[NBC Bay Area] NASA now acknowledges what NBC Bay Area's Investigative Team first uncovered last year--that the government agency has been effectively giving a price break on jet fuel to a private company.In a letter to Iowa senator Chuck Grassley , NASA's associate administrator for legislative and intergovernmental affairs admits the agency was selling jet fuel at below market rates to H2-11, a company owned by the founders of Google. Senator Grassley says he received the letter on Thursday although it's dated Feb. 24. In the letter, NASA's Seth Statler writes, "in light of the concerns expressed with those agreements, NASA has reviewed its pricing approach and...is now charging a 'market rate' for aviation fuel at Ames research center."
Last September, NBC Bay Area examined seven years of fuel records from 2007 through 2013. According to those records, NASA sold to H2-11 discounted jet fuel that was then used to fly a private 757, a 767 and 5 other luxury aircraft all over the world. H2-11's principle owners are the same as Google's: Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.
According to the fuel records, H2-11 purchased jet fuel for prices ranging from $2.37 to $3.20 a gallon. At nearby local airports, the exact same jet fuel goes for between $5 and $8.50 per gallon. According to the inspector general's report, the discount fuel saved Google's principals between $3.3 million and $5.3 million since H2-11 was able to purchase the taxpayer subsidized fuel at Ames.
[Details from a September 2013 story: Local officials in Santa Clara County confirm that the company owned by the Google founders, H211, pays no property taxes on the airplanes that are housed at Moffett—a potential loss to local tax rolls of up to $500,000 per airplane per year.
This was made possible under a NASA Space Agreement which has allowed these planes to be housed at Moffett Field since 2007. In exchange, H211 agreed to pay NASA first $113,365.74 a month in rent. That figure later dropped to $108,938.62 a month in rent and NASA was allowed to use the planes for science. But an examination of records by NBC Bay Area in May 2012 showed that only 155 out of more than 1,039 flights were actually used for science. And these newly released fuel records show the planes used the below-market-rate fuel to fly to exotic places around the world, such as Paris, London, Cancun, Scotland, Puerto Vallarta, St. John, Hawaii, Liberia and Tahiti.
GoogleÂ’s world headquarters are located is less than 3 miles away from the hangar where H211Â’s airplanes are stored at Moffett Field.]
