Here are some selected news articles from the week ended 06 March 2021. Part 2 is available here.
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Global Economic Intersection every Monday evening or Tuesday morning.
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Fuel supplies drop most on record as US oil refining collapses, leading to largest ever jump in oil supplies
Refinery utilization at an all time low, 10% lower than it s ever been; oil refined is least on record; record jump in oil inventories, record drop in gasoline inventories; distillates production at a 26 year low, distillates inventories drop most in 18 years; largest jump in oil imports in 39 weeks.
Blackjewel’s Bankruptcy Filing Is a Harbinger of Trouble Ahead for the Plummeting Coal Industry
The company wants to walk away from almost 200 mining permits in four states, potentially leaving thousands of acres of environmentally damaged land.
March 3, 2021
Unemployed Blackjewel coal miner David Pratt holds his daughter Willow as he walks across railroad tracks that lead to one of the company s mines near Cumberland, Kentucky in 2019. Blackjewel miners found themselves unemployed when the company declared bankruptcy and the workers final paychecks bounced, leading them to blockade the tracks to prevent the train carrying the mine s final shipment of coal from leaving until they were paid their wages. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images
NASA Faces $1.9 Billion Bill to Clean up Contaminated Sites Across the U.S.
On 1/21/21 at 10:50 AM EST
NASA faces a bill of about $1.9 billion to clean up its sites across the U.S, a report by government auditors has found.
The space agency faces soaring costs for the restoration of former sites, with the potential costs having increased by 45 percent since 2014, according to the Government Accountability Office report published last Friday.
Environmental cleanups could cost $1.9 billion as of fiscal year 2020, a rise of about $180 million from 2019 and a rise of $724 million from 2014.
The bulk of those predicted costs, or environmental liabilities, comes from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory located about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles that played a key role in the Apollo and space shuttle programs.
that reportedly isn t the case. in fact, the daily beast sam stein is citing a review of lobbying disclosure forms and records that pruitt s attorney was representing a major gas company and epa holder. priet claims that heart was no client,s has no client. one of hearts clients is currently battling the epa in court over paying $100 million in cleanup costs. williams and jensen represented a country that got a pipeline expansion project approved by the epa. but as stein points out, this only scratches the surface of heart s advocacy on behalf of
sorry, mr. president, you re on the hook to pay for any clean up here yourself. your company has to pay, mr. president, you had? that s a loutsy position to put these folks in south carolina in, these are mid-ranking government officials, people in charge of enforcing these state regulations, they re being asked to make a decision on the financial bottom line of the sitting president of 2 united states should we be doing this to people? we ve never done this to them before. but that s what we re doing now. last night south carolina made their call. they said no to the president. the state will not be granting his application to have the taxpayers on the hook for the environmental cleanup. they did not buy the president s argue. there s no relationship whatsoever between the president and his namesake son and that means the president s company will be responsible for any cleanup costs at that site instead of the taxpayers. now, we contacted the president s lawyer to ask for a reaction t