Friday, March 11, 2022

Carlyle's Rubenstein on Carbon Chaos

Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein told Fox Business News the world still relies heavily on carbon based energy.   Rubenstein's firm sank both a refinery and oil export project.

Carlyle blew up a Philadelphia refinery in June 2019.

The disaster at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions complex began with the early morning failure of an elbow section of pipe that had corroded to half the thickness of a credit card.

The failure of a section of pipe was similar to a 2012 accident at a Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif., which prompted the CSB to recommend that refinery operators inspect all components of piping systems. That was not done at PES.

The Port of Corpus Christi announced Carlyle's role as lead developer of the Harbor Island deepwater oil terminal in March 2019.  The Port's press release stated

“This long-term commitment is testament to the significance of the Corpus Christi gateway for American energy exports, which are expected to triple in the next decade,”

...United States’ first and only onshore terminal capable of fully loading Suezmax vessels and nearly full loading Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs).

"This partnership is a great vote of confidence in Carlyle and our abilities to deliver generation changing infrastructure projects, and we take that responsibility seriously.”

Seven months later Carlyle backed out of Harbor Island, giving no reason for abandoning the project. Carlyle co-CEO Glenn Youngkin oversaw infrastructure efforts and never spoke to ditching Harbor Island in his run for Virginia governor.

Much changed over the last three years but not Carlyle's thirst for profits. One advantage is the increasing number of private equity underwriters (PEU) winning public office.  Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is now able to steer the state budget to his peers.

The greed and leverage boys are working overtime to discern how profitably navigate economic chaos while abandoning any responsibility for the current state of events.