Wednesday, March 11, 2015

A Port pledge? Shell’s Arctic fleet out in 2 years, no more lightning leases

Mar 11th, 2015

From an article by Joel Connelly published 10 March 2015 by Seattlepi.com

A Port pledge? Shell’s Arctic fleet out in 2 years, no more lightning leases

With a $5.8 billion investment, Shell is determined to return to Alaska’s Chukchi Sea this summer.

The Seattle Port Commission is seeking a passage to calmer waters after facing protest and song over its lease of Terminal 5 to provide a staging area for Royal Dutch Shell’s Arctic oil drilling fleet.

A motion, set for vote at a future Commission meeting, would require that Shell’s fleet be gone within two years. It also promises no more quickie deals removed from public scrutiny. And the Commission would take over all future details of the controversial deal with Foss Maritime, which services Shell’s ships.

“We are not changing terms of the lease,” said Seattle Port Commissioner Tom Albro. “We are, essentially, owning the lease as an executive action and determining what will happen there.”

Initial reaction from groups organizing protests — who packed Tuesday’s commission meeting with 200 anti-Shell activists — was negative.

The motion, introduced late Tuesday, directs Port management to ensure that “tenant” — Shell and Foss Maritime — “vacates the premises at the end of the initial term of two years unless instructed otherwise by future public action of the Commission.”

Under a new resolution, it added, “the Commission will establish new requirements for leases of significant public interest including — at a minimum — a 30-day public comment period and the completion of all relevant environmental reviews in advance of Commission consideration.”

Commissioner Albro, who coauthored the pending motion, was a skeptic on the lease to begin with. Now, he explained, the Shell-Foss Maritime deal has become a “hot political issue.”

“What we do, I want to be overt, to make sure we have acted properly, and — when we made a decision — to make clear that we own it.

“I also do not want the Port of Seattle staff to become whipping posts for criticism, which I have seen signs of in the media.”

The Port of Seattle is facing fire on several fronts.

The lease with Foss Maritime, which services Shell’s ships, is being challenged in court by Earthjustice. The environmental legal group claims the Port violated the State Environmental Policy Act by not evaluating whether the servicing of Shell ships goes beyond the Port’s permit for Terminal 5.

Mayor Ed Murray has told the city’s planning department to review and investigate — quickly — whether hosting Shell’s Arctic oil drilling fleet is allowed under the current Shoreline Substantial Development Permit granted to Terminal 5.

The upcoming Shell lease was first disclosed by SeattlePI.com in early January, with almost no time for opposition to develop.

But environmental and progressive groups have refused to treat the signed lease as water under Terminal 5.

They mounted a loud, classic Seattle, made-for-adoring-Stranger-coverage protest at Tuesday’s meeting of the Commission.

The protest featured claims of “climate suicide,” a protest letter signed by environmental “bigfeet” (e.g. 350.org founder Bill McKibben), a Coalition for Port Accountability, an Episcopal priest, and appeals that the Port think about the future of the planet.

The Commission heard from usual suspects (a salty song from the Raging Grannies)and one Aji Piper. Piper is a Seattle teenager whose ukulele and self-written songs have added a note of originality sorely needed in Seattle environmental protests.

“A young man testified at our Commission meeting via song he played on a ukulele. Definitely a candidate for Sea-Tac Airport’s music program,” tweeted Commissioner John Creighton. “He did a really good job,” Commissioner Bill Bryant said later.

Under their motion, port commissioners would reserve “all decisions” involving the Shell-Foss lease including expansion of the Shell port, changes of use to Terminal 5, and “election of remedies in the case of tenant default.”

Fuse Washington, the state’s largest progressive organization, sent a contingent of activists to the Tuesday meeting. Its communications director, Collin Jergens, was not impressed by the Port Commission’s conciliatory motion and promises.

“The commissioners would sweep this issue under the rug and give themselves in two years the opportunity to extend the lease when the public is no longer paying attention,” Jergens said.

“Shell has one of the worst environmental records in the world: Two years is plenty of time for Shell to irreparably damage fragile Arctic waters or Puget Sound.”

Under the Shell-Foss lease, the drilling ship Noble Discoverer could be one of the ships based at Terminal 5. The drilling vessel broke loose from anchor in July of 2012 and nearly ran aground in Unalaska Harbor in Alaska.

A U.S. Coast Guard inspection of the vessel later resulted in eight felony convictions and $12.2 million in fines against Shell’s contractor.

A spill containment vessel, developed for Shell’s Arctic drilling, broke loose during a Puget Sound test, shot to the surface and “breached like a whale” — in words of a federal inspector’s report — and, later, “crumpled like a beer can.”

With a $5.8 billion investment, however, Shell is determined to return to Alaska’s Chukchi Sea this summer. It is clearing up final issues with the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Bering and Chukchi Seas are reporting unusually low winter ice packs.

Others, as well, are heading for the Chukchi Sea. The Chukchi is a prime feeding ground for gray whales, which migrate from winter calving bays in Baja California to the high Arctic each spring. The first visiting whale was spotted off Saratoga Passage last weekend.

The Seattle Port Commission has a lot of business to conduct as it combines maritime operations with the Port of Tacoma. A key to those operations is upgrading Terminal 5 to attract a terminal operator and grow traffic of container ships.

The terminal is, in the Commission’s words, “a critical element of the Port’s efforts to handle larger container vessels and grow the Puget Sound gateway.

Could approval of Shell and Foss Maritime as tenant been better handled by the Seattle Port Commission?

When asked, Bryant, a possible candidate for governor, paused for almost a minute.

“Let me not give you a flip answer,” he said. “I would like to think over that issue.”

