GOP hopeful Herman Cain spoke for Koch brothers propaganda front

Koch Industries, now headed by Charles Koch and his brother David, was founded in Wichita, Kansas, in the 1920s. It currently has 70,000 employees.  

Koch Industries was founded in the 1920s by patriarch Fred Koch, a U.S. engineer who developed a new method of converting oil into gasoline. He helped to build a refining network in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, then returned to the United States with a visceral hatred for Joseph Stalin and communism. 

A fiercely libertarian ideology live on at Koch Industries' spartan headquarters in Wichita, Kan.

With around $100 billion in sales, Koch Industries is a heavyweight among U.S. oil trading firms, and one of the most secretive U.S. corporations. 

Koch Industries owns a 4,000-mile U.S. pipeline network and three of the country's most profitable refineries. The company operates in 60 countries.

The Koch brothers, Chairman and CEO Charles and co-owner David Koch, are high-profile supporters of libertarian and anti-regulation U.S. politics. Among their campaigns is one to end the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's mandate for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The Kochs fiercely deny global warming. A profile in the New Yorker magazine last year identified the brothers as behind-the-scenes operators who bankroll the U.S. Tea Party movement.

One of the groups funded by the Koch brothers is Americans for Prosperity. For the past five years, GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain has been the front man for the AFP propaganda operation. Most of Cain’s campaign staff comes from Americans for Prosperity. The U.S. Supreme Court in Noerr Motor Freight v. Eastern Railroad Presidents ruled that third-party propaganda fronts are legal but unethical. 

Before AFP and his radio talk show careers, Cain was a Washington lobbyist for a restaurant trade association.

Koch Industries declared 'substantial interest' in Keystone XL pipeline

A document filed with Canada's Energy Board appears to cast doubt on claims by Koch Industries that it has no interest in the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

In recent months Koch Industries Inc., the business conglomerate run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, has repeatedly told a U.S. Congressional committee and the news media that the proposed Keystone XL oilsands pipeline has "nothing to do with any of our businesses."

But the company has told Canadian energy regulators a different story.

In 2009, Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, an Alberta-based subsidiary of Koch Industries, applied for - and won - "intervener status" in the National Energy Board hearings that led to Canada's 2010 approval of its 327-mile portion of the pipeline. The controversial project would carry heavy crude 1,700 miles from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast.

In the form it submitted to the Energy Board, Flint Hills wrote that it "is among Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters. Consequently, Flint Hills has a direct and substantial interest in the application" for the pipeline under consideration.

To be approved as an intervener, Flint Hills had to have some degree of "business interest" in Keystone XL, Carole Léger-Kubeczek, a National Energy Board spokeswoman, told InsideClimate News. Interveners are granted the highest level of access in hearings, with the option to ask questions. The Energy Board approved Canada's segment of the pipeline with little opposition, and Flint Hills did not exercise its right to speak.

Koch could be spoiler in sale of Colonial stock to Korea

ALPHARETTA, Ga. – If you believe the media coverage, Chevron’s sale of its 23.44 percent interest in Colonial Pipeline Co. for $847 million to the National Pension Service, South Korea’s biggest investor, is a done deal.
The Korea Economic Daily reported on Aug. 23. that the pension fund was picked as a preferred bidder to buy Chevron Corp.’s 23.44 percent interest in Colonial Pipeline Co. for about one trillion won.
What the coverage did not note is that existing stockholders have right of first refusal in any sale of Colonial stock.
According to its Web site, Colonial is currently owned as follows:
23.44% - Chevron Midstream Investments
16.55% - ConocoPhillips Pipe Line Co.
15.80% - IFM(US) Colonial Pipeline 2
28.09% - Koch Capital Investments Co., LLC
16.12% - Shell Pipeline Co. LP
Before Chevron could sell its interest to National Pension Service, the other stockholders would have to waive their right of first refusal.
Of the existing stockholders, the one with the most to gain by exercising its right would be Koch Capital Investments, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. By adding 23.44 percent to its existing 28.09 percent interest, Koch would end up with a 51.53 percent controlling interest in Colonial.
Koch Industries already owns Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific.

