The Dirty Secrets of Carbon Trading


By Elliot Hannon
Time
Dec. 03, 2009



Toranagallu, INDIA  - Two hundred miles north of Bangalore and 4,500 miles southeast of Copenhagen, where world leaders will meet next week in a landmark conference on climate change, sits the southern Indian village of Toranagallu. While the residents of this mostly rural hamlet may not realize it, the same environmental problems they grapple with in their daily lives may well be on the table at the UN's Copenhagen conference, as attendees decide whether to overhaul an international carbon-trading mechanism designed to help developing nations cut greenhouse gases.

That's because Toranagallu is also home to a 3,700-acre forest of puffing smokestacks that make up the Jindal South West steel factory. Opened a over a decade ago, Jindal South West has over the past several years claimed an estimated $150 million in carbon credits thanks to its internationally recognized status as a part of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) administered by the UN under the Kyoto Protocol. But while the steel plant's efforts to reduce its emissions may in a very small way be helping the earth's atmosphere, villagers complain any benefits are lost on them. "Since the plant has come, the village's water supply is polluted, and the air is polluted from the dust and smoke," says KSL Swamy, the Toranagallu representative in the state legislature. "Salaries at the plant are very good," he says, "but the pollution is very bad. We feel it." (See pictures 25 years after India's Bhopal industrial disaster.)

The controversy in Toranagallu raises questions about the effectiveness of CDM projects and the wisdom of relying on the carbon market to combat climate change. While carbon trading has helped lower overall global emissions, some argue the CDM system has significant flaws that need to be addressed in Copenhagen. One problem, critics say, is that the mechanism is subject to manipulation and creates undeserving winners. For example, the UN body in charge of managing carbon trading reportedly has suspended approvals that would have awarded credits for the construction of dozens of wind farms in China. Projects only qualify for credits if applicants can prove they could not be built without them. According to the Financial Times, the UN determined some 50 wind power projects were in fact viable without the credits because they qualified for Chinese government subsidies — but Beijing had deliberately lowered subsidies to make them eligible for CDM funding.

Toranagallu illustrates another unintended consequence of the CDM system: it tends to prop up the dirtiest industries in developing countries such as India, essentially allowing the industrialized West to outsource the heavy lifting of greenhouse-gas reduction to the world's poorer nations. "The trouble is the design of the CDM has been to guarantee the cheapest option for the Western countries to balance their carbon books," says Sunita Narain of the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. "It's not [just]what is happening in India that is flawed, it is flawed in design."

The CDM was meant to create a market-based system to curb global emission of greenhouse gases. To help make this happen, instead of strictly holding countries to their emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, it allows companies and countries to continue to pollute if they offset their emissions by purchasing Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) — each representing 1 ton of carbon — from developing countries —where carbon-reducing modifications to power plants, factories and other facilities would be less costly. This was meant to promote the dispersion of green technology to the developing world, and also give emerging economies like India and China a financial incentive to start cleaning up their dirty industries. In mid-2005 the global carbon market sprang to life and three years later had grown twelve-fold to $126 billion, according to the World Bank. "In terms of total investment it's been a remarkable success," says Henry Derwent, President and CEO of the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association(IETA). "It's done exactly what was expected of it."

But concerns persist about whether the market is generating enough highly effective carbon-reducing projects, such as solar power plants and public transit systems — or if it is actually retarding the pace of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by subsidizing the dirtiest industries, which can rather easily and cheaply generate credits because they have the most to clean up and often have the resources to make improvements. Fluorochemical companies in India, for example, have been the biggest generators of CERs for the global market. That's because companies like SRF, a fluorochemical company headquartered outside of New Delhi, emit a gas called HFC-23 during the process of making chemicals for refrigerators and air conditioners. HFC-23 is 11,700 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. SRF invested $3 million to equip its factory to burn the gas instead of releasing it into the atmosphere, a project that could earn it some 3.8 million CERs annually, worth about $600 million over the next decade.

