Category Archives: fossil fuels

energy policy, fossil fuels, offshore oil

Environmental News Network: Deep sea Drilling in New Zealand

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http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/46647

From: Rachel Shaw, The Ecologist, More from this Affiliate
Published November 6, 2013 01:51 PM

newzed
Deep sea drilling will soon commence in the rough waters off the New Zealand coast. This could mark the beginning of an oil rush in which democratic process, public concern, environmental protection and safety considerations are all swept aside. The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around New Zealand is fifteen times larger than the country’s land area – it extends from the sub-tropical to the sub-Antarctic. Like the Arctic, New Zealand’s EEZ supports a multitude of species which travel from far-flung areas of the globe to reach these rich waters. Like the Arctic, New Zealand’s EEZ is fast becoming an oil exploration frontier.

In the Arctic, drilling rig operators must contend with the extreme polar conditions and sea ice. In New Zealand, notoriously rough seas and the deep ocean will test the limits of drilling technology. The deepest offshore oil production well in New Zealand is currently 125 m below the ocean’s surface. In a matter of weeks, Texan oil company Anadarko will drill its first deep-sea oil well 1500 m below the waves of the Tasman Sea. This is the first exploration well in what is shaping up to be an onslaught of deep-sea oil drilling in the coming years.

To expedite the deep-sea oil rush, a legislative process is underway to remove any consultation rights from the New Zealand public regarding proposals to drill new offshore exploratory oil wells. Meanwhile, in May of 2013 the government rushed through a law, infamously known as the ‘Anadarko amendment’, banning protest within 500 m of a rig or drill ship operating within the New Zealand EEZ. The penalties for entering this 500 m zone include hefty fines and up to a year in prison. Like the Russian response to the Arctic 30, the message from the New Zealand government is clear: opposition to oil drilling is not welcome here.

The dangers of deep-sea oil
Public concern in New Zealand over this deep-sea oil rush is understandable. In 2010, the environmental and economic devastation that a deep-sea oil spill may cause became a terrible reality in the Gulf of Mexico. Vast quantities of oil gushed into the Gulf unimpeded for 87 days before the spill was capped. As a quarter share investor in the well, Anadarko (the same company at the vanguard of the New Zealand oil rush) were found jointly liable for the worst oil spill in history.

Read more at ENN affiliate, The Ecologist.
West Coast New Zealand image via Shutterstock.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

BP Spill, fossil fuels, gulf of mexico clean-up, Gulf restoration, oil pollution

Alabama13.com: Flesh Eating Bacteria Tied to BP Oil Spill Tar Balls

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http://www.alabamas13.com/

Posted: Nov 07, 2013 12:02 PM EST Updated: Nov 07, 2013 2:25 PM EST
By Peter Albrecht – bio | email

The Alabama Gulf Coast attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, and since the 2010 BP Oil Spill, tens of thousands of tar balls.

A couple hundred miles away at Auburn University, Dr. Cova Arias, a professor of aquatic microbiology, conducts research on the often-deadly and sometimes flesh-eating bacteria Vibrio Vulnificus. Arias’ research at Auburn, and through the school’s lab at Dauphin Island, has focused on Vibrio’s impact on the oyster industry which was brought to a standstill three years ago by the BP Oil Spill. In 2010, out of curiosity, Arias set out to discover if Vibrio were present in the post-spill tar balls washing up on the Alabama and Mississippi coasts. She was highly surprised by what she found.

“What was clear to us was that the tar balls contain a lot of Vibrio Vulnificus,” said Arias. Arias can show an observer Vibrio in the lab as it appears as a ring on the top of the solution in a test tube. Vibrio is not something, though, that a person can see in the water, sand, or tar balls. But, Arias’ research shows it there, especially in the tar balls, in big numbers. According to Dr. Arias’ studies, there were ten times more vibrio vulnificus bacteria in tar balls than in the surrounding sand, and 100 times more than in the surrounding water. “In general, (the tar balls) are like a magnet for bacteria,” said Arias. Arias’ theory is that Vibrio feeds on the microbes that are breaking down the tar.

She and researchers looked at tar balls that washed in to the same areas they had previously studied so they could therefore make valid comparisons to before the oil spill. “What we also found was in water, the numbers were about ten times higher than the numbers that have reported before from that area,” said Arias. So the water alone had ten times as much Vibrio as before the oil spill, and the tar balls themselves had 100-times more Vibrio than the water.

Dr. John Vande Waa , an infectious disease specialist at the University of South Alabama Medical Center in Mobile says a person can get Vibrio two ways, by eating infected seafood, usually raw oysters, or by being in infected waters, either salt water or brackish. In this form, Vibrio is a fast-acting flesh-eating bacteria.

“The destruction in arms and legs, the flesh eating component, it’s two parts ,” said Vande Waa. “One is that the organism itself can destroy the tissues. The other is sepsis. The bacteria is in their bloodstream, it affects all the organs. Within my own experience of cases, the mortality has been approaching 40-50 percent.”

When entering through the skin, Vibrio is contracted thru some sort of cut or abrasion. The young or old, or someone with a compromised immune system, is more likely to get Vibrio. Dr. Vande Waa says exposure to Vibrio should be taken seriously by everyone in marine environments, due to the random, but deadly, nature of bacteria. “It can be very little exposure,” he said. “Just the wrong place at the wrong time.” It’s not a way anyone would want to die.

“I hope and pray to God I never have to see something like that again in my life,” said David Cox. His stepfather Wayne Anderson of Irvington was killed by Vibrio in September. Anderson was a life-long fisherman. It was something in the water where he spent his life that took his life. Cox says it started as a small bump on Anderson’s leg. “It spread very quickly,” said Cox. “The pain was unbearable. You could just see