http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science_technology/Deepwater_oil_still_trapped_beneath_ocean_.html?cid=30713406

Tuesday 19.07.2011
Jul 18, 2011 – 21:36

Over 150 dolphins have washed up in the Gulf of Mexico since the start of the year (Keystone)

by Simon Bradley, swissinfo.ch

A “significant” share of the millions of gallons of oil that spewed from BP’s Deepwater Horizon well is still trapped beneath the ocean, says a Swiss-based expert.

Samuel Arey, an environmental chemist from Lausanne’s Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), has carried out research into the behaviour of the oil and gas released from the damaged well deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico.

Eleven rig workers were killed on April 20, 2010, and the US government estimates some 206 million gallons of oil were released from the Deepwater Horizon well 1,600 metres beneath the surface of ocean. The well was capped three months later but it resulted in the worst offshore oil spill in US history.

Arey, and researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, United States, used a remotely operated vehicle to gather samples in June 2010 from the base of the rig. As well as the surface spill, they analysed a separate large plume at 1,100 metres below the surface that was moving horizontally.

Their research has been published in the latest online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

swissinfo.ch: What are the main findings of your research?
Samuel Arey: As oil and gas ascend to the surface, some materials are retained by the deep ocean and stay there as they dissolve rapidly into the water.

This is different from a conventional oil spill, which usually happens at the sea surface. When that happens the light, volatile components, such as the gases methane, ethane and propane, but also the light hydrocarbons like benzene, toluene or xylene, typically escape rapidly into the atmosphere.

But in the case of a deepwater spill they don’t have this option. First they are exposed to the water column for many hours and this enables a significant quantity of compounds to be dissolved and retained in the deep ocean.

When we think about applying conventional wisdom about oil spills and ecological damage we need to recognise that there is a new impact that needs to be taken into account.

swissinfo.ch: There is still uncertainty over the fate of the oil. Some scientists say up to 50 per cent may still be floating around out there below the surface. What are your figures?
S.A.: I don’t know. A significant fraction of oil is trapped in the deep ocean but I’m not able to give a number. The study published now will provide an important basis to be able to then properly estimate what fraction was retained.

swissinfo.ch: Will the natural process of weathering, microbial activity and evaporation eventually break down any residual oil?
S.A.: Different components will last different amounts of time. Some components can be degraded by microbes within days, weeks or months, such as methane or ethane. Others may last for many years or even decades.

But because this spill was so deep I suspect in general it will not arrive at the atmosphere. The transport times for water at that depth to arrive at the surface is likely to be in the order of many years, so it’s not likely that evaporation will be a significant process.

If any oil lands on underwater sediments it may get trapped and stay indefinitely. You may argue that their environmental relevance is limited to organisms on the seafloor in the sediment, but we have experience of oil spills on the sea surface where once oil lands on a beach and then becomes buried in sediment, fifty years later the oil is still there and relatively fresh.

That kind of process can preserve oil for a long time and continues to have an ecological impact on organisms living in that part of the ecosystem.

swissinfo.ch: Some two million gallons of dispersants were used to break up the oil, including some below the surface. Could such products have caused lasting damage?
S.A.: I think the jury is still out on that one. I think it’s difficult to say whether dispersants overall decreased or increased the environmental impact. There are arguments on both sides and I haven’t been convinced either way.

swissinfo.ch: What are the main lessons learned from your research?
S.A.: I think the most important lesson is that the use of deep-sea oil extraction wells has important risks that are significantly beyond what the industry anticipated when wells were first drilled. This will continue to be an issue in the coming years as pressure increases to develop these kinds of drilling sites.

______________________________________________________

DEEPWATER HORIZON TIMELINE
April 20, 2010: an explosion on the drilling rig “Deepwater Horizon” starts a fire that causes the deaths of 11 workers.

April 22: the platform sinks. The safety valves on the oil well below the sea surface fail to function and crude oil begins to leak into the sea.

May 7: BP tries to seal the well with a cement and steel dome. The attempt failures. In the absence of a definitive solution, BP positions a funnel over the well to suck up parts of the crude oil. It also begins drilling two relief wells. The objective is to gain access to the main well and block it with cement.