It's easy to rush to condemn projects like these that seem counterintuitive to the very logic of the CDM. But the planet's atmosphere is perfectly happy with the tradeoff, says Derwent of the IETA, "just as much as it would be happy with the reduction of CO2 over a long period by the adoption of wind power in the place of coal." What matters is the absolute reduction in carbon emissions, regardless of the source, he says. "That's what markets do, they find the cheapest, most cost-efficient way of producing whatever it is that's demanded," says Derwent. "That's a good thing, not a bad thing. That means that the atmosphere gets an emissions reduction at a cheaper cost."

In Toranagallu, the Jindal plant continues to expand as the company pursues carbon credits by generating power through the burning of waste gas created during steel manufacture. In a bid for more carbon dollars, a second power plant was built. "The carbon revenues were a major factor in taking up these projects," says Suresh Iyer, the chief coordinator of carbon trading at Jindal South West. If a project is reducing carbon, he says, "we do take the initiative and put up the plant because of that." The second plant, which Iyer estimates cost the company $50 million to build, was approved by the CDM in January 2007 and now earns an estimated 700,000 CERs a year.

The carbon financial windfall has yet to trickle down to the villagers in Toranagallu, many of whom say life has gotten worse, not better, since the steel mill first arrived. What they don't know is that, like it or not, the global battle against climate change is being fought in their backyard.

Source:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1945243,00.html
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Dear Tea Baggers,

I am convinced that close to 90% of you have no clue what you're even protesting.

If it's the debt or the deficit, where were you the last eight years? You scream about ignoring the Constitution, but when pressed for specific examples you stutter on about Socialism. Most of you don't even know the definition of socialism, it's just a buzzword your rich corporate sponsors injected into the debate to further their own agenda.

You shout people down in town halls while they talk about loved ones who were denied care by health insurance company "death panels." Classy.

And stop calling it a "government take over of health care," if anything, the current bills are the opposite, driving more people into the free-market health care system and making those insurers even wealthier. Shouldn't that make you happy?

Also? Please stop bringing up the founding fathers. You did not know them. You do not have some sort of special access to their views on the current debate if they were alive today. For all you know, they would have voted for Barack Obama.

If you want to go back to the days of the founding fathers as your misspelled signs and civil war garb suggests, you will also have to give up the following:


■ Cars
■ Sneakers
■ Fast food
■ Telephones
■ Chocolate chip cookies
■ Fox News
■ Medicare
■ Rush Limbaugh
■ Automatic weapons

I knew those last two would change your mind. Oh, and the founding fathers read....a lot, and not books by Glenn Beck.

Maybe you should start by reading the Constitution, I suggest Article I Section 8.

Sincerely,

Coffee Filterer


By By Ken Kupchik
Air America
Dec. 1, 2009

Source:
http://airamerica.com/really/12-01-2009/letter-tea-baggers/
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SOY - It's not the Wonder
Food You Think It Is

By Tara Lohan

AlterNet.org

These days, you can get soy versions of just about any meat -- from hot dogs to buffalo wings. If you're lactose-intolerant you can still enjoy soy ice-cream and soy milk on your cereal. If you're out for a hike and need a quick boost of energy, you can nibble on soy candy bars.

Soy is a lucrative industry. According to Soyfoods Association of North America, from 1992 to 2008, sales of soy foods have increased from $300 million to $4 billion. From sales numbers to medical endorsements, it would seem that soy has reached a kind of miracle food status.

In 2000 the American Heart Association gave soy the thumbs up and the FDA proclaimed: "Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include 25 grams of soy protein a day may reduce the risk of heart disease." Over the course of the last decade medical professionals have touted its benefits in fighting not just cardiovascular disease, but cancers, osteoporosis and diabetes.

But soy's glory days may be coming to an end. New research is questioning its health benefits and even pointing out some potential risks. Although definitive evidence may be many years down the road, the American Heart Association has quietly withdrawn its support. And some groups are waging an all-out war, warning that soy can lead to certain kinds of cancers, lowered testosterone levels, and early-onset puberty in girls.

Most of the soy eaten today is also genetically modified, which may pose another set of health risks. The environmental implications of soy production, including massive deforestation, increased use of pesticides and threats to water and soil, are providing more fodder for soy's detractors.

