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Ed Rendell
A breaking investigation by EnergyWire appears to connect the dots between shadowy lobbying efforts by shale gas fracking company Range Resources, and the Obama EPA’s decision to shut down its high-profile lawsuit against Range for allegedly contaminating groundwater in Weatherford, TX.
At the center of the scandal sits former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, the former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the National Governors’ Association.
Just weeks ago, the Associated Press (AP) broke news that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shut down the high-profile Texas lawsuit and buried an accompanying scientific report obtained during the lawsuit’s discovery phase in March 2012.
That confidential report, contracted out to hydrogeologist Geoffrey Thyne by the Obama EPA, concluded that methane found in the drinking water of a nearby resident could have originated from Range Resources’ nearby shale gas fracking operation.
Range Resources – which admitted at an industry conference that it utilizes psychological warfare (PSYOPs) tacticson U.S. citizens – launched an aggressive defense against the EPA’s allegations that the company might be responsible for contaminating resident Steve Lipsky’s groundwater.
AP explained in its investigation that resident Steve Lipsky, who has a wife and three young children, had “reported his family’s drinking water had begun ‘bubbling’ like champagne” and that his “well…contains so much methane that the…water [is] pouring out of a garden hose [that] can be ignited.”
In response, the Obama EPA ordered Range to halt fracking. Range was non-cooperative every step of the way, refusing to comply with the legal dictates of the discovery phase and not complying with the censored water sample study implicating the company with groundwater contamination.
The new twist exposed by EnergyWire‘s Mike Soraghan is that Ed Rendell, acting “as a spokesman for Range” Resources, “proposed certain terms” to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Exactly what was said remains unclear, but the EPA ultimately dropped its case against Range.
Over a thousand pages of emails obtained by EnergyWire “offer behind-the-scenes insights in a case that has come to be seen as a major retreat by the agency amid aggressive industry push-back and support for natural gas drilling by President Obama.”
Rendell: Range’s Chosen One or Rogue Lobbyist?
The emails obtained by EnergyWire reveal that Rendell intervened directly with Administrator Jackson at some point in 2011, presumablyRendell said he was there “as a spokesman for Range.”
According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Rendell took almost $200,000 from the oil and gas industry in the run-up to his 2006 electoral victory and while governor, he described himself as the industry’s “best ally.”
Upon completion of his gubernatorial stint, Rendell immediately fled to the private sector. He currently works both as an Operating Partner at Element Partners and as a Senior Advisor at Greenhill & Co., Inc.
Element Partners describes itself as a firm that, among other things, provides “services to the energy, industrial, and environmental markets” and “capital for growth, acquisitions, shareholder liquidity, recapitalizations, and buyouts.” It provides investment capital for numerous oil and gas industry clients.
Greenhill is a similar firm, describing itself as a “leading independent investment bank focused on providing financial advice on significant mergers, acquisitions, restructurings, financings and capital raisings to corporations, partnerships, institutions and governments.” Like Element, Greenhall also provides investment capital for numerous oil and gas corporations.
Prior to the completion of Rendell’s final term as governor, three of his former aides abruptly left their jobs to work as shale gas industry lobbyists. Their names: Kenneth Scott Roy, Barbara Sexton, and Sarah Battisti.
Sexton, Rendell’s former Executive Deputy Secretary of the PA Department Environmental Protection (DEP), transitioned into a gig working as a lobbyist for industry giant Chesapeake Energy. Battisti, another of Rendell’s cadre of Deputy Chiefs-of-Staff, became a lobbyist for BG (British Gas) Group.
The third, K. Scott Roy, wound up as a lobbyist for Range Resources as Vice President for Government Relations and Regulatory Affairs.
Is Scott Roy the Bridge Between Ridge, Rendell, Range and MSC?
In his Range Resources bio, K. Scott Roy describes his former position as Ed Rendell’s “top advisor.” His official title was Executive Deputy Chief of Staff in the Office of the Governor. Roy also serves on the Executive Board of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the gas industry’s aggressive lobbying arm in statehouses located within the Marcellus Shale basin. Prior to serving in the Rendell administration, Roy worked in the office of former PA Governor Tom Ridge, who went on to serve as “strategic advisor” to the Marcellus Shale Coalition in 2012.
It is as yet unclear what role Scott Roy played as one of Range’s hired guns to fend off the EPA lawsuit. Might he have contacted his old boss Ed Rendell for help pressuring the Obama administration to lay off Range? It seems a reasonable question to ask.
Range Denies Rendell Worked on its Behalf
Range Resources spokesman Matt Pitzarella (of PSYOPs revelation notoriety) denied any connection between the company and Rendell.