July 15: BP announces it has stopped the oil leak.

August 3: BP starts an operation intended to seal the well permanently by injecting mud and cement into it through the nearby relief wells.

PENDING LAWSUITS
According to BP’s September 2010 report, the accident started with a “well integrity failure”. This was followed by a loss of control of the pressure of the fluid in the well. The “blowout preventer”, a device which should automatically seal the well in the event of such a loss of control, failed to engage. Hydrocarbons shot up the well at an uncontrollable rate and ignited, causing a series of explosions on the rig.

The US Justice Department is suing BP and the rig owner Transocean as being directly responsible for the spill.

Transocean, Halliburton and BP – which owns the actual well – continue to be locked in legal dispute over who is to blame.

Multiple lawsuits have also been filed against BP, Transocean and Halliburton by private citizens and businesses affected by the spill.

BUILDING SWITZERLAND
An insight into the country’s most spectacular architectural and engineering feats

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/oil-still-washing-ashore-one-year-after-bp-capped-the-gulf-spill.html/

By Emily Knapp
July 17 2011

It’s been a year since BP (NYSE:BP) stopped the flow of its damaged Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico and crude oil is still washing ashore. As of July 9, roughly 491 miles of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida coastline were contaminated by BP oil, slightly less than half of the total number of miles oiled since the the U.S.’s worst offshore spill began.

Estimates have 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon (NYSE:RIG) drilling rig exploded on April 20, 2010. It wasn’t until July 15, 2010 – a year ago today and almost three months after oil first began flowing freely into the ocean – that BP was able to cap the flow.

While Tim Zink, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration characterizes current oiling as having a light sheen with tar balls of all shapes and sizes, compared to heavy and moderate oiling experienced in the past, a recent Louisiana survey found that 5 miles of beaches and 8 miles of marsh were still heavily oiled.

BP has chosen today to announce that it has so improved Gulf drilling operating standards that they exceed U.S. regulatory requirements. “BP’s commitment in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon (NYSE:RIG) incident is not only to restore the economic and environmental conditions among the affected areas of the Gulf Coast, but also to apply what we have learned to improve the way we operate,” said Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley. The fact that BP shares remain about 30% below their pre-spill price might also have something to do with it.

Of course, nothing can reverse the effects of BP’s (NYSE:BP) negligence that led to last year’s disastrous oil spill. Eleven workers were killed and seventeen were injured when the $385 million rig exploded, with the spill shutting down thousands of square miles of fishing grounds for months and killing off scores of local wildlife. Seafood coming from the Gulf wasn’t officially declared safe by the government until March 4, 2011.

The U.S. government estimates that 4.9 million barrels worth of oil were poured into the ocean over the course of the 87-day spill. BP estimates that the spill was probably closer to 4 million barrels, of which only 850,000 were captured, burned, or skimmed off the water, according to a 2010 annual report. As of July 7, damage claims and cleanup cost BP $6.57 billion, $500 million of which will go to the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative over the next 10 years, which will take samples and analyze different aspects of the spill in order to aid clean-up efforts and act to prevent another such catastrophe in the future.
Meanwhile, the government has collected 44,800 samples as evidence in a damage assessment in order to determine BP’s fines. In April, BP agreed to give $1 billion to restoration projects.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/15/bloomberg1376-LOC9D21A1I4H01-4GLC6GRP0EJ62BVIL8U3C3SGV0.DTL

San Francisco Chronicle

BP Oil Still Washing Ashore One Year After End of Gulf Spill
Friday, July 15, 2011

July 15 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil continues to wash ashore along the Gulf of Mexico coast a year after BP Plc stopped the flow from its damaged Macondo well, which caused the worst U.S. offshore spill, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
On June 4, the last available tally from field inspections, 530 miles of coastline in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida remained contaminated by oil, said Tim Zink, a spokesman for the agency. That’s down from a high of 1,074 miles. The U.S. government estimates that 4.9 million barrels were spilled into the Gulf from Macondo before London-based BP succeeded in capping the flow a year ago today.

“I’d characterize it as a light sheen and tar balls of all shapes and sizes,” Zink said in an interview yesterday. “For roughly the first year, it was heavy, moderate to light oiling. This is light.”

