[AGL] Houston Retort

Tue May 9 16:47:58 EDT 2006

Connie/et al.

BP stands for British Petroleum.  It was BP plus Standard Oil (Ohio? NJ?) which started the whole oil rush in Saudi Arabia as I recall.  This was directly aided and abetted by the Sykes-Picot Treaty and Winston Churchill at the end of WW1.  This re-drew the borders/boundaries of the former Ottoman Empire, created Iraq/Iran/Syria/Palestine/etc   and, of course, Kuwait.   BP was thick with the sheiks before the ink was dry.  Pox on 'em, says I.

wgJ
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Connie Clark 
  To: Remembrances of Austin Ghetto ; Ghetto List 
  Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2006 10:48 AM
  Subject: [AGL] Houston Retort

  Bill and Frances,

  Actually, Houston is a lovely place.  A well kept secret, and a place that Austinites in particular love to hate. Too bad.

  There is a section of the Houston area that is loaded with refineries.  It is not the town that is to blame, but the fact that every American wants to drive their car everywhere they go.  Formaldahyde and ammonia are by-products of the refining process.  Refined gasoline is what you and everybody else on this list buy in significant quantities day in and day out.  We do have a lot of blue-collar workers down here who make a living in the petroleum/chemical industry because 1) they can; 2) they always have, but not for greed.

  I posted the news about BP because the list members might want to know that they may perhaps question this company's claims for being environmentally sensitive.  BP is btw, a British company with a refinery located here, not a Houston company.  The interesting point about the news is that BP changed the method in which they report toxic releases, such that more was reported than in previous years by virtue of their calculations.  Maybe we shouldn't judge yet.  It might be that the local BP refinery will lead the way to better reporting, and consequently stiffer penalties and better pollution control.  The TCEQ is the state regulatory agency that should be doing a better job of identifying the pollutants, but have left it to the polluters to come up with the figures for how much toxins they put into the air. Baldauf can relate to you the struggles that have been made by very good folks down here, to compel better agency effect on cleaner air for us.

  As to the toll road story.  That also is not solely a Houston problem, but very much a national and Texas problem.  One could predict from this latest revelation of the progress of the public/private negotiations, that private toll roads could one day be a monopoly like the phone company once was - and we'll pay whatever the owners (Spanish perhaps) will tell us to pay to drive their roads.  And, it might be someone you know who is eminent domained out of their homes or land for the Trans Texas Corridor.

  For all of the above, there are the Ken Lays and Jeff Skillings of the world.  If our prosecutors and local jury manage to send Enron executives to jail for being extraordinarily greedy, then we are making some progress, not just for Houston, but for you too.

  Connie

  Bill Irwin <billi at ALOHA.NET> wrote:
    Wow!! That Houston sounds like a lovely place.  Does anybody have any common sense or is it all greed all the time?  Formaldehyde is a carcinogen and ammonia is just an irritant but poison in larger doses.  

    Houston, the fat capital of America, Houston the polluted city, and don't you also have a high murder rate?  So just what is the attraction of living in Houston?  Watching fat people die of cancer is entertaining or what?

    Running out of hydrocarbons is the best thing that could happen for Houston and the whole world.
    Ewie
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Jim Baldauf 
      To: GHETTO2 at LISTS.WHATHELPS.COM 
      Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 3:53 AM
      Subject: Re: Enron, BP and Toll Roads

      I love the headline, 

      "BP investigating accuracy of pollution figures"

      I'm sure they would prefer to investigate the figuring rather than the polluting.

      Here's a post I received yesterday from another list:

      ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      "Having lived and worked in and around Houston for 25 years, I made a research effort at why my eyes were burning all the time.  Ozone is the reason.  It is blamed on auto exhaust.

        I found an EPA ozone measuring site on the web which produced time-series maps of ozone pollution over Houston.  The funny thing was that the collection times started at noon and ended at 7pm.  (Real funny.)  Auto gridlock is 6am to 9am and 4pm to 7pm.  There was usually no ozone problem in downtown Houston at those times.  The major ozone problems, according to the maps, were always northwest of the city in residential areas where cancer rates are also abnormally high.

        Houston is a circular radiating city.  Traffic comes and goes in all directions, pretty much equally.  Concentration of ozone should be at the center.

        So, I began watching the weather as well as the ozone maps.  Whenever temperature inversions happened (cold on the ground in Houston, but warm above from Gulf winds), I would invariably see severe ozone pollution at noon in downtown Houston.  One winter, it rolled in like a brown fog bank from the southeast.

        As the downtown asphault and concrete heated up, the ozone elevated above the sensors and was blown to the northwest suburbs where it fell to earth again.

        Downtown Houston creates a heat island effect where winds are lifted thousands of feet higher than surrounding areas, many times creating thundershowers and other weather disturbances.

