Coal

• US Department of Energy
  • Rick Perry, Secretary of Energy Department
  • Kentucky-Murray paid Inauguration Fund to keep Tenneessee Valley Authorities Paradise #3 Kentucky coal-buying plant open; Sanctions dropped to allow Oleg Deripaska to joint venture with MIT & Northwestern University labs & US Braidy Atlas, headed by Inland Steel heir Craig Bouchard
• Trump Inauguration 2017
• European Energy
• Russian Energy
  • Rosneft
• Natural Resources

US Coal

Tennessee Valley Authority–closed Paradise#3 plant, customer of FirstEnergy, 2 remaining

Freedom Industries, J. Clifford Forrest

Alliance Resource Partners, Joseph Craft  

Elliot Management, Paul Singer $2.5 billion FirstEnergy Bailout

Murray Energy, FirstEnergy–Bob Murray–Javelin Commodities “Javelin was founded in 2015 as a joint venture between Murray Energy Corporation (“Murray Energy”), one of the largest coal producers in the United States, Uniper (formerly E.ON SE), one of the largest investor owned power and gas companies in Europe, and a management team consisting of industry leading marketing, trading and operations professionals.”

Deceased Chris “Cline founded Foresight Energy in 2006 as a joint venture with Murray Energy Corp. to develop and operate the company’s Illinois mining assets.” Miami Herald

Trump Inaugural Drew Big Dollars From Donors With Vested Interests The New York Times By Nicholas Confessore, Nicholas Fandos and Rachel Shorey April 19, 2017 “Documents released this weekby Mr. Trump’s inaugural organizers provide a glimpse of the big-dollar frenzy of influence-seeking and peacemaking surrounding Mr. Trump’s swearing-in, which raised $107 million, twice as much money as any other inauguration. At least $10 million — about one out of every $10 raised — came from coal, oil, and gas companies or their executives. They are the chief beneficiaries of Mr. Trump’s aggressive efforts to weaken federal rules aimed at limiting pollution in streams and wetlands, cutting back on greenhouse gases and closing coal-burning power plants.  The inauguration received $500,000 from Citgo Petroleum, a Houston-based United States affiliate of Venezuela’s state oil company. The country’s biggest cable and wireless companies, Verizon, Comcast and AT&T, donated more than $2 million combined.

A $900,000 donation came in December from Avenue Ventures, a California-based boutique money management firm founded by the entrepreneur Imaad Zuberi. Mr. Zuberi was a top fund-raiser for President Barack Obama and for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Zuberi was also paid millions of dollars to work in Washington on behalf of the scandal-plagued government of Sri Lanka and its central bank, work he did not initially disclose to the Justice Department as required by federal law, according to a report in Foreign Policy magazine.”

Money Talked Loudest at Donald Trump’s Inaugural New York Times Editorial Board April 24, 2017 “Bob Murray, one of the coal industry’s loudest voices, spent $300,000 on President Trump’s inauguration and got a lot more than good seats. Mr. Murray — whose Murray Energy is a serial violator of federal health and safety rules — demanded that Mr. Trump gut regulatory oversight and pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement in his first three months.

How a Coal Baron’s Wish List Became President Trump’s To-Do List Robert E. Murray, chief executive of the largest coal mining company in the United States, at a Clean Power Plan hearing in Charleston, W.Va., in November. The New York Times By Lisa Friedman January 9, 2018 “

The memo was written by Robert E. Murray, a longtime Trump supporter who donated $300,000 to the president’s inauguration. In it, Mr. Murray, the head of Murray Energy, presented Mr. Trump with a wish list of environmental rollbacks just weeks after the inauguration.

Murray Energy’s ‘Action Plan’ for the Trump Administration Robert E. Murray’s wish list of environmental rollbacks reads like a playbook for the Trump administration.

Nearly a year later, the White House and federal agencies have completed or are on track to fulfill most of the 16 detailed requests, even with Monday’s decision by federal regulators to reject a proposal by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to subsidize struggling coal and nuclear plants.

The March 1 memo, which was obtained by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and shared with The New York Times, is addressed to Vice President Mike Pence.”

And at the time of Murray Energy’s donation, utility FirstEnergy, one of its biggest coal customers, was “on the verge of bankruptcy,” Murray told the White House in an August 4 letter. If the administration didn’t issue an emergency order keeping its power plants open, Murray Energy would soon suffer the same fate, the letter said. “Their bankruptcy will force Murray Energy Corporation into immediate bankruptcy, promptly terminating our 6,500 coal mining jobs,” he wrote.

Two weeks after that letter, and ten days after its America First contribution, Murray wrote to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. He estimated that a failure to prop up FirstEnergy would cost his company more than $4 billion. In fact, he said, “no other viable alternative…will stop the certain collapse of much of the thermal coal industry.”

The Trump administration rebuked the company, and declined to issue the order that Murray sought. But Murray ended up finding a lifeline elsewhere. This week, FirstEnergy announced a “transformational” $2.5 billion investment from Elliot Management, the hedge fund run by Republican megadonor Paul Singer.“

Trump Tweeted an intervention directing the Department of Energy to direct its resources to Bob Murray by propping up Paradise #3 in the Tennessee Valley Authority which gets its coal from Murray.

Tennessee Valley Authority provides energy to Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky

Trump intervenes in support of coal plant owned by major donor MSNBC Maddow Blog February 12, 2019 Steve Benen