interests are unpopular with Western voters, and most importantly, unconstitutional.
Despite these concerns, PERC and its oil and gas allies in Congress have continued to ramp up efforts to seize and sell off America’s public lands and push an overall “No More National Parks” campaign. While these highly partisan and divisive attacks on the environment have taken priority in Congress, the conservation efforts supported by both parties, such as the reauthorization of the LWCF, are at risk of being left behind. Congress will have less than 100 days to act and reauthorize LWCF when it returns from recess next week.

Koch Brothers

Half The Country Doesn't Know Who The Koch Brothers Are

WASHINGTON -- More than half of the country has no idea who the Koch brothers are.

That was the news from a George Washington University Battleground poll released Tuesday morning. And it was immediately interpreted as bad news for Democrats, who have tried to turn the billionaire energy tycoons into midterm election boogeymen.
"Koch Zero?" read a headline on Washingtonpost.com. "Why Democrats are going to have a hard time enraging people about campaign finance."
The article itself was more dismissive of the strategy: "We've long believed that attacks on two relatively low-profile billionaires isn't likely to work for Democrats simply because, as this poll shows, people don't know who the Koch brothers are."
In fact, the GW Battleground survey, conducted by a bipartisan team of pollsters, doesn't show that "people don't know who the Koch brothers are." It shows that about half the country doesn't know them. It's likely those more aware of the brothers include Democratic donors and politically attentive voters, two constituencies that Democrats are desperately trying to reach in 2014.
Of course, Democratic strategists would like it very much if more of the country knew who the Koch brothers are. With 25 percent of GW Battleground respondents saying they had a negative opinion of the brothers and only 13 percent saying they had a positive opinion, the Kochs do make decent political villains. And as Slate's Dave Weigel points out, the fact that roughly two out of every five Americans knows about the Kochs, despite their efforts to keep themselves and their influence-peddling hidden, is something of a vindication of Democratic strategic thinking.
To get a sense of how the Koch brothers stack up as campaign kindling, it also helps to look at past polls. No comparison is perfect: When the polls took place, the way the questions were asked, and the names of the other people or companies raised in those questions all affect the results. But the data do suggest that while the Kochs are relatively obscure (at least among the public at large), they aren't completely off the radar.

In May 2013, for example, YouGov discovered that 55 percent of Americans had heard of the Koch brothers. That was more than the 51 percent who had heard of investor and Democratic moneyman George Soros. Soros has long been a conservative villain but he hasn't played a starring role in campaigns of late.
In January 2010, CNN/ORG released a poll showing that 24 percent of respondents had never heard of the tea party movement, which was roughly a year old by then.
Perhaps a better comparison, however, is to Bain Capital. In May 2012, 53 percent of respondents to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll said they did not know or were not sure of their opinion of the private equity firm started by Mitt Romney. Over the subsequent months, Democrats used the firm as a cudgel against the Republican presidential nominee.
Romney was obviously more closely associated with Bain Capital than any Republican candidate is with Koch Industries. Bain also became ubiquitous because the Obama reelection campaign worked to make it so. It's unclear if congressional Democrats and their allied committees can do the same this year with the Koch brothers.
Still, that May 2012 poll (which, it should be noted, came two months later in the election cycle than the GW Battleground poll) suggests how something known only to half the country can still be molded into a sharp campaign issue.
Here are some other, semi-relevant survey results to help evaluate the significance of the Koch brothers' poll numbers:
Karl Rove
In July 2005, Gallup found that 25 percent of Americans had not heard of the Republican strategist despite his having been widely portrayed as the evil genius behind George W. Bush's two presidential victories.
Paul Ryan
On Aug. 12, 2012, USA Today/Gallup ran a poll that found 39 percent of the country had never heard of the Wisconsin Republican even though Democrats had been running forcefully against his budget plan. Shortly thereafter, the congressman would be chosen as Romney's vice presidential candidate.
Nancy Pelosi
In October 2006, a Newsweek poll found that 36 percent of Americans had never heard of the California Democrat, even though she was poised to become the next speaker of the House and was the target of national GOP scorn.
Gallup and CNN had the percentage of Americans who hadn't heard of Pelosi hovering in the mid- to high 20s during that time period. But Fox News/Opinion Dynamics did a poll in October 2006 that found 43 percent had never heard of Pelosi, while an Associated Press poll in December of that year (after the election) had 55 percent saying that they hadn't heard of her.
Harry Reid
In mid-November 2006, a CNN/ORC poll showed that 37 percent of the public had never heard of the soon-to-be majority leader of the Senate, and 16 percent were not sure of their opinion on him. Gallup's numbers were a bit better for the Nevada Democrat. But an NBC News/WSJ poll in January 2007 found that 58 percent didn't know his name or were unsure of their opinion of him. That number was reduced to 42 percent by January 2009.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/koch-brothers-poll_n_5030735.html

Elizabeth Warren Comes Down Hard Against Keystone XL Pipeline While Hillary Clinton's Allies Push It Ahead

Warren stands up to a project that could enrich the Koch brothers by tens of billions while helping to destroy our climate.

