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WASHINGTON
Protesters rally about the Keystone XL oil pipeline along U.S. President Barack Obama’s motorcade as he arrives at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington July 11, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Pressure for President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline increased on Friday after a State Department report played down the impact it would have on climate change, irking environmentalists and delighting the project’s proponents.
The agency made no recommendation on whether Obama should grant or deny an application by TransCanada Corp to build the $ 5.4 billion line, which would transport crude from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
But the State Department said blocking Keystone XL – or any pipeline – would do little to slow the expansion of Canada’s vast oil sands, maintaining the central finding of a preliminary study issued last year.
The 11-volume report’s publication opened a new and potentially final stage of an approval process that has dragged for more than five years, taking on enormous political significance.
“President Obama is out of excuses,” said John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and a big Keystone proponent.
“If President Obama wants to make this a ‘year of action’ he will stand up to the extreme Left in his own party, stand with the overwhelming majority of American people, and approve this critical project.”
With another three-month review process ahead and no firm deadline for a decision on the 1,179-mile line, the issue threatens to drag into the 2014 congressional elections in November.
Obama is under pressure from several vulnerable Democratic senators who favor the pipeline and face re-election at a time when Democrats are scrambling to hang on to control of the U.S. Senate. The project looms over the president’s economic and environmental legacy.
Canada’s oil sands are the world’s third largest crude oil reserve, behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, and the largest open to private investment. The oil sands contain more than 170 billion barrels of bitumen, a tar-like form of crude that requires more energy to extract than conventional oil.
The report offered some solace to climate activists who want to stem the rise of oil sands output. It reaffirmed that Canada’s heavy crude reserves require more energy to produce and process – and therefore result in higher greenhouse gas emissions – than conventional oil fields.
But after extensive economic modeling, it found that the line itself would not slow or accelerate the development of the oil sands. That finding is largely in line with what oil industry executives have long argued.
“This final review puts to rest any credible concerns about the pipeline’s potential negative impact on the environment,” said Jack Gerard, head of the oil industry’s top lobby group, the American Petroleum Institute.
NOT OVER
Obama signaled in a major climate speech in June that he was closely watching the review and said he believed the pipeline should go ahead “only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”
Keystone XL opponents and the State Department itself warned that the process was not over.
“This environmental impact study … is by no means the final word on the Keystone XL pipeline,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning group with strong ties to the White House. “I hope that President Obama will hold firm on the commitment he made in his climate speech and reject the pipeline.”
TransCanada Corp shares finished up more than 1 percent on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Friday, reflecting optimism that the report was positive for the eventual construction of the pipeline.
The company’s chief executive officer, Russ Girling, said the case for the Keystone pipeline “is as strong as ever.”
Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said he hoped Obama would make a decision in the first half of 2014.
“This has been a lengthy and thorough review process. The benefits to the United States and Canada are clear. We await a timely decision on this project,” Oliver said.
He described the environmental review “as a positive step on the route to approval.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will consult with eight government agencies over the next three months about the broader national security, economic and environmental impacts of the project before deciding whether he thinks it should go ahead. There is no deadline, and the report does not seek to address some of the larger strategic questions involved.
The public will have 30 days to comment, beginning next week. A previous comment period in March yielded more than 1.5 million comments.
The open-ended review made some pipeline supporters nervous.
“The administration’s strategy is to defeat the project with continuing delays,” said Republican Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, where the oil boom has boosted truck and rail traffic.
Some North Dakota oil would move on the pipeline, designed to take as much as 830,000 barrels of crude per day from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would meet the project’s already complete southern leg to take the crude to the refining hub on the Texas Gulf coast.
PREMATURE VICTORY?
The State Department’s study found that oil from the Canadian oil sands is about 17 percent more “greenhouse gas intensive” than average oil used in the United States because of the energy required to extract and process it. It is 2 to 10 percent more greenhouse gas intensive than the heavy grades of oil it replaces.
The Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group, said the report shows the pipeline would create as much pollution each year as the exhaust from almost 6 million cars – evidence that it said will be hard for Obama to ignore.
“Reports of an industry victory on the Keystone XL pipeline are vastly over-stated,” said Michael Brune, the group’s executive director.
The study found oil sands development could be curbed if pipelines were not expanded, oil prices were low, and rail shipping costs soared.
The study examines data from a 2010 pipeline spill in Michigan, where more than 20,000 barrels gushed into the Kalamazoo River system. Pipeline operator Enbridge Energy Partners was ordered last summer to do more to dredge up oil from the bottom of the river.
