Global warming begets more warming, new paleoclimate study finds

by Abby Abazorius, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

It is increasingly clear that the prolonged drought conditions, record-breaking heat, sustained wildfires, and frequent, more extreme storms experienced in recent years are a direct result of rising global temperatures brought on by humans' addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. And a new MIT study on extreme climate events in Earth's ancient history suggests that today's planet may become more volatile as it continues to warm.

The study, appearing today in Science Advances, examines the paleoclimate record of the last 66 million years, during the Cenozoic era, which began shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs. The scientists found that during this period, fluctuations in the Earth's climate experienced a surprising "warming bias." In other words, there were far more warming events—periods of prolonged global warming, lasting thousands to tens of thousands of years—than cooling events. What's more, warming events tended to be more extreme, with greater shifts in temperature, than cooling events.

The researchers say a possible explanation for this warming bias may lie in a "multiplier effect," whereby a modest degree of warming—for instance from volcanoes releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—naturally speeds up certain biological and chemical processes that enhance these fluctuations, leading, on average, to still more warming.

Interestingly, the team observed that this warming bias disappeared about 5 million years ago, around the time when ice sheets started forming in the Northern Hemisphere. It's unclear what effect the ice has had on the Earth's response to climate shifts. But as today's Arctic ice recedes, the new study suggests that a multiplier effect may kick back in, and the result may be a further amplification of human-induced global warming.

"The Northern Hemisphere's ice sheets are shrinking, and could potentially disappear as a long-term consequence of human actions" says the study's lead author Constantin Arnscheidt, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. "Our research suggests that this may make the Earth's climate fundamentally more susceptible to extreme, long-term global warming events such as those seen in the geologic past."

Arnscheidt's study co-author is Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics at MIT, and co-founder and co-director of MIT's Lorenz Center.

A volatile push.

For their analysis, the team consulted large databases of sediments containing deep-sea benthic foraminifera—single-celled organisms that have been around for hundreds of millions of years and whose hard shells are preserved in sediments. The composition of these shells is affected by the ocean temperatures as organisms are growing; the shells are therefore considered a reliable proxy for the Earth's ancient temperatures.

For decades, scientists have analyzed the composition of these shells, collected from all over the world and dated to various time periods, to track how the Earth's temperature has fluctuated over millions of years.

"When using these data to study extreme climate events, most studies have focused on individual large spikes in temperature, typically of a few degrees Celsius warming," Arnscheidt says. "Instead, we tried to look at the overall statistics and consider all the fluctuations involved, rather than picking out the big ones."

The team first carried out a statistical analysis of the data and observed that, over the last 66 million years, the distribution of global temperature fluctuations didn't resemble a standard bell curve, with symmetric tails representing an equal probability of extreme warm and extreme cool fluctuations. Instead, the curve was noticeably lopsided, skewed toward more warm than cool events. The curve also exhibited a noticeably longer tail, representing warm events that were more extreme, or of higher temperature, than the most extreme cold events.

"This indicates there's some sort of amplification relative to what you would otherwise have expected," Arnscheidt says. "Everything's pointing to something fundamental that's causing this push, or bias toward warming events."

"It's fair to say that the Earth system becomes more volatile, in a warming sense," Rothman adds.

A warming multiplier

The team wondered whether this warming bias might have been a result of "multiplicative noise" in the climate-carbon cycle. Scientists have long understood that higher temperatures, up to a point, tend to speed up biological and chemical processes. Because the carbon cycle, which is a key driver of long-term climate fluctuations, is itself composed of such processes, increases in temperature may lead to larger fluctuations, biasing the system towards extreme warming events.

In mathematics, there exists a set of equations that describes such general amplifying, or multiplicative effects. The researchers applied this multiplicative theory to their analysis to see whether the equations could predict the asymmetrical distribution, including the degree of its skew and the length of its tails.

In the end, they found that the data, and the observed bias toward warming, could be explained by the multiplicative theory. In other words, it's very likely that, over the last 66 million years, periods of modest warming were on average further enhanced by multiplier effects, such as the response of biological and chemical processes that further warmed the planet.

As part of the study, the researchers also looked at the correlation between past warming events and changes in Earth's orbit. Over hundreds of thousands of years, Earth's orbit around the sun regularly becomes more or less elliptical. But scientists have wondered why many past warming events appeared to coincide with these changes, and why these events feature outsized warming compared with what the change in Earth's orbit could have wrought on its own.

So, Arnscheidt and Rothman incorporated the Earth's orbital changes into the multiplicative model and their analysis of Earth's temperature changes, and found that multiplier effects could predictably amplify, on average, the modest temperature rises due to changes in Earth's orbit.

"Climate warms and cools in synchrony with orbital changes, but the orbital cycles themselves would predict only modest changes in climate," Rothman says. "But if we consider a multiplicative model, then modest warming, paired with this multiplier effect, can result in extreme events that tend to occur at the same time as these orbital changes."

"Humans are forcing the system in a new way," Arnscheidt adds. "And this study is showing that, when we increase temperature, we're likely going to interact with these natural, amplifying effects."Global warming will result in stronger and more frequent heatwaves in Southeast Asia

More information: Asymmetry of extreme Cenozoic climate-carbon cycle events, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg6864

Journal information: Science Advances 

Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

Study of Earth's Deep Past Reveals Terrifying Global Warming Warning

Even modest temperature increases can self-amplify into extreme warming events, a finding that has implications for the current climate crisis.

By Becky Ferreira
11.8.21


PEOPLE RUN FROM THE FOREST FIRE THAT BROKE OUT IN MANAVGAT DISTRICT CONTINUE IN ANTALYA, TURKEY ON AUGUST 01, 2021. IMAGE: ANADOLU AGENCY/ CONTRIBUTOR VIA GETTY IMAGES

The urgent need to address the climate crisis was thrown into sharp relief yet again this week by a mountain of research that established an “unequivocal” link between human activity and warming global temperatures, according to a major new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Now, a pair of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reveal that modest warming events in Earth’s deep past often spiral into volatile climate extremes, a finding that has been written into the fossils of marine organisms over the Cenozoic period, which dates back 66 million years to the present.

This long view of our planet’s climate swings suggests that “as anthropogenic warming continues, Earth’s climate may become more susceptible to extreme warming events on time scales of tens of thousands of years,” according to a study published on Wednesday in Science Advances.