All of this has many people wondering if they should even be eating it at all. And you are most likely eating it. Even if you're not a vegetarian or an avid tofu fan, there is a good chance you're still eating soy. Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, explains that soy is now an ingredient in three-quarters of processed food on the market and just about everything you'd find in a fast food restaurant. It's used as filler in hamburgers, as vegetable oil and an emulsifier. It's in salad dressing, macaroni and cheese, and chicken nuggets.

"Even if you read every label and avoid cardboard boxes, you are likely to find soy in your supplements and vitamins (look out for vitamin E derived from soy oil), in foods such as canned tuna, soups, sauces, breads, meats (injected under poultry skin), and chocolate, and in pet food and body-care products," wrote Mary Vance for Terrain Magazine. "It hides in tofu dogs under aliases such as textured vegetable protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and lecithin--which is troubling, since the processing required to hydrolyze soy protein into vegetable protein produces excitotoxins such as glutamate (think MSG) and aspartate (a component of aspartame), which cause brain-cell death."

Health Risks or Rewards?

"I grew up in Houston on po' boys and the Wall Street Journal," said Robyn O'Brien. "I trusted our food system." But all that changed when one of her kids developed a food allergy and O'Brien began doing research to find out what's actually in our food and the companies behind it.

Her work led to the book,The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It, and she's become an incredible crusader on multiple fronts when it comes to food. She's also been educating consumers about soy's double-edged sword.

To understand why, it helps to know a little history about soy. It's been cultivated, starting in China, for 3,000 years. While Asian diets have generally included soy it has been in small amounts eaten fermented -- primarily via miso, natto and tempeh. "Fermenting soy creates health-promoting probiotics, the good bacteria our bodies need to maintain digestive and overall wellness," wrote Vance. "By contrast, in the United States, processed soy food snacks or shakes can contain over 20 grams of nonfermented soy protein in one serving."

It's not that all soy is bad; in fact, eating it in small doses can be quite healthy, if it's fermented. But when it's not, that's where the problems begin. Soy is a legume, which contains high amounts of phytic acid. Phytic acid binds to minerals (like calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc), interfering with the body's ability to absorb them (which is usually a bad thing). Soy is also known to contain "antinutrients," among them enzyme inhibitors that interfere with protein digestion. The Chinese figured out about 2,000 years ago that antinutrients and phytic acid could be deactivated during fermentation, but in the processed-food laden land of the West, we've chosen cultural ignorance in favor of quick and cheap. Most of the soy we eat is unfermented.

Another issue with soy is its high amounts of isoflavones, which can be good and bad (hence the double-edged sword). Isoflavones are a powerful antioxidant, writes Robyn O'Brien in her book, that can help boost immunity. They also impact estrogen levels and have been shown to have positive effects on easing symptoms of menopause. "But that plus can also be a minus," writes O'Brien, "because isoflavones' very ability to boost estrogen production can also pose hazards to our health. For example, the FDA scientists point out, during pregnancy, isoflavones could boost estrogen levels even higher, 'which could be a risk factor for abnormal brain and reproductive tract development.'" There is also a risk of breast and other reproductive cancers for women and the potential for testicular cancer and infertility in men.

While there was much news about the American Heart Association endorsing soy in 2000, there was little attention given when the AHA changed its mind and quietly withdrew its pro-soy claims in 2006, O'Brien points out. She also learned that they were not the only ones who expressed concerned about soy. A study in the British medical journal Lancet in 1996 warned of the effects of soy in infant formula. The study found babies had levels of isoflavones that were five to 10 times higher than women taking soy supplements for menopause. The effects in girls could be early-onset puberty, obesity, breast and reproductive cancers. Boys could face testicular cancer, undescended testicles and infertility. Additionally, O'Brien says, a 2003 British study conducted by Gideon Lack of St. Mary's Hospital at Imperial College London followed 14,000 children from the womb through age 6 and found that kids who had been given soy formula as infants seemed almost three times as likely to develop a peanut allergy later on.

As if all this weren't disturbing enough, there's also another reason to be alarmed -- most of the soy we eat is genetically modified to withstand increasing doses of weed-killing herbicides, and really, we have no idea what the long-term affects of that might be. So, what's a person to do? Stay away from soy as much as possible, which also means avoiding processed foods. And, even if we choose not to eat those things, some of us may end up getting them anyway. "There are different sales channels that these companies are using to sell soy with little regard for the cost to people down the road," said O'Brien. "Soy that is not used in grocery stores, in restaurants, or consumed by livestock, is disposed of in school lunch programs, hospitals, and prisons."