The pollution of Gulf coast beaches is one of several headwinds BP faces as Europe’s second-largest oil company seeks to rebuild its business and reputation in the U.S. The U.K. oil producer’s share price remains about 30 percent below its pre- spill level and has gained 13 percent since the spill ended.

How long the oiling will persist, the extent of damage it has caused and how much it may yet inflict it still being studied. A November estimate by NOAA, disputed by BP, found about 1.1 million barrels of oil unaccounted for after adjusting for amounts that were recovered, dispersed into the sea, burned and evaporated into the air. NOAA is investigating a surge in deaths of baby dolphins along the Gulf coast during the spring calving season, Zink said.

Cleanup Workers

As of June 7, 1,162 people were still employed in spill clean-up, the U.S. Coast Guard reported. That’s down from a peak of 48,200 staff a year ago. William Benson, a Coast Guard spokesman in New Orleans, said officials weren’t available to discuss the details of the clean-up efforts.

Compounding the difficulty of calculating how much oil may remain to wash ashore or harm wildlife is a dispute between BP and NOAA over how much escaped from the well during the 87-day spill. The Macondo well began spilling into the Gulf April 20, 2010, after Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank 40 miles (62 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast. After stopping the leak on July 15, 2010, the well was plugged by cement and declared dead by the government Sept. 19.

The volume of oil spilled into the Gulf is key to determining the size of penalties that could be levied against the company for violations of U.S. environmental laws. The catastrophe killed 11 rig workers, injured 17, destroyed a $365 million drilling vessel and shut thousands of square miles of fishing grounds for months.

Spill Estimate Disputed

BP has said the U.S. government’s estimate of 4.9 million barrels overstated the spill. BP said in its 2010 annual report that the spill probably was closer to 4 million barrels, of which 850,000 barrels were captured, burned or skimmed off the water.

The 23 percent of the oil NOAA can’t account for may have settled to the bottom of the sea or remain suspended in the water as tar balls that currents may eventually wash ashore, the agency said. The estimate hasn’t been revised, agency spokesman John Ewald said.

“We really didn’t mount the comprehensive kinds of sampling studies or mappings required to better assess where the oil was distributed initially and where it eventually ended up,” Robert Weisberg, a professor of Physical Oceanography at the University of South Florida, said yesterday in an interview.

Mounting Bills

BP spokesman Tom Mueller didn’t respond to questions about the company’s estimate of spillage or damage. Payments for damage claims and cleanup costs reached $6.57 billion as of July 7, according to a BP website.

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, funded with $500 million from BP in payments spread over 10 years, announced $1.5 million of “stop-gap” grants for oil sampling June 30. The Initiative is reviewing another round of proposals for work to be done beginning in September, according to its website.

“There will be additional work done,” Weisberg said. “These monies will do more to prepare us for some subsequent environmental assault than shed much light on the Deepwater Horizon event. It’s a little too late.”

NOAA has collected 44,800 samples as evidence for a National Resource Damage Assessment, Zink said. The NRDA is an official determination of the damage BP caused, which will be the basis for fines to be levied. The samples include 17,365 from sediment and 12,647 from water, he said. About half have been validated by third parties, he said.

‘Get a Picture’

“We’re starting to get a picture of the damage that was done,” Zink said. “At the end of the day, it’s a legal case.”

BP in April agreed to fund $1 billion of restoration projects, and an initial restoration plan may be released this year after consultation with the trustee council for the oil spill, comprised of two federal agencies and representatives of the affected states, Zink said.
Seafood harvested in the Gulf of Mexico is safe, NOAA declared in a March 4 statement. A third of the Gulf was closed to fishing at the height of the spill.

–With assistance from Brian Swint in London. Editors: Susan Warren, Will Kennedy.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/15/bloomberg1376-LOC9D21A1I4H01-4GLC6GRP0EJ62BVIL8U3C3SGV0.DTL#ixzz1SQ5u5qi

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Date: Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 5:09 AM

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
GULF SHORES, Ala. – It seems like old times here on the Gulf Coast. The Flora-Bama Lounge is hopping, there’s a two-hour wait for a table at the Original Oyster House, and the first complaints you hear among the charter boat operators are about the latest fishing limits – not oil slicks. The numbers tell a similar story, with many tourism-related businesses having their best summer in years. BP felt obliged to note this officially. Last week, in a court filing that included a detailed list of indicators of “the strength of the gulf economy,” BP argued that “there is no basis to assume that claimants, with very limited exceptions, will incur a future loss related to the spill.”