“Abrupt global warming events of the geologic past are of interest because they reveal fundamental aspects of how the Earth system works, and because they provide an observational window into the long-term consequences of anthropogenic climate change,” said Constantin Arnscheidt, a graduate student at MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences who led the study, in an email.

“In past studies the focus has been on specific large warming events,” he added. “Here, we wanted to understand the more general behavior throughout the Cenozoic (the past 66 million years), and so for the first time we considered all of the fluctuations involved rather than picking out the big ones.”

To accomplish this aim, Arnscheidt and co-author Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics at MIT and co-director of its Lorenz Center, relied on single-celled organisms called benthic foraminifera, which have been living and dying in Earth’s oceans for hundreds of millions of years.

These simple lifeforms grow hard shells that preserve information about temperatures and conditions at the time their bodies were deposited in sediments. As a result, their fossils offer an extremely useful window into the deep past, and are often used as a climate proxy in reconstructions of Earth’s paleoclimate.

Arnscheidt and Rothman assessed foraminifera records from around the world that date back to the cataclysmic asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs and many other species some 66 million years ago. In contrast to other studies, the team applied a statistical analysis of this entire Cenozoic period as opposed to focusing on major climate disruptions, such as the dramatic Eocene warming event that occurred about 55 million years ago.

This approach exposed “an intrinsic asymmetry that favors ‘hyperthermal-like’ extreme events of abrupt global warming,” according to the study. In other words, Earth’s Cenozoic climate has shown a clear bias toward warming events (hyperthermals) relative to cooling events, meaning that warming events were both more frequent and more extreme than cooling events.

“The fact that specific intervals in Earth history, such as the Eocene epoch, exhibit this bias is not surprising: this has been implicitly understood for a long time,” Arnscheidt said. “However, when we quantified the evolution of this asymmetry throughout the past 66 million years, we found that it displayed remarkable consistency over most of this period.”

“One simple way to explain the observed warming bias is to hypothesize that temperature fluctuations (on timescales of thousands to tens of thousands of years) themselves increase with temperature: this is called ‘multiplicative noise,’” he added. “The statistics of the observed fluctuations turn out to be mathematically consistent with the multiplicative noise hypothesis.”

‘Nobody Is Safe,’ Warns Latest IPCC Climate Report

Even modest global temperature increases during the Cenozoic seemed to lead to more stochastic and self-amplifying climate fluctuations than cooling events of similar magnitude. No doubt there are many complex mechanisms underlying these processes, but Arnscheidt and Rothman identified a few likely culprits, including biological and chemical processes that speed up at higher temperatures, as well as Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

“Many past global warming/hyperthermal events appear to coincide with changes in the eccentricity of Earth's orbit, but the mechanisms remain debated,” explained Arnscheidt. “The multiplicative theory provides a natural reason this could occur. If temperature fluctuations (on timescales of thousands to tens of thousands of years) indeed increase as it gets warmer, small changes in Earth's surface temperature due to orbital changes can, on average, generate abrupt warming events consistent with geologic observations.”

Interestingly, the team found that the Cenozoic’s long-term bias toward warming events disappeared about five million years ago, around the same time that ice cover crept down from the Arctic across much of the Northern Hemisphere. It’s possible that this recent period of glaciation helped to stabilize the global climate and reduce the incidence of extreme temperature fluctuations.

But Arnscheidt and Rothman warn that human-driven climate change may now be injecting all of that multiplicative noise and volatility back into the climate system. In light of the new IPCC report, which concludes that we are essentially locked into a global temperature spike of at least 1.5°C above pre-industrial averages, it’s more important than ever to heed the lessons etched into the paleoclimatological record of our planet.

“I think these results emphasize that Earth's long-term evolution is governed by complex, potentially amplifying mechanisms that we do not yet fully understand,” Arnscheidt said. “As humans continue to increase Earth's surface temperature, we will likely interact with these mechanisms, potentially at the peril of current and future generations.”

CCS IS A MYTH, NATIONALIZE BIG OIL
Cenovus chief urges Trudeau to pay for greening of Canada's oilsands

Canada's oil could be the 'cleanest in the world' but it will take $75 billion to get there

Financial Times
Derek Brower in Calgary
Publishing date: Aug 09, 2021 • 

Cenovus Energy has joined the four other largest producers in Canada's oil and gas sector to propose a vast carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) project they said was "the only realistic proposal" to curb pollution. PHOTO BY REUTERS/TODD KOROL/FILE PHOTO

Canada’s government should pay for up to 70 per cent of a proposed $75 billion project to decarbonize the country’s controversial oilsands and protect a critical engine of the country’s economy, one of the proposal’s backers said.

“If we’re able to solve the puzzle of making Canadian oil significantly lower carbon intensive,” the oil would be the “cleanest in the world,” Alex Pourbaix, chief executive of Cenovus Energy, the country’s second-largest oil producer, told the Financial Times.

But Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, which last year committed Canada to slashing emissions by 40-45 per cent below its 2005 levels by 2030, must pay up to make it happen, he argued.

“It’s going to take tens of billions of dollars over 30 years to decarbonize [our oil] industry,” said Pourbaix. “But at the same time that will protect something in the range of $3 trillion of GDP.”

Pourbaix and industry group the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (Capp) also urged the federal government to extend tax credits to oil companies that would use captured carbon to produce more oil.

“If we’re able to solve the puzzle of making Canadian oil significantly lower carbon intensive,” the oil would be the “cleanest in the world,” said Alex Pourbaix, chief executive of Cenovus Energy. PHOTO BY AZIN GHAFFARI/POSTMEDIA

The calls for federal funding will complicate matters for Trudeau amid criticism that Canada is not moving quickly enough to meet its climate targets while his government defends its high-emissions oil industry, the biggest petroleum exporter to the U.S.

Despite imposing an aggressive carbon tax regime, the federal government lobbied for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas — which was cancelled by U.S. President Joe Biden earlier this year — and is funding another export pipeline development from the oilsands to Canada’s west coast.

“Our prosperity and our economy are still highly dependent on” the oil sector, Seamus O’Regan, the country’s Liberal federal resources minister said in a recent interview with the FT. “It is what we do.”

