I’m Sure This Doesn’t Matter
So, we’re having a discussion of alternative energy sources in comments and I was out looking for various things that I have heard about, when I came upon this article, LS9: Genetically Modified E. Coli that Secrete Drop-in Diesel, which is the sort of thing I was seeking.
Down in the article which is discussing the company, LS9, more than its process, I noticed this:
Add one more factor in LS9’s favor: one of its founders is Chris Somerville, the director of the Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley and one of the major scientific figures in biofuel. He’s also close to Energy Secretary Steve Chu and Steve Koonin, the head scientist at the DOE. The three were behind BP’s $500 million donation to Berkeley and the University of Illinois to study biofuels.
So, the two guys that have been tagged with watching what BP is doing, Chu and Koonin, have connections to BP. I don’t remember this being mentioned when they were assigned to the job.
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So, the two guys that have been tagged with watching what BP is doing, Chu and Koonin, have connections to BP. I don’t remember this being mentioned when they were assigned to the job.
funny, i don’t remember hearing that mentioned either.
Okay, how about the connections between the new co-chair of the “advisory panel” just appointed, Mr. Reilly, and Nalco, the company that makes Corexit, BP’s dispersant of choice?
Nalco is apparently owned or controlled by the equity firm Blackstone, one of Pete Peterson’s gangs.
http://www.nalco.com/aboutnalco/history.htm
quite the convoluted family tree, entangled with exxon mobil, and several others, then:
2003
The Blackstone Group, Apollo Management L. P. and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners buy Ondeo Nalco.
2004
Nalco returns to trading on the New York Stock Exchange under its old NLC ticker symbol following an Initial Public Offering on November 11, 2004.
Pretty standard bought-looted-sold deal that results in a much weaken corporation, and much wealthier arbitrage scum.
It’s pretty similar to “house flipping”, only they do it with corporations, and sell the “appliances”.
Crony capitalism, much?
The United States is starting to look like Suharto’s Indonesia or Marcos’s Phillipines, where an interconnected network of cronies systematically looted the wealth of the nation for their own benefit, leaving the vast majority of the population impoverished and barely surviving. Ah yes, third world USA… guess we’re heading there quicker than I thought.
-Badtux the Third-world Penguin
.-= last blog ..Cooking =-.
A handful of big corporations have an inordinate amount of influence on everything that goes on in the US. You would find it almost impossible to make it to the top in any field without selling out to one of them.