WaPo suffers self-inflicted wound in the war on the Koch brothers

It’s become very obvious that Saul Alinsky continues to live on in the democrat party and among the decerebrate left. Rule 13 says

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

The 2014 Democrat Party target is the Koch Brothers. Private citizens, they are the 2014 left wing whipping boys and the left has donned its asshats in unison.

An article in the Washington Post screams:

The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.

You might expect the biggest lease owner in Canada’s oil sands, or tar sands, to be one of the international oil giants, like Exxon Mobil or Royal Dutch Shell. But that isn’t the case. The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David.

The Koch Industries subsidiary holds leases on 1.1 million acres — an area nearly the size of Delaware — in the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada, according to an activist group that studied Alberta provincial records. The Post confirmed the group’s findings with Alberta Energy, the provincial government’s ministry of energy. Separately, industry sources familiar with oil sands leases said Koch’s lease holdings could be closer to two million acres. The companies with the next biggest net acreage positions in oil sands leases are Conoco Phillips and Shell, both close behind.

Now check out this Abert Einstein quality question:

What is Koch Industries doing there? The company wouldn’t comment on its holdings or strategy, but it appears to be a long-term investment that could produce tens of thousands of barrels of the region’s thick brand of crude oil in the next three years and perhaps hundreds of thousands of barrels a few years after that.

The above article derives from the this pathetic screed:

As seen above, trashing the Earth is inherent to Canada’s tar sands trade, and the proposed Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline would accelerate tar sands “development” across Alberta, including the 1.1 million acres now discovered to be owned by the world’s two wealthiest men, Charles and David Koch.

New research from the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) confirms that Koch Industries has a huge financial interest at stake in KXL’s approval, which could become “stranded assets” if KXL is not approved. The Koch Brothers’ combined net worth ($100 billion) is far more than Bill Gates’ ($78 billion), allowing Koch to outspend all other oil companies—even Exxon—in blocking climate change policies. Koch has repeatedly denied any interest in KXL, but we now see that the very opposite is true.

There’s only one thing wrong with the WaPo story.

It’s false.

Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker dismantles it.

So the fundamental point of the Post story, which relied uncritically on a goofball far-left report, is dead wrong. Moreover, the Post story itself acknowledges that the tar sands encompass 35 million acres, so Koch’s 1.1 million comprise less than 3% of the total. The whole point of this exercise is to make the Keystone Pipeline all about Koch, and that premise is implausible from the start.

But there is much more. The Post more or less endorses IFG’s theory that the Keystone pipeline somehow would benefit Koch, even though the Post notes that there is zero evidence to that effect:

Koch’s oil production in northern Alberta is “negligible,” according to industry sources and quarterly publications of the provincial government. Moreover, Koch has not reserved any space in the Keystone XL pipeline, a process that usually takes place before a pipeline is built. The pipeline also does not run anywhere near Koch’s refining facilities. And TransCanada, owner of the Keystone routes, says Koch is not expected to be one of the pipeline’s customers.

Hinderaker continues:

And that still isn’t the worst of it. The new report by IFG, on which the entire Post story is based, merely supplements another report that IFG produced last October. The only change in the current report is that it reduced the estimate of Koch’s Alberta leases from 2 million acres to 1.1 million acres. But last October’s IFG report was a laughingstock. I wrote about it here. The astonishing thing about the IFG report is that it admitted that the Keystone Pipeline will damage Koch’s economic interests. Keystone would funnel Canadian oil to the Midwest, thereby driving down oil prices in that region. The original IFG report admitted that this would cost Koch $120 billion! Now, that is a stupid number based on a 50-year projection. But still, the basic point is correct: the Keystone Pipeline would hurt Koch Enterprises economically, which is why Koch has never come out in favor of the pipeline or lobbied on its behalf.

The IFG report hypothesized that despite this $120 billion hit, Koch would come out ahead in the long run–the very long run!–by selling two million acres worth of Alberta oil. Just one small problem: they forgot to consider the fact that the size of the Keystone Pipeline, 830,000 barrels per day, limits the speed with which Koch can recoup its $120 billion loss. As I calculated in my post, it would take 476 years for Koch to break even, using IFG’s own numbers. Now that IFG has reduced its estimate of Koch’s leasehold acreage by one-half, it will take Koch just about 1,000 years to break even if the Keystone Pipeline is constructed–again, using IFG’s own assumptions.

You can’t help but notice the source for this anti-Koch garbage:

The material about Koch and its oil sands leases has been provided to The Post by Victor Menotti, who was arrested during the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle back in November 1999. But he says the IFG concentrates on research and education, not direct action.

And who funds the IFG?

The group receives funding from a variety of non-profit foundations, including Park Foundation, Tides Foundation, Janelia Foundation, Tarbell Family Foundation, Cloud Mountain Foundation, Klein Family Foundation, Susie Tompkins Buell Foundation, Buckley Foundation, and European Climate Foundation.

Tides Foundation, you say? As in George Soros?

And the WaPo reporter?

Who is Post reporter Juliet Eilperin? Among other things, she is married to Andrew Light, who writes on climate policy for the Center for American Progress. The Center for American Progress is an Obama administration front group headed by John Podesta, who is a “special advisor” to the Obama administration. CAP’s web site, Think Progress, has carried out a years-long vendetta against the Koch brothers that has focused largely on the environment. Ms. Eilperin’s conflict in writing about environmental issues has already been a subject of controversy at the Post. The paper’s ombudsman should examine this latest example of Ms. Eilperin throwing facts to the winds in her eagerness to promote her (and her husband’s) far-left agenda.

So why would WaPo put on its asshat for this? You know the answer. John Hinderaker does:

Because that is a Democratic Party talking point, and the Post is a Democratic Party newspaper.

The Washington Post cheapens itself with these partisan fabrications.

The oil from the Alberta Sands is going to get sold, Keystone or not. The entire premise of the hit piece is false. And stupid. A pipeline is the safest means of transporting the oil. By the way, I was in Edmonton last week. Their economy is booming.

And as a matter of note, the single largest beneficiary of BP Oil political money as of 2010 was guess who?

DrJohn

DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.

DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.

Except for liberals being foolish.