Last month Cenovus joined the four other largest producers in Canada’s oil and gas sector, the biggest single contributor to the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, to propose a vast carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) project they said was “the only realistic proposal” to curb pollution.

Critics of CCUS say the technology, mentioned for years as a solution to emissions, remains too expensive to achieve the scale needed.

Pourbaix said it showed operators were now “attuned to where the world is moving.”

The proposal includes installation of a trunk line capturing carbon from oilsands projects and other industries near Fort McMurray, in northern Alberta, and storing it further south near Cold Lake.

The proposal came as the Canadian government mooted an investment tax credit designed to accelerate development of a domestic CCUS industry. The credits are due to begin next year.

Pourbaix urged the federal government to reverse a decision to exclude enhanced oil recovery — a method of reinjecting the captured CO2 to help produce more oil — from the tax incentive scheme, saying the EOR could make the CCUS projects economic “right out of the chute.”

Tim McMillan, Capp’s chief executive, welcomed the federal government’s focus on CCUS to help meet its emissions goal, but said “excluding EOR from the federal programme will create substantial challenges to the government in reaching this goal.”


A spokesperson for O’Regan’s office said CCUS was “one of many technologies that will get us to net zero by 2050,” but did not say if the federal government would help pay for the oilsands companies’ proposed project. The government has set aside $319 million for research into CCUS and is working on a new strategy to promote it.

The oilsands sector is recovering from last year’s crash. But operators continue to face opposition from climate activists and environment-focused investors because of the higher emissions associated with producing the heavy, bituminous oil found in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

International oil supermajors, including Shell, TotalEnergies and Equinor, have pulled investment from the region, home to the world’s third-biggest oil deposit.

Alberta’s provincial government has fought aggressively to protect the sector, including a recent failed legal challenge to stop the federal carbon tax.

Pourbaix said he supported the new carbon pricing scheme and his company has a “long-term ambition” to achieve net zero emissions from its operations. But like other oil sands operators, Cenovus would not commit to a net zero target for its so-called scope 3 emissions — the pollution caused by the burning of the products its sells.

“Scope 3 is largely the responsibility of consumers,” said Pourbaix. “And kind of absolving the consumer of accountability for this doesn’t make sense.”

© 2021 The Financial Times Ltd

Oil companies’ renewables 

push squeezing profitability

from green projects

By WILLIAM MATHIS on 8/10/2021

(Bloomberg) --The world’s largest oil companies are bidding up prices for renewable energy projects, squeezing profits from wind and solar farms just as climate planning focuses more on green energy sources.

Companies from BP Plc to TotalEnergies SE are paying top dollar for clean energy assets as they transition away from fossil fuels, boosting competition and compressing margins for developers. Wind giants Orsted A/S and Vestas Wind Systems A/S reported lower returns in the first quarter, while turbine maker Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA lost money as materials rallied.

Shrinking profits are a worrying sign for an industry that needs to invest at least $92 trillion by 2050 to cut emissions fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change. They also come at a time governments are tackling record gas and electricity prices, a headache for world leaders trying to iron out an ambitious climate deal when they meet in Scotland in November.

“Sometimes you end up with very low remuneration of capital, below normal,” said Bruno Bensasson, chief executive officer of the renewables arm of Electricite de France SA. “That’s not healthy, that’s not sustainable.”

Green energy is now the cheapest source of electricity in most of the world, drawing a growing number of companies into the space. BP last year set a target to boost its renewable energy capacity to 50 gigawatts up from less than 3 gigawatts. TotalEnergies plans to have 100 gigawatts of capacity by 2030, while Royal Dutch Shell Plc is also growing quickly in the space.

Rising competition is being met by a limited pipeline of projects. Auctions for offshore wind sites in the U.K. saw record prices earlier this year as oil companies led by BP battled for the right to develop projects in the Irish Sea.

Renewable Returns

“We see the European oil companies positioning themselves strongly into renewables now,” said Christian Rynning-Tonnesen, CEO of Norwegian utility Statkraft AS. “It will take down returns, of course, but oil companies also have return requirements of a similar size to us, so the whole industry is dependent on finding an economic balance here.”

Orsted, the top developer of offshore wind farms, said returns on capital employed fell to 7.5% in the first quarter, down from 11% in the same period a year earlier. Vestas, another wind developer, saw returns fall to 12.2% from 17.4% in the first quarter of 2020. Investors will keep an eye on any signs of diminishing returns when the two Danish firms report this week.

Siemens Gamesa lost 314 million euros ($369 million) in the three months ended in June. The Spanish developer was wrong-footed this year by the surging price of steel, which accounts for most of a turbine’s weight.

Even Equinor ASA, an oil and gas company that has become a major developer of wind farms, has had to tame investor expectations, projecting returns from its renewable projects at 4% to 8%, down from the 6% to 10% forecast last year.

Solar Modules

“If you look at renewables -- just renewables, nothing else attached to it -- you reach a stage where the returns are going to plateau and probably go down a little bit in the next years because of increased competition,” Francesco Starace, CEO of Italian utility Enel SpA, said on Bloomberg TV. “Our view is that the strategy of an integrated utility is a much safer position.”

Solar module prices are up over 16% in 2021, while the cost of key commodities like steel and copper have surged this year. That’s forced wind turbine makers to raise prices for their customers. The cost of shipping, which skyrocketed as the world emerges from the global pandemic, has also added to the long list of challenges facing renewable energy companies.

Producers of green power tend to strike deals to sell the electricity they produce before construction begins. While that strategy helps them obtain financing, it may also leave them exposed to swings in the cost of materials.

“Our industry is vulnerable,” said Michel Letellier, CEO of Innergex Renewable Energy Inc., which builds renewable power projects in Canada and the U.S. “Unfortunately you get caught because your costs to build are so high and you can’t go back to your customer and increase the price.”

Renewables Investment

To be sure, there are still no signs that the squeeze in profits is reducing investment. A record $174 billion was spent on solar, offshore wind and other green technologies and companies in the first half of the year, according to BloombergNEF. That’s 1.8% more than in the same period a year earlier.

Still, there’s concern some projects may get scrapped or be delayed, making it harder to achieve climate goals. Limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels will require wind and solar capacity to grow at a rate five times higher between 2020 and 2050 than the average from the last three years, according to the International Energy Agency.