The response here: Hold on, it’s not that good.

Since the spill last year, messages from the coast have been somewhat mixed, with some businesses arguing that it is continuing to hurt the coast and that more assistance is needed, and others, often led by tourism officials, emphasizing the positive to entice visitors and consumers.

This is not necessarily contradictory, as the effects of the spill were infuriatingly uneven, and a business does not have to be empty to be hurting. But the summer of 2011, a strong one by a variety of measures, has made this balance harder to strike.
BP has long taken issue with the formula created by Kenneth R. Feinberg, who oversees the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which is dispensing BP’s $20 billion compensation fund. Under the formula, settlements would generally be double the demonstrable losses from 2010, with money previously paid by the fund subtracted. BP has been arguing that this “future factor” is too generous. That argument is revisited in its 29-page filing, pointing out the strong revenue figures for lodging in coastal tourism areas in the fall and spring, most surpassing figures from comparable times in 2009 and early 2010.

BP makes the same argument in regard to the strong performance of much of the seafood industry, though the filing devotes less attention to it – possibly because unresolved questions about the long-term ecological effects of the spill, as well as a lingering nationwide skepticism about gulf seafood, have made its recovery more debatable.
Tourism, on the other hand, seems rather straightforward.

Taxable lodging revenues from rentals in Gulf Shores and its neighboring resort town, Orange Beach, fell by more than half last summer. After months of aggressive marketing, largely paid for with the tens of millions of dollars that BP sent to states for that very purpose, tourism officials are now boasting of record, or near-record, numbers: going in to the Fourth of July weekend, tourism officials here reported vacation rental occupancy rates that hovered near 100 percent, all above – and some far above – rates at comparable times in 2009.

These figures would seem to bear out BP’s assertion that the recovery has firmly set in, to the chagrin of some coastal residents.
“Our state and local leaders have been so quick to declare that the beaches, seafood and Gulf Coast are doing fine that we may have screwed up the chances of the remaining outstanding BP oil spill claims to be paid,” Rick Outzen, publisher of the Independent News, an alternative weekly in Pensacola, Fla., wrote on his blog. Business owners here acknowledge that it has been for the most part a good summer. But they are quick to add that the effects of the spill are more complicated than they may appear.

The tourism business is a lot like farming; it is seasonal and involves managing a financial cycle between fat and lean seasons.
Up to 90 percent of the income for many Gulf Shores businesses is made during June, July and August; by winter that money is largely gone and businesses usually take out lines of credit to prepare for summer. This was the case going into the summer of 2010, which was itself projected to be something of a recovery year after 2009, a down season of recession and high gas prices.

But in 2010, there was no summer. Hotels sat empty or filled rooms only by offering steep discounts. Smaller businesses like beach chair rentals went under; charter boat operators barely hung on. The whole spend-save-borrow cycle was thrown off.
“What happened last winter was a lot of lenders stopped the line of credit because they didn’t know the impact of what the spill was going to be,” said Sheila Hodges, owner of a real estate firm in Gulf Shores. “We barely survived the winter. Some didn’t survive the winter.”

While initial BP payments and a strong fall and winter helped, some business owners are still carrying around bad credit ratings from those lean days, or paying off loans, or working under franchise agreements that were renegotiated to their disadvantage.
Pedro Mandoki, the owner of Mandoki Hospitality, a management and development consulting firm, made another commonly heard argument: the effects of the recession, which made for a disappointing 2009, look to be fading. While the coast has returned to an upward trajectory, it is still further down than it would have been had this been the second good summer in a row.
The success of these arguments in negotiating settlements has been mixed at best, business owners and lawyers say.
But one concern about the future is raised more than any other.