        Drawing a line from the northwest suburbs (Spring, Conroe, TX) through downtown Houston and extrapolating leads one across Baytown, Pasadena, Houston Ship Channel, and Texas City (the largest petroleum refining installations in the world).

        I suspect the same thing is happening in Los Angeles from Bakersfield.  Ozone blows down the San Fernando valley and piles up in the LA basin.

      Accuracy IT <accuracy_consultant at yahoo.com> wrote:
          With the EPA intentionally weaked by Gail Norton and the bush crime family it's hard to image how bad it must be when EPA levies a record $21.3 million fine. You put that scumbag bush into office and he allows his corporate polluting oil sucking pigs at the trough buddies to pollute the hell out of our environment.

        http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060507/ap_on_re_us/bp_plant_pollutionhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060507/ap_on_re_us/bp_plant_pollution

            BP Refinery in Texas Called Biggest Polluter    
        The nation's worst polluting plant is the BP PLC oil refinery where 15 workers died in an explosion last year, raising questions about whether the company has been underreporting toxic emissions.
            BP's Texas City refinery released three times as much pollution in 2004 as it did in 2003, according to the most recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency.

        The increase at BP was so large that it accounted for the bulk of a 15 percent increase in refinery emissions nationwide in 2004, the highest level since 2000.

        The company is investigating whether it has been accurately documenting pollution, the Houston Chronicle reported on Sunday. There could be more federal fines levied against the energy giant if mistakes are found.

        BP already faces a record $21.3 million fine from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration for 300 safety and health violations found at the Texas City refinery after the deadly explosion in March 2005 that also injured 170 workers.

        The company reported that it released 10.25 million pounds of pollution in 2004, up from 3.3 million pounds the year before, according to EPA's Toxics Release Inventory, which tracks nearly 650 toxic chemicals released into the air, water and land.

        BP cautioned that its latest pollution estimates might not be correct because of a recent change in how the plant calculates emissions.

        "These were on-paper calculations - not based on real measurements through valves or stacks," spokesman Neil Geary told the newspaper.

        According to the EPA, the Texas City plant had more than three times the toxic pollutants as the nation's second most-polluted plant, an Exxon Mobil Corp. refinery in Baton Rouge, La.

        The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said it was too early to speculate about the accuracy of BP's reported figures. A spokesman said the difference might have been in reported emissions, not actual emissions.
        But the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington-D.C. based advocacy group, said the increase shouldn't be dismissed as merely an increase on paper.

        "It's real; it just never got reported before," said Eric Shaeffer, a former EPA staffer and the organization's founder. "You can argue that it's not an increase, but the next sentence has to be, 'We've always been bad.'"
        Most of the increase in pollution was from formaldehyde and ammonia, which can form smog and soot and irritate the eyes, nose and throat.

        BP says that when all pollution is taken into account, emissions from its Texas City plant have dropped 40 percent since 2000.

        Before last year's explosion, the refinery processed up to 460,000 barrels of crude oil a day and 3 percent of the nation's gasoline.

        BP still faces criticism for management lapses that may have contributed to last year's explosion. The company faces a possible Justice Department investigation and is dealing with victims' lawsuits.

        Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

       "You tell people what you want them to think, tell them often, keep government on message, and loyal citizens will believe.  It's called PROPAGANDA."     Accuracy 02/24/2006
      ----------------------------------------------------------------- 

           ----- Original Message ----- 
        From: Connie Clark 
        To: GHETTO2 at LISTS.WHATHELPS.COM 
        Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 7:32 AM
        Subject: Enron, BP and Toll Roads

        Interesting developments:

        It was revealed in yesterdays Houston Chron that BP will be getting a very stiff fine for heaving polluting - they reported excesive releases of amonia and formaldahyde (a precursor to ground level ozone) in 2004.  They are the No. 1 toxic polluter down here.  But then, they are not sure if it was new way of calculating.  Nevertheless, these new figures will change all of the areas calculations for the Clean Air Act.  It's back to the drawing board for meeting the ozone levels for 2010.  Anyway, I wouldn't believe their 'green' ads.
        http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3845870.html

        The Harris County Toll Road Authority was shocked to learn that TxDOT wants them to pay $1 billion for the privilage of building roads on 3 corridors (about 80 miles) that TxDOT had acquired ROW and planned.    Plus they want 50 percent of the toll revenue.  It turns out that TxDOT's negotiations with Cintra-Zachry to build the I-35 Trans-Texas Corridor 35 has given them some extra bargaining power.  Cintray-Zachry is offering $6 for the Central Texas project.  The Harris County Commissioners are incensed at the proposed price - now realize they must compete with private industry.  This may prompt them to sell the whole thing to a private consortium - duck and run, a typical Republican strategy when govt/tax money machines dry up.

        Enron trial is winding down.  Prosecutors are feeling good about the case - think they may be putting both Skilling and Lay away.

        -30-
        Connie

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