“There’s been a restart of the industry,” said Xavier Barbaro, CEO of French renewable energy firm Neoen. “It may sometimes destroy some value of some of our projects, but that didn’t lead us to abandon any project. I think some people that had very little buffer are now abandoning some projects, or postponing them as much as they can.”

 Nfld. & Labrador

Climate change report shows need for 'downward shift' in N.L. oil industry, prof says

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'We need to make sure we're reading it,' says Angela Carter

CBC News · Posted: Aug 10, 2021

A university professor with a focus on oil and the climate crisis says Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore industry needs to transition. (Paul Daly/Canadian Press)

A United Nations report released on Monday sounded the alarm on what it's calling "irreversible" climate impacts and a "code red for humanity," and a Newfoundland professor researching oil and the climate crisis says people need to pay attention. 

University of Waterloo professor Angela Carter, originally from Conception Bay South, told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show on Tuesday the the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is the best independent knowledge on climate science in the world. 

"We need to make sure we're reading it, paying attention to it and adapting it in terms of how policy makers are responding to this," Carter said. 

Carter said the latest report is a summary of more than 14,000 scientific publications that's peer-reviewed work vetted by hundreds of scientists. 

The report blames human activity for being the cause of heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, extreme storms and sea-level rise.

Carter said what surprised her in the report is the urgency coming from the science community for immediate solutions.

"This is happening. We created it as humans by the greenhouse gases that we have been producing. This report is underscoring that we have altered our climate and we have altered it in every corner of the world," she said. 

"The impacts of the change that we have created are now unfolding with terrible consequences."

N.L. oil and gas

As a province, Newfoundland and Labrador relies heavily on revenue generated from its offshore oil and gas industry to keep its lights on. A report released earlier this year by the premier's economic recovery team recommended the province stop depending on oil with further recommendations on transitioning to a green economy. 

Carter said no one is suggesting there can be an immediate end to using fossil fuels, but pointed to IPCC vice-chair Ko Barrett on Monday saying "unprecedented transformational change is needed."

"Those are strong words," said Carter. "No one is saying we need to stop using or producing oil, or gas or coal tomorrow, but what is very clear is that there must be a downward shift of the production and the use of those fossil fuels."

Carter said the most pressing question now facing the government of Newfoundland and Labrador is what it will do about winding down a sector that has been financially beneficial for decades. 

University of Waterloo professor Angela Carter says Monday's report from the United Nations needs to be considered by policy makers responding to the climate crisis. (CBC)

She said Newfoundland and Labrador's oil sector is part of the global climate problem, ranking among the highest large final emitters in Canada in 2017, and the province needs to take responsibility. Carter said the province cannot explore oil fields further for new reserves and subsidies given to that sector need to be redirected to developing sectors that are climate-safe. 

"We can't hide behind oil companies' wishful thinking that our oil is somehow clean. However we might extract it, it's being extracted to be burned somewhere with a terrible climate cost that the IPCC is referencing for us today," said Carter.

"What we have on the books right now is the commitment to increase production of oil off our coast. In fact that's been a key talking point for our provincial government now for several governments."

National economy

Federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan told CBC News the IPCC report reminds people they're on "red alert."

With Canada the fourth-largest oil-producing nation in the world, O'Regan said, the country is facing a big challenge. 

"It's the biggest part of our national economy," he said. He noted Canada has set a target of reducing emissions by 30 to 40 per cent by 2030.

"But the same people, the same infrastructure, the same expertise that made us the fourth-biggest producers of oil and gas in the world are also the same people, and the same infrastructure that can turn this around and lower our emissions.… But we got to get at it urgently."

• UN sounds alarm on 'irreversible' climate impacts, but offers hope

• $392M shortfall for N.L., as oil-related revenue drops

Newfoundland and Labrador Environment Minister Bernard Davis told CBC Radio's On The Go he's happy the province is working on its environment and climate change action plan. 

Davis said small changes from the general public can have an impact on supporting the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. 

When asked about backing future oil exploration in Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore industry, Davis said the industry is still going to exist "for a little while" but the transition away from it is "important for us."

"We're going to put practices in place to … even more reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That's our goal, that's what we're working with [the] industry on," he said. 

"At the end of the day I understand that tomorrow would be great to switch from all of those things, but the economy has to survive and one of the things we're working in is balancing that approach."

Tom Mulcair: Climate looms large on list of Trudeau's broken promises

With the likelihood of a federal election, the prime minister's failure has been noted by voters whose generation will have to try to deal with the dire consequences of climate change.

Author of the article: Tom Mulcair • Special to Montreal Gazette
Publishing date: Aug 10, 2021 • 1 day ago • 

Just over a month after being elected prime minister in 2015, Justin Trudeau went to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and proclaimed: “Canada is back.” PHOTO BY ALAIN JOCARD /AFP/Getty Images files
Article content

Canadians are getting ready to go to the polls for the second time in less than two years, and the result will have a determining effect on the economy, the environment and social programs.

Justin Trudeau has followed the pattern of previous Liberal governments: governing by polling and focus groups, and achieving very little in the process.


Scenes from the historic climate march in Montreal on Sept. 27, 2019

Jean Chrétien will be remembered more for something he didn’t do (get us embroiled in the U.S. war in Iraq) than any signal accomplishment that has lasting historical significance.

During an election campaign, you learn a lot about the other side.

In my run as leader of the NDP in 2015, we heard that the Liberals were doing a new focus group every day. It showed as they veered from one policy announcement to the other with very little ideological consistency. The only common thread was the desire to tell people what they wanted to hear. It works. They won.

Trudeau stole a page from our playbook and announced (hundreds of times) that 2015 would be the last election under the unfair “first past the post” system. Once the election was over and they’d formed government, a lengthy set of hearings concluded that a fairer system would include some form of proportional representation. Trudeau tore up the report because it wouldn’t be good for the Liberals to change the system. He was proven right in 2019 when the Conservatives under Andrew Scheer actually got more votes than Trudeau, but the Liberals still won based on that unfair system he’d promised to change.

Whether it was smaller local issues like restoring door-to-door mail delivery to communities where it had been cut by Stephen Harper’s government (Trudeau broke that one right away) or big promises like ending boil-water advisories on reserves during their first five years (cheques are now being sent out to try to compensate for that failure), the Liberals have a history of promising big to win, then breaking those promises once they’re in office.