It was the topic of another document sent out last week, this one to state and local officials from the command center of the spill cleanup operation in New Orleans. It is a draft version of a “decision matrix,” a list of several factors to consider in deciding when and when not to remove submerged mats of oil that are still being found, some even in recent days, sitting just offshore.

The prospect of not removing a mat for just about any reason is unacceptable to Taylor Kirschenfeld, an environmental officer for Escambia County, Fla. If a tropical storm or hurricane comes through and whips up those mats, sending tar patties onto the beach, “it could be the whole thing all over again.”

Thus the gamble that really keeps business owners here on edge: if this happened, it could be devastating, and a business’s final settlement with BP might fall far short. Then again, if it did not happen, then that same settlement – including a payment for future losses that never occurred – would turn out to have been a pretty good deal.Ms. Hodges, the real estate broker here, is mulling that same calculus right now. Her summer is good and business is strong, and she is tired of negotiating. Still, she is reluctant to agree to a final settlement. It could be a while, she says, before it is known what the summer of 2010 really means.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9OBFR8O0.htm

This is good news and the results will be important for the communities within the oil spill zones. There have been far too many reports gone unnoticed by officials citing dangerous after-effects from the BP blowout, especially workers in contact with dispersants. DeeVon

The Associated Press July 8, 2011, 8:52AM ET

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
NEW ORLEANS

Studies at four Gulf Coast universities will focus on continuing fears that last year’s oil spill is making people sick, especially if they eat lots of fish. Two of the studies based in Louisiana will look at women, while one of them also will study children.

All of the $25 million set of studies funded by the National Institutes of Health will look at people’s mental or physical health over the next five years. Three will also look for oil- and dispersant-related chemicals in fish landed by people whose catch makes up a big part of their own food.

During and after the BP PLC oil spill, federal and state authorities stressed that no unsafe seafood was sold and that the entire Gulf is now safe for fishing. But many people who live in fishing communities just don’t believe that, Dr. J. Glenn Morris, lead researcher at the University of Florida, said Thursday.

“When you get back into these areas along the coast, what you get repeatedly is, `We really don’t trust BP and we don’t really trust the government, either,'” he said.

His studies include buying seafood from subsistence and sport fishermen in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and testing it for contamination, including patterns of heavy metals associated with oil. He also plans to use GPS mapping data to see whether the fish or shellfish were taken from areas with natural oil seeps or other sources of oil.

BP’s Macondo well spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil over five months after the April 20, 2010, explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig. The company provided about $3 million of the money being used to look for lingering physical and mental health effects, but is not involved in the program or any of the research, NIH and its National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said.

Most of the physical illnesses reported during the spill were among cleanup workers and apparently the result of fumes. In June, the attorney overseeing the payments from a $20 billion compensation fund told a Louisiana legislative committee that he had not seen any claims for medical costs or scientific evidence linking cleanup measures such as chemical dispersants to health problems. Kenneth Feinberg also said that if such claims can be scientifically proven, they might not show up for years.

Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine is getting $6.5 million for its work; the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Public Health $3.5 million, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston $7.8 million and the University of Florida at Gainesville about $7 million.

Most are doing multiple studies. All four consortiums will also work together and with community organizations — 20 just in Florida.

Those community groups helped decide what to investigate. They also will explain the results to the groups they represent, so people will understand — and, officials hope, accept and support — the findings, said Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, lead investigator of Tulane’s study of nearly 2,000 women who are pregnant or could become pregnant.

This round of research is looking at the general public. Cleanup workers and volunteers are the subjects of a separate, 10-year study planned to involve 55,000 people.

One of three studies at Tulane will check blood from 1,800 women for possible oil spill chemicals, levels of stress hormones and — if the budget allows — mercury, lead and cadmium. It will also see if those affect pregnancies and decisions about family planning, as well as anxiety and depression.

Researchers also will go out with Vietnamese fishermen, keep part of the catch to analyze, and check people in about 100 households for whatever contaminants are found in the fish.

Researchers in all three states will also be looking at just how much fish people eat in fishing communities, and whether they eat so much fish that contamination levels set for the average U.S. resident might leave them in danger.