One organization, the Weston A. Price Foundation, is actually engaged in a lawsuit on behalf of Illinois state prisoners who say they're eating a diet made of largely soy protein. "In their letters, the prisoners have described deliberate indifference to a myriad of serious health problems caused by the large amounts of soy in the diet," the WAP Foundation writes. "Complaints include chronic and painful constipation alternating with debilitating diarrhea, vomiting after eating, sharp pains in the digestive tract after consuming soy, passing out after soy-based meals, heart palpitations, rashes, acne, insomnia, panic attacks, depression and symptoms of hypothyroidism, such as low body temperature (feeling cold all the time), brain fog, fatigue, weight gain, frequent infections and an enlarged thyroid gland."

While the soy industry has profited from the widespread adoption of its products here in the United States, other developed countries have taken a more precautionary approach and not allowed soy to become as pervasive in their food supplies in an effort to protect the health of their citizens, says O'Brien. But it's not just people who are at risk. The deleterious effects of soy can start with the seed.

Goodbye Rainforests, Hello Roundup

Glenn Beck recently chastised Al Gore about his meat eating, telling him that if he really cared about the planet he should put down his burger and pick up some Tofurkey. But unfortunately, it's not that simple. Increasing evidence is showing that soy production is also catastrophic for the environment. Just like a beef burger, a soy-based veggie patty may also be leading to deforestation, water depletion, and pesticide pollution. But it's also important to note that the vast majority of soy produced globally isn't used for tofu and veggie sausage -- it's actually used to fatten livestock and create biofuels (so, yeah, you may still want to put down the burger).

"Soy is a really sexy crop; it's fantastic. It's nitrogen fixing, it's full of protein; it's very rich and flexible," Raj Patel said in an interview with New America Media. "The tragedy is that the way we grow it today has turned a blessing into a curse because the way that soy agriculture works is monocultural, which means it takes over large parts of land. In Brazil, that means the Cerrado and the rainforest in the Amazon, and they are draining the water that is beneath that land. There are even some soy and biofuel plantations in Brazil where the International Labor Organization says there are 40,000 slaves working today. Slaves! In Brazil, producing biofuels and soy."

Brazil is one of the leading soy producers in the world, second only to the U.S. and poised to quickly move to the top spot. And overall, the growth of the world market is huge, with global production doubling over the past 20 years and 210 million tons produced a year.

But it has also led to problems. Countries across Latin America, including Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, are experiencing environmental problems similar to Brazil's. Rainforests are cleared, carbon emissions increase, indigenous and small farmers are displaced, aquifers are sucked dry, roads are built through sensitive ecosystems, and heavy pesticide use threatens waterways, soils and the health of locals. And as with all industrial monocultural farming, the rich (Monsanto, Cargill, and Bunge) get richer and the poor get poorer.

"The soy 'gold rush' has attracted fierce competition for land, leading to violence and murder," Marianne Betterly summarized in Mariri Magazine. "Hundreds of acres of rainforest are being cleared everyday, often by slave 'debt' laborers, to make room for more soy plantations."

So, we may get our cheap burgers and a deluge of soy-infused foods, but at great cost.

Adding to all these environmental problems with soy is the fact that much of the world's soy (and 85 percent of the U.S crop) is genetically engineered. Since the early '90s farmers in the United States (and now across the world) have been using Monsanto's Roundup Ready soy that is genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup, which is liberally sprayed on the crop to kill weeds.

Much of the promise of GE crops was that they'd lead to the use of less pesticides and herbicides, which threaten both human and environmental health. But that hasn't actually panned out. "Because herbicide-tolerant crops are designed to withstand application of weed killers, farmers can apply large amounts of pesticides without fear of harming their crops. The U.S. has seen more than a 15-fold increase in the use of glyphosate, or Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, on major crops from 1994 to 2005," Co-Op America reported.

