Tag Archives: Alabama

Ex-military infiltrators of pipeline opposition

Be sure that if you are at all successful in opposing a pipeline you will get infiltrators, whether FBI or private security. Be prepared to deal with it, whether by checking backgrounds, or comparing lists, or by some other methods.

One of the most effective methods appears to be exposing what the pipeline company and their hired hands are up to, as The Intercept_ did about infiltrators at Standing Rock, using leaks from private security firm TigerSwan, which was hired by pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) to “protect” its Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). THE INFILTRATOR: How an Undercover Oil Industry Mercenary Tricked Pipeline Opponents Into Believing He Was One of Them, Alleen Brown, The Intercept_, 30 December 2018,

An infiltrator
Joel McCollough, far right, at a climate march launch event in Chicago hosted by Food and Water Watch in April 2017. Photo: Courtesy of Gloria Araya, in The Intercept_.

What he’s certain of is that the glimmer of opportunity he saw at the beginning of the pipeline fight was extinguished when The Intercept published more than 100 TigerSwan situation reports leaked by a former operative, revealing the security firm’s extensive surveillance efforts, coordination with law enforcement, and comparisons of water protectors to jihadi fighters. …

He remembers thinking at one time, “If they watch their p’s and q’s, they will be the standard. They’ll be the company that everybody’s gonna use.” The former contractor laughed. “That didn’t happen.”

DAPL is a petroleum products pipeline, but we heard some of the same Continue reading →

The shift has come: GE, Siemens massive job losses as fossil fuels crash and the sun rises

The carbon bubble is bursting, as jobs fly from some of the biggest companies in the world, because solar and wind power are taking over right now. It’s too late to bet on the wrong nuclear horse or the wrong pipelnie snake. Get out of fossil fuels now: the sun is rising.

Tiffany Hsu and Clifford Krauss, New York Times, 7 December 2017, G.E. Cuts Jobs as It Navigates a Shifting Energy Market,

General Electric, whose new leadership is moving to eliminate bloat and grapple with the fallout from earlier, ill-timed decisions, is taking drastic steps to keep pace with seismic shifts in the global energy industry.

GE ranks first in 2017 downsizing after 12,000 more jobs: Brandon Kochkodin, Bloomberg, 7 December 2017
Brandon Kochkodin, Bloomberg, 7 December 2017, GE Ranks First in 2017 Downsizing After 12,000 More Job Cuts.

The company said on Thursday that it would cut 12,000 jobs in its power division, reducing the size of the unit’s work force by 18 percent as part of a push to compete with international rivals in a saturated natural gas market, adjust to “softening” in the oil and gas sectors and stay abreast of the growing demand for renewable energy.

Solar and wind energy technology is increasingly being deployed Continue reading →

Big Bets keep getting worse for Southern Company

OSHA certified a “continuing pattern of retaliatory treatment” at Kemper “clean” Coal after an employee alerted Southern Company of alleged fraud: SO fired him, refused to hire him back and now he’s suing. Plant “new nukes” Vogtle also had impossible projections from the start and is even later and more overbudget, while anybody from GA-PSC to Georgia EMCs to the Florida PSC or even PowerSouth in Alabama could bring it down. Somebody put Plant Vogtle out of its misery so we can get on with solar power in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and everywhere else.

Plant Vogtle reactors 3 and 4
Two new cooling towers and construction cranes mark the work sites for nuclear reactors 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle in east Georgia. The project is currently $3.6 billion over budget and almost four years behind the original schedule. JOHNNY EDWARDS / JREDWARDS@AJC.COM, in Plant Vogtle: Georgia’s nuclear ‘renaissance’ now a financial quagmire by Russell Grantham and Johnny Edwards, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 19 May 2017.

Kemper “clean” Coal

Doyle LLP, PRNewswire, 8 August 2017, Whistleblower in Kemper Project Sues Southern Company and CEO: OSHA ruled former company engineer faced “continuing pattern of retaliatory treatment” Continue reading →

Georgia Power new acquisition AGL’s Pivotal LNG exporting through Jaxport

Back in May 2015, Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning and Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers both told me “If we can’t do coal, we have to do pipelines”. I-75 through Atlanta, Macon, Valdosta, I-10 through Lake City A year in the making, Southern Company bought pipeline company AGL Resources. Turns out AGL Resources is also an LNG export company, exporting through Jacksonville by LNG containers on trucks. And the plot thickens with the pending corporate takeover of CSX Railroad by the former CEO of Canadian Pacific, given that CSX depends a lot on carrying coal, which remember is what Southern Company is rapidly getting away from. Could CSX want to carry LNG? Meanwhile, LNG containers are already rolling down I-75 and I-10 to Jaxport, apparently through Atlanta, Macon, Valdosta, and Lake City.

Southern Company PR, 1 July 2016, Southern Company and AGL Resources complete merger, create a leading U.S. energy company, Continue reading →

America’s largest college mutual fund VA529 owns Spectra Energy, a stranded investment

Parents and grandparents buy 529 college savings plans as safe investments, so VA529 chose poorly in Spectra Energy, the very risky company behind the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline now plowing through the Floridan Aquifer drinking water of south Alabama, Georgia, and all of Florida and under the Withlacoochee and Suwannee Rivers against growing opposition. Maybe you’d like to mention that to Mary G. Morris, the Chief Executive Officer of Virginia529 College Savings Plan, the biggest mutual fund investor in both Spectra Energy and in Enbridge, which is buying Spectra. There’s a handy VA529 contact form or you can call or write:

1-804-371-0766
Toll-Free: 1-888-567-0540
9001 Arboretum Parkway
North Chesterfield, VA 23236

Spectra is so risky it just sold itself so Enbridge would take on about $22 billion of Spectra debt. Debt especially racked up since Continue reading →

Sabal Trail Alignment Maps from April 2016

Rivers, creeks, roads, and counties in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, labelled on small, big, huge, and PDF versions of each and every one of the 527 alignment maps Sabal Trail filed with FERC in April 2016 are on the LAKE website.