SOURCE

Here Are the Five Port Commissioners Who Failed to Stop Seattle from Becoming Shell’s Arctic Drilling Homeport

And Why You Should Be Giving Them Hell

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Canadian Firm Welcomes Nigerian High Court Decision on Shell Oil Block

Mar 11th, 2015

by John Donovan.

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From an article published bythisdaylive.com on 11 March 2015

Canadian Firm Welcomes Nigerian High Court Decision on Shell Oil Block

A Canadian firm and member of Crestar Consortium that won the bid for Shell’s Oil Mining Lease (OML) 25, James Bay Resources Limited, has welcomed the decision of a Federal High Court restraining the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) from acquiring the 45 per cent interest of Shell, Total and Agip in the disputed oil block.

James Bay is a part-owner of Crestar Integrated Natural Resources Limited, which was the winning bidder in May 2014 for the Shell’s 45 per cent participating interest in OML 25, and had deposited 100 per cent of the purchase consideration into an escrow account with JP Morgan in London.

The company said in a statement that Crestar commenced the legal action after NNPC attempted to block the sale and acquire the interest for itself under a 30-day contractual right of first refusal that had expired months earlier.

According to the statement, Crestar commenced injunction proceedings to restrain the Shell JV from effecting a transfer to NNPC or anyone else, adding that the injunctions were granted on a preliminary basis.

“The Shell JV subsequently sought to discharge the injunctions, but the Federal High Court dismissed the Shell JV’s application on March 6, 2015, and reaffirmed the injunction pending a further hearing expected to occur on March 17.

FULL ARTICLE

Posted in: Africa, Litigation, Nigeria, Oil, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell.
Tagged: Litigation · Nigeria · Oil · Royal Dutch Shell Plc

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SEN. BERNIE SANDERS' IMAGES 10MAR15

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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The Conundrum of Corporation and Nation

shared from

TUESDAY, 10 MARCH 2015

Conundrum of Corporation and Nation

Robert Reich: Most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility to their shareholders — which often requires lower wages to fuel larger profits and higher share prices.

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The Conundrum of Corporation and Nation

BY ROBERT REICH

The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.

What’s behind this? Two big facts.

First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries.

In fact, most Americans have no influence at all. That’s the conclusion of Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, who analyzed 1,799 policy issues — and found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Instead, American lawmakers respond to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and of big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

The second fact is most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility to their shareholders — which often requires lower wages to fuel larger profits and higher share prices.

When GM went public again in 2010, it boasted of making 43 percent of its cars in place where labor is less than $15 an hour, while in North America it could now pay “lower-tiered” wages and benefits for new employees.

American corporations shift their profits around the world wherever they pay the lowest taxes. Some are even morphing into foreign corporations.

As an Apple executive told The New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”

I’m not blaming American corporations. They’re in business to make profits and maximize their share prices, not to serve America.

But because of these two basic facts – their dominance on American politics, and their interest in share prices instead of the wellbeing of Americans – it’s folly to count on them to create good American jobs or improve American competitiveness, or represent the interests of the United States in global commerce.

By contrast, big corporations headquartered in other rich nations are more responsible for the wellbeing of the people who live in those nations.

That’s because labor unions there are typically stronger than they are here — able to exert pressure both at the company level and nationally.

VW’s labor unions, for example, have a voice in governing the company, as they do in other big German corporations. Not long ago, VW even welcomed the UAW to its auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (Tennessee’s own politicians nixed it.)

Governments in other rich nations often devise laws through tri-partite bargains involving big corporations and organized labor. This process further binds their corporations to their nations.

Meanwhile, American corporations distribute a smaller share of their earnings to their workers than do European or Canadian-based corporations.

And top U.S. corporate executives make far more money than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.

The typical American worker puts in more hours than Canadians and Europeans, and gets little or no paid vacation or paid family leave. In Europe, the norm is five weeks paid vacation per year and more than three months paid family leave.

The typical American worker puts in more hours than Canadians and Europeans, and gets little or no paid vacation or paid family leave. In Europe, the norm is five weeks paid vacation per year and more than three months paid family leave.

And because of the overwhelming clout of American firms on U.S. politics, Americans don’t get nearly as good a deal from their governments as do Canadians and Europeans.

Governments there impose higher taxes on the wealthy and redistribute more of it to middle and lower income households. Most of their citizens receive essentially free health care and more generous unemployment benefits than do Americans.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that even though U.S. economy is doing better, most Americans are not.

The U.S. middle class is no longer the world’s richest. After considering taxes and transfer payments, middle-class incomes in Canada and much of Western Europe are higherthan in U.S. The poor in Western Europe earn more than do poor Americans.

Finally, when at global negotiating tables – such as the secretive process devising the “Trans Pacific Partnership” trade deal — American corporations don’t represent the interests of Americans. They represent the interests of their executives and shareholders, who are not only wealthier than most Americans but also reside all over the world.

Which is why the pending Partnership protects the intellectual property of American corporations — but not American workers’ health, safety, or wages, and not the environment.

The Obama administration is casting the Partnership as way to contain Chinese influence in the Pacific region. The agents of America’s interests in the area are assumed to be American corporations.

But that assumption is incorrect. American corporations aren’t set up to represent America’s interests in the Pacific region or anywhere else.

What’s the answer to this basic conundrum? Either we lessen the dominance of big American corporations over American politics. Or we increase their allegiance and responsibility to America.

It has to be one or the other. Americans can’t thrive within a political system run largely by big American corporations — organized to boost their share prices but not boost America.

Robert Reich

Republished with permission from Robert Reich’s blog.

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