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"Citibank is the bank that's been running the books on the project, and that's the bank that beat the bushes and got other banks to join in. So, we have Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Mizuho Bank, TD Securities, ABN AMRO Capital, DNB First Bank--and that's actually a bank based in Philly; it's not the DNB Bank based in Norway, which is actually provided several hundred million to the Energy Transfer family separately -- and ICBC London, SMBC Nikko Securities and Socie'te' Ge'ne'rale."
All of these names are candidates for the Obama legacy fund donor list, donors to the fund from which the Obama library and Obama foundation will spring. There has emerged some reasonably good (and headline-grabbing) news from the administration lately, but many are calling this news just posturing.
How will you know whether the administration is serious or not about standing with native Americans, and all Americans, in ending this project? When it ends the project using the authority it has without mass civil disobedience forcing them to do it. Or when the money a completed pipeline generates flows to its financiers -- Citibank, Wells Fargo, et al. Keep watching.
Despite His Words, Obama Won't End Extraction on Federal Lands
Which brings us to the end of Farron Cousin's piece. He rightly takes the president to task for saying good words and doing the worst of bad deeds when it comes to fossil fuel extraction on federal lands. Obama not only enables the carbon industry, he acts as one of their primary suppliers:
"President Obama's shortcomings on climate change action could be forgiven or even dismissed, if it weren't for his administration's willingness to open up federal lands and waters to fossil fuel industry exploitation. ...
"Looking at some of the numbers on this issue reveals a pro-industry approach toward energy production. When President Obama took office in 2009, domestic oil production was at about 5.1 million barrels a day. By April of 2016, that number had climbed to 8.9 million barrels a day, which CNN notes is a 74 percent increase in just seven years.
"Under President Obama's watch, the United States has become the largest fossil fuel producer on the planet when accounting for both oil and liquefied natural gas production. In terms of just crude oil production, the U.S. falls to third place, behind Russia and Saudi Arabia.
"Oil and gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing ('fracking') now accounts for 50% of U.S. oil production, and, thanks to the Republican-controlled [but Democratic-enabled] Congress, the 40-year-long ban on crude oil exports was lifted.
"Meanwhile, the government is still auctioning offshore oil and gas leases, even after President Obama presided over the largest ever oil spill in U.S. waters. Fracking continues its incredible boom, despite reports showing a rise in human-caused earthquakes related to fracking wastewater injections."
Yet fossil fuel extraction from federal land and water, overseen by the Department of the Interior, accounts for more than 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. From a study (pdf) commissioned by the Center for American Progress and The Wilderness Society:
"Today, taxpayer-owned gas, oil, and coal extracted from federal lands and waters by private companies are one of the nation's most significant sources of GHG emissions, accounting for more than one-fifth of all U.S. GHG emissions.[2] The U.S. Department of the Interior, or DOI, which has jurisdiction over the nation's public lands, has no comprehensive plan to measure, monitor, and reduce the total volume of GHG emissions that result from the leasing and development of federal energy resources."
The study also notes:
"...Federal lands and waters could have accounted for 24 percent of all energy-related GHG emissions in the United States in 2012.
"...Combustion of coal from federal lands accounts for more than 57 percent of all emissions from fossil-fuel production on federal lands.
"...Methane pollution from venting and flaring from onshore federal leases rose more than 51 percent between 2008 and 2013, according to government data."
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