[STA. 0+00 TO STA. 53+00, PIPELINE BY STATION, PIPING PLOT PLAN ALEXANDER CITY COMPRESSOR STATION (CS-1), COMPRESSOR STATION WORKSPACE PLOT PLAN, 10+81 CL OAKTASASI ROAD, 4+70 CL STREAM (OAKTASASI CREEK), COMPRESSOR STATION, TALLAPOOSA COUNTY, ALABAMA]
STA. 0+00 TO STA. 53+00, PIPELINE BY STATION, PIPING PLOT PLAN ALEXANDER CITY COMPRESSOR STATION (CS-1), COMPRESSOR STATION WORKSPACE PLOT PLAN, 10+81 CL OAKTASASI ROAD, 4+70 CL STREAM (OAKTASASI CREEK), COMPRESSOR STATION, TALLAPOOSA COUNTY, ALABAMA
PDF

Follow the link for details of what, and how you can help.

Investigative reporting costs money, for open records requests, copying, web hosting, gasoline, and cameras, and with sufficient funds we can pay students to do further research. You can donate to LAKE today!

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Many same investors in Sabal Trail and Dakota Access Pipeline

DAPL and Sabal Trail are more intertwined than we thought. But first, who are the institutional investors in the three Sabal Trail partners? Three Banks NASDAQ makes this easy to discover, and the answer is in the first table below: among banks State Street and Bank of America stand out.

Let’s not forget Williams Company, of the Transco Hillabee Expansion Project from which Sabal Trail wants to get its fracked methane; see the second table, which State Street clearly wins, and there’s Goldman Sachs.

We learned this week that Enbridge of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota: that Enbridge is buying Spectra Energy of Sabal Trail.

But there’s more! Last year Williams was bought by Energy Transfer Equity, which is the main backer of DAPL.

Update 2016-09-26: Actually, Energy Transfer backed out of buying Williams Co..

See the third table, which shows banks bought into at least five of the partner entities: Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.

Opponents of Sabal Trail are not just fighting the same industry as DAPL: they’re fighting many of the same companies and the same investors.

Investors in Sabal Trail partners (Spectra Energy, NextEra Energy, Duke Energy)

Continue reading →

Alabama Power wants more renewable energy due to corporate customer demand

Southern Company’s subsidiaries are all turning to the sun! Even that titanic ship is affected by the tugboats of its corporate customers.

Ari Phillips, ClimateProgress, 16 July 2015, This Massive Utility Wants More Renewable Energy Because Corporations Are Demanding It,

In June, Alabama Power, one of the country’s largest electricity providers, filed a petition with the state’s Public Service Commission to add up to 500 megawatts of renewable energy over the next six years. The utility, which serves over 1.4 million customers in Alabama, cited customer demand as a primary reason for adding all this renewable energy — specifically corporate customers.

“This program was driven by conversations with customers looking to meet renewable mandates pushed down from their headquarters,” said Tony Smoke, Alabama Power vice president of marketing, in a statement announcing the request. “As a service provider, our focus is to make sure we are providing customers access to choices they want.”

It’s like Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning said in May Continue reading →

Opposes Sabal Trail pipeline in any portion of Lowndes County –Lowndes County Commission

Escalating from the Chairman’s letter of 11 April 2014, perhaps after listening to requests from citizens, the Lowndes County Commission passed a resolution wanting no part of Sabal Trail in the county or in the state of Georgia.

Update 2014-11-25: Well, according to Joe Adgie in the Valdosta Daily Times today, “Even though the missive has already been mailed [to FERC], the resolution will not be formally voted on until the county commission’s next meeting in December [9th].”

Filed with FERC in docket CP15-17 on 21 November 2014 as Accession Number: 20141121-5242, but that was a Friday and FERC doesn’t work on weekends, so it actually appeared Monday 24 November 2014.

300x52 Commissioners, in Lowndes County Commission Work Session, by John S. Quarterman, 10 November 2014 RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, Spectra Energy of Houston, Texas has proposed to build a $3.7 Billion, 460mile natural gas line known as Sabal Trail, and;

WHEREAS, The Lowndes County Board of Commissioners has concerns regarding personal property rights Continue reading →

Sabal Trail’s eminent domain argument applied to FPL headquarters

300x72 Between the Atlantic and the canal, in FPL Headquarters, by John S. Quarterman, 24 November 2014 The alleged “Project Need” in Sabal Trail’s Friday FERC docket CP15-17 permit application to get eminent domain for its 100-foot-wide gouge for a yard-wide hazardous fracked methane pipeline is: Sabal Trail claims it has contracts to sell the gas. Let’s apply that logic to Sabal Trail co-owner FPL’s headquarters.

This is FPL headquarters at 700 Universe Blvd., Juno Beach, Florida, in the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s map: Continue reading →