Buried in the 700-plus page energy bill currently under debate in the U.S. Senate is a provision that provides hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal loan guarantees for a power project apparently to be built by four former Enron executives. One of the former executives is Thomas White, former head of Enron’s retail and energy trading in California during the energy crisis who later served as President Bush’s Secretary of the Army.
Title XIV, Section 1403(c)(1)(B) of the Senate energy bill provides federal loan guarantees for “a project to produce energy from coal … mined in the western United States using appropriate advanced integrated gasification combined cycle technology that minimizes and offers the potential to sequester carbon dioxide emissions and … shall be located in a western State at an altitude greater than 4,000 feet.”
Public Citizen’s investigation to find out who this loan would benefit narrowed the answer to just one company: Houston-based DKRW Energy. This company, named after the four Enron executives that founded it – Jon C. Doyle, Robert C. Kelly, H. David Ramm and White – formed a subsidiary, Medicine Bow Fuel & Power, to develop a $2.8 billion coal gasification project in Medicine Bow, Wyo. The DKRW facility meets all the criteria required in the legislation: The coal will be supplied from Arch Coal mines neighboring the power facility; it will stuff carbon dioxide emissions into oil wells; and the facility will be located in a western state (Wyoming) at an altitude above 4,000 feet.
“Congress should not be in the business of slipping taxpayer subsidies into large bills to benefit individual corporations, especially executives from a company that perpetrated one of the greatest corporate frauds in American history,” said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.
The federal loan guarantee makes taxpayers responsible for repaying the loan if the company defaults, or if the project ends up not being economically feasible after its construction. The provision states that if an energy company receiving such a loan guarantee defaults on that loan, the bank to which the loan is owed “shall have the right to demand payment of the unpaid [loan] amount from the Secretary” of Energy. Therefore, taxpayers hold all the risk while energy companies reap all the rewards.
“Has Congress learned nothing from the Enron bankruptcy and the fallout from the company’s fraudulent behavior?” said Tyson Slocum, research director for the energy program. “The fact that the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is willing to back these former Enron executives with taxpayers’ money is truly unsettling.”
Unsettling is not the word I would use. Rip Off, Stealing, Full Scale Robbery would be more like it.
You have to read the whole thing. Is there nothing this administration won't give away to their corporate buddies?
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