Category Archives: fossil fuels

climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, Keystone XL, national ocean politics, natural resource management, oil pollution, tar sands

Common Dreams: With Review in Hand, Obama Must Now Reject Dirty Pipeline

Leave a comment

Published on Friday, January 31, 2014 by Common Dreams

McKibben: “The State Department has given Obama all the room he needs to do what he promised in both campaigns: to take serious steps against global warming.”
– Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer

reject_bnnr
Protestors demonstrated against the Keystone XL pipeline in San Francisco last year. (Photo: Getty Images)The State Department released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) of the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday. Environmental groups and climate activists are saying that given Obama’s promise to judge the project on its climate impacts there is no way—given the review’s contents—he can possibly approve it now.

In a press call following the release of the review, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben said that a close reading of the report shows that the climate impacts it recognizes are undeniable.

“The report concluded that in a scenario where we take climate change seriously and regulate climate pollution, this pipeline will indeed have a ‘significant impact’ on climate change,” said McKibben. “So now we’ll find out if that’s the world Barack Obama and John Kerry want. This report gives President Obama everything he needs in order to block this project. This is the first environmental issue in years to bring Americans into the streets in big numbers, and now they’ll be there in ever greater numbers to make sure the President makes the right call.”

“President Obama now has all the information he needs to reject the pipeline. Piping the dirtiest oil on the planet through the heart of America would endanger our farms, our communities, our fresh water and our climate. That is absolutely not in our national interest. Keystone XL should be rejected.” —Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, NRDC

Following reports in the corporate media indicating that the final environmental review gives the go-ahead for the Obama administration to approve the controversial pipeline, environmental groups are calling this wishful thinking that accepts the spin of the fossil fuel industry. According to climate experts, the report actually corresponds to what the scientific evidence has shown all along—that the Keystone XL pipeline is dangerous, carbon intensive, hard to clean up, and the dirtiest fuel on the planet.

“The new review represents an important shift from prior analyses because it no longer tries to claim that Keystone’s impacts will be negligible,” said Bill Snape, senior counsel with the Center for Biological Diversity. “But even so, the environmental consequences are clear as day: oil spills, polluted rivers, and wildlife directly in harm’s way.”

According to the Sierra Club:

“Even though the State Department continues to downplay clear evidence that the Keystone XL pipeline would lead to tar sands expansion and significantly worsen carbon pollution, it has, for the first time, acknowledged that the proposed project could accelerate climate change,” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “President Obama now has all the information he needs to reject the pipeline. Piping the dirtiest oil on the planet through the heart of America would endanger our farms, our communities, our fresh water and our climate. That is absolutely not in our national interest. Keystone XL should be rejected.”

“Keystone XL will transport nearly a million barrels of highly toxic tar sands oil through America’s heartland each and every day for 50 years or more — only to have much of it refined and exported,” said Snape. “Along the way it will crush some of the last habitat for endangered species like the swift fox and whooping crane. It’ll pollute water used by millions of people and emit as many greenhouse gases as 51 coal-fired power plants.”

“The State Department acknowledges there is risk to our water and Keystone XL will increase tarsands production,” said Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska executive director. “TransCanada is fighting for their bottom line, while farmers and ranchers are fighting for their livelihoods and the Ogallala Aquifer which at one point our Governor stood with us to protect. We are in this fight to win and are confident Pres. Obama will make the right decision and deny the permit.”

“The State Department has given Obama all the room he needs to do what he promised in both campaigns: to take serious steps against global warming,” said McKibben earlier on Friday. “He’s about the only person who hasn’t weighed in on Keystone XL; now we’ll see if he’s good for his word.”

As 350.org said in a press statement: “Don’t let the convoluted process fool you. This is President Obama’s decision and his alone–and he has all the information he needs to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. The President has already laid out a climate test for Keystone XL, that it can’t significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions. It’s clear that Keystone XL fails that test.”

No final decision from the Obama administration has yet been made. The process now opens up to a 30-day public comment period.

And as the Associated Press reports: “The Environmental Protection Agency and other departments will have 90 days to comment before State makes a recommendation to Obama on whether the project is in the national interest. A final decision by the government is not expected before summer.”

On Twitter, key members of the climate movement were pointing out the fallacies and corporate spin they saw in early reporting on the FEIS by some:

Michael Brune @bruneski
Follow

Don’t believe the oil industry’s hype. State Dpt analysis shows tar sands oil is more toxic, more corrosive, & more carbon-intensive. #nokxl
3:22 PM – 31 Jan 2014

climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, Keystone XL, national ocean politics, natural resource management, tar sands

Common Dreams: The Guardian Approving Keystone XL Could Be the Biggest Mistake of Obama’s Presidency by Michael Mann

Leave a comment

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/31-6
Published on Friday, January 31, 2014 by The Guardian

A State Department report fails to take into account the full climate impacts of Keystone XL. Who is Obama protecting?
by Michael Mann

keystone-xl-pipeline-prot-006
Keystone-XL-pipeline-prot-006.jpg

I have made my position on the Keystone XL pipeline quite clear. Approving this hotly debated pipeline would send America down the wrong path. The science tells us now is the time that we should be throwing everything we have into creating a clean 21st century energy economy, not doubling down on the dirty energy that is imperiling our planet.

Now that the State Department has just released a final environmental impact report on Keystone XL, which appears to downplay the threat, and greatly increases the odds that the Obama administration will approve the project, I feel I must weigh in once again.

The simple fact is this: if Keystone XL is built, it will be easier to exploit fossil fuel reserves large enough to drastically destabilize the climate. A direct pipeline to refineries and global markets makes the business of polluting the atmosphere that much cheaper and easier.

The only truly accurate examination of the pipeline would include a full cost accounting its environmental footprint. It needs to take into account how much energy is consumed in refining and transporting the crude from oil sands. It must acknowledge that the pipeline would lower the cost and raise the convenience of extracting and exporting the incredibly carbon-intensive deposits of gas.

There are two main issues at stake in the Keystone XL decision: path dependency and US leadership. Path dependency is the term use to describe the fact that once a policy is put into place, it then constrains future options to those within that policy framework. More simply, the choices we make now determine what choices we get to make in the future.

A classic example is the “qwerty” keyboard layout. Even though this layout may not be the most efficient, it was the first one, and so it became the standard. New keyboard layouts would have to compete with an established format, meaning consumers would have to adapt to a new system they had no experience with. On the basis solely of legacy, inferior standards or policies remain in place, more or less out of inertia.

So, looking through the lens of path dependency, what does the Keystone XL project look like?

It looks like decades of extracting high-CO2 fuel at a time when we should be winding down such carbon intensive resource exploitation. It looks like decades of oil spills across America’s heartland written off as an acceptable side effect of making money. It looks like decades of continued political lobbying against any CO2-limiting regulations.

If approved and built, it looks like the United State is failing to take climate change seriously by virtually guaranteeing the massive Canadian oil sands reserved are exploited. That, I’m afraid, is the real threat of Keystone XL – the loss of US status as a global leader.

As the world looks to 2015 for the establishment of legally binding emissions targets, it is looking to the US for inspiration and leadership. While opponents of carbon regulations routinely point to China and India as an excuse for further inaction, the US is still the dominant force in world politics. If Obama puts his foot down and tells us the pipeline will not be built, he will be telling the world that the United States is committed to a future powered by clean renewable energy. For better or for worse, as the US goes so goes the planet.

If the United States takes the climatologically necessary step of preventing the Keystone pipeline, it sends a message more powerful than any protest, watered down regulation or rosy proclamation. It says that business as usual is no longer an option. It says carbon pollution is a serious problem. It says that we will no longer be held hostage by ideologues demanding, “More fossil fuels, or the economy gets it!”

Protecting our planet from Keystone XL would protect US standing on the global stage, and by reassuring all nations that the United States takes climate change seriously, it would protect international negotiations from devolving into a finger pointing, blame shifting debacle. Protecting us from Keystone XL would protect us from decades of continued foreign influence on US energy policy. Protecting us from Keystone XL would protect US land from oil spills and leaks.

Most importantly, protecting us from Keystone XL would protect our atmosphere from one of the most carbon-intensive fuels ever discovered.

If the president won’t protect us, who is he protecting?
© 2014 Guardian News and Media
Michael Mann

Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University. He was recognised with other Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change authors for their contribution to the IPCC’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Follow him @MichaelEMann

energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, Keystone XL, tar sands

Common Dreams & Center for Biologic Diversity: Obama Administration Pushes Disastrous Keystone XL Closer to Approval

Leave a comment

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2014/01/31-3

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 31, 2014
5:21 PM

CONTACT: Bill Snape, (202) 536-9351

In a Shift, New State Department Review No Longer Attempts to Say Keystone Impacts Would be ‘Negligible’

WASHINGTON – January 31 – The controversial Keystone XL pipeline — a project that will worsen the climate crisis and threaten wildlife and waterways along its route — moved a step closer to approval today with the State Department’s release of a final environmental review.

“Keystone XL is a turning point for President Obama in deciding whether he’s embracing the climate-killing fossil fuels of the past or sane energy sources for the future,” said Bill Snape, senior counsel with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Oil companies may love this pipeline, but it’s a disaster in the making for our climate and for the wildlife in its path.”

Unlike prior reviews of the pipeline, the new State Department review does not attempt to claim that the environmental impacts would be minimal.

“The new review represents an important shift from prior analyses because it no longer tries to claim that Keystone’s impacts will be negligible,” Snape said. “But even so, the environmental consequences are clear as day: oil spills, polluted rivers, and wildlife directly in harm’s way.”

Last June President Obama warned of the dangers of climate change and said Keystone would only be in the national interest if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” The State Department and independent experts have already determined that Keystone XL will vastly increase tar sands development in Alberta, Canada. Acclaimed climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has said Keystone would be “game over” for avoiding catastrophic climate change.

“Keystone XL will transport nearly a million barrels of highly toxic tar sands oil through America’s heartland each and every day for 50 years or more — only to have much of it refined and exported,” said Snape. “Along the way it will crush some of the last habitat for endangered species like the swift fox and whooping crane. It’ll pollute water used by millions of people and emit as many greenhouse gases as 51 coal-fired power plants.”

Last year the Center released a report on the risks posed to endangered species by Keystone XL. The Center also released a video highlighting the dangers of oil pipelines — a key point given the State Department’s estimate that the 1,700 Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline will spill at least 100 times during its lifetime.
###
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature – to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law, and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters, and climate that species need to survive.

climate change, fossil fuels, fracking, tar sands

Homerdixon.com: Seeing Past the Fracking Hype; Light larger than Chicago

Leave a comment

http://www.homerdixon.com/2013/12/20/seeing-past-the-fracking-hype/

by Thomas Homer-Dixon
Toronto Globe and Mail, December 20, 2013

For years, NASA has produced a composite photograph of North America at night. Taken by satellite, the photo shows huge patches of light marking New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto. Smaller patches mark cities like Denver, Seattle, and Calgary.

Recently something strange has appeared in this image. Another patch of light°©larger than Chicago’s°©now glows in a sparsely populated region just south of the Canada-US border near Saskatchewan.

The light comes from thousands of gas flares at oil wells tapping North Dakota’s Bakken shale. Farther south in Texas, a broad swath shaped like a scimitar marks the Eagle Ford shale play. In both places, drillers are mainly seeking oil. But because it’s often too costly to capture the natural gas associated with the oil, they burn it.

This flaring is a staggering waste of energy and a significant source of carbon emissions. But waste and environmental damage get short shrift in the popular discussion of these energy plays. Instead, the buzz is about how new hydrofracking technologies that liberate oil from shale have changed our energy future. The US is on course to be the world’s biggest oil producer and to achieve energy independence, the story goes. Shale plays around the planet mean we’ll soon be awash in oil, and prices will plummet.

But evidence is accumulating that fracking, at least when it comes to oil, has been hyped. Yes, the US is experiencing a short-term production boom, lasting perhaps another ten to fifteen years. Then its output will fall steeply. Globally, fracking isn’t going to change the fundamentals of the planet’s worsening oil-supply crunch. As the International Energy Agency says, fracking “does not mean that the world is on the cusp of a new era of oil abundance.”

No technology, no matter how ingenious, can repeal geology. It takes a huge amount of energy to drill long curving wells that follow horizontal strata kilometers from the well head, then crack the shale with high-pressure water and chemicals, and finally bring the liberated oil to the surface. Also, output from these wells drops quickly.

In a recent optimistic analysis, the US Energy Information Administration says drillers are learning how to put holes in the ground faster and release more oil from each hole; rig productivity in the Bakken field has quadrupled since 2007. But a close look at the data suggests that the EIA exaggerates the trend: rig productivity has actually varied wildly, and it may have been higher in 2009. Also, output from wells over a month old is declining 6.3 percent each month, for an annual rate of 53 percent.

A 53 percent annual decline is worse than analysts’ most pessimistic estimates. Canadian geologist David Hughes has examined Bakken drilling data closely and puts the figure at 44 percent. Either way, when it comes to shale oil, exploration companies face the ultimate Red Queen energy race: they have to run flat out just to stay in place. In an industry magazine, Lynn Westfall, EIA’s director of energy markets, acknowledges the problem. “For every 100 barrels you produce from new Bakken wells, 70 barrels of that go just to replace the decline from old wells.”

But the problems don’t end there. So much energy is needed to drill these wells that only the best produce a large energy surplus. Egan Waggoner, a graduate researcher working with Charles Hall at State University of New York, has done preliminary calculations. For wells in Bakken’s “sweet spot,” which makes up roughly a third of the field’s total area, the energy return is around 12 to 1°©about the return of US conventional oil wells. For wells outside the sweet spot, the return is 4 to 1 or less. As a result, drillers generally tap the sweet spot first and move to less-productive zones later. Hughes estimates that Bakken’s output will peak before 2020 and that, if drilling continues at current rates of about 2,000 wells a year, the field will be saturated with wells by 2025.

The price of Brent crude, which is the international benchmark, has stayed between 100 to 125 dollars a barrel for the last three years despite a struggling world economy. An OECD analysis released earlier this year projects a price of 190 dollars by 2020, given reasonable estimates of oil demand in India and China. Fracking may change the oil supply balance in North America for a while, but it’s not going to change the underlying global reality: cheap oil is a thing of the past.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

climate change, fossil fuels, fracking, natural resource management

Gulf Restoration Network blog: Drilling for Florida Oil by Cathy Harrelson

Leave a comment

https://healthygulf.org/201401152194/blog/energy-/-global-warming/drilling-for-florida-oil
Blog – Energy / Global Warming
Wednesday, 15 January 2014 11:55

cathyh

Florida-Panther-at-Big-Cypress-Reserve-photo-Ralph-Arwood-Flickr_300x225_ed95ba8d5b15fe9d9727e21ec2578676
Florida Panther at Big Cypress Reserve – photo Ralph Arwood Flickr An endangered Florida Panther in Big Cypress National Preserve, which is the site of some of the proposed drilling activities. Photo credit: Ralph Arwood/NPS.

As we guard our coastlines against drilling, Texas oil companies are quietly drilling for oil in our backyards. In fact, oil drilling in Florida’s Everglades and Big Cypress Preserve has been going on since the 1930’s. However, recent permits issued in Collier County, east of Naples, represent a new threat. These operations involve drilling for oil at depths up to 25,000 feet using a mix of chemicals the state wants to exempt from disclosure. The waste chemicals resulting from oil drilling include Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene and Xylene (BTEX). These carcinogenic BTEX chemicals endanger our aquifer and people’s lives. In addition to chemical injection, the use of salt water threatens intrusion into the Naples wellfield – the drinking water supply for thousands.

Although not ‘fracking’ as we typically consider it, Florida Acid Fracking involves injecting massive quantities of fresh water, toxic chemicals and even salt water into the limestone below our aquifer – dissolving it to free up dirty fossil fuels. Thirty percent of these injection fluids are not returned to the surface. This stew of acid fracking chemicals is injected into an aqueous layer below the Floridan Aquifer called the “Boulder Zone.” This zone is so named because its cavernous spaces are the size of boulders. This salty, aqueous layer doesn’t prevent the upward migration of lighter-than-water chemicals into our groundwater aquifer. And, because the salinity and temperature of the Boulder Zone is similar to that of modern seawater, it is thought to be connected to the Gulf and Atlantic Ocean.

Over 115,000 acres have been leased for wells in Collier County, including a permit to drill a 16-25,000 foot injection well, known as the Golden gate disposal well, in a neighborhood east of Naples. Other leases are close to the Fakahatchee Strand and the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. There is no federal protection against fracking or its chemicals under the Safe Drinking Water Act because Congress passed an exception for fracking in 2005. That must change. Although the permit for the Golden Gate disposal well sailed through Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, a local community group, Preserve Our Paradise, has filed suit against the disposal well with the EPA. Florida Senator Bill Nelson has called for an EPA hearing, but EPA has pulled back from confirming the hearing date and location and has shown an unwillingness to stand up to the fracking industry.

EPA needs to do the right thing and set a field hearing date for the Golden Gate disposal wells. The risk to our water is not worth the reward for these destructive efforts. Since swamp drilling began in Florida in the 1930’s, all the oil produced has not added up to one day of current U.S. production. In fact, when asked about Florida drilling, Edward Glab, Florida International University professor and former Exxon executive asked, “the question in my own mind is whether the juice is worth the squeeze.” The risks to Florida’s fragile ecosystem just don’t justify the “reward” and are not restricted to Naples. We’ve learned from the Tampa Bay Times that drilling, mining and groundwater rights have been sold under housing developments elsewhere in Florida. GRN continues to support efforts to protect Florida’s water, people and climate from drilling and dirty fuels.

Cathy Harrelson is Gulf Restoration Network’s Florida Organizer.