“I don’t know the extent of the governor’s involvement in energy-related matters, but he never functioned as a spokesperson of Range,” Pitzarella told EnergyWire.
Given the ties that bind Rendell to Range, though, the words “plausible deniability” come to mind.
Coming full circle, it’s important to remember the human side of this story. Lipsky’s family now pays $1,000 per month for water deliveries, with life for them changed forever.
“This has been total hell,” Lipsky told the AP. “It’s been taking a huge toll on my family and on our life.”
Determining the truth of what happened with the EPA’s failed investigation and lawsuit against Range Resources won’t change the Lipskys’ predicament, but it would go a long way towards identifying the grasp of the oil industry’s tentacles on Washington.
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Photo by Center for American Progress under Creative Commons license
16 Comments
Good work again Steve.
All of the above must include bribery, corruption, and forsaking our future environment to maximize profits in the present. Obama on the side of the people will ruin his children’s future. Good Job Brownie II.
He’s known as “Fast Eddie” to those who remember the early days.
This Quisling Democrat is quite busy. He had to take some time off from advocating raising Medicare age to 67 and Social Security to 70 to do this.
How about some jail time for these crooks?
Good investigative work. Rendell proves once again that he’s a despicable human being.
The law would have to change on the Federal side of things. The Cheney Oil and Big Energy Giveaway and Liability Protection “Reform” Act of 2005 ensures that those who are plundering our nation’s land and waters for profit are given the go ahead. And to hell with the consequences.
It’s all good, after all. If the water, pristine and delicious before the frackers move in, becomes undrinkable, well, the same big corporate interests already have the contracts in place in states like Michigan, to pump up clean water and bottle it and sell it to the public. Ca-Ching! Ca-ching! in ay event!
“Robert Howarth, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, and Anthony Ingraffea, a civil and environmental engineer, reported that fracked wells leak 40 to 60 percent more methane than conventional natural gas wells. When water with its chemical load is forced down a well to break the shale, it flows back up and is stored in large ponds or tanks. But volumes of methane also flow back up the well at the same time and are released into the atmosphere before they can be captured for use. This giant belch of “fugitive methane” can be seen in infrared videos taken at well sites.
Molecule for molecule, methane traps 20 to 25 times more heat in the atmosphere than does carbon dioxide. The effect dissipates faster, however: airborne methane remains in the atmosphere for about 12 years before being scrubbed out by ongoing chemical reactions, whereas CO2 lasts 30 to 95 years. Nevertheless, recent data from the two Cornell scientists and others indicate that within the next 20 years, methane will contribute 44 percent of the greenhouse gas load produced by the U.S. Of that portion, 17 percent will come from all natural gas operations.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fracking-would-emit-methane
President Obama is really something isn’t he?
As if that’s not enough, ALEC connected players have been working to legally tar animal abuse reporters as terrorists, according to this.
Rendell is a fat blowhard who knows where every snack in every greenroom across the country is hidden.
Ed Rendell can also be seen in the documentary, The Art of the Steal, doing dirty deeds to procure a private art collection for a new museum in Philly:
In 1922, Dr. Albert C. Barnes formed a remarkable educational institution around his priceless collection of art, located just five miles outside of Philadelphia. Now, more than 50 years after Barnes’ death, a powerful group of moneyed interests have gone to court for control of the art, and intend to bring it to a new museum in Philadelphia. Standing in their way is a group of Barnes’ former students and his will, which contains strict instructions stating the Foundation should always be an educational institution, and that the paintings may never be removed. Will they succeed, or will a man’s will be broken and one of America’s greatest cultural monuments be destroyed?
The U.S. is exceptional at manufacturing sleazy politicians.
Next up: Keystone XL pipeline approval. Any bets?
Ed is the new ” go to guy ” for the money boys now that Lanny Davis has to lay low until Hillary gets the nomination. There are lots of union fellas in the West, from Denver to Portland, who’d like to see Lanny and Andrew Weiderhorn, etc. still in prison. Where they all belong, including it now appears, Ed of the Talking Head.
It’s been a problem for a long time. “If good men will not come to the service of their Country, others will.” John Adams 1789
We can’t have certification by the EPA that groundwater for the public was contaminated by fracking, can we? Then Obama would have a certain position FOR the public.
That big phony corporate smile on Good Old Boy Ed Rendell’s face is pretty sickening. And he has been running the Democrats? Just disgusting leadership. Public, throw these Democrats out. MSNMC needs to dump Rendell as a contributor if they want us to believe he is a good representative for true Democrats. Hope that Jackson wasn’t forced out by these corrupt assholes. We need to BAN fracking and anything that threatens our right to good health and clean air and water.