(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferarro and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Peter Henderson, Jonathan Leff, Grant McCool and Mohammad Zargham)
U.S. President Barack Obama reacts to a question during his year-end news conference in the White House briefing room in Washington, December 20, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., left, and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., announce a tentative agreement between Republican and Democratic negotiators on a government spending plan, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013. Negotiators reached the modest budget agreement to restore about $ 65 billion in automatic spending cuts from programs ranging from parks to the Pentagon, with votes expected in both houses by week’s end. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., left, and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., announce a tentative agreement between Republican and Democratic negotiators on a government spending plan, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013. Negotiators reached the modest budget agreement to restore about $ 65 billion in automatic spending cuts from programs ranging from parks to the Pentagon, with votes expected in both houses by week’s end. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Graphic shows highlights of budget deal; 1c x 3 inches; 46.5 mm x 76 mm;
Portuguese yields fall after Moody"s raises ratings outlook
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* Moody’s changes Portuguese rating outlook to stable
* Portuguese debt outperforms broader euro zone debt rebound
* Bunds rise after biggest one-day loss since September
By Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Ana Nicolaci da Costa
LONDON, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Portuguese bond yields fell near five-month lows on Monday, outperforming other euro zone debt after Moody’s raised its outlook on the country’s ratings to stable from negative.
The agency’s move after European markets closed on Friday was the latest in a series of news that has helped improve the market’s view on Lisbon since a government crisis sent 10-year yields back above an unsustainable 8 percent in July.
Portuguese 10-year government bond yields fell as much as 14 basis points to 5.86 percent, near troughs seen in early June. The yield gap between 10-year and two-year Portuguese bonds is near its widest since July – reflecting reduced concerns about the possibility of a debt restructuring.
“The Moody’s move on Friday evening does build on a fair degree of other positive moves that the Portuguese market has enjoyed over recent weeks … and the other thing helping has been positive newsflow on growth,” said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec.
Other lower-rated debt also rose, with Spanish and Italian 10-year yields falling 2 basis points to 4.11 percent and 4.13 percent respectively.
Portugal has started to recover from its worst recession since the 1970s and the International Monetary Fund said on Friday it was on track with its bailout and gave the indebted euro zone country another 1.9 billion euros.
“We live in a world where there’s a lot of hunger for yield and consequently against the backdrop of falling volatility and quiet newsflow it’s no surprise to us to see Portuguese bond spreads moving tighter,” said Mark Dowding, co-head of investment grade team at Bluebay Asset Management.
“That’s clearly been benefiting our investment performance where we have adopted an overweight stance,” said Dowding, whose team has $ 24.5 of assets under management and is overweight Portugal in its government bond portfolio. Bluebay is also overweight on Italy and Spain.
“BUY-DIPS” MENTALITY
Euro zone bonds mostly rallied after a sell-off on Friday when higher-than-expected U.S. jobs numbers brought forward bets of a cut in U.S. monetary stimulus.
Last week’s shock move by the European Central Bank to cut interest rates – and the stronger commitment to stimulate the economy that implies – is still supporting European debt markets. Most traders expect the ECB to pump more cheap long-term money into markets, according to a Reuters poll on Monday.
But investors are also returning to bets on the Federal Reserve scaling back its programme of bond-buying before March, after U.S. job growth unexpectedly accelerated in October. A Reuters poll after Friday’s numbers showed more primary dealers were leaning toward an earlier cut in stimulus.
That is broadly bad news for top-rated government bonds. German Bund futures settled 1 tick lower on Monday at 141.01, having seen their biggest one-day loss since September on Friday. German 10-year yields were steady at 1.76 percent .
In this image released by the U.S. Air Force, a Malmstrom Air Force Base missile maintenance team removes the upper section of an ICBM at a Montana missile site. An Air Force unit that operates one-third of the nation’s land-based nuclear missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., has failed a safety and security inspection, marking the second major setback this year for a force charged with the military’s most sensitive mission, Lt. Gen. James M. Kowalski, who is in charge of the nuclear air force told The Associated Press on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013. He said a team of “relatively low ranking” airmen failed one exercise as part of a broader inspection, which began last week and ended Tuesday. He said that for security reasons he could not be specific about the team or the exercise. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force, John Parie)
In this image released by the U.S. Air Force, a Malmstrom Air Force Base missile maintenance team removes the upper section of an ICBM at a Montana missile site. An Air Force unit that operates one-third of the nation’s land-based nuclear missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., has failed a safety and security inspection, marking the second major setback this year for a force charged with the military’s most sensitive mission, Lt. Gen. James M. Kowalski, who is in charge of the nuclear air force told The Associated Press on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013. He said a team of “relatively low ranking” airmen failed one exercise as part of a broader inspection, which began last week and ended Tuesday. He said that for security reasons he could not be specific about the team or the exercise. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force, John Parie)
This image provided by the U.S. Air Force shows Lt. Gen. James M. Kowalski, Air Force Global Strike Command commander, is seen after a coin toss at Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on Aug. 18, 2012. An Air Force unit that operates one-third of the nation’s land-based nuclear missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., has failed a safety and security inspection, marking the second major setback this year for a force charged with the military’s most sensitive mission, Kowalski, who is in charge of the nuclear air force, told The Associated Press on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013. He said a team of “relatively low ranking” airmen failed one exercise as part of a broader inspection, which began last week and ended Tuesday. He said that for security reasons he could not be specific about the team or the exercise. (AP Photo/Grovert Fuentes-Contreras)
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Another embarrassing stumble by the U.S. nuclear missile force, this time a safety and security inspection failure, is raising questions about the Air Force’s management of arguably the military’s most sensitive mission.
