At the board meeting the auditors told Lay that [Louis] Borget and his traders were manipulating earnings, destroying daily trading records and probably gambling way beyond their limits. ibid.
Lay encouraged his traders to gamble more. ibid.
Enron would become a kind of stock market for natural gas ... Transform energy into financial instruments that could be traded like stocks and bonds. ibid.
Market to market accounting allowed Enron to book future potential profits on the very day the deal was signed. ibid.
‘The insiders had sold off a billion dollars of their stock in the preceding several months.’ ibid. Bill Lerach, attorney for shareholders
Though Lou Pai flew away from Enron with $250 million the divisions he left behind lost a total of nearly $1 billion but Enron managed to disguise that fact. ibid.
Enron mounted a campaign to capture the hearts and minds of stock analysts. ibid.
The game was called Pump and Dump. Top execs would push the stock price up and then cash in their multi-million dollar options. ibid.
Enron had vast natural gas operations all over the world. They had cost billions to build and most were performing terribly. ibid.
The analysts weren’t analysing at all; they were willing to believe virtually anything Enron told them. ibid.
‘Enron has created the market to buy and sell bandwidth like a commodity. Ask why.’ ibid. Enron advert
Enron’s stock soared 34% in two days. ibid.
When Enron announced its latest plan to trade weather, people wondered whether it was good science or science fiction. ibid.
[Andrew] Fastow had to figure out a way to keep the stock price up by hiding the fact that Enron was thirty billion dollars in debt. ibid.
Traders soon discovered that by shutting down power plants they could create artificial shortages that would push prices even higher. ibid.
The year-long energy crisis would cost the state of California $30 billion. ibid.
Ken Lay did have easy access to the Bush administration. ibid.
Jeff Skilling abruptly resigns. ibid.
The SEC launched an investigation when the Wall Street Journal published articles revealing Fastow’s murky deals. Enron announced massive financial restatements. ibid.
Enron’s accounting firm Arthur Anderson had begun destroying its Enron files. On October 23rd Anderson shredded more than one ton of paper. ibid.
Enron declared bankruptcy. ibid.
America experienced its first oil shock. Within days of the cutoff, oil prices rose from $2.90 to $11.65 a barrel; gasoline prices soared from 20 cents to $1.20 a gallon, an all-time high. Across America fuel shortages forced factories to close early and airlines to cancel flights. Filling stations posted signs: Sorry, No Gas Today. If a station did have gasoline, motorists lined up before sunrise to buy a few gallons; owners limited the amount sold to each customer. Motorists grew impatient. Fistfights broke out, and occasionally, gunfire. President Nixon called for America to end its dependence on foreign oil. ‘Let us set as our national goal ... that by the end of this decade we will have developed the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy source,’ he said. We have still not met this goal. Albert Marrin
The universal utilization of water power and its long-distance transmission will supply every household with cheap power and will dispense with the necessity of burning fuel. The struggle for existence being lessened, there should be development along ideal rather than material lines. Nikola Tesla
Compared to coal, which generates almost half the electricity in the United States, natural gas is indeed a cleaner, less polluting fuel. But compared to, say, solar, it’s filthy. And of course there is nothing renewable about natural gas. Jeff Goodell
In the world of energy politics, the sudden vanishing of the word ‘coal’ is a remarkable and unprecedented event. Jeff Goodell
We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we’re so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives, because it’s not going to be around for ever. Margaret Atwood
Whether it is to reduce our carbon-dioxide emissions or to prepare for when the coal and oil run out, we have to continue to seek out new energy sources. Martin Rees
There is an urgent need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, dramatically reduce wasted energy, and significantly shift our power supplies from oil, coal, and natural gas to wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources. Bill McKibben
I’m not a pessimist. I’ve always had a great deal of faith in people that we wouldn’t succumb to frenzy or rage or greed. That we’d figure out a solution without destroying the things that we love. Josh Fox, Gasland 2010 *****
‘Hydraulic fracturing has been characterized as environmentally risky and inadequately regulated. Press reports and websites alleging that six states have documented over 1,000 incidents of ground water contamination resulting from the practice of hydraulic fracturing – such reports are not accurate.’ ibid. evidence to sub-committee on Energy & Minerals
In 1972 Richard Nixon signed the clean water act into law. ibid.
One day I got a letter in the mail; it was from a natural gas company. The letter told me my land was on top of a formation called the Marcellus Shale which stretched across Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. And that the Marcellus Shale was the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. I could lease my land to this company and I would receive a signing bonus of $4,750 an acre. Having 19.5 acres that was nearly $100,000 there in my hand. ibid.
The 2005 Energy Bill pushed through Congress by Dick Cheney exempts the oil and natural gas industries from the Safe Drinking Water Act. They were also exempt from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund Law and about a dozen other environmental and democratic legislations. ibid.
The method of gas drilling they used is called hydraulic fracturing ... Like a mini-earthquake ... A mix of over 596 chemicals. ibid.
Shortly after their well was drilled their water started bubbling and fizzing – it turned out to be natural gas. ibid.
I’d heard reports of oil and gas waste-water known as produced water, the water that comes back up out of the ground that’s contaminated with the fracking fluids being dumped illegally on to fields and into streams, and I’d heard of workers who had chemical burns on their hands and faces. ibid.
I was starting to compile a list of things that could happen in Dimmock: water trouble, health problems, hazardous explosive conditions inside the house, destruction of land ... A total loss of normal life. ibid.
There was no-one for them to complain to. ibid.
[lights drinking water from tap] Jesus Christ! ibid.
The Whistleblower: Weston Wilson – In 2004 the EPA was investigating water contamination incidents due to hydraulic fracturing across the country, but a panel rejected the Inquiry stating that although hazardous materials were being injected underground the EPA did not need to investigate. Weston Wilson, a twenty-year veteran of the EPA, wrote a letter to Congress objecting. ibid.
Energy Police Act of 2005: The Halliburton Loophole to the Safe Water Act. ibid.
Glycol Ethers eat the membrane inside the filters. ibid.
Of all the [chemical] water that goes down only about half of it comes back up. ibid.
Evaporation Sprayers ... In flow-back pits the water is sprayed into the air ... They create ozone hazardous air pollutants and they fall down in the form of chemical or acid rains on the grasslands. ibid.
Theo [Dr Colborn] has identified 596 different chemicals in 900 chemical products. ibid.
I tried to keep anger and sorrow at bay. ibid.
I wanted to get out of Gasland as fast as I could. But there was nowhere to go ... Everywhere I went it was the same story. ibid.
I’d seen these condensation tanks everywhere all across the United States. ibid.
Industry has leased hundreds of thousands of acres within the New York City watershed and the Delaware basin. ibid.
There were hours and hours of hearings at city hall. But no-one from the State’s department of environmental conservation came to the city’s hearings. ibid.
It’s possible the Gasland might stretch a little bit further from my backyard into yours. ibid.
The problem is that everywhere the gas drilling industry goes, a trail of water contamination, air pollution, health concerns and betrayal of basic American civic and community values follows. Josh Fox
Just as fossil fuels from conventional sources are finite and are becoming depleted, those from difficult sources will also run out. If we put all our energy and resources into continued fossil fuel extraction, we will have lost an opportunity to have invested in renewable energy. David Suzuki