Category Archives: fossil fuels

energy policy, fossil fuels, marine mammals, national ocean politics, natural resource management, ocean pollution, offshore oil

Miami Herald: Feds support air gun blasts to find Atlantic oil, gas

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http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/27/3963572/feds-support-air-gun-blasts-to.html

Thursday, 2/27/14whale

A study of what the controversial seismic tests would do to whales, dolphins and fish is on track for release at the end of February, an Interior Department official told lawmakers on Friday. Pictured is a North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis). GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES / NOAA/MCT

BY SEAN COCKERHAM
MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON — The Interior Department is endorsing seismic exploration for oil and gas in Atlantic waters, a crucial move toward starting drilling off the Carolinas, Virginia and possibly down to Florida.

The department released its final review Thursday, favoring a plan to allow the intense underwater seismic air gun blasts that environmentalists and some members of Congress say threatens the survival of whales and dolphins.

The oil industry wants to use the air guns to find out how much oil and gas lies along the U.S. Atlantic seabed. Federal estimates of a relatively modest 3.3 billion barrels of oil date from the 1970s and 1980s and are considered too low.

“The currently available seismic information from this area is decades old and was developed using technologies that are obsolete,” said Tommy Beaudreau, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

The federal government wants to use the information to decide whether to open up the mid- and south Atlantic to oil and gas drilling for the first time in decades. President Barack Obama had planned to start allowing drilling at least off the coast of Virginia, but he postponed consideration of the idea after the massive 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Interior Department’s plan is to start allowing underwater seismic air gun tests in an area from Delaware to Florida’s Cape Canaveral, though most of the push for offshore drilling involves the waters off the Carolinas and Virginia.

The seismic tests involve vessels towing an array of air guns that blast compressed air underwater, sending intense sound waves to the bottom of the ocean. The booms are repeated every 10 seconds or so for days or weeks.

The echoes are used to map the locations of subsea oil and gas deposits.

The Interior Department received more than 55,000 public comments on the proposal. Environmental groups warn that the blasts make whales and dolphins deaf, preventing them from feeding, mating and communicating. More than 50 members of Congress, including a few Republicans, have sent letters to the president opposing the seismic air gun tests and saying that up to 138,500 marine mammals could be injured by them.

Interior Department officials said their plan protected the endangered North Atlantic right whale by closing areas along the whales’ main migratory route to the air gun testing. Beaudreau said the tests would be monitored closely.

“We’re really going to require and demand a high level of environmental performance,” he said.

The environmental group Oceana said the protected area was too small and the endangered whales would suffer from the “dynamite-like blasts.”

“They are like the American bison of the ocean. They deserve protection. There are only 500 of them left,” said Matthew Huelsenbeck, a marine scientist for Oceana.

Oceana last week spearheaded a letter from more than 100 marine scientists and conservation biologists that urges the Obama administration not to approve the seismic tests until the National Marine Fisheries Services releases upcoming new acoustic guidelines for marine mammals.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is expected to give the final approval to the seismic testing plan in April. At that point the government would start reviewing the nine applications from companies that want to conduct the testing and decide whether their specific proposals should go forward.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash.,, said the seismic testing plan was a major milestone for efforts to open the Atlantic to oil and gas drilling.
“While it has taken far too long, this step today will help put America on a path to open new areas to more American energy production,” Hastings said.

The Obama administration is weighing whether to include mid- and south Atlantic oil and gas drilling in the next federal offshore leasing plan, which runs from 2017 through 2022.
The National Ocean Industries Association, a group that’s lobbying for offshore drilling,
said the Interior Department’s approval of seismic testing appeared to be a huge step. But the group said it needed to review the plan to make sure its restrictions didn’t make testing unworkable.

The industry group said seismic testing had been used for decades in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere in the world to make informed decisions about where to drill for oil.

There’s been controversy along the Gulf of Mexico, though, where the industry, environmental groups and government agencies settled a lawsuit last summer by putting some areas off limits to air gun testing for 30 months while environmental studies are conducted.

Email: scockerham@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @seancockerham

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/27/3963572/feds-support-air-gun-blasts-to.html#storylink=cpy

Special thanks to Richard Charter

clean energy, climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking

Common Dreams, The Guardian: Why We Need an Outright Ban on Fracking–Convicted on Monday after supergluing herself to a fellow anti-fracking protester at Balcombe in the UK, activist says more people should stand up against the risks

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/26-7
Published on Wednesday, February 26, 2014 by The Guardian

by Natalie Hynde

Fracking protest at Balcombe, West Sussex. ‘Taking part in non-violent direct action will cause the investors to think twice.’ Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian. Getting arrested for taking part in direct action at Balcombe was the most liberating experience I’ve ever had. Nothing I’ve ever done in my life has made me feel so empowered and alive.

