Category Archives: West Coast

The Tyee – Here Comes the Bribe

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1329754637 29 The Tyee – Here Comes the Bribe

What price do we put on our natural heritage?

Alberta Premier Alison Redford stated in a recent speech that her government is looking to “clear a path for the oil sands through British Columbia by upping the economic benefits for its western neighbour — including the option of paying to modernize and expand West Coast ports.”

Premiers don’t just throw that sort of stuff around and I believe that this speech foretells an ever increasing policy of the federal government and Alberta to bribe First Nations and the rest of B.C. citizens alike.

Here is why we must not take the bribe.

Ruptures of the pipelines. Carrying condensate mixed with the bitumen (gunk) from the tar sands, the pipeline is bound to rupture at some point. This is not a risk but an absolute certainty. Enbridge has admitted there will be ruptures. Enbridge’s pipelines have recorded 811 ruptures since 1998.

Myth of a clean-up. Those ruptures will happen in areas where only helicopters can land, so machinery for clean-up is out of the question. Even in accessible areas, there cannot be any real clean-up, as the Kalamazoo spill in July 2010 eloquently demonstrates.

Tanker leaks. These, too, are a certainty, While double-hulling helps, in the past two years there have been four major spills with double-hulled ships. We know from the Exxon Valdez what a spill means.

Opposition continues to build

Two weeks ago, I gave the keynote speech at a gathering against Enbridge’s proposal in Prince Rupert. I heard affected members of First Nations firmly re-state their opposition to the pipeline and the tanker traffic. Particularly emphatic statements came from natives on the coast. If there is no approval from coastal nations the prospects must be dim for the pipeline.

Opposition is fast increasing, as well, among the non-native community. This is not going to lessen as time passes.

In a way this reminds me of the Meech Lake/Charlottetown accords of more than two decades ago, which took so long to craft, present and debate — from 1986 to 1992 — that people actually found out what it was all about. An informed public is anathema to governments. Proof is that the Charlottetown referendum went down in a crashing defeat, especially in B.C. where almost 70 per cent opposed. Day after day, as the public gets more and more information, its resolve against the pipelines and tankers grows and firms up.

Which raises the key question. Will that opposition grow so strong that no bribe of any amount from Alberta or the federal government can reverse it?

My educated guess is that Premier Redford’s sweet talk was known to if not approved by Stephen Harper as the first step in softening up this province. It’s significant to note that the head of Enbridge was part of the recent Harper visit to China.

Harper has, in my view, made a serious mistake of plumping for Gateway without knowing, nor I suspect caring, what the people think. This casual approach to our province will, I predict, harden B.C. opinion against the project.

Will First Nations hold firm as the offers of money roll in?

The short answer is that no one knows. I believe that the majority will, especially those on the coast. If this project, to start in 2013, is opposed by the people of B.C., both First Nations and the rest of us, a very serious roadblock will develop which will in my view lead to a confrontation like nothing we’ve ever seen in this province.

No middle ground

The problem is that there is no compromise position available. It’s either a full steam ahead or no damned way.

The face of the environmentalist has changed. What I call the three-piece suit and pearl necklace crowd are getting more and more active. Rallies against overhead wires and intrusion into sensitive areas like Burns Bog showed these new faces. When I was given a “roast” last in the WISE Hall in East Vancouver last November, I saw people who a year or two before would rather have been caught in a house of ill-fame.

The issue is not money, or at least it ought not to be. The issue does not pit left against right. Rather, the issue starkly defines right versus wrong.

It’s not often I’m at a loss for words, but recently one of my co-panelists on the CBC radio program Early Edition recently stated that we must approve the Enbridge pipeline linking Alberta’s tar sands to Kitimat in the “interests” of Canada. In other words, we must sacrifice our pristine wilderness in the “national interest.” I was reduced to spluttering babble!

How can we make the Great Bear Forest hostage to money in the short term and catastrophe in the future?

How can we condemn the most beautiful — and dangerous — coastline in the world to spills of oil in its most toxic form, bitumen, because we were offered large amounts of money?

Have we as a people lost our moral compass? Are we prepared to condemn our heritage to death over large chunks of lucre? Do we not care about losing the soul of our beautiful but prefer obeisance to Mammon?

Will we be, in Wilde’s words, a people who know the “cost of everything and the value of nothing?”

British Columbians will find out what they’re made of as the offers of money in exchange for our natural heritage come piling in.

[Tags: Energy, Environment.]

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Rep. Moran Opposes Drilling Off the Virginia Coast

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1329637027 61 Rep. Moran Opposes Drilling Off the Virginia Coast

Congressman Jim Moran today took to the House floor to speak out against H.R. 3408, a bill to mandate and expedite drilling off the coast of Virginia. The legislation would generate an insignificant amount of revenue compared with billions needed to address the Commonwealth’s transportation funding shortfall.

“The cold reality is that this legislation will not bring relief to Americans suffering at the gas pump,” said Moran. “This bill is a bad deal for Virginia. It threatens our tourism, fishing, and defense industries in exchange for revenue that would barely cover the cost of half of one Metro car.”

Under the guise of generating revenue to offset the cost of the Republican transportation bill, H.R. 3408 opens up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas drilling, mandates drilling off the east and west coast of the United States, directing priority lease sales off the coast of Southern California and Virginia, and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal revenue from the Virginia lease sale would generate roughly $40 million over the next decade. The Republican legislation guarantees the Commonwealth only a maximum of 37.5 percent of that revenue, which would amount to under $1.5 million a year.

“Virginians shouldn’t be fooled, the purported panacea of drilling revenues is nothing but a mirage,” Moran continued. “This bill moves us in the opposite direction of what the bipartisan National Oil Spill Commission recommended after the tragic Gulf oil disaster. It saddles Virginia with a lot of risk for little to no reward.”

H.R. 3408 dramatically accelerates the pace of drilling offshore, reducing the time taken to conduct thorough environmental reviews and ensure adequate oversight. The legislation ignores the recommendations of the National Oil Spill Commission’s and returns us to a regulatory environment that predates the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.  The 2010 Gulf oil spill that dumped more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, costing more than $10 billion to clean up. The tragedy resulted in a loss of 11 lives and economic damages in the billions of dollars.

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Ghosts Along the Assembly Line: The East Bay Edition

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1329602228 36 Ghosts Along the Assembly Line: The East Bay Edition

A product of Fremont, California. Photo by Randy Stern

California was the land of great opportunity a century ago. After the Gold Rush, people sought their fortunes through finding new ways to ensure the wealth of a state that promised almost perfect weather year round.

