elections

Billionaires Will Reap 7,000% Profit on Marcellus Shale Lands while Republican Legislators Jim Christiani and Jim Marshall Oppose Gas Severance Tax

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by Randy Shannon

4th CD Chapter PDA Treasurer

The article below shows that two savvy investors who bought up land in Pennsylvania will now sell it to gas drillers for up to $14,000 per acre. If they sell at $6,300 per acre they will net between $5 billion to $6 billion in profits. Of course they will pay a capital gains tax on their fleecing of Pennsylvania landowners.

Let’s focus on the tremendous price that the gas drillers are willing to pay for drilling rights – no less than $6,000 and up to $13,000 per acre. And that is before the land is cleared, the pads are constructed, the well is drilled, the local water supply is sucked dry, the poisonous fumes are released, and the toxic mud is dumped in our rivers.

Aug. 20 2010 – 1:45 am |

Billionaires To Sell Marcellus Gas Stakes

By CHRISTOPHER HELMAN
The Marcellus is the nation’s biggest gas field. Image via Wikipedia 

The news came out Thursday that billionaires Trevor Rees-Jones and Phillip Anschutz had put their natural gas fields in the Marcellus Shale up for sale. We confirmed yesterday with a source close to the Anschutz Company that the acreage, thought to be roughly 500,000 acres is indeed on the block. Rees-Jones too has some 500,000 acres for sale.

It’s incontrovertible that these two men own more of the Marcellus than anyone other individuals. That they’re both looking to sell at the same time is fascinating. So why now?

Taxes, for one. The capital gains tax rate is set to rise from 15% to 20% next year. Ready buyers, for another. We’ve been watching the wave of consolidation in the Marcellus, including big buys by Shell and Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, and anticipate even bigger deals to come for land-long, cash-short independents like Range Resources. When the ducks quack, feed them.

For Rees-Jones, the payday could very well equal or even surpass the $2.6 billion he grossed in 2006 selling his Barnett Shale acreage to Devon Energy. A source with some knowledge of Rees-Jones’s Marcellus investments says that he acquired some 650,000 acres on the order of $100 an acre, long before the land grab heated up.

Late last year he and JV partner Tug Hill did a deal with Enerplus, which farmed in on 165,000 acres for $400 million, including $160mm in cash up front and the rest to pay drilling costs. That implied a value of $2,500 per acre. That’s a lot less than deals since then, which have gone as high as $14,000 an acre. Ambani’s last deal was for $6,300 an acre.

If Rees-Jones can fetch $6,000 per acre for his remaining 500,000 acres, that’ll be $3 billion. Even if his costs were $1,000 per acre ($500 million), Rees-Jones’s hypothetical gain would be on the order of $2.5 billion.

That’s a lot of reasons to sell now. Considering that the federal capital gains tax is set to increase from 15% to 20% in 2011, by selling before the end of the year he could presumably hold on to something on the order of $125 million that would otherwise go to Uncle Sam. Now that’s a motivated seller.

http://blogs.forbes.com/christopherhelman/2010/08/20/billionaires-to-sell-marcellus-gas-stakes/?partner=yahootix

Community, Environment

Toxic Spill in Tioga County: A Note to Rep. Jim Christiana, Who Argues That It Never Happens

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PA ‘Fracking’ Blowout Spews Marcellus Shale Fluid onto State Forest Lands

Talisman Energy may face heavy penalties

Photo: Typical PA Gas Drilling Site

By G. Jeffrey Aaron

•jgaaron@gannett.com •

Jan25, 2011- Talisman Energy has resumed its Marcellus drilling operations in Pennsylvania, a week after one of the company’s gas wells experienced a blowout that caused an uncontrolled discharge of sand and fracking fluids onto state forest lands in Tioga County.

As a result of the incident, Talisman shut down all of its hydraulic fracturing operations in North America while it conducted an internal investigation into the cause of the Jan. 17 blowout. Those operations have since resumed, with Talisman’s Pennsylvania drilling program being the last to be brought back online.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has requested Talisman provide answers to nine questions related to the blowout as part of its investigation into the incident. The investigation could result in civil penalties levied against Talisman.

The well where the blowout occurred is on Pennsylvania State Forest lands in Ward Township, about nine miles southeast of Mansfield.

Continue reading Toxic Spill in Tioga County: A Note to Rep. Jim Christiana, Who Argues That It Never Happens →

Egypt, labor, trade unions

Power of Egypt’s Workers Moves To Center Stage

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Egyptian Workers Hold Key to Uprising, New Union Association Issues Call for General Strike

By: Jeff Kaye

Beaver County Blue via Fire Dog Lake

While much analysis has focused on the youth-social network driven aspects of the recent uprising in Egypt, or on diplomatic and political maneuvers that thus far have left President Mubarak in office, and given even more power to the state repressive apparatus through the appointment of Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman to the Vice Presidency, it is the Egyptian working class that holds the future of its country in its hands.