Right after being elected, Trudeau went to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and proclaimed: “Canada is back.” Then he came back to Canada and announced that he was sticking with Harper’s targets and timeline.

This week’s UN report lays out in stark terms the extreme danger that human-caused climate change is creating for life on our planet. Trudeau’s failure has been duly noted by those voters whose generation will have to try to deal with the consequences.

Indeed, polls are showing that younger, more progressive voters are increasingly turning away from Trudeau. In the past, the Liberals have often been able to use the threat of a Conservative victory to convince hesitant progressives not to “split the vote.” With the very low polling numbers of Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives, that threat won’t work this time.

Trudeau’s history of broken promises and the self-destruction of the Greens have provided an interesting opening for Jagmeet Singh’s NDP. The increasingly strange rule of Jason Kenney in Alberta has given Singh hope that he can surf on the resurgent popularity of Rachel Notley’s provincial NDP. In the seat-rich Greater Toronto Area, Singh has built a solid following that extends beyond the NDP’s traditional base, bringing in many voters from ethnocultural communities who often feel taken for granted by the Liberals.

But it’s Singh’s own province of B.C. that may decide whether Trudeau gets his much-coveted majority.

Against a backdrop of heat domes and forest fires fuelled by global warming, climate activist Avi Lewis will be running as part of Singh’s team. He is emblematic of a refusal to compromise on this vital issue.

Lewis’s views may cause some grief to NDP organizers elsewhere, but in B.C. he’ll be seen as part of a bulwark against more climate failures, if Trudeau can be denied a majority.

Tom Mulcair, a former leader of the federal NDP, served as minister of the environment in the Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest.

 Belarus Struggles to Circumvent Western Sanctions Against Its Oil Industry

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 18 Issue: 127

By: Mateusz Kubiak

August 10, 2021 04:56 PM Age: 1 day

On July 29, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka appointed Mikhail Kostechko to serve as the new general director of the country’s main oil products trader, Belorusskaya Neftyanaya Kompaniya (BNK), and ordered him to maintain foreign market share regardless of the activity of the “Western scumbags” (President.gov.by, July 29). Undoubtedly, Lukashenka was referring to the sanctions recently imposed by the United States, European Union and the United Kingdom that had significantly affected Belarus’s oil sector (see EDM, June 30). The Belarusian side is experimenting with many different actions to try to mitigate the effects of these restrictive measures; however, it seems it will not be able to fully circumvent the international penalties. This is particularly the case because the Western sanctions continue to be expanded, as was illustrated on August 9, when the US, Canadian and UK governments imposed further sanctions packages on the one-year anniversary of the start of the Belarusian political crisis.

In general, Minsk’s attempted responses are currently aimed at both circumventing the Western sanctions against the Belarusian oil industry as well as making it more difficult for analysts to track the restrictive measures’ effects. First, the Belarusian authorities have removed open access to governmental customs data regarding oil products and potash exports (Interfax, July 13), and they likewise hid the statistics concerning the Naftan refinery’s production (the plant is under US sanctions) (Gorod214.by, July 29). Second, Belarus changed the shareholder structure of targeted companies (or their subsidiaries, due to the US Office of Foreign Assets Control’s “50 percent rule”) to limit their sanctions exposure. The starkest example of the latter tactic may have been the recent presidential order to withdraw Belarus’s international oil products trader BNK from Belneftekhim’s indirect control, as the latter had fallen under US sanctions in April of this year (Pravo.by, July 17). Third, the Belarusians are also founding brand new companies to replace previously operating entities. It took Mikalay Varabyey (one of the Lukashenka’s deputies, who controls the EU-designated oil products trader Novaya Neftyanaya Kompaniya, or NNK) only three days to establish a new company—OOO Nordstar—presumably to circumvent the sanctions’ effects (T.me/nexta_tv, July 25).

Moreover, it appears Minsk has also managed to informally secure continuous crude oil supplies to Naftan, despite the secondary sanctions looming over the companies involved. The basis for that inference is that the refinery has not been shut down since the revocation of the US sanctions suspension in April. By their technical nature, refining plants cannot be frequently stopped and restarted as these facilities need to maintain a specific minimum level of capacity utilization. But Belarus would not have been able to provide Naftan with enough crude based from indigenous sources—domestic petroleum production is small and is being exported to Germany. Therefore, even though official Russian customs data and Transneft exports schedules indicate a halt in supplies to Naftan (TASS, August 2), deliveries from Russia are most likely still being realized in some informal way (in contrast, non-Russian deliveries to Naftan would not be economically viable for Belarus and would be easily traceable). This presumed murky scheme involving Russian supplies might involve dedicated intermediaries, false certificates of origin, etc.

Although the Belarusian authorities evidently see the Western sectoral sanctions as a threat to the country’s oil industry, serious obstacles are likely to prevent a full mitigation of the associated economic risks. The largest concern for Minsk is probably the fact that the EU’s sectoral sanctions include a ban on any new contracts for the import or transfer of all Belarusian petroleum products (see EDM, June 30). That particular restriction will be especially difficult to circumvent, as the sanctions provisions clearly state that the ban relates both to fuels of Belarusian origin and to ones from third countries but that have been exported from Belarus (Eur-lex.europa.eu, June 24). Effectively, even if Belarusians try to sell their petroleum products as of different origin (e.g. Russian), they would have to do that via Russia or (much less probably) Ukraine. However, such a scheme should then be easy to spot for the EU countries’ intelligence services, and it could make those exports no longer profitable for the original Belarusian producers.

The second apprehension from Minsk’s point of view is that the Western countries and the EU itself are still further expanding their restrictive measures lists. Illustratively, yesterday, August 9—i.e., on the one-year anniversary of Belarus’s fraudulent presidential election, which sparked mass street protests and bloody crackdowns by the authorities—the US, Canada and the UK announced additional sanctions. The penalties include several new US designations aimed at persons linked to Lukashenka’s regime (Treasury.gov, August 9); while the British and Canadian measures bring those governments in line with the previously mentioned EU ban on importing or transferring Belarusian petroleum products (Gov.uk, Canada.ca, August 9). All of these new sanctions provisions/designations add to Belarus’s economic problems, further reducing its room for maneuver on the international stage.