Many opportunities presented themselves for the newly-minted Californian. Oil, railroads and financial houses formed the backbone of the economy before the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906. It continued in various forms throughout the century – through two world wars and the Great Depression.

It is clear there are three economies driving my home state: A well-balanced Southern California, the agricultural Central Valley and the Bay Area. Unlike its suntanned rival in the south, San Francisco and Oakland bore the work that off-loaded boats from the Pacific and built everything and anything in its bowels. This went on until the Summer of Love changed at least one part of the Bay Area.

While San Francisco saw battles between longshoreman and the city’s government, the entire East Bay puts nose to the grindstone. The railroads ended effectively in Oakland giving industry and commerce a place to grow. The automotive industry saw opportunities for another part of their West Coast distribution strategy to build their cars in the East Bay.

In the heart of it all was Oakland – the bicep that pulled the entire Bay Area’s weight. Tucked away on the other side of San Francisco Bay, Oakland was the center of industry and home of Kaiser and Clorox. From Richmond to Milpitas, the Big Three had their plants positioned to feed into the railroad hub at what is now called Jack London Square.

Let’s take a tour from San Pablo Bay down the East Bay corridor – and a little surprise just over the Altamont Pass.

OAKLAND: General Motors had roots in the city as far back as 1916 at the corner of Foothill and 73rd. Chevrolets were built primarily at the Oakland plant for a growing West Coast and mountain state region. There, Chevrolets continued to roll out of Oakland until 1965, when production was fully transferred down the bay in Fremont. The plant was soon torn down for Eastmont Mall.

Another automotive facility that was built in Oakland was for the Durant Motor Company. On Durant and International on the San Leandro border, their facility opened up in 1922 as the West Coast site for production. When Durant sales began to decline towards the latter part of the 1920s, the plant became redundant, closing in 1930. The site has been mostly torn down for light industrial and commercial properties developed since that time.

Chrysler began production in San Leandro in 1929, making the Oakland area the “Detroit of the West.” San Leandro was seen as a back-up plant to the one in Commerce, near Los Angeles, as it built its small mix of cars. Expansion began just before World War II for primary production purposes. After the war, Dodges and Plymouths were the primary products coming out of San Leandro by 1949. The plant closed in 1954 to make way for mixed industrial and commercial development.

STOCKTON: Little known to most automotive historians was that Graham had a truck plant in the Central Valley city of Stockton. Known as a little inland port where California’s produce was shipped worldwide, Graham began building trucks under contract by the Dodge Brothers in 1926. At the same time, the Dodge Brothers bought out the Graham Brothers’ truck business as their own – the Stockton plant, included. Then, Chrysler bought the Dodge Brothers in 1928. Stockton’s job was the build Dodge trucks for Western USA markets and turned out quite a good product reflecting its volume. The Great Depression played into the hands of the West Coast truck facility. By 1933, the Stockton facility was closed down and truck production was transferred to the Commerce facility near Los Angeles.

RICHMOND: Ford’s outpost in the East Bay began with a practically modern plant built as the Great Depression began to take hold on the nation. In 1930, Ford opened up their plant in what is now called Marina Bay to cover distribution to the Pacific Northwest and the mountain states. The plant was Ford’s largest on the West Coast, eclipsing the Terminal Island facility in Long Beach. As with most facilities of the era, a vast amount of glass was installed throughout the plant – one of Albert Kahn’s “daylight factories.” Where the facility shined was during World War II when it became the center for tank and Jeep production for the Pacific Theater. Automotive production returned after the war, but not for long. As the automobile market grew, Richmond was unable to meet the demand. A bigger, more modern facility was needed. The last Ford was built in Contra Costa County in 1953. Production was transferred to Milpitas, near San Jose. Though parts of it were damaged during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the facility is part of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historic Park at Marina Bay on the south side of Richmond.

MILPITAS: When the Richmond plant was unable to meet the demands of a growing automobile market, Ford needed to find a bigger location to augment the growth of the region. Ford looked south beyond Oakland towards San Jose for their new facility. Two years after the last Ford rolled off at Richmond, the Milpitas plant began working on their first automobiles. The timing was right with 1955 being a huge year for the auto industry in this country. The plant was very flexible in terms of what it could produce. From full-sized Fords, Milpitas built pickups, Falcons and Mustangs. Come to think of it, the 1974 Mustang II Ghia my brother and I owned may have been built at Milpitas. In 1984, Ford closed the plant as part of a consolidation of production facilities nationwide. Ten years later, the Great Mall of the Bay Area opened up out of the old plant infrastructure as it is its current use today.

FREMONT: Seen as a more modern facility then the one up in Oakland, GM’s Fremont plant began to build other lines for the same markets – the West Coast and mountain states. The facility opened in 1960 to offset capacity up at the Oakland plant. GM envisioned that Fremont would replace the older plant up north, which it did by 1965. Fremont saw many lines of automobiles come through its doors. By 1982, GM needed to consolidate and wound up closing the plant – if only for a few years. By 1985, a deal was struck with Toyota to share the plant producing a mix of products for either company and jointly. Thus was born New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. Toyota’s pickups and Corollas were part of the mix, while a Chevrolet version of the Toyota Sprinter would become the focal point of assembly line – the new Nova. Nova production would become Geo/Chevrolet Prizm production as the 1990s rolled in. In 2002, GM and Toyota created a set of twins for their sales channels – the Pontiac Vibe and the Toyota Matrix. The Vibe was exclusively built at Fremont. In 2009, it was plainly obvious that GM was going to reduce itself through its bankruptcy proceedings. The Vibe closed production first, leaving Toyota to fend for itself inside Fremont. Eventually, they pulled out of the NUMMI agreement effectively shuttering the plant again in 2010. However, the plant will have another life, thanks to Silicon Valley automaker Tesla. Tesla will utilize part of the plant for production of their electric vehicles. The Fremont facility remains the only automobile production line on the West Coast.

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Special report: The twilight of the Bond King

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1329281827 65 Special report: The twilight of the Bond King

NEWPORT BEACH, California (Reuters) – He is the man who made bond investing sort of sexy – and now he may pay the price.

Over more than three decades, Bill Gross, co-founder of asset-management giant PIMCO, has made so much money for clients that he has become the barometer by which other bond traders are judged. His West Coast perch, prescient calls on the U.S. economy and devotion to yoga only added to the mystique.

But the very recipe that enabled Gross to dominate his industry may now be conspiring against him.