 

 

 

December 21, 2013  |

 

On Friday, December 20, Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren finally separated herself clearly from former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, regarding the issue of climate change and global warming.
TransCanada Corporation wants to build the Keystone XL Pipeline to carry oil from Alberta Canada's tar sands to two refineries owned by Koch Industries near the Texas Gulf Coast, for export to Europe. Hillary Clinton has helped to make that happen, while Elizabeth Warren has now taken the opposite side.
Secretary of State Clinton, whose friend and former staffer Paul Elliot is a lobbyist for TransCanada, had worked behind the scenes to ease the way for commercial exploitation of this, the world's highest-carbon-emitting oil,  53% of which is owned by America's Koch brothers. (Koch Industries owns 63% of the tar sands, and the Koch brothers own 86% of Koch Industries; Elaine Marshall, who is the widow of the son of the deceased Koch partner J. Howard Marshall, owns the remaining 14% of Koch Industries.)
David Goldwyn, who was former Secretary Clinton's Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, is yet another  lobbyist for TransCanada. So, TransCanada has two of Hillary Clinton's friends working for it. Elliot and Goldwyn worked with Clinton's people to guide them on selecting a petroleum industry contractor (not an environmental firm or governmental agency) to prepare the required environmental impact statement for the proposed pipeline.
Secretary Clinton's State Department allowed the environmental impact statement on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline to be performed by a petroleum industry contractor that was chosen by the company that was proposing to build and own the pipeline, TransCanada. That contractor had no climatologist, and the resulting report failed even at its basic job of estimating the number of degrees by which the Earth's climate would be additionally heated if the pipeline is built and operated. Its report ignored that question and instead evaluated the impact that climate change would have on the pipeline, which was estimated to be none.
President Obama is  now trying to force the European Union to relax its anti-global-warming regulations so the EU will import the Kochs' dirty oil. His agent in this effort is his new U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, from Wall Street.
But on December 20,  Senator Warren signed onto a letter criticizing the Obama administration's apparent effort to force the European Union to agree to purchase this oil. As the Huffington Post's Kate Sheppard reported, "Six senators and 16 House members, all Democrats, wrote a letter to Froman on Friday asking him to elaborate on his position on the matter. 'If these reports are accurate, USTR's [the U.S. Trade Representative's] actions could undercut the EU's commendable goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its transportation sectors,' these 22 Democratic lawmakers wrote."
This is, essentially, a rebellion by 22 progressive congressional Democrats against the Clinton-Obama effort to provide a market for the Kochs' oil. The letter was actually written by Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and co-signed by senators Barbara Boxer, Ed Markey, Dick Durbin, Jeff Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren; and Representatives John Conyers, Jr., Barbara Lee, Raúl M. Grijalva, Rush Holt, Louise M. Slaughter, Jerrold Nadler, Judy Chu, Peter DeFazio, Anna G. Eshoo, Sam Farr, Peter Welch, Alan Lowenthal, Mark Pocan, and Steve Cohen.
What is at issue in the Keystone XL and Alberta tar sands matter is governmental policies that will determine whether the tar-sands oil will undercut the production-costs of normal oil. Right now, normal oil costs far less to mine, process, and get to market (because tar sands oil is so dirty and so landlocked). However, if the Kochs win, existing governmental policies will change in ways that will eliminate this cost-advantage of normal oil. The result would be increased sales and burning of the tar-sands oil, and thus reduced sales and burning of cleaner oil. That would throw into the atmosphere "more than $70 billion in additional damages associated with climate change over 50 years." That added $70 billion would be the added harms to the entire world, not to the owners of the tar sands.
The benefits to Koch Industries, from this competitive re-allignment in favor of tar-sands oil, have been estimated to be  around $100 billion. This would add about $45 billion to the net worth of David Koch, $45 billion to the net worth of Charles Koch, and $15 billion to the net worth of Elaine Marshall. (David and Charles Koch would then become the two wealthiest individuals in the world.)
On December 17, the Republican House budget chief, Paul Ryan,  threatened to drive the U.S. government into default unless President Obama approves the Keystone XL Pipeline.
President Obama holds the sole authority to approve or disapprove this project, because it crosses the international border. He has delayed this decision for years because he doesn't want to enrage the environmental community. Also, tipping his hand in that way would be a waste if he cannot first get Europe to weaken its environmental standards and allow this oil to compete in Europe with normal oil.
Senator Warren has now joined with the progressives on two big issues that arouse intense opposition from the aristocrats who finance most political campaigns. Warren opposes the taxpayer handouts to Wall Street, and she now also opposes the environmental handouts to the owners of the most harmfully polluting corporations, such as Koch Industries. (The  other owners of tar-sands oil are Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco.)
This could be a turning point in Elizabeth Warren's political career. She's no longer at war against only the corrupution in the financial industry, she is also at war against the environmental corruption so widespread in the Republican Party.
In another example of that environmental corruption, on Oct. 2, 2013, Joe Romm at Think Progress reported that "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that methane... is far more potent a greenhouse gas" than previously known, so bad it "would gut the climate benefits of switching from coal."
Just five days after that, Jon Campbell in upstate New York reported that at Hamilton College, Hillary Clinton praised fracking for methane by saying, "What that means for viable manufacturing and industrialization in this country is enormous."
If Warren won't be able to get either Wall Street or the oil patch to finance her political campaigns, how can she possibly rise within the power structure?
Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of Christ's Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/elizabeth-warren-comes-down-hard-against-global-warming-separates-herself-hillary?page=0%2C1