Greenpeace says Koch funds misinformation about global warming

LONDON - Great Britain’s The Guardian on March 30 reported on an investigation by environmental activist group Greenpeace that identifies privately owned U.S. oil company Koch Industries as the paymaster of global warming skeptics in the U.S. and Europe.
Greenpeace accuses Kansas-based Koch, which owns refineries and operates oil pipelines, of funding 35 conservative and libertarian groups, as well as more than 20 congressmen and senators. Between them, Greenpeace says, these groups and individuals have spread misinformation about climate science and led a sustained assault on climate scientists and green alternatives to fossil fuels.
Greenpeace says that Koch Industries donated nearly $48 million to climate opposition groups between 1997-2008. From 2005-2008, it donated $25 million to groups opposed to climate change, nearly three times as much as higher-profile funders such as ExxonMobil.
Koch also spent $5.7 million on political campaigns and $37 million on direct lobbying to support fossil fuels.
In a hard-hitting report, which appears to confirm environmentalists' suspicions that there is a well-funded opposition to the science of climate change, Greenpeace accuses the funded groups of "spreading inaccurate and misleading information" about climate science and clean energy companies.
"The company's network of lobbyists, former executives and organizations has created a forceful stream of misinformation that Koch-funded entities produce and disseminate. The propaganda is then replicated, repackaged and echoed many times throughout the Koch-funded web of political front groups and think tanks," said Greenpeace.
"Koch industries is playing a quiet but dominant role in the global warming debate. This private, out-of-sight corporation has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. On repeated occasions organizations funded by Koch foundations have led the assault on climate science and scientists, 'green jobs', renewable energy and climate policy progress," it says.
The groups include many of the best-known conservative think tanks in the U.S., like Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute and the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. All have been involved in "spinning" the "climategate" story or are at the forefront of the anti-global warming debate, says Greenpeace.

Read the rest of this story at http://www.energypipelinenews.com/

Koch’s MPC line spills 210,000 gallons of crude oil in central Minnesota

STAPLES, Minn. - Crews in central Minnesota are cleaning up 210,000 gallons of crude oil after a pipeline leak during the night of Dec. 3-4.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) estimates 210,000 gallons (5,000 bbls.) of crude oil leaked out near Philbrook.
Minnesota Pipeline Co. (MPC) owns the pipeline and Koch Pipeline Co. operates the line. Koch Pipeline is a division of Flint Hills, which in turn is owned by privately held Koch Industries.
Representatives from the Koch Oil Co., Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Minnesota Office of Pipeline Safety (MOPS) were on-site to oversee cleanup of the spill.
According to MOPS, pipeline workers on Dec. 3 had been repairing sections of the 16-inch pipe in a rural area of Todd County two miles south of Staples, near Philbrook, Minn. They left on the afternoon of Dec. 3, and the spill occurred during the evening hours of Dec. 3-4.
MPCA Information Officer Steve Mikkelson noted that equipment installed to stop the flow of oil and allow work on the pipeline actually caused the leak, and that the trench dug to repair the pipeline also helped contain the spill.
"The size of the oil spill is quite significant," Mikkelson said. "But in this particular case it was a real fortunate situation because due to the maintenance work they had excavated a large trench and the oil basically filled it up."
According to Mikkelson, the oil-filled trench measures 20 feet wide by 150 feet long and 12 feet deep, and was overflowing into a wooded area when the pipeline's maintenance crew reached the site at 6 a.m. on Dec. 4
Mikkelson also said no area surface area waters had been contaminated and only one home had to be evacuated due to the spill.
The pipeline in question runs from the Clearbrook Pumping Station to the
Flint Hills Refinery near Inver Grove Heights.
Representatives of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Minnesota Office of Pipeline Safety were on the scene to investigate the
cause of the leak.