He’s coming off his worst year in the business after making a huge bet against U.S. Treasuries that backfired. Last year, for the first time in nearly two decades, investors pulled more money out of PIMCO’s flagship fund than they put in.

More troubling, U.S. regulators are now considering whether PIMCO should be deemed a “systemically important financial institution” – that is, too big to fail, and thus subject to tighter regulatory oversight. The concern: The juggernaut manages so much money for pension funds that it could hammer the economy if it ever went under. The firm has doubled in size to $1.36 trillion in assets since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

The firm is lobbying hard to fend off the “systemically important” designation, according to regulatory disclosures. Like other financial firms, it also objects to impending rules that could make some of its derivatives trading more costly.

Industry analysts also wonder whether PIMCO’s $250 billion Total Return Fund, the world’s largest bond fund, is such a behemoth that Gross sometimes has to swing for the fences to generate the kind of returns investors have come to expect. Because PIMCO’s flagship fund relies heavily on derivatives to bet on bonds, some analysts say it’s unnecessarily complex and potentially at risk should one of its trading parties fail.

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Video – Will the Bond King reclaim his throne? link.reuters.com/jyg56s

Blog – Paul after PIMCO: here

PIMCO’s Total Return Fund vs rest of PIMCO funds: link.reuters.com/pyg56s

A decade of the Total Return Fund’s performance: link.reuters.com/qyg56s

Total Return Fund vs other bond funds: link.reuters.com/ryg56s

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Gross dismisses concerns about PIMCO’s girth. He says the firm isn’t “levered,” or making bets with borrowed money, in the way that failed players like Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers did. The asset manager is using only client money to trade.

“It’s not like we are a deposit institution and there’d necessarily be a run on the bank because they thought the bank was going to fail,” Gross said in an interview. “‘Too big to fail’ is dependent upon tens of thousands of clients” abandoning ship at once, and it’s “hard to believe they’d want out at the same time.”

The debate over PIMCO’s centrality to the financial establishment is a turnabout: Up until the financial crisis, the 67-year-old Gross was largely seen on Wall Street as a West Coast outsider and a bit of a loner.

He holed up most of the time at Pacific Investment Management Company’s headquarters in Newport Beach, California, which in September celebrated its 40th anniversary. Gross was a bond geek with a California twist – there was the yoga thing, and weekly TV appearances on business shows where he predicted the movements of bonds and the economy.

But during the crisis, scared investors piled into his funds. Policymakers from the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department turned to PIMCO to help with a raft of programs meant to rescue the financial system. That helped forge closer ties between the firm and the government and raised PIMCO’s profile even more with investors.

“The concentration of bond-market assets in a few firms, which some could argue to be systematically risky, is not of those firms’ design, but rather stems from their success,” says Joshua Rosner, managing director of Graham Fisher & Co., an adviser to institutional investors.

Also bubbling up at PIMCO is a topic that few there want to discuss: Life after Bill. It’s a quandary that has faced other legendary money managers who have built a firm from the ground up but must eventually find a way to let someone else steer the ship.

Some say PIMCO will be a much different place once Mohamed El-Erian, the firm’s co-chief investment officer, succeeds Gross, as most expect he eventually will. Some former PIMCO traders say the firm will lose some of its edge without Gross, given that El-Erian, a former International Monetary Fund official, is more prone to wonkish discussion than hardball trading.

“If Mohamed took over, it would be the IMF and a lot of think-tank mentality,” says John Brynjolfsson, who was PIMCO’s lead expert on commodities and inflation-linked bonds before founding a hedge fund, Armored Wolf, three years ago.

El-Erian dismisses thoughts that PIMCO is becoming staid. Gross is responding to the firm’s bigger scale by diversifying away from simply bonds and into stock funds, hedge funds and exchange-traded funds. Gross is in no hurry to leave, he adds.

“Bill’s not going anywhere,” says El-Erian, 53, in an interview at PIMCO’s offices. “I often joke that he will outlast me. I would be considerably worse off, in every single way, if Bill wasn’t here.” (El-Erian writes a monthly column for Reuters.)

All these challenges come as many in the investing world question how much value money managers really add. Some of the best-known investors, including hedge-fund legend John Paulson, had poor returns in 2011, spurring talk that it’s getting harder for stars to generate “alpha,” or outsize returns.

There is now a slew of low-cost index funds and exchange-traded funds that often deliver performance superior to managed funds. To some degree, Gross himself is bending to the new reality. On March 1, PIMCO is launching an exchange-traded fund that seeks to offer a cheaper alternative to buying shares in the Total Return Fund.

Gross cemented his reputation as the Bond King with his famous prediction in 2005 that the subprime mortgage crisis would imperil all financial markets and major economies.

His call about subprime helped rocket his Total Return Fund to new heights. In 2007, the fund returned over 9 percent, ranking him No. 1 in his peer category. Equally important, the fund returned 4.82 percent in 2008 while most of its competitors’ funds were down an average of 4.69 percent at the height of the financial crisis, according to Morningstar. In 2008 and 2009 alone, the Total Return Fund attracted over $65 billion in net inflows as investors fled falling equity and real-estate markets.

The 2007-2009 period may be remembered as Gross’s peak. It’s also when Gross, a man who doesn’t like to travel much or schmooze with peers, began to shift from outsider to establishment figure, as a trusted advisor to federal policymakers.

Around the time Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, Gross wrote in an email that PIMCO was “in crisis management mode with frequent contacts with Treasury and Fed” officials, and that he was working 18-hour days and getting little sleep.

PIMCO and rival money manager BlackRock Inc were soon tapped to manage several critical financial rescue programs. PIMCO was the lead asset manager of the Fed’s $738 billion program to bolster the commercial paper market by snapping up notes from corporations, providing them with short-term financing. PIMCO is a unit of Allianz SE, the German insurer, which bought the firm in 2000.

Gross brought in former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan as a consultant in 2007. Also gracing PIMCO’s ranks are former top advisors to the Bush administration: Joshua Bolten, a former White House chief of staff, Richard Clarida, assistant secretary of Treasury, and Neel Kashkari, who ran the Wall Street bailout program better known as TARP.

Currently, Stephen Rodosky, a top portfolio manager at PIMCO, sits on the 13-member Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, an important adviser to the government.

PIMCO even came close to getting one of its own on the Federal Reserve. President Obama in 2010 considered Paul McCulley, a portfolio manager and the firm’s defacto Fed watcher, for a Fed governorship. But McCulley didn’t make the final cut. He left PIMCO in December 2010 and is now a director of the Global Interdependence Center public policy group.