The head of nuclear air forces, Lt. Gen. James M. Kowalski, revealed to The Associated Press on Tuesday that the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., had failed what the military calls a “surety” inspection — a formal check on the unit’s adherence to rules ensuring the safety, security and control of its nuclear weapons.
The 341st is one of three units that operate the Air Force’s 450 Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.
Kowalski, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said a team of “relatively low-ranking” airmen failed one exercise as part of a broader inspection, which began last week and ended Tuesday. He said that for security reasons he could not be specific about the team or the exercise, although he said the team did not include missile launch crew members.
“This unit fumbled on this exercise,” Kowalski said by telephone from his headquarters at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., adding that this did not call into question the safety or control of nuclear weapons at Malmstrom.
“The team did not demonstrate the right procedures,” he said, and as a result was rated a failure.
To elaborate “could reveal a potential vulnerability” in the force, Kowalski said.
In a written statement on its website, Kowalski’s command said there had been “tactical-level errors” in the snap exercise, revealing “discrepancies.”
Without more details it is difficult to reliably judge the extent and severity of the problem uncovered at Malmstrom.
On Capitol Hill, a spokesman for Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said McKeon believes that “two troubling inspections in a row at two different missile wings is unacceptable.”
“It is his sense that the Air Force must refocus on the nuclear mission,” spokesman John Noonan said. “The Air Force should hold failed leadership at the group and wing level accountable, recommit itself from the top down to the nuclear deterrent mission, and ensure a daily focus on its centrality to our nation’s security.”
In response to word of the failed inspection, the press secretary for the Pentagon, George Little, said the bottom line for nuclear forces hasn’t changed: “Our nuclear forces remain fully capable and ready.”
“While the fact that the unit made errors during this exercise is disappointing, this type of exercise is designed to push people to their limits and learn how to improve,” Little said.
Asked whether the Air Force intends to take disciplinary action against anyone for the inspection failure, Kowalski said the Air Force is “looking into it.” Overall, the 341st wing “did well,” he said, earning ratings of excellent or outstanding in the majority of the 13 areas in which it was graded by inspectors. Those areas include management, administration, safety, security, emergency exercises, worker reliability and other facets of a mission that relies on teams of officers and enlisted personnel.
The acting secretary of the Air Force, Eric Fanning, will meet with Kowalski at his Barksdale headquarters on Wednesday to discuss the Malmstrom situation and other aspects of the broader nuclear mission, according to Brig. Gen. Les Kodlick, the top Air Force spokesman. Kodlick said the visit had been scheduled for “some time” and not in response to the failed inspection.
ICBM wings undergo multiple types of inspections. The one at Malmstrom was a “surety” inspection, which the Pentagon defines as “nuclear weapon system safety, security and control.” The point is to ensure that no nuclear weapon is accidentally, inadvertently or deliberately armed or launched without presidential authority.
Kowalski said his command’s inspector general has conducted 14 such inspections since early 2010 with just two failures — both involving the 341st wing. The first was in February 2010. The second was this week.
The 341st also failed a safety and security inspection in 2008.
A different type of inspection of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., in March of this year led the deputy commander of the wing’s operations group to complain of “rot” in the force. Technically, the wing passed that inspection, but its missile crews earned the equivalent of a “D” grade when tested on their mastery of Minuteman 3 launch operations using a simulator. The following month the 91st temporarily removed 17 officers from launch control duty — the first time such a large number had been pulled from duty.
In April the Pentagon reissued a public directive on responsibilities for ensuring nuclear weapons security. “Standards, plans, procedures, and other positive measures will be developed and maintained to ensure the (Pentagon) can accomplish its nuclear mission in a safe, secure, and reliable manner,” the directive said.
In June, the commander in charge of training and proficiency of missile crews at Minot, Lt. Col. Randy Olson, was relieved of duty. The Air Force cited a “loss of confidence” in his leadership.
Launch operations were not part of the Malmstrom inspection failure, Kowalski said.
The trouble at Minot was the latest in a longer series of setbacks for the Air Force’s nuclear mission, highlighted by a 2008 Pentagon advisory group report that found a “dramatic and unacceptable decline” in the Air Force’s commitment to the mission, which has its origins in a Cold War standoff with the former Soviet Union.
