FBI Looking at Democratic Pennsylvania Governor

                                                               Jeremy Long/Lebanon Daily News

More evidence that despite the world literally facing a climate emergency directly related to the emission of greenhouse gases politicians of both parties will do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry.  In this case, the politician in question may even be willing to break the law in service of the natural gas industry.

The FBI has begun a corruption investigation into how Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration came to issue permits for construction on a multibillion-dollar pipeline project to carry highly volatile natural gas liquids across Pennsylvania, The Associated Press has learned.

FBI agents have interviewed current or former state employees in recent weeks about the Mariner East project and the construction permits, according to three people who have direct knowledge of the agents’ line of questioning.

The focus of the agents’ questions involves the permitting of the pipeline, whether Wolf and his administration forced environmental protection staff to approve construction permits and whether Wolf or his administration received anything in return, those people say.

The pipelines run past houses, parks and schools in southeastern Pennsylvania, and have been met with protests by alarmed neighbors worried that one leak could ignite a deadly explosion. Sinkholes along the pipelines’ route have opened on lawns and construction has contaminated streams and private water wells.

The planet is literally awash with natural gas.  The US is pulling so much out of the ground via fracking that US markets are saturated.  This is one reason for this pipeline – moving the gas to terminals for overseas shipments.  Shipments to places like Scotland, where fracking is banned but single use plastics are a growth industry.

Since 2016, natural gas from the U.S. has been feeding the Grangemouth petrochemical plant, a vast complex of cooling towers, flaring towers and pipelines. The gas is originally harvested in Western Pennsylvania, sent through a pipeline to Philadelphia, and put on ships across the Atlantic.

Natural gas is mostly used for heating homes or fueling power plants. But when it comes out of the ground it contains another key ingredient — ethane, a building block of plastics — that is now fueling another booming industry.

So, while the planet and its inhabitants face the potential for a massive dislocation resulting from worldwide climate change, fossil fuel companies still play the tune to which politicians all over the world dance.