LSU hopes to get 6,000 women and 2,000 children to agree to give two blood and urine samples as well as two phone interviews for psychological surveys. About two-thirds of the women would simply live in one of the seven parishes most affected by the spill, and 2,000 would be wives of men who worked to clean it up, lead researcher Edward Trapido said.

The Texas fish study will look at oysters, blue crabs, shrimp and speckled trout taken by members of the United Houma Nation in Terrebonne Parish, La., and by two different fishing communities in Biloxi, Miss.: Vietnamese Americans and African Americans.

If oil- or dispersant-related chemicals are found, the lab will look for chemical “fingerprints” of the Macondo well, lead researcher Cornelis “Case” Elferink said.

Special thanks to Gulf Restoration Network.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/study-repealing-tax-deductions-on-us-energy-companies-exacerbates-federal-deficit-increases-us-debt-125407898.html

This is an example of a bioprostitute; someone who uses his degree to support industry, despite evidence to the contrary. It is ridiculous to say that if Big Oil doesn’t get special tax treatment, jobs will be cut and oil will stop pumping. This is the most lucrative business in the history of the world. This one untested presumption makes Dr. Mason’s findings flawed and his report invalid. If these tax breaks were extended to renewable energy, we wouldn’t still be using fossil fuels. DeeVon

STUDY: Repealing Tax Deductions on U.S. Energy Companies Exacerbates Federal Deficit, Increases U.S. Debt

LSU Economist Finds Administration’s Dual Capacity and Section 199 Proposals Would Reduce Federal Tax Revenue by More Than $53 Billion

WASHINGTON, July 12, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Louisiana State University Endowed Chair of Banking and nationally-renowned economist Dr. Joseph R. Mason today released a just-completed study that finds the Administration’s proposal to carve out U.S. energy firms from receiving certain tax deductions would have a net negative impact on federal revenues. In his study, “Budget Impasse Hinges on Confusion among Deficit Reduction, Tax Increase and Tax Reform: An Economic Analysis of Dual Capacity and Section 199 Proposals for the U.S. Oil and Gas Industry,” Dr. Mason finds repealing tax deductions for American energy manufacturers would result in:

$30 billion in Federal tax revenue at the expense of some $341 billion in economic output;
Over 155,000 lost jobs, $68 billion in lost wages, and $83.5 billion in reduced tax revenues; and,
A net fiscal loss of $53.5 billion in tax revenues.

“The administration’s proposal to eliminate tax deductions on U.S. oil and gas companies is grossly counterproductive toward the goal of increasing federal revenues,” Dr. Mason said. “Such a move would have a net negative impact on revenue, thereby increasing federal deficits.

“If the goal is deficit reduction, a far more meaningful approach would be reforming federal tax and business policies that encourage economic growth. Expansion of oil and gas exploration and production on the Outer Continental Shelf, for example, would generate an estimated $11 billion annually in Federal tax revenue in the short run, and $55 billion annually in Federal tax revenue in the long run.

“Reform supports business development in both developing and developed countries, alike. The best reformers have several things in common. First, their reforms are part of a broad agenda of boosting global competitiveness and, second, they never stop. Even developing countries previously stung by fiscal imbalances and committed to business reform rarely retreat to increased taxes as a way to raise revenues. The U.S. should also step up to the challenge of reform.”

Dr. Mason’s conservative economic analysis employs the same government modeling – the U.S. Commerce Department’s RIMS II system.

Dr. Mason’s report was sponsored by the American Energy Alliance (“AEA”). To learn more and get exclusive information on upcoming projects, sign up for AEA’s In The Pipeline.

Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, issued the following statement in response to the study’s findings:
“This study confirms that President Obama’s insistence on imposing discriminatory tax changes on American oil and gas companies has nothing to do with deficit reduction – it has everything to do with satisfying his anti-energy agenda. The president’s insistence on these senseless tax hikes is further proof of his outright hostility to the oil and gas industry – an industry that provides over 9 million jobs and billions in revenue to the federal government.”

Founded in May, 2008, The American Energy Alliance (“AEA”) is a not-for-profit organization that engages in grassroots public policy advocacy and debate concerning energy and environmental policies. AEA is the advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a not-for-profit organization – founded in 1989 – that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets.
SOURCE American Energy Alliance

Special thanks to Richard Charter