The Bills Are Coming Due in the American Petrostate of North Dakota

Some folks got rich quick in the fracking boom, but now they're concerned about the damage to their land and their water.

By Charles P. Pierce

Aug 9, 2021


KEN CEDENOGETTY IMAGES

There are times when it is Tiger Beat On The Potomac, and there are times when it’s just Politico. Most often, the latter incidents occur in Politico Magazine, which has been a strong product ever since its launch, its early call on DeSantis v. COVID notwithstanding. One of these occasions can be found in Tom Haines’s lucid examination of how North Dakota is handling the inevitable—and highly predictable—consequences of having declared itself a petrostate a few years back. Both Dakotas pretty much gave themselves over to the extraction industry over the last couple of decades. It was there that fracking got to be the hot new thing. Now, the bills are coming due, and crows doth sit upon the drilling rigs.

Fracking has also accelerated life on the surface. Some landowners have made millions of dollars from selling the rights to oil beneath their land to major corporations. And struggling agricultural crossroads, including Watford City, the county seat 20 miles southeast of Novak’s farm, have found new life as boomtowns. During the past decade, a new high school and hospital, and housing developments sprawling from Main Street into the prairie, have arisen to serve the more than 10,000 people who have come from afar to work in the McKenzie County oil field.

But installing an industry atop an agricultural zone has brought less-heralded changes, too, including an elaborate system to deal with the saltwater, which is actually a polluted mix of naturally occurring brine, hydrocarbons, radioactive materials and more. Billions of gallons of it are produced by oil drilling and pumping each year.

Haines begins his story with an account of how one of the saltwater tanks got hit by lightning, whereupon it burst, sending its toxic contents spilling down washes and gullies and into a river, a lake, and one farmer’s groundwater. This was not an unusual occurrence.

The damage to [Larry] Novak’s land, while dramatic, isn’t uncommon in the North Dakota oil fields. More than 50 saltwater spills happen each year in McKenzie County, when tanker trucks crash, pipelines leak, or well pads or disposal sites catch fire or otherwise malfunction. Many spills are contained on well pads and at disposal sites. But others drain into fields, farmyards and roadways. Novak worried about his pasture, a water source for cows, deer, pheasants and more. And he feared the cumulative impact of so many saltwater spills in a county that is home to hundreds of streams and springs, and where farmers and ranchers often rely on water wells for livestock and themselves.

This, of course, puts the residents of the oil-rich state in the same bind as the poor folks down in Cancer Alley in Louisiana: What do you want, your job or your drinking water? Of course, in North Dakota, a lot of people got rich before being forced into that choice.

But today, even Republicans in deep-red McKenzie County are raising questions. One morning during my visit this May, I met Karolin Jappe, McKenzie County Emergency Manager, at her office in the county courthouse. She sat at her desk in a red-white-and-blue blouse, with a red-white-and-blue lanyard around her neck. She had a Trump-Pence 2020 coffee mug reading ‘Keep America Great.’ As coordinator of local response efforts, many of which come from volunteer fire companies, Jappe is often on scene after a tanker truck crashes and dumps wastewater, or a saltwater disposal site gets hit by lightning (which can happen several times a year), or a saltwater pipeline bursts a leak. The walls of Jappe’s office are covered with diagrams of well pads and county road maps. Next to her desk, she keeps stocks of extra-large sanitary wipes and emergency spill kits.

“I love the oil field,” Jappe told me. “But saltwater is my enemy.”

She is especially concerned about the damage that can come if pipes injecting saltwater a mile underground were to leak. She told me she is not confident underground aquifers, let alone fields and pastures impacted by surface spills, are safe. She worries that residents don’t have enough protection under current oil-field oversight by state agencies that can’t keep pace with development.
“We’re their lab rats,” Jappe said.

It’s easy to dismiss the people in Haines’ story as suckers who went for the quick buck. But, in the 1980s, American farmers were in such awful shape that Willie Nelson and Neil Young started an annual benefit concert for them. So along come the oil companies wanting to drill, and offering bags of cash for the right to do so.

 It’s awfully glib to say that the farmers should have refused it , especially with foreclosures and bankruptcy auctions happening every couple of hectares down the road. Now, though, these bills are coming due. Haines has caught the beginnings of what may be a serious political uprising by people of the land against the power of the industry that made some of them rich. Haines recalls a speech given by Art Link, one of the state’s few Democratic governors in this half-century.

Link, a McKenzie County native who is buried in Alexander, just eight miles south of the lightning-strike saltwater spill on Larry Novak’s land, gave what was then considered a defining speech for the state’s ideals. In it, he said he supported development of coal mining in the southern part of the state, but only in a way that protected land and water. “And when we are through with that and the landscape is quiet again …” Link said, “let those who follow and repopulate the land be able to say, ‘our grandparents did their job well. The land is as good and, in some cases, better than before.’”

Nigeria’s north needs jobs, not oil

This is not the time for oil exploration, especially when it risks further marginalising the country’s most vulnerable region.

10 AUG 2021 / BY TENIOLA TAYO


Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Bill was passed on 1 July, potentially ending a 13-year stalemate since it was first introduced in 2008. It is expected to radically reform Nigeria’s oil and gas industry and ensure that its citizens benefit more from its oil wealth. However some provisions appear to contradict this objective.

One of these is the allocation of oil revenues to exploration in the country’s northern region.

Natural resources can serve as a good base for growth and prosperity. But the political economy of oil in Nigeria means that production in the north may worsen the already deplorable security, political and socio-economic situation. It’s also unlikely to provide the substantial number of jobs urgently needed to drive stabilisation in the region.

The bill stipulates that 10% of rents on petroleum prospecting licences and petroleum mining leases and 30% of oil revenue collected by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation be allocated to a Frontier Exploration Fund. This fund was created to finance state-backed oil exploration in areas referred to as the Frontier Basins. The Frontier Basins include the Lake Chad, Gongola, Anambra, Sokoto, Dahomey and Bida basins and the Benue Trough, all primarily situated in Nigeria’s north.

Nigeria’s Frontier Basins



(click on the map for the full size image)


In February 2020, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, announced that one billion barrels of crude oil had been discovered in Gongola Basin in Nigeria’s north-east. This announcement was met with public scepticism.