And more damning evidence has just been released. A new study that just came out this week funded by a coalition of non-governmental organizations including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Center for Food Safety, the Cornerstone Campaign, Californians for GE-Free Agriculture, Greenpeace International and Rural Advancement Fund International USA, found that GE corn, soybean and cotton crops have increased the use of weed-killing herbicides in the U.S. by 383 million pounds from 1996 to 2008.

The study will surely be accompanied by more alarms bells set off by small farmers, environmentalists and organic supporters. And it will be one more battle in the war against soy that's being fought on both health and environmental fronts. Perhaps it will make people think twice before eating soy products, processed food and even most meat.

Source:

http://www.alternet.org/story/144074/

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Feds Wanted Private Data on All Visitors to Liberal News Site


By Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
November 11, 2009,


A Justice Department subpoena requesting all available information on all visitors to an independent news site is raising serious privacy concerns, and questions about how much information the US government is storing about its citizens' news reading habits.

Privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation has released an extensive report on a "bogus" attempt by a US attorney in Indiana to get Indymedia.us, an independent left-leaning news site, to hand over all the data it had about all the users who visited the site on a particular day.

Further adding to civil libertarians' and privacy watchdogs' concerns is the fact that the Justice Department ordered Indymedia to keep silent about the request.

"This overbroad demand for internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated [Indymedia's] First Amendment rights, by ordering [it] not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a US attorney’s permission," the EFF's Kevin Bankston wrote.

And while Indymedia is an unabashedly left-wing news site, advocating causes such as gay rights and anti-globalization, some of the site's defenders in the wake of the subpoena controversy are right-wing pundits who are drawing a parallel between the Indymedia case and the war of words between the White House and Fox News.

Fox News host Glenn Beck sent out a Twitter message on Tuesday drawing attention to the Indymedia story. Though the Tweet was non-committal -- "Interesting times we live in. Can't wait to see what this story is about." -- it did raise the unusual prospect of a prominent right-wing commentator championing the rights of a left-wing news site.

"Beck claims to be a libertarian, so it’s no surprise that his hackles might be raised by this case,"writes Robert Quigley at the Mediaite blog. "But more broadly, it’s understandable why this could alarm the right-wing media and its consumers. They already have a sense that the Obama administration is out for their heads (cf. the Fox News feud with the White House)."

Quigley argued that Indymedia's outspokenness, rather than its political leanings, could have made the news site a target. "You don’t have to be a ‘wingnut’ to be concerned about the government trying to ferret out the entire readership of a publication and then bar anyone from talking about it," he wrote.

According to the EFF, Indymedia received a request (PDF) in January for the IP addresses of everyone who visited the Indymedia site on June 25, 2008. But the request went further than simply asking for the computer addresses of visitors -- the subpoena ordered Indymedia to turn over all identifying information it may have about visitors, including their addresses, email addresses, bank account numbers and social security numbers.

However, as EFF points out, most Web sites don't collect that sort of data from typical visitors. And in the case of Indymedia, their records of visitors' IP addresses are stored only for a short time. So when Indymedia -- now represented by the EFF -- challenged the subpoena, it argued that the news site was unable to provide that sort of information to the federal government.

EFF reports that, when they challenged the subpoena, the Justice Department backed down, and responded with a one-sentence letter (PDF) that rescinded the subpoena. But at the same time, Justice Department officials threatened an Indymedia web administrator with charges of obstruction of justice if she revealed the subpoena's existence.

Officials told the administrator, Kristina Clair of Philadelphia, that publicizing the request "may endanger someone's health" and would have a "human cost."

"Under pressure from EFF, the government admitted that the subpoena’s gag order had no legal basis, and ultimately chose not to go to court to try to force Ms. Clair’s silence despite earlier threats to do so," EFF stated.

And, as a report at CBS News notes, the Justice Department may have violated its own rules about making requests from journalists. The guidelines state, among other things, that the US attorney general has to personally authorize a media subpoena.

There is some question as to whose responsibility it would have been to authorize the request.

The subpoena was issued on January 30, 2009 -- 10 days after President Barack Obama was sworn in, but days before Holder was sworn in as attorney general. Thus it's not clear if Attorney General Eric Holder authorized the request, but several news blogs are now pointing the finger at the Obama administration.