Gross bristles at talk among some competitors, financial columnists and bloggers that PIMCO is too close to U.S. monetary policy makers. He says the firm doesn’t get special treatment. In fact, Gross says, the first time he met Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner “or any of them” in person was October 2010.

“It’s just a suspicion” to characterize PIMCO as being cozy with the government, he added.

The PIMCO subsidiary operations that were helping the Treasury and the Fed buy mortgages and run their commercial paper programs were completely detached from the firm, he added in an interview. “They were in a separate building, and when Mohamed and I wanted to wish (traders) a Merry Christmas, we needed two lawyers and a special key to get in the door,” Gross said.

PIMCO still radiates Gross’s workaholic culture.

On a recent visit to PIMCO’s headquarters, the trading floor was graveyard quiet. People who have worked for PIMCO say Gross prefers traders to swap electronic messages rather than speak – believing too much talk is a distraction.

It’s not uncommon for PIMCO traders and portfolio managers, who start work at 4 a.m. Pacific time, to find a sheet of paper with their bond holdings circled by Gross himself, asking them to justify their trades.

Gross’s temper has been known to flare at work, where he has slammed desk drawers in anger. He discourages employees from socializing and speaking with competitors, and once fumed at an employee for attending an industry conference: “I don’t want you to attend the conference, I want you to be a speaker at the conference.”

The aggressive culture has minted millionaire traders and portfolio managers. The top 30 partners have pulled down an average $33 million a year in compensation in recent years, say people familiar with the firm.

Gross himself is rolling in it. Last year, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $2.2 billion and ranked him as the 188th wealthiest American. In July, he and his wife, Sue, purchased the Beverly Hills home of actress Jennifer Aniston for a reported $37 million. They own a 11,316-square-foot mansion in Indian Wells, California. They also have a 7,091-square-foot house on 17 Mile Drive in Pebble Beach that backs up to one of the finest golf fairways in the world.

The Gross family’s charitable foundation had $272 million in net assets, according to a 2010 federal tax return. The foundation paid out $25.8 million in grants and donations in 2010.

It’s quite a contrast from Gross’s upbringing in Middletown, Ohio, and later San Francisco. The son of Shirley, a homemaker, and Sewell, a sales manager for AK Steel Holding, Gross obtained a degree in psychology from Duke University in North Carolina. He briefly played blackjack professionally in Las Vegas, before heading back to California to get his start in the bond business. Gross says he’s applied his gambling methods for spreading risk and calculating odds to his investment decisions.

Like a number of other big-name managers who suffered in 2011, Gross is off to a good start this year. As of February 6, the Total Return Fund was up 2.58 percent, beating its main benchmark, the Barclays Capital US Aggregate Bond Index, which was up just 0.88 percent.

Prior to the stumbles of 2011, the Total Return Fund beat 97 percent of its peers in the intermediate-term bond category over 10 years. That winning streak produced total returns of 7.335 percent per annum – an “extremely rare” feat, says Eric Jacobson, director of fixed-income research at Morningstar. Over the 15 years prior to 2011, the Total Return Fund surpassed 99 percent.

But roughly a year ago, Gross took one of the biggest bets of his life, one that would tarnish his record. He sold all of the U.S. government debt holdings in the Total Return Fund on the expectation that interest rates would climb for a long time. They didn’t. He ratcheted up his bet month by month thereafter, taking short positions in U.S. interest-rate swaps, financial instruments that traders sometimes use to speculate on a rise or fall in rates.

Gross was betting that inflation would spike because of the vast injections of cash into the economy by the Federal Reserve and heavy deficit spending by the U.S. government. Instead, prolonged economic weakness prompted a big rally in long-dated Treasuries, driving returns over 33 percent higher last year, according to the Barclays Aggregate Index.

DEVIL IN THE DERIVATIVES

Gross and PIMCO are facing questions from industry analysts over the Total Return Fund’s wide use of derivatives – financial instruments that derive their value from another security – to generate some of the fund’s returns.

For years now, a number of industry experts have warned pension investors that the PIMCO Total Return Fund relies heavily on derivatives to gain exposure to bonds and makes leveraged bets using borrowed money – ones that allow it to buy more bonds with less cash as the fund gets bigger.

“This is a fund that is a real challenge for us, especially when you look at its underlying holdings, because of all the derivatives,” says Todd Rosenbluth, a senior director and analyst with S&P Capital IQ. “They are accessing parts of the market without having to put as much money up.” The catch for investors is that it is difficult to fully fathom the risk of what is in the portfolio.

In a 2009 report, pension consulting firm Ennis Knupp found that the Total Return Fund used hundreds of derivatives, including futures contracts and credit-default swaps – a type of insurance contract written on corporate bonds. The consultants said that by using derivatives, Gross had managed to sometimes outperform competitors.

It is in part because of its use of derivatives, and the amount of money it manages for state and corporate pensions, that regulators are considering whether PIMCO poses a potential danger to the financial system and should be subject to heightened scrutiny.

Representatives for PIMCO last year met with regulators on more than a dozen occasions to safeguard its turf, public records show.

Regulators are expected to decide sometime in the next few months about which non-bank financial institutions should be treated as systemically important firms.

Gross is hoping regulators won’t lump his firm with the likes of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citi. While he has embraced the lessons of blackjack as a trader, he insists PIMCO doesn’t take the kind of risks Wall Street is famed for.

“This is definitely not a casino,” he said. “This is a well-managed, conservatively risked shop where innovation has a significant place.”

(Reporting by Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein, Editing by Chris Kaufman)

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2012 Subaru Impreza 2.0i Limited: Review notes

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1329226637 68 2012 Subaru Impreza 2.0i Limited: Review notesAn attractive fuel-efficient and all-wheel-drive combo

WEST COAST EDITOR MARK VAUGHN: CVTs–continuously variable transmissions–are popping up in more small cars because they are more efficient and return better gas mileage. It’s all about gas mileage now for carmakers that have to meet ever-stricter government regulations. By providing an infinitely variable transmission ratio to maximize use of engine output, CVTs “eliminate the fixed relationship between vehicle speed and engine speed for individual driving ranges,” is how the Handbook of Automotive Engineering–available through SAE books–put it. The perfect gear ratio is available all the time, no shifting necessary.

But because sporty driving is accomplished at the expense of efficiency, CVTs traditionally are not fun–thus the eternal conundrum. This could be solved by a dual-clutch transmission or, God forbid, a manual, but the overwhelming majority of buyers in the United States wants automatics. So there you have it.