Nigeria’s mismanagement of its oil sector and its reliance on crude oil exports and petroleum imports have been central to several political and economic struggles. Rather than experiencing economic prosperity, the southern oil-producing Niger Delta region has suffered environmental degradation, worsened health outcomes and the erosion of livelihoods. It’s also endured violence and political instability, with the emergence of armed groups since 2004.

Given the Niger Delta situation, it can be argued that increased state-backed investment in oil exploration is the last thing Nigeria’s north needs – contrary to the proposition that it will drive industrialisation.

The northern region performs poorly on almost all human development indicators compared to the south. The World Bank reports that 87% of Nigeria’s poor live in its northern region – about half of them in the north-west. National Bureau of Statistics data shows that seven out of 10 states with the highest unemployment and underemployment rates are in the north. These challenges extend to issues like maternal and child mortality, literacy rates, and general life outcomes.

Nigeria’s northern region performs poorly on almost all human development indicators compared to the south

The disparity between the north and south has also affected the prevalence of conflict. The north-east is the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, which has reportedly claimed an estimated 350 000 lives to date. Criminal gang activities have also escalated in the north-west and north-central. The north-central has seen the highest incidence of deadly clashes between herders and farmers. The region has also been disproportionately affected by the country’s growing kidnapping crisis.

The challenges the government faces in resolving the conflict in the north have made it apparent that the root causes of socio-economic deprivation and poor state presence need to be addressed.

As one example, efforts have been launched to stabilise the north-east, which forms part of the Lake Chad Basin. At the core of these efforts are the restoration of livelihoods and the creation of new livelihood sources. Violent extremists capitalise on these high rates of employment during recruitment drives.

Therefore what the north needs is jobs. Crude oil production, being capital-intensive, cannot fill this role. Instead it could lead to the loss of livelihoods through the pollution of agricultural lands and fishing sites. Oil exploration in Nigeria’s north may only increase its developmental gap with the south. It may also worsen the security situation by raising the stakes for resource capture between the state and violent extremists looking to take over the region.

Resources should be invested in securing lives and livelihoods and figuring out how to create jobs

Changes in the global oil industry, driven by climate change mitigation, also create a case against long-term investment. Already, one of Nigeria’s major oil producers has expressed that its operations in the country are no longer suited to its green strategy. The country’s tough regulatory space is an added disincentive for foreign investment.

Nigeria’s dependence on oil exports as the major source of government revenue and foreign exchange consistently puts the country in difficult economic situations. Ninety-seven percent of the government’s revenue was spent on debt servicing in 2020 because of the COVID-19-driven decline in the demand for oil.

Nigeria should be on the path of industrialisation – focusing less on the production and export of commodities like crude oil and more on manufactured goods, for example. One way to do this is to transfer resources from the oil sector to more productive sectors such as agriprocessing that will provide employment. Agriprocessing for export and domestic consumption has the potential to employ more people at lower skill levels than required by the oil industry.

There’s a need for investment towards resolving the problems obstructing basic and advanced food production. This includes inadequate storage that leads to significant losses of agricultural output and processing and transport facilities and infrastructure. Continent-wide trade projects like the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement should be used – Nigeria should explore ways to embed northern producers into national and regional value chains. Insecurity is one of the biggest threats to the region’s agricultural activities.

Nigeria’s leaders shouldn’t be betting on oil at the risk of further marginalising its most vulnerable region

The focus for Nigeria’s oil sector should be to improve efficiency, curb corruption, and find ways to move up the production value chain. This isn’t the time for the country’s leaders to bet on oil at the risk of further marginalising its most vulnerable region – especially since there is no evidence that the government has learnt lessons from the Niger Delta.

Instead, resources should be invested in securing lives and livelihoods in the region and figuring out how to create sufficient jobs for its population. This would be the right kind of attention the north needs from the federal government.

Teniola Tayo, Research Officer, Lake Chad Basin Programme, ISS Dakar

This article is funded by the United Nations Development Programme and the government of the Netherlands.

In South Africa, Daily Maverick has exclusive rights to re-publish ISS Today articles. 

AUSTRALIA

Beetaloo Basin fracking: court bid launched to stop Coalition giving company $21m in grants for project

Action alleges federal minister’s grants decision for Northern Territory basin plan was unlawful and failed to ensure ‘proper’ use of public funds

Demonstrators outside of Empire Energy offices in Sydney in May oppose the company’s fracking plans for the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin. 

Photograph: Loren Elliott/Reuters

Christopher Knaus
@knausc
Thu 29 Jul 2021

Environmental groups will go to court in an attempt to stop resources minister Keith Pitt handing $21m in grants to a gas company seeking to frack the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory.

The Environment Centre Northern Territory (ECNT) and the Environmental Defenders Office on Thursday launched urgent proceedings in the federal court alleging the minister’s decision to award the grants to gas company Imperial Oil and Gas, a subsidiary of Empire Energy, was unlawful.


Australia’s reliance on gas exports questioned as Japan winds down fossil fuel power

According to court documents, it will be alleged that the minister failed to ensure the expenditure was a “proper” use of money and “efficient, effective, economical and ethical”, as required under public governance laws.

The case will argue the minister failed to consider the potential increased risk of climate change if the Beetaloo Basin is opened up to gas companies. It also argues the minister failed to examine the risk of publicly-funding gas projects, when the world is reducing fossil fuel use.

ECNT co-director Dr Kirsty Howey said the groups wanted to see “taxpayers money used wisely and with all the consequences being fully considered”.

“Granting $21 million to a private fossil fuel company should only be done after all care is taken to examine the impacts on climate change, the environment and the community,” Howey said.

Opening up Beetaloo to gas development is part of the Morrison government’s gas-led recovery plan. The Coalition set up the Beetaloo Cooperative Drilling Program to incentivise exploration in the basin, and the first three grants went to an Empire Energy subsidiary.

The groups are now asking for an undertaking that the money will not be transferred to Empire prior to the court deciding on the legality of the expenditure.

The Environmental Defenders Office chief executive, David Morris, said the case was about “whether the proper process has been followed”.

“Our client will argue that before making a decision to grant these funds, the relevant minister needed to make reasonable inquiries into a range of risks, including climate and economic risks, that may arise from the expenditure,” he said.