While the organized workers movement saw its unions gutted by state privatization and the gutting of union independence though the hated Law No. 100, which guaranteed that union representation would be strongly controlled by the state, recent events, particularly in strategic Suez, have shown that when the social weight of the workers is thrown into the balance, even all the machinations of Hillary Clinton’s State Department will not be able to patch together Mubarak’s state apparatus. The question then will be, what will follow it?

Continue reading Power of Egypt’s Workers Moves To Center Stage →

Banks, Community, Economy

Why Not Public Banks of Our Own? The North Dakota Model

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Washington State Joins the Movement for Public Banking

The legislature will consider whether to move its funds from Bank of America to a publicly owned bank that would keep the state’s money working locally.

Yakima WA Strawberries, Photo by Jay Cox
Strawberries at a farmer’s market in Yakima, WA. The state’s proposed creation of a Washington Investment Trust would help support the local economy. Photo by Jay Cox.

By Ellen Brown

Beaver County Blue via Yes! Magazine

Jan. 24, 2011 – Bills were introduced on January 18 in both the House and Senate of the Washington State Legislature that add Washington to the growing number of states now actively moving to create public banking facilities.

The bills, House Bill 1320 and Senate Bill 5238, propose creation of a Washington Investment Trust (WIT) to “promote agriculture, education, community development, economic development, housing, and industry” by using “the resources of the people of Washington State within the state.”

Currently, all the state’s funds are deposited with Bank of America. HB 1320 proposes that, in the future, “all state funds be deposited in the Washington Investment Trust and be guaranteed by the state and used to promote the common good and public benefit of all the people and their businesses within [the] state.”

Continue reading Why Not Public Banks of Our Own? The North Dakota Model →

Community, Democrats, labor

PA Progressives Plan for New Battles

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Pennsylvania Progressive Summit 2011:

Rebuilding Alliances, Shaping New Messages

Keynote speakers, Leo Gerard and Jess Jackson

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Nearly 500 progressive and liberal organizers gathered at Pittsburgh’s Sheraton Station Square over the sunny but bitterly cold weekend of Jan. 22-23 to drawn out the lessons of their setbacks in the 2010 elections and shape a new course for the future.

Under the theme of ‘Taking Pennsylvania Forward,’ the two-day meeting was mainly pulled together by four ‘Organizing Sponsors’—Keystone Progress, a popular online communications hub for the state; SEIU, representing some 100,000 PA workers; the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a coalition between the United Steelworkers and advocates for new manufacturing enterprises; and Democracy for America, the outgrowth of the Howard Dean campaign in the Democratic Party.

A large number of unions other than the USW and SEIU also took part, as well as many local political, civil rights, women’s rights, youth and environmental groups from around the state. Beaver County was represented by a delegation from the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America.

Continue reading PA Progressives Plan for New Battles →

Community, unemployment, Youth and students

Aliquippa’s Harsh Realities Featured in Story of the Hope and Vision of its Athletes

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Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis visiting his hometown, Aliquippa, Pa.

The Heart Of Football Beats In Aliquippa

Over five decades of economic decline and racial conflict, a Western Pennsylvania mill town has found unity and hope on the football field

By S.L. Price

Sports llustrated’s ‘Vault’

Jan 31, 2011 Issue – The fear came for Willie Walker that November. He was not expecting it. Evening had dropped early and hard, as it does in Western Pennsylvania in the fall, but these were streets he had known forever. Hours had passed since the 2004 regional championship game had ended down in Pittsburgh; the adrenaline and bravado on the ride home had long since burned off, replaced by grief, then mere regret. They had lost. The Aliquippa High football team, for all its history of success, had been beaten. Now, in the backseat, Walker felt a numbness settling in. Losing happens. You move on. You start thinking about what’s next.

Walker was a senior. Just seven months until graduation, and he’d be able to say it: He had survived. The town hadn’t killed, hadn’t crippled, hadn’t defeated him, though God knows it had tried. His life had been a cliché of criminal pathology: father long dead, mother struggling with crack addiction, days of hunger, corners promising casual violence. Aliquippa’s streets are, as one of Walker’s coaches put it, "a spiderweb" capable of ensnaring the most innocent, and though Walker never lost sight of his prize—college somewhere, anywhere—he was hardly innocent. No, for a time he had leaped into the web, daring it to grab hold.

Continue reading Aliquippa’s Harsh Realities Featured in Story of the Hope and Vision of its Athletes →

elections

Rep. Conyers: We Need a Jobs Program in the SOTU Speech

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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Conyers:  We Need a Job Creation Rally Speech in Today’s SOTU Address

Conyers Calls On President Obama to Enact A Bold And Effective Emergency Job Creation Plan

(Washington) –Today, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) called on President Obama to boldly and decisively address national job creation and further economic recovery initiatives in this evening’s State of the Union Address.

“President Obama must now provide bold and decisive leadership and move this nation forward with an effective and targeted national job creation program that will put millions of unemployed Americans in my district in the rest of the country back to work,” Conyers said.  “I encourage him to lead the country in investing in more initiatives that spur and invest in creation, innovation, and infrastructure.   We cannot allow politics to brush these major issues under the rug any longer.  We must face them and fix them.”

Continue reading Rep. Conyers: We Need a Jobs Program in the SOTU Speech →