Anyone can Google the “List of the Harmed” or look at the Shalefield Stories detailing what’s happened to people in the US as a result of fracking – the nosebleeds, the cancers, the spontaneous abortions in livestock, the seizures and silicosis in the worker’s lungs. Not to mention the farming revenue lost from sick and dying cattle. When you have exhausted all other channels of democratic process – written letters, gone on marches and signed petitions – direct action seems the only way left to get your voice heard.

In the US, this industry has buried people’s stories and threatened their livelihoods if they dare to speak out. Researchers from the Colorado School of Public Health have found that a number of toxic, and carcinogenic, petroleum hydrocarbons in the air near fracking wells include benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene, which cause acute and chronic health problems for those living nearby.

In the UK we are told that it will bring energy prices down. Most people do not understand that the exploration wells that we are seeing at the moment are just the start. Unconventional gas will require tens of thousands of wells over huge areas of the country. Production will require pipelines, compressor stations and waste disposal on a massive scale. The tiny exploration companies will be replaced by massive firms when they sell the information and licences they have gathered.

Fracking releases methane into the Earth’s atmosphere which is a much more potent greenhouse gas, between 20 and 100 times more so, than CO2. This is a time when we should be meeting our climate change obligations, not worsening the situation by injecting a chemical cocktail of carcinogens into the earth’s crust.

A lot of us want the moratorium that was lifted in 2012 to be reinstated – due to new evidence and significant Royal Society/RIE recommendations not having been followed. We’ve already had two earthquakes in Blackpool and the property market in the town has tanked as a result of the fracking. In the exploratory drilling process, the range of chemicals, including hydrochloric acid, pose a massive threat if they escape from the well. All wells leak eventually – 6% of gas wells leak immediately and 50% of all gas wells leak within 15 years.

Following on from the Lock the Gate protest in Australia, communities are being inspired to spread information and prepare for when fracking is introduced to their area. Taking part in nonviolent direct action will cause the investors to think twice – we need more people to get involved, even at the risk of getting arrested.

Nothing is in place in the UK at the moment to deal with all the radioactive toxic waste water that we’re left with after the land has been fracked. In other words, they’ve said yes to fracking without having all of the necessary waste water treatment procedures in place. Some believe it won’t be possible to treat it at all, in which case they will end up dumping it in estuaries and elsewhere. Once that water is contaminated it can’t be reversed – it is in the water cycle forever.

Many people think UK shale gas would provide us with energy security, but what does that mean? People don’t realise the Chinese have already invested in iGas and Cuadrilla. The environment is not considered at all. Do we want to leave this mess for the next generation? Why hasn’t the public been informed of the risks? Why are they rushing it through? Why are they offering bribes to local communities? Why has France banned fracking? Why is the French company Total investing in fracking in the UK? Why is the French-owned EDF allowed to build nuclear power stations in the UK? We need an outright ban on fracking – or at the very least, a moratorium.

energy policy, fossil fuels, natural resource management, offshore oil

UPI.com: Report: ‘Perfect storm’ of oil risks in U.S. arctic waters

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http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2014/02/27/Report-Perfect-storm-of-oil-risks-in-US-arctic-waters/UPI-42481393502191/#ixzz2uXBx1UCL

Feb. 27, 2014 at 6:56 AM |

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) — With Shell uncertain about its future in U.S. arctic waters, a consortium of environmental advocacy groups said the region presents a “perfect storm of risks.”

Shell Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said in January a series of mishaps in its drilling campaign off the Alaskan coast meant his company lacked a “clear path forward” in the arctic. “I am not prepared to commit further resources for drilling in Alaska in 2014,” he said.

Oil Change International, Greenpeace, Oceana, Platform, Pacific Environment and ShareAction issued a 36-page report Wednesday saying the long-term capital investments needed and the “uniquely challenging” arctic environment suggested the region may be out of reach.

“The U.S. Arctic Ocean presents almost a perfect storm of risks,” their report stated. Shell’s arctic drill ship Kulluk ran aground off the Alaskan coast while being towed to Seattle in December 2012. The grounding followed a 2012 exploration season in the arctic waters of Alaska that was complicated by equipment failures.

A January decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has headquarters in San Francisco, against environmental aspects tied to Shell’s work in Alaska could delay the company’s plans “by several years,” the environmental groups say.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fossil fuels, fracking, tar sands

E&E: Enviros petition EPA to ban chemical discharges off Calif. coast

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Scott Streater, E&E reporter
Published: Wednesday, February 26, 2014

An environmental group wants U.S. EPA to ban the discharge of chemicals
off the California coastline that are used by some offshore oil and gas
drilling operators as part of the hydraulic fracturing process.

The Center for Biological Diversity today submitted the 44-page
petition to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Jared Blumenfeld, the
agency’s regional administrator in San Francisco, requesting that the
agency amend a general permit covering offshore oil and gas exploration
off the South California coast to prohibit discharges of “dangerous
fracking chemicals into the ocean just off the coast of California
directly into sensitive habitat for blue whales, leatherback sea
turtles and many other endangered species.”

EPA last month approved an updated version of the general permit that
allows oil companies to discharge more than 9 billion gallons of
wastewater into the ocean each year, according to the environmental
group’s petition.

“EPA must revoke or modify” the permit, which authorizes 23 offshore
oil and gas platforms to discharge into federal waters off California,
“because offshore fracking and its associated discharges endanger human
health and the environment,” the petition said.

The Center for Biological Diversity says oil companies have used
fracturing on more than a dozen offshore wells in California and that a
CBD analysis of 12 offshore sites in the state found that a third of
the fracking chemicals used are suspected of ecological hazards.

“It’s disgusting that oil companies dump wastewater into California’s
ocean,” said Miyoko Sakashita, CBD’s oceans program director in San
Francisco. “You can see the rigs from shore, but the contaminated
waters are hidden from view. Our goal is to make sure toxic fracking
chemicals don’t poison wildlife or end up in the food chain.”

The general permit that EPA updated last month and that is at the
center of the CBD petition was revised to include better oversight of
offshore drilling in the state in response to concerns from state
legislators and others over “the risks to the marine environment from
potential releases of hydraulic fracturing fluids and the adequacy of
the existing information and requirements,” according to the agency
(E&ENews PM, Jan. 9).

The updated general permit, among other things, requires oil and gas
drillers operating offshore in California to maintain an inventory of
the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing and other drilling
operations and to report those results if the fluids are released into
the surrounding water.

But the updated permit also allows it to “be reopened and modified if
new information indicates that the discharges (including chemicals used
and discharged in hydraulic fracturing operations offshore) could cause
unreasonable degradation of the marine environment,” according to EPA.

While the updated EPA rules “were a step in the right direction,”
Sakashita said, chemicals used in the fracking process have no business
being discharged into federal waters.

The CBD petition said that the “hazards posed to the environment from
fracking operations are too great to allow the continued dumping of
wastewater with unlimited fracking chemicals into the ocean,” and that
“reporting alone is insufficient” to protect waterways and the marine
life in them.

“The toxic chemicals used for offshore fracking don’t belong in the
ocean,” Sakashita said, “and the best way to protect our coast is to
ban fracking altogether.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

BP Spill, fossil fuels, gulf of mexico clean-up, offshore oil

Times-Picayune: BP begins oil production at major Gulf of Mexico deepwater hub

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http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2014/02/bp_begins_oil_production_at_ma.html

big rig
BP’s Na Kika offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico in November 2013. The company said it started new oil production at the platform on Feb. 19, 2014. (BP p.l.c.)

By Jennifer Larino, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on February 25, 2014 at 4:31 PM, updated February 25, 2014 at 4:32 PM

BP has started production at a key offshore oil and gas hub, its third major deepwater drilling project to begin flowing oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico this year, the company said this week.

The project falls in line with the oil giant’s broader strategy to ramp up high-margin oil and gas production at four of its platforms in the region.

The recent activity centers on BP’s Na Kika field and production platform located about 140 miles southeast of New Orleans, in which BP owns a 50 percent interest. Royal Dutch Shell owns the remaining stake.

This is the third and latest phase of development at the Na Kika field, which started producing oil in 2003. The Na Kika platform sits in more than 6,000 feet of water.

BP has grown its operations there in recent months, drilling two new wells and building a system of subsea pipe and other equipment needed to tie the new wells back to the Na Kika platform.

BP brought the first oil well under the latest development phase into production on Feb. 19. A second well is expected to start up in the second quarter.

The company is also installing new equipment to boost production at an existing well at the site.

The investment could boost Na Kika’s daily production from up to 130,000 barrels of oil equivalent to up to 170,000 barrels.

The Na Kika project is among a number of projects expected to come online in the Gulf in coming years, potentially pushing the area to record high oil production by 2016.
BP has started up two other major deepwater projects so far this year, its Chirag oil project in the Caspian Sea and the Mars B project also in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shell, which operates Mars B, started production at the field’s Olympus platform, a move that is expected to boost production by 100,000 barrels per day, according to a report by FuelFix this month. BP owns a 28.5 percent working interest in the project.

BP plans to invest about $4 billion annually in the Gulf over the next decade, with much of the spending centering on four of the platforms it operates in the area – Thunder Horse, Na Kika, Atlantis and Mad Dog.

New leasing could also factor into the company’s spending plans.

BP America Inc. CEO John Minge, in a speech to the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association in New Orleans on Feb. 19, said that the company was nearing an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice that would again allow the company to bid on federal contracts, according to The Associated Press.

The suspension was put in place in November 2012 after BP pleaded guilty to criminal counts tied to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, which killed 11 men and unleashed the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

It’s still unclear whether the parties will reach an agreement prior to federal lease sales in the central and eastern Gulf planned for March 19 in New Orleans.

Special thanks to Richard Charter