When you first get behind the wheel of the 2012 Subaru Impreza, you might not even know–if you were not accelerating quickly and maybe not paying too much attention–that it has a CVT. Even once you start pushing it a little harder it, doesn’t jump out at you and scream, “I’ve got a CVT! Don’t expect much!” The CVT does seem to take a half a beat longer to go from forward to reverse and reverse to forward, and when you really stomp on the throttle you’ll notice some of the typical CVT slipping-clutch feeling, but it’s not as bad as most of these generally cursed things.

This unit is what Subaru calls the second-generation Lineartronic CVT. Subaru says it is quieter and more compact than the CVTs that debuted in the Legacy and the Outback in 2010. You can knock the shifter lever over to the left to get a faux six-speed manual mode, but who are we kidding with that? Overall, this CVT seemed to slip less and connect more than any other we’ve driven. This is not to say that we want a CVT in all of our favorite sports sedans, just that this is the least bad of the lot.

Subaru introduced this new Impreza at the New York auto show almost a year ago, touting the car’s 30 percent improvement in fuel economy. It now makes EPA numbers of 27 mpg city and 36 mpg highway. That’s a heck of a lot considering that it’s also as roomy and comfortable as the best in the class.

If Subaru put a CVT in this Impreza to improve gas mileage, it also put a smaller engine in and reduced curb weight for the same reason. The 148-hp, 2.0-liter flat-four replaces the 2.5-liter of last year’s model. Curb weight varies from trim level to trim level, but it can drop by 160 pounds. Our car weighed 2,911 pounds. The drop in curb weight should equate to–let’s say–about 23 hp. So the lighter car’s 148 hp is theoretically 171 hp when compared with the old car. Maybe that’s juggling theoretical statistics around too much.

Nonetheless, when I strapped the Racelogic timer onto the new Impreza, I got a 0-to-60-mph time of 9.1 seconds after a little brake-torquing, as much as a second quicker than published figures for the old model with its four-speed automatic. Sure, that’s not performance-sedan territory, and the WRX and the STI will always rule this model line, but the 2.0i Limited can be fun.

The new car’s 104.1-inch wheelbase is an inch longer this year, which should help smooth out the ride but which also points up the car’s roomier interior. There are two more inches of legroom in the back seats and more room in the trunk as well.

I have always thought Subarus were a little raspier than other four-cylinder engines. So I got our expensive decibel meter out and measured sound. The Impreza got the following: 40 dB at idle, 66.1 dB at a steady 60 mph and 72.1 dB at wide-open throttle. Some recent cars I’ve also sounded out for comparison: Buick Regal GS: 43.7, 65.0, 71.9; Volkswagen Passat TDI: 48, 66, 69; VW Jetta GLi: 44, 66, 75. So it’s quieter than I might’ve thought.

The week I had it was pretty busy, so I never got it on a really good twisting road or, even better, off-road or in some snow. But it felt responsive enough. It wasn’t soft but it wasn’t harsh. It was firm. There’s no excessive lean in corners. High-tailing it over rain gutters (without scratching the air dam), I was impressed with the controlled rebound in the shocks. They take the initial jounce well then hold on just the right amount as they let the springs push the car back to normal ride height. Nice.

The base version of the 2.0i Limited sedan that I had stickers for $22,345. Mine had navigation and a moonroof for $2,000 more.

If you check out all of the players that pop up in this segment when you click on “sedans” at shopautoweek.com, you’ll see that you have a lot of choices. This one is at or near the top of the class for the lower-$20,000 range as far as sporty drivers go.

2012 Subaru Impreza 2.0i Limited sedan

Base Price: $22,345

As-Tested Price: $24,345

Drivetrain: 2.0-liter H4; AWD, continuously variable transmission

Output: 148 hp @ 6,200 rpm, 145 lb-ft @ 4,200 rpm

Curb Weight: 2,911 lb

Fuel Economy (EPA): 24 mpg

Options: Navigation, moonroof ($2,000)

For more information: Check out the 2012 Subaru Impreza 2.0i Limited sedan at shopautoweek.com.

Get more car news, reviews and opinion every day: Sign up to have the Autoweek Daily Drive delivered right to your inbox.

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Begin job – Article Directory » Friends and family Shore Holiday Ideas

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1329188237 48 Begin job – Article Directory » Friends and family Shore Holiday Ideas

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UFO sightings not interesting for media stuck in mental boxes, say ufologists

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maskoAInvaders2 0 UFO sightings not interesting for media stuck in mental boxes, say ufologists

“Stop Oregon’s Invaders” is a real sign posted near the popular UFO watcher site at Bray’s Point where mysterious metal boxes have turned up along local beaches after recent UFO sightings. While the “Stop Oregon’s Invaders” signs are intended as a warning about “invasive plant species,” they are also a source of jokes for local UFO fans who point to the “invaders” as a pop UFO term coined in the Sixties when a popular TV show about aliens living on Earth was called “The Invaders.” Today, however, the Oregon “invaders” warning sign is intended to warn locals — when using various lakes and parks — that “invasive species” are damaging the local ecosystem. Also, these “Stop Oregon’s Invaders” signs are aimed at controlling “invasive plants, insects and other invaders” before they have a chance to damage natural areas.

Who are the real invaders?

In turn, locals who’ve pointed to the recent UFO issue of “strange metal boxes” appearing along West Coast beaches — after UFO sightings — say the “invader” signs are about another issue entirely.

Still, they still like to poke fun at the signs simply because it states the word “invaders” that’s become code for UFOs.

For instance, someone who doe not believe in UFOs might post a mental “stop invaders” sign in one’s mind as a way to rationalize this issue of “UFOs” that’s longed plagued man.

At the same time, UFOs are still considered by many to be “invaders” because they are thought to be “not friendly” due to years and years of American culture brainwashing that’s painted UFOs and aliens as evil in both books and movies.

UFO reports met by non-believers

The ongoing issue of UFOs — and those who believe in “invaders” from far off worlds — is viewed, unfortunately, as simply “pie in the sky” by mainstream media.

At the same time, many others — who have that lazy laughter in their eyes when one mentions something such as UFO sightings – tend to “shoot the messenger” when either a journalist or a blogger attempts to share details passed on by others.

Thus, the recent UFO sightings here at Bray’s Point – and resulting strange “metal boxes” appearing the day after these sightings, have many Huliq readers and others who like to read about UFOs a bit up tight because we still don’t know, as of Feb. 10, what these metal boxes are all about.

