Koch Industries (and the Family) - Part 6

In political and business circles, Charles and David Koch, and their very diversified companies, Koch Industries, are known as "the Koch-topus."  They seem to have a tentacle attached to almost every type of big business.  As they have a great deal of their money invested in crude oil and petroleum products, pipelines, chemicals and asphalt, they do not support the Clean Air Act, do not support the Kyoto Accord, and are constantly fighting against cleaner air standards, emission controls, the rulings of the Environmental Protection Agency, and they fight against funding for alternative energies - solar, wind, water.
    Bloomberg reports that from 1999 to 2003, Koch Industries was assessed "more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments."  Daniel Indiviglio, in a reaction article in The Atlantic, asserted that the Bloomberg article was biased and misleading, as the research team "found only eight instances of alleged misconduct ... over the span of 63 years."
   Koch Industries reported 300 oil spills in six states in the year 2000.  Koch paid the largest civil fine ever imposed for the illegal discharge of crude oil and petroleum products.  In a settlement with the US Justice Department and the state of Texas, the company paid a "$30 million civil penalty," agreed to improve it's leak -prevention programs, and donate $5 million to be spent on environmental projects.
   In 1996, an 8-inch-diameter steel Liquid Petroleum Gas pipeline operated by the Koch Pipeline Company ruptured and began to leak butane gas.  Two residents jumped into their truck and drove to a neighbors' to call 911.  Driving through the butane cloud, the truck exploded and the people were killed. Twenty-five families were later evacuated without injury.  In 1999, a Texas jury found that negligence had led to the rupture, and the victims' families were awarded $296 million - "the largest compensatory damages judgment in a wrongful death case filed against a corporation in US history."
   In 2000, a federal grand jury returned a 97-count indictment against Koch Industries and its individual employees for environmental crimes relating to excess emissions of 85 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen.  In 2001, Koch Industries was fined $20 million - $10 million was paid as a criminal fine, and $10 million was paid to clean the environment.

   On 26 March 2014, a joint letter was sent to David L. Robertson, the President and COO of Koch Industries.  The letter was signed by Representative Henry A Waxman, ranking member on the Committee of Energy and Commerce; the co-signer was Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of the Subcommittee on Oversight and the Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works.  The full letter may be read at:  http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Robertson-Koch-Industries-Keystone-XL-2014-3-26.pdf      - To my knowledge, it has yet to be answered.
    The Keystone XL Pipeline seems to be a touchy point for the Koch brothers and Koch Industries and their multiple subsidiaries...  First, a quick background on what the Keystone XL will do:  The Keystone Pipeline already exists.  What doesn't fully yet exist is its proposed expansion,the Keystone XL Pipeline.  The existing Keystone runs from the oil sand fields in Alberta, Canada into the US, ending in Cushing, Oklahoma.  The 1,700 new miles of pipeline would connect Cushing, OK (where there's currently a "bottleneck" in the pipeline) with the Gulf Coast of Texas; and a new section from Alberta down to Kansas.  While the pipeline is initially carrying US light crude oil, it is expected to carry more heavy Canadian oil harvested from tar sands over the next year, with a huge increase of tar sand oil once the Keystone XL opens.
   What are tar sands? Tar sands consist of heavy crude oil mixed with sand, clay and bitumen.  Extraction entails burning natural gas to generate enough heat and steam to melt the oil out of the sand.  It takes as many as five barrels of water to produce a single barrel of oil. In the Canadian boreal forest, just downstream from the Rocky Mountains, in Alberta, are the main deposits of the Canadian tar sands.  The region is estimated to contain some 2 trillion barrels of oil.  Getting to it, however, involves strip mining, and that will destroy an area larger than the state of Florida - 65,755 square miles, or 170,304 square kilometers.
   Across the US, oil refineries are seeking permits to expand their facilities to process heavy crude oil from tar sands. Processing tar sands oil will mean more asthma and respiratory diseases, more cancer, and more cardiovascular problems.  Many local communities are opposing these expansion requests.
   In Canada, the toxic burden on communities near the tar sands is already enormous.  In addition to direct human exposure, oil contamination in the local watershed has led to a huge rise in arsenic in moose meat - a dietary staple of the First Nations peoples - levels up to 33 times the acceptable levels for arsenic.  Drinking water has also been contaminated.

    The next, and last, installment will include more information, and some interesting reading about the Koch brothers and Koch Industries....