Following a series of nuclear embarrassments in 2008 — including the inadvertent transport of six nuclear-tipped missiles on a B-52 bomber, whose pilot did not know they were aboard when he flew from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base, La. — then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the top two Air Force officials.
Kowalski’s command was created in late 2009 as part of an effort to fix what was broken in the nuclear force. In Tuesday’s interview, he said he is encouraged that inspections after 2009 began finding an increasing number of problems at the ICBM wings, followed by a decrease since 2011. He said this tells him that the Air Force has come up with more rigorous, effective means of inspecting, and that they are spurring change.
“This is a difficult inspection,” he said, so occasional failures do not point to a systemic failure to adhere to safety and security regulations.
___
Follow Robert Burns at Twitter at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP
1 of 2. Military policemen stand in front of a poster of Cambodia’s long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen in central Phnom Penh July 30, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Samrang Pring
PHNOM PENH |
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – Cambodia’s main opposition party said on Wednesday it had won the weekend’s general election, stepping up its battle with the party of authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen that has also claimed victory and rejected allegations of electoral fraud.
Yim Sovann, a lawmaker and spokesman for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), said the CNRP had won 63 seats in the 123-member parliament, with Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) getting 60.
The claim was based on its own data.
“This is according to figures of votes we collected from various provinces and this needs to be investigated,” Yim Sovann told Reuters.
The government announced on Sunday that the CPP had won 68 seats, a sharp fall from its previous tally of 90 but beating the CNRP’s 55.
The election campaign and voting on Sunday were largely peaceful but Phnom Penh remains tense because of the political stand-off. Police and the military are maintaining a presence on the streets, although business is mostly back to normal.
Hun Sen, 60, has been prime minister for 28 years and has crushed dissent in the past while building a network of government and military allies. He has kept out of sight since Sunday and made no comment on the election.
The CNRP was formed last year from the merger of two opposition parties. Long-time opposition leader Sam Rainsy returned from exile on July 19 to galvanize its campaign after a royal pardon that removed the threat of jail for what he called trumped-up charges relating to criticism of a new border the government agreed with Vietnam.
That pardon was recommended by Hun Sen, apparently under pressure from aid donors demanding a free and fair election, analysts said.
Sam Rainsy has demanded an inquiry into the election with United Nations involvement, alleging in particular that up to 1.3 million names were missing from the electoral rolls. The government has rejected that idea.
The United States and European Union have expressed concern about irregularities. Both have said an investigation should be conducted by Cambodia’s National Election Committee.
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called on Wednesday for an independent investigation, saying senior CPP officials appeared to have issued fake voting documents to supporters and had allowed some people to vote in more than one place.
“The multiple voting scheme suggests the possibility of systematic election fraud by the CPP and raises serious questions about the credibility of the election,” Brad Adams, its director for Asia, said in a statement.
“Since the National Election Committee and local election commissions are under the ruling party’s control, influential governments and donors should demand independent investigations into these and other credible allegations of election-related irregularities,” he said.
Even by the government’s own figures, Sunday’s vote was Hun Sen’s worst election result since Cambodia returned to full democracy in 1998 after decades of war and turmoil that included the 1975-79 “Killing Fields” rule of the Khmer Rouge.
Prolonged wrangling over the result and a weakened Hun Sen could raise uncertainty over policy in the small but fast-growing Southeast Asian country that has built up a thriving garment sector and forged economic ties with China and Vietnam.
(Editing by Alan Raybould and Paul Tait)
Mark Drajem
Bloomberg
June 12, 2013
Buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens is a change in the U.S. government’s accounting for carbon emissions that could have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline.
The increase of the so-called social cost of carbon, to $ 38 a metric ton in 2015 from $ 23.80, adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations. The figure is meant to approximate losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops.
With the change, government actions that lead to cuts in emissions — anything from new mileage standards to clean-energy loans — will appear more valuable in its cost-benefit analyses. On the flip side, approvals that could lead to more carbon pollution, such as TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone pipeline or coal-mining by companies such as Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) on public lands, may be viewed as more costly.
This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 12:34 pm
Tags: energy
SARATOGA, Calif. (AP) — Roku, the streaming video device maker, has raised $ 60 million in its sixth round of funding. Media giant Hearst Corp. and an unnamed institutional investor joined News Corp. and its subsidiary British Sky Broadcasting in the round.
Roku’s service offers an alternative to broadcast, cable and satellite television and first supported Netflix viewing five years ago. The funding comes as the battle for the living room heats up and traditional pay TV subscriptions stagnate in the U.S.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told a conference Tuesday the company has a “grand vision” for remaking TV. Microsoft Corp. last week unveiled a new gaming console, the Xbox One, in which users can flip through channels using voice commands.
Roku says the funding will help it develop its streaming software and services business.