Media turns blind eye to UFOs

In turn, it’s known that mainstream media does not usually search out and then interview UFO fans – not because of their natural charm and gift of persuasion – but because they don’t view anything “that reeks of UFOs as not credible.”

For instance, one mainstream journalist friend in nearby Eugene, stated “the UFO connection kills the story for me.”

So whatever seems to be happening “with those strange metal boxes” is simply “not news for me,” added the Eugene reporter.

At the same time, these beached and ever mysterious “metal boxes” are not yet going away.

For example, local UFO “watcher” Errol states that an “unofficial number” of sited box has now “reached 18,” that are now being reported up and down the West Coast, via reports online from beach trekkers and ufologists.

Of course, adds Errol, “who really cares if we spotted a UFO or that there’s these crazy boxes all over the beach. There have always been sightings and there’s so much junk all over the beaches from recent storms and such, that who knows.”

Metal boxes still vexes experts

In turn, the latest “official” comment about the identity of the metal boxes was relayed to this reporter in a Feb. 9 Hulilq phone interview with Bill Hanshumaker who stated: “We don’t know what they are.” Hanshumaker, a public marine specialist and (Ph.D) doctor of marine science at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in nearby Newport, told Huliq in recent interviews that, “I don’t know what they are.”

Doctor Hanshumaker said he’s advised “surf monitoring” about these strange metal boxes, and he’s still waiting for answers to many, many questions posed by those who’ve made comments on the Huliq website under the two “science” page reports.

At the same time, a local ufologist named Perry thinks the temperament of “an underfed interested community of UFO believers” has led to what this retired hospital administrator has dubbed “The Question that nobody can really answer.” And, that question is “why are there so many unexplained phenomenon liked to UFOs that never get answered?

The Question that haunts all ufologists

During the Sixties, the British band the “Moody Blues” framed a song around a “Question.”

“Why do we never get an answerWhen we’re knocking at the door?With a thousand million questionsAbout hate and death and war.

It’s where we stop and look around usThere is nothing that we need.In a world of persecutionThat is burning in it’s greed.

Why do we never get an answerWhen we’re knocking at the door?Because the truth is hard to swallowThat’s what the wall of love is for.”

The song goes on to state that “when you stop and think about it, you won’t believe it’s true.”

What’s behind a media of nonbelievers?

Just because someone sees a UFO, doesn’t mean that mainstream media is jumping at the news and covering it. “Hardly,” says a Eugene journalist, adding that “I won’t touch a story that has that word “UFO” tied to it. “And, now you add these ‘strange metal boxes.’ I’m not covering such bull.”

Thus, it’s no wonder that Norio Hayakawa – writing for lien-ufos.com back on July 18, 2010 – vented his frustrations with mainstream media by sharing a most interesting perspective on why UFOs, alien abductions and even the appearances of “strange metal boxes” on Oregon coast beaches after a UFO sighting would never be covered by media who earn their bread and butter by chasing ambulances and other train wrecks.

Hayakawa writes: “It is a sad fact, especially to die-hard “UFO believers” that UFO sighting news have never been (and will never be) treated as a top headline story in most national and local nightly TV news. And, if any, most of the time such news stories about UFO sightings come at the very end of the half-hour nightly national or local TV news. And, it never has been a top news story.”

What is, and what should never be

“Why is it so” he asks and then answers his own question: “Simply because the mainstream news media still consider and categorize the subject of “UFOs” as part of Pseudo Science. The news stations seem to do its best to avoid any ridicule. And so they have no choice but to treat such news with a ‘light-hearted’ attitude.”

While Hawakawa shares his views – that “usually the news anchor makes a cynical, smart-alecky and (most of the time) comical remarks about the sighting or about the subject matter in general; and then, usually all of the anchors end up together with a laughter” – so too has Errol and other Oregon UFO “watchers” lament the persecution of “outing themselves” in public about believing in UFOs.

For instance, Errol doesn’t not like to use his full name when sharing details about UFO sightings. “A few years ago one of the many UFO sites that now exist out there on the Internet blasted me as a ‘UFO hoaxer” after I shared my abduction accounts. I don’t need my grandkids reading that I’m a nut for sharing about my abduction.”

“Look,” adds Errol, with a real heaviness in his chest, “our society is not ready to hear about any UFO related issue unless than can see it, feel it, touch it and even smell it. They will hit hard if you speak about it, and they will hurt you if you’re real about it.”

Living in a world of unanswered questions

In turn, Errol’s friend and neighbor, Perry, who often joins the “watchers” to view – what can only be described as bright lights that tear up the evening sky over Bray’s Point like rain streaking a taxi cab window like tears – that “what we have here is a problem with communication. These issues of UFOs goes back eons, to the very beginning of man, and it’s not about religion but about a higher power that may be playing with us right now here on Earth and nobody on this big marble really understands. Now, enter the Internet and everybody wants answers, now.”

At the same time, UFO blogger Norio Hayakawa goes on to write that news media like “to end the nightly news on a ‘light’ note, a break from ‘serious’ and increasingly depressing subject matters such as economy, politics, wars, terrorism, crime, environmental destruction, ad infinitum. The subject of ‘UFOs’ occupies the very end of a long list of all available topics, and usually only as a ‘filler’ if they can’t find any other items to bring the half-hour news program to a close, on a rather “happy” or ‘light-hearted’ tone.”

Moreover, Hayakawa adds: “We all hope that someday in the future, UFO news will become a top story in the nightly news program. But, will that day ever come.”

Image source of a sign posted at a central Oregon lake near Bray’s Point warning locals of “invaders.” Photo by Dave Masko

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Cedar Rapids lands low-cost carrier with Frontier flights to Denver

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1328875035 51 Cedar Rapids lands low cost carrier with Frontier flights to Denver

CEDAR RAPIDS — Eastern Iowa travelers will soon have a low-cost alternative for flights from Cedar Rapids to Denver, Los Angeles and other western destinations.

The Eastern Iowa Airport on Thursday announced that Frontier Airlines will launch nonstop service between Cedar Rapids and its Denver hub  on May 17. Introductory fares will begin at $60 each way, plus the usual fees and taxes.

Airport Director Tim Bradshaw said Frontier will initially offer four weekly flights, with the possibility of additional flights depending on demand.