In an article entitled "White House declared war on Indymedia?", Ed Morrissey writes: "Holder assumed office on February 3rd, which means that the acting AG may have had to sign off on the subpoena instead — or that Holder may have filled that role while filling the role pending confirmation."

Complicating the matter is the fact that the Justice Department has released no information about what case or investigation the Indymedia request is connected to. Further complicating the case is the fact that Indymedia is a news aggregation site, with links to other news sites, so it's not clear what information the Justice Department could have gleaned from Indymedia's records that would have helped them in an investigation.

Indymedia is a left-leaning site that has championed anti-globalization causes for years. The EFF argues that the case raises serious concerns about the extent to which the US monitors citizens' news reading habits.

"How often does the government attempt such illegal fishing expeditions through internet data? How many online service providers have received similarly bogus demands, and handed over how much data, violating how many internet users’ privacy?" EFF asked. "How many of those subpoena recipients have been intimidated into silence by unconstitutional gag orders?"

© 2009 Raw Story All rights reserved.

View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/143864/
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Timor Sea oil spill may have reached 63,000 barrels making it among the three worst in the country’s history


October 22, 2009
Bloomberg


(International) An oil spill from a leaking well off Western Australia may have polluted the Timor Sea with 10 million liters, about 63,000 barrels, of oil, making it among the three worst in the country’s history, the Greens said on October 22.

The Montara well may be spilling as much as 3,000 barrels of oil a day, a Greens senator said in a statement, citing information sourced by the party.

That is up to 10 times higher than the estimate from field operator PTT Exploration & Production Pcl (PTTEP), which puts the flow at about 300 to 400 barrels a day, a spokesman said by phone on October 22. Bangkok-based PTTEP is due to make a fourth attempt on October 23 to intercept the leak, 2,600 meters (1.6 miles) below the seabed, in an effort to plug it. Oil, gas and condensate began seeping into the Timor Sea from the well on August 21.

The opposition Liberal Party has called on the government to intervene in the operation should the next bid fail.

Australia’s department of resources, energy and tourism has calculated the well is leaking oil at a rate of 2,000 barrels a day, based on data from Geoscience Australia, the Greens said.

The estimate was made by department officials at a Senate hearing in Canberra yesterday, the senator said. By October 20, 457,000 liters of oil product, including 277,000 liters of oil, had been removed from the ocean, the marine safety authority said.

Aerial surveillance shows oil about 201 kilometers from the Western Australian coast and 257 kilometers off Indonesia, it said.

The oil currently poses no threat to environmentally sensitive reef areas, the authority said October 21. PTTEP has drilled a relief shaft at the Montara field to intercept the leaking well and plug it, and intends to halt the flow by injecting heavy mud.

Source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=aWGuIAo7gecc
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Panamanian Ship operator pleads guilty for concealing pollution from oil tanker


October 21, 2009
U.S. Department of Justice


(Texas) A Panamanian company that operated a 40,000- ton oil tanker ship that regularly made calls in multiple ports in Texas pleaded guilty today in federal court in Houston for deliberately concealing pollution discharges from the ship directly into the sea.

The operator of the M/T Georgios M, pleaded guilty to three felony violations of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships for failing to properly maintain an oil record book as required by federal and international law.

According to a plea agreement filed with U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the company has agreed to pay a $1 million criminal fine along with a $250,000 community service payment to the congressionally-established National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.

The money will be designated for use in the Flower Garden and Stetson Banks National Marine Sanctuary, headquartered in Galveston, Texas, to support the protection and preservation of natural and cultural resources located in and adjacent to the sanctuary.

According to the joint factual statement, from December 2006 until February 2009, senior engineering officers and crew members installed a bypass pipe known as a “magic pipe” in order to avoid the pollution control equipment on-board the ship.

The senior engineers then directed junior engineers to connect the so-called “magic pipe” and deliberately discharge sludge and oily waste directly into the ocean.

The senior engineers also made false entries in the oil record book to conceal the fact that the pollution control equipment had not been used.

The crewmembers then attempted to conceal the discharges on February 19, 2009 during a Coast Guard boarding at the port in Texas City, by providing the falsified oil record book to the boarding crew.

Source:
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/October/09-enrd-1133.html
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