The scam is to privatize the ”profits” made by socializing the inherent losses. Losses in cash paid by the people, losses in health and suffering by toxic work and pollution. Losses of the ruined environment and massacred animal life, and above all pending mega losses in spiraling Climate chaos. (see also Cancer Alley As virus ravages Louisiana, ‘Cancer Alley’ residents Fight Back

$117 BILLION to pay, and that’s just Texas.

”But what about the Magnificent new horizon of the Permian West Texas and New Mexico fields. The Investment of a Lifetime in the pipelines and the Golden Opportunity of cornering the World LPG supply to make Texas the triumphant Plastics Capital of the dying planet”. (note. LPG is the semi liquid pumpable part of gas production used to make plastics etc, its not LNG)

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Image projected onto Houston petrochemical plant during the Houston Toxic Tour, 2017. Credit: Backbone Campaign, CC BY 2.0

This is the Shale Revolution that Made America Great Again. A State of predator capitalists who believe it’s their God given right to promote little gangster businessmen and trash the planet.. So they are lauded and rewarded and given nearly free interest money and a blind eye to toxic aquifers, tailings lakes and massive methane leaks. Just for a few months often, till the wells become ”unprofitable”…

But another and another is already being drilled, till there are millions of them, more than half of them abandoned.(See also Fracking Gas and Oil to Supply Giant US Chemical Belt and Lock-in cheap Plastics Monopoly)

Then there is too much oil and gas, till it’s ”unprofitable” even avoiding most of the real costs. So bankruptcy is declared, after pocketing the assets. Ruining the small suppliers and abandoning thousands of toxic leaking wells and ponds. So the company is swallowed by Exxon or another Corporation and our heroic entrepreneur still has capital to retire on his Texas ranch or DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.

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Fracking for Plastics, a DeSmog investigation into the proposed petrochemical build-out in the Rust Belt. Over 12.6 million people in the United States live within half a mile of an oil and gas facility.

So who will pay the $117,000,000,000 dollars, in the middle of a pandemic and economic crash? The poor and immigrants of Texas will no doubt be further squeezed, all social programs cut or abolished. Health care will disappear, schools will fester, homes will be repossessed.. But even so this could never never be able to pay off 117 Billion.

Only and uniquely in The USA, because the dollar has been forced on us as world reserve currency, the State can borrow TRILLIONS and sell off the debt to investors to stash in their fiscal paradises. So the toxic ecocidal bubble can seemingly grow indefinitely. Until suddenly one day people are forced to stop ‘make-believing’ in it.

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This is voodoo Trump style economics, based on Endless growth on a finite and fragile planet. But if predictions are accurate its days are numbered, and , though the 1% of big capitalists and warmongers may suffer, social and environmental justice movements, now organizing, may yet triumph in the USA.

4 october 2020 by EN-AB

texas-taxpayers-face-$117-billion-bill-for-orphaned-oil-wells

Texas Taxpayers Face $117,000,000,000 Bill For Orphaned Oil Wells

04-10-20 11:13:00, Authored by Josh Owens via OilPrice.com.

The state of Texas and its taxpayers could be on the hook for paying up to US$117 billion for the cleaning-up of abandoned wells as a growing number of U.S. oil companies go bust, and the guarantees for paying for the cleanup cover only 1 percent of estimated costs, a report by climate finance think-tank Carbon Tracker showed on Thursday.

U.S. oil and gas producing states and taxpayers may have to pay in total as much as US$280 billion in cleanup costs, with Texas leading with US$117 billion, followed by Oklahoma with US$31 billion and Pennsylvania with US$15 billion, Carbon Tracker’s report says.

The US$280-billion estimate is for 2.6 million unplugged onshore oil and gas wells in the United States, while there may be another estimated 1.2 million undocumented onshore wells, Carbon Tracker said.

While operators are obliged to pay for the cleanup of oil and gas wells, the so-called surety bonds – the guarantee that the operator will indeed pay those costs – currently cover around 1 percent of the closure costs for plugging and cleanup of the wells, the think-tank said.

Scientific study and optical gas imaging videos demonstrate that the worst recorded oil and gas methane pollution is in the Permian Basin of Texas & New Mexico.

The growing number of defaults in the U.S. shale patch may put taxpayers “at risk of picking up costs in excess of available bonds,” Carbon Tracker said.

The lower-for-longer oil prices and the high debt levels of many U.S. oil companies resulted in as many as 16 filings for bankruptcy protection in the shale patch in July alone, bringing the total since the price crash to 50, the latest bankruptcy monitoring data from law firm Haynes and Boone showed at the end of August.

stock-oil-refinery-night-uk-scotland-1550x764

According to Carbon Tracker, “States can lower their orphan well liability risk and protect taxpayers by demanding higher bond rates and forcing companies to plug long-inactive ‘zombie’ wells. These actions will shift responsibility for oilfield cleanup costs to industry and also position states to qualify for U.S. federal aid.”

Fracking Gas and Oil to Supply Giant US Chemical Belt and Lock-in cheap Plastics Monopoly

Ecocidal US Frackers, to get a Bailout: Nationalism, Oil and Climate Crime in Texas

Climate fueled Hurricanes suspend Frack Gas exports of US Climate Criminals, cause toxic chemical fire

Cancer Alley Communities battle Exxon in Louisiana

More proof Methane spike due to US ecocidal Frackers.. Stopping it could delay Climate Catastrophe

The Fight for Life in Death Alley: Testimony from Sharon ...

As virus ravages Louisiana, ‘Cancer Alley’ residents Fight Back/

photo shared with thanks from The Times exposé https://www.nytimes.com —“I travel the Permian Basin with an optical gas imaging camera that makes visible the normally invisible methane pollution the oil & gas industry often claims doesn’t exist”.-

Big Oil’s Climate Plans Fail at Every Metric

Dharna Noor 9/23/20 12:15PM• Filed to:Fuck Fossil Fuels 2

Oil companies’ flashy climate plans don’t live up to the hype.

Fossil fuel companies are talking a big game about climate policy. This year, BP pledged to cut its fossil fuel investments by 40%, Shell pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and other oil giants have made similar promises, too. Right now, executives from these firms are bragging about their plans for carbon neutrality to policymakers and other powerful people at New York’s annual Climate Week.

But—surprise!—new research shows that not a single one of these major oil company’s pledges comes close to aligning with leading climate scientists’ recommendations. Who’da thunk?

The analysis, released on Wednesday by Oil Change International with endorsements from 30 climate justice groups, examined eight oil majors’ climate plans. To see if the plans jived with the limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels—a threshold which leading climatologists say would be catastrophic to cross—the authors graded each one based on 10 criteria, ranking the plans on the spectrum from “fully aligned” to “grossly insufficient.”Facebook Follows Up Vow to Fight Climate Change With. ‘Mass Censorship’ of Climate Activists ………….. .

continue reading HERE…

Author: thefreeonline

The Free is a book and a blog. Download free E/book ...”the most detailed fictional treatment of the movement from a world recognizably like our own to an anarchist society that I have read... View all posts by thefreeonline

3 thoughts on “Texas Taxpayers must Pay $117,000,000,000 Bill For toxic abandoned Capitalist Oil and Gas Wells”

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Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
The state of Texas and its taxpayers could be on the hook for paying up to US$117 billion for the cleaning-up of abandoned wells as a growing number of U.S. oil companies go bust, and the guarantees for paying for the cleanup cover only 1 percent of estimated costs, a report by climate finance think-tank Carbon Tracker showed on Thursday.

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