“Landing Frontier is really good for us, especially since AirTran has left the Quad City International Airport in Moline,” Bradshaw said. “Frontier will provide a low-cost alternative for passengers traveling to Denver and western destinations such as Los Angeles,  Seattle, San Diego and beyond.

“A lot of our top destinations are on the West Coast and Los Angeles is one of our top markets. This helps companies like Rockwell Collins, which has business with Boeing in Seattle.”

Frontier flights are scheduled for Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, departing from Denver at 3:10 p.m., and arriving in Cedar Rapids at 5:59 p.m.; and departing from Cedar Rapids at 6:35 p.m. and arriving in Denver at 7:43 p.m. With the new flights, Eastern Iowa Airport passengers will have 27 nonstop flights to Denver each week.

The introductory fares of $60 each way are available at FrontierAirlines.com through Feb. 29, for travel through mid- to late June, depending on the market. The new flights are only available  on the airline’s website (frontierairlinescom and through its reservations centers. They will be sold through other ticketing channels beginning this weekend.

Bradshaw said the airport has been talking with Frontier representatives for some time, working to bring the low-cost carrier to the community.

“Originally we were looking at Frontier offering service to Milwaukee, but they are pulling out of that market to concentrate more on Denver,”  Bradshaw said. “If you look at Frontiers route map, they’ve been adding quite a few cities and destinations, including some in Mexico. They also serve several cities on the East Coast, but a lot of people don’t like the idea of flying west to go east.”

Joshua Schamberger, the first Johnson County member of the Cedar Rapids Airport Commission, said Frontier Airlines is an exceptional carrier that will bring terrific service and much more competitive airfares for both inbound and outbound travelers.

“This announcement truly marks another monumental day for The Eastern Iowa Airport and a day, quite honestly, I was most interested in seeing realized when I joined the commission,” said Schamberger, president of the Iowa CityCoralville Area Convention & Visitors Bureau. ”Visitors coming here for business, conferences, sporting events or general leisure are smiling from this news, as are local travelers looking to make a trip out west.”

Frintier will provide the Denver flights on 99-seat Embraer 190 aircraft. The aircraft features ”stretch” seating with an additional five to seven inches of legroom on every flight.

As with any airline service, Bradshaw said it will be important for Eastern Iowa air travelers to use the new low-cost alternative when traveling west.

“It’s now up to everyone to patronize this new service and that could lead to more service down the road,” he said. “We also hope that it will bring some competitive airfares.”

A study of the impact of Frontier Airlines entering the Knoxville, Tenn., market showed significant lowering of airfares along competitive routes.

The study, commissioned by the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority and the East Tennesseans for Airfare Competition, showed that travelers making reservations seven days or less from departure have seen savings ranging from $198 to $707. The price range of tickets has gone from $561-$996 each way to $289-$363 each way, a drop of about two-thirds.

Before Frontier’s entry, all but one of the nonstop fares to Denver was above $300 one way, according to the study, noting that the only fare below $300 was a 30-day advance purchase fare at $277.50 one way. In November, except one fare at $363, all Knoxville-to-Denver fares were below $300, the report concluded.

During the last three years, the Eastern Iowa Airport regained Delta Airlines service to Atlanta and added Continental Airlines service to Houston. The Frontier service brings the total number of airlines serving The Eastern Iowa Airport to six.

With the addition of Frontier, The Eastern Iowa Airport will offer service to 11 nonstop destinations — more than any other airport in Eastern Iowa or western Illinous — including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Orlando-Sanford, Fla.; Tampa, Fla.; St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla.; and Phoenix-Mesa.

Last month, Southwest Airlines announced that it will eventually serve Des Moines International Airport as it converts AirTran Airways operations at 22 domestic and international airports to Southwest operations.

The Eastern Iowa Airport recently received a “leakage” report from a consultant showing the number of air travelers from the area that drove to Chicago, Des Moines and the Quad Cities for flights, rather than flying from Cedar Rapids. Lower airfares typically were cited as the reason for using the other airports. 

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U.S. ports claim harbour tax giving Canada unfair advantage

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1328548640 82 U.S. ports claim harbour tax giving Canada unfair advantage

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States and Canada appear to be heading for yet another cross-border skirmish, this time over container ports.

Just as the governments bought a couple years of peace in the seemingly never-ending softwood lumber dispute, a group of U.S. senators and congressmen, mostly in the northwestern U.S., have asked the Federal Maritime Commission to gather as much information as it can about the "land border loophole."

The dispute centres on a controversial and relatively expensive U.S. harbour maintenance tax, part of the 1986 Comprehensive Water Resources Development Act.

The tax was imposed, ostensibly, to help fund the dredging of American harbours.

The tax is 0.125 per cent on the value of each container, depending on the cargo’s value. It averages about US$84 across the country but can be much higher. As an example, a container of auto parts worth US$250,000 would face a HMT of US$312.50 per container.

As a result, critics complain, the imposition of the HMT has prompted shippers to land their container cargoes in Canadian and Mexican West Coast ports such as the Prince Rupert, B.C., container terminal and the expanding port of Lazaro Cardenas.

Neither Canada nor Mexico impose these taxes but collect the needed revenue through berthing and unloading fees.

That means shippers can get as much as a US$200 per container shipping cost advantage when other factors are included such as apparently less onerous "security and customs procedures," the commission notes, over containers heading to major American ports in Seattle and Los Angeles.

The containers are then loaded on to railcars or other intermodal means of transport and shipped into the U.S. market, thereby avoiding the HMT.

"The entire metropolitan Seattle business community is gravely concerned about this issue, not only because the HMT is incentivizing shippers to avoid U.S. ports, but also that this loss of shipping services could become a trend that will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse," complains the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the Washington Council on International Trade.

That is why the commission has been asked to look at ways to close this land border loophole.

Especially on the West Coast, ports like Seattle want to see the tax imposed on all containers crossing the border "regardless of which North American port those goods arrive into."

And the worry, especially from Canadian East Coast ports such as Halifax, is that if the idea gains momentum, this could spread across North America.

"This could impact all Canadian ports," says Michael Broad, president of the Shipping Federation of Canada in Montreal.

The commission’s notice last November has attracted some 75 responses. Most were from Canada — the Mexican government’s response was marked confidential for some inexplicable reason — and few found any merit in the idea of imposing a U.S. harbour tax on containers moving in railcars or trucks.

Broad dismisses the imposition of a wider tax as simply "silly."

"I think it is a bit off the wall."

Others, such as those even in Oshkosh, Wis., are worried that the imposition of this backdoor container tax would drastically impact the northern border state. Many state manufacturers use CN to access Canadian West Coast ports.

