Lemons and Lemonade

Today brought with it tears of rage, and then tears of laughter.

First, the lemons.

As reported this morning, Magma Energy is planning on exploring for geothermal activity around Kerlingafjöll. In case you don't know, Kerlingafjöll is considered one of Iceland's natural treasures. If they find geothermal activity in the mountain, they could start drilling bore holes there. Which would sorta mess up the whole natural beauty thing the area has going on.

Of course, Magma Iceland chairman Ásgeir Margeirsson made some vague statement to reporters about how they plan to "play by the rules" or whatever, but you know what? Don't trust these guys. Why? Because they're all liars.

Magma Energy already lied about not wanting more than 50% of HS Orka. CEO Ross Beaty told the Grapevine last fall, "No, we do not plan on getting a majority [in HS Orka]. I have no interest in fighting Icelanders, particularly the government, over what is proper energy policy in the country, the government said they would accept Magma going to a 50.0 % interest so long as Icelandic interests had the other 50 %. So that’s neither minority or majority, it’s a rather awkward business position but certainly something that we feel can be workable and we certainly will be striving to achieve, but not increase beyond that."

And we all know how that went. If the CEO of Magma Energy told me the sky was blue, I'd look out my window to double-check. More examples of Magma's policy of disingenuousness to come in the next issue of Grapevine, penned by the journalist who brought you the first story, Catherine Fulton.

As for the lemonade, former Kaupthing chairman Sigurður Einarsson was denied his appeal in Icelandic Supreme Court to have charges against him dropped. OK, so that's schaudenfreude on my part, I realize. And the only reason why the court rejected the appeal was because they don't have the power to do make the charges go away. But hey, chalk one up for justice, right?