“We will argue on behalf of our client that the federal government did not make these reasonable inquiries, and thus the minister’s decision is invalid.”


Beetaloo Basin fracking plan: gas companies linked to tax secrecy havens and Liberal party, inquiry told

Pitt described the case as another example of “activists using the courts with baseless allegations to try and delay nationally important resources projects”.

“This latest case of green ‘lawfare’ declared on legitimate projects threatens to delay an estimated 6,000 new jobs being delivered for the Northern Territory along with around $37 billion on economic activity,” he said.

“Grants are provided to companies that possess the highly specialised skills to meet the challenges of developing the Basin as determined by an expert assessment panel.”

He said the grants were awarded in accordance with the grant guidelines.

Empire Energy was approached for a response.

Separately, a Senate inquiry into fracking the Beetaloo on Wednesday heard evidence about Empire and other grant recipients.

Empire’s chair is Paul Espie, a frequent Liberal donor and chair of the Liberal-aligned Menzies Research Centre.

Liberal senator Jane Hume has previously described Espie in parliament as a doyen of the party.

The company’s managing director, Alex Underwood, told a Senate inquiry on Wednesday that he had met with the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, and praised the grants program in March, just prior to the grant guidelines being released.

The company has denied it lobbied Taylor to obtain grants or that Espie’s links to the party played any role whatsoever.

During Wednesday’s hearing senators also heard evidence about two other companies seeking to exploit the basin.

The not-for-profit group Publish What You Pay Australia investigated the corporate structures of both Sweetpea Petroleum and Falcon Oil and Gas Australia, finding both had links to the tax secrecy jurisdiction of Delaware.

Falcon, it told the inquiry, was linked to Russian plutocrat and Vladimir Putin ally Viktor Vekselberg, who held a 16% stake in its parent company.

Beetaloo Basin fracking plan: gas companies linked to tax secrecy havens and Liberal party, inquiry told

One company given grants worth $21m for drilling despite not having Northern Territory environmental approvals, senators hear

A protest outside Empire Energy’s offices in Sydney in May against the company’s fracking plans for Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory. Photograph: Loren Elliott/Reuters

Christopher Knaus
Wed 28 Jul 2021 

The gas companies seeking to frack the Beetaloo Basin have been accused of sharing links to tax secrecy jurisdictions, the Liberal party and Russian plutocrats, a Senate inquiry has heard.

Opening up the Northern Territory to fracking is a key part of the Morrison government’s “gas-led recovery”, and the commonwealth is incentivising exploration through the $50m Beetaloo cooperative drilling program.

Earlier this month, the first three grants from that program were given to a subsidiary of Empire Energy, a company chaired by frequent Liberal donor Paul Espie. Espie is the also chair of the Liberal-aligned Menzies Research Centre and has been described by Liberal senator Jane Hume as a doyen of the party.

A Senate inquiry into fracking in the Beetaloo Basin on Wednesday heard that Empire Energy was given the grants, worth $21m, to drill at three sites in the Beetaloo, despite still waiting on the necessary environmental approvals from the Northern Territory government.


Coalition granted $21m to Liberal party donor to frack Beetaloo Basin

The inquiry also heard that Empire executives met with the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, on 10 March, prior to the announcement of the grant guidelines later that month.

“From memory, I may have told the minister that I believed it was a good policy and that it might incentivise an acceleration of activity,” Empire’s managing director, Alex Underwood, said. “But I can assure you there was no mention of seeking any kind of influence over the process.”

Asked by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young whether he believed Espie’s connections with the Liberal party helped the company obtain the grants, Underwood responded: “No, I do not. They played no role whatsoever in our applications for these grants. We follow due and proper process at all times.”

In October last year, the company invited Taylor to visit its first Beetaloo well, paying for a charter flight and a dinner. Espie was on the charter flight, the inquiry heard.

Empire was also asked about one of its larger shareholders, a company named Global Energy and Resources Development. The company was registered in the Caribbean and associated with (Michael) Tang Yan Tian, who the inquiry heard is the subject of an arrest warrant in Hong Kong relating to alleged insider trading.

Underwood said Empire, which is publicly-listed, did not have a good relationship with Global Energy and Resources Development.

“I have no control over whether or not that entity chooses to hold shares in our company,” he said.

Earlier, the inquiry heard about two other companies that are seeking to exploit the Beetaloo Basin: Sweetpea Petroleum and Falcon Oil and Gas Australia.

Both companies have been investigated by the not-for-profit group Publish What You Pay Australia.

It found that a Russian plutocrat and ally of Vladimir Putin, Viktor Vekselberg, held a 16% stake in Falcon’s parent company. One of its subsidiaries is registered in Delaware, a known tax secrecy jurisdiction.

The group’s spokesman, Clancy Moore, told the inquiry: “I would strongly urge the commonwealth not to be giving public money to companies with opaque ownership and worrying concerns around the ultimate owners, such as Falcon Oil and Gas.”


‘The living heart of Australia’: fracking plans threaten fragile channel country

Sweetpea Petroleum, the inquiry heard, appeared to be owned by a US investment firm that had recently created a shell company, Longview Petroleum LLC, in Delaware.

Parts of the corporate structure were registered to a two-story yellow brick building in downtown Wilmington, which is home to more than 285,000 companies, the inquiry heard.

Moore told the inquiry that Sweetpea’s parent company appeared not to have paid a small tax bill in Delaware.

“I would take the view that a company whose parent company appears not able to pay the few hundreds of dollars of tax to remain of good standing in Delaware should not be receiving valuable government revenue under the program at this stage,” he said.

Former Darwin lord mayor and Protect Country Alliance spokesman Graeme Sawyer told the inquiry that the industry had effectively captured the territory government.

“A former NT chief minister is now a consultant for the oil and gas industry, key government senior staff are people from the industry, and key people from the bureaucracy and advisory positions leave to work in the industry,” he said. “The revolving door is in full operation in the NT.”

Sawyer also said there was no informed consent from traditional owners in the area.

“There is no informed consent about fracking and the family groups that I have spoken to at length have recently reinforced their opposition at a meeting in Darwin in June. There was about 45 traditional owners there and I’d really encourage you to talk to them in detail about that notion of informed consent.”

Empire said it went to great lengths to ensure informed consent was obtained from traditional owners. It also said its projects would deliver significant economic benefits to the local region.