"The . . . allegations of potential unfair competition from Canadian seaports is unwarranted" and that any new protectionist tax would lead to "higher costs at the border and would have a devastating impact on the Wisconsin economy and jobs, the Oshkosh Chamber of Commerce notes.

Despite claims container traffic is being diverted to Canada and Mexico, Ottawa insists it has hardly been noticeable. The federal government said that despite a five per cent increase in container traffic at Canada ports from 2000 to 2010, the ports still only have 2.5 per cent of the total U.S. container shipping market. Meanwhile, 74 per cent of the increase in traffic during the past decade has gone to U.S. ports.

The commission has yet to decide if it will even hold public hearings.

Peter Morton is a freelance writer based in Washington.

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Huge challenge to retrieve Pike bodies

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1328236631 11 Huge challenge to retrieve Pike bodiesDEIDRE MUSSEN

Smoke lingers in the Mines Rescue Service building near Rapahoe, north of Greymouth.

A Mines Rescue team was practising drills in its underground tunnel the night before, says general manager Trevor Watts.

He is explaining the complexity of recovering the Pike River victims’ remains.

Two to four years is a realistic time frame “because there are so many things that have to happen”, he says, spreading a map of the underground West Coast mine on the table.

The engineer employed by the victims’ families, Bruce McLean, concurs with Watts’ estimate, saying last week that body recovery might be completed by mid-2015 at the earliest.

The first step has begun, with work to reclaim most of the mine’s 2.4-kilometre tunnel up to a big rockfall, which blocks access to the mine’s working areas where most, if not all, of the bodies are entombed.

Mines Rescue teams will reventilate the tunnel over two to four weeks after a remote seal is built close to the rockfall. That work is on hold until more risk assessments on the tunnel reclamation are done to satisfy the Labour Department’s health and safety needs.

Many families cling to hopes that the teams will find some of the men’s bodies in the farthest 600 metres of the uphill tunnel, which has not been searched. There are no current plans for a body-recovery operation beyond the rockfall.

Watts, who has spent 27 of his 31 years mining in Mines Rescue, says there are serious challenges in re-entering the mine further than the rockfall, but believes it is possible.

Video footage through boreholes shows the rockfall stretches at least 50m.

It was caused by the tunnel roof collapsing, leaving an unstable cavern above it.

Its dimensions are unknown but it must be at least 8m high – roof bolts had been bored that far in to secure the roof. It is also in the Hawera fault zone, which has fractured, unpredictable terrain.

Working in the area risks causing more rocks to fall or tunnel sides to collapse, Watts says.

The major threat is reigniting smouldering coal if oxygen reaches it, even if gas levels indicate no fires. The rockfall and surrounding area was the scene of a raging fire after the second and subsequent explosions in November 2010.

“Once coal has been on fire, it goes on fire again quite quickly. You would never be able to control it. Oxygen can never be allowed to enter that area of the mine,” Watts says.

Coal seams exude methane, which can become explosive when mixed with air. Managing gas, particularly oxygen, in such a fractured area is virtually impossible, he says.

Instead, he believes the rockfall must be bypassed and new roadways tunnelled around it to intersect the mine’s mid-section, avoiding low-lying areas which had been on fire.

The mine’s southern lower end is believed to be flooded, which will make tunnelling into this area virtually impossible.

Video footage from boreholes shows the upper part of the mine has suffered minimal blast impacts and no signs of fire. It is where a body has been seen, prompting many families to push for body recovery.

Where the bypass goes will be up to the new mine owner, but Watts says two tunnels are needed for gas control, plus as a second emergency exit.

Tunnelling and creating roadways are slow processes, with Pike River Coal taking two years just to build the 2.4km stone tunnel.

Once around the rockfall, the next problem is how to safely break into the mine without introducing oxygen from the new tunnel.

The mine and tunnel is full of methane gas, which is inert at high concentrations but unbreathable because of a lack of oxygen. Watts says it becomes potentially explosive at 5 to 15 per cent when mixed with air, but needs an ignition source.

One technique often is to erect two seals in a tunnel and fill the airlock between them with nitrogen. It acts as a barrier between air and methane in the mine because nitrogen is also inert and avoids oxygen mixing with methane, which prevents explosive mixtures forming.

It requires Mines Rescue staff to then break through the last part of the tunnel into the mine wearing breathing apparatus because there is no oxygen present in environments full of nitrogen and methane.

Watts believes methane will need to be drained out and the mine reventilated with air before body recovery is attempted. That is because of restrictions working in breathing apparatus and the immensity of the task.

“It would have to be reventilated because of the distances involved, the debris and the number of bodies.”

Reventilating the mine offers further challenges and will require more seals to be erected to prevent air from reaching parts that had been on fire, he says.

Other challenges are getting a new work force together to complete the tunnelling work and finding appropriate machinery.

“It could be quite a lead-in before the first sod is turned,” Watts says. Before any work can start, someone has to stump up with the money.

The mine’s new owner will be expected to plan and pay for body-recovery operations as part of the purchase deal. Some experts close to the inquiry estimate body retrieval will cost more than $13 million.

That compares with the estimated $6 billion value of Pike River’s coal reserves and the damaged mine’s “fire sale” price tag, they say.

Receiver John Fisk, of PricewaterhouseCoopers, says the inquiry’s outcomes “are of interest” to buyers.

The commissioners have requested an extension for their final report, initially due by the end of March, which may delay the mine’s sale.

“You’ve got to factor in the outcomes of the royal commission, which will impact on mining operations in New Zealand in the future,” Watts says.

Fisk says the sale has stalled over prospective buyers having “commercial difficulties” with certain aspects of the mine’s sale. He had hoped the mine would be sold by now, but now is reluctant to set a date.

Fisk says work at the mine will be downscaled after the tunnel is reclaimed and focus put on its sale.

The spokesman for some of the victims’ families, Bernie Monk, says the families are upset over the lack of any body-recovery plan.

They are also upset after hearing Watts explain the long time-frame at their weekly meeting in Greymouth last Wednesday but are exploring options to speed up the process.

It is set to be one of the most challenging body recoveries in mining ever.

“It’s a massive logistical task,” says Watts. “I don’t know if there are any comparatives.”

He is confident it is achievable, at least to access the top part of the mine where many of the men were working when the mine exploded.

“I don’t want to pre-empt how a new mine owner is going to approach this. I think any potential owner will be aware of the challenges they are faced with.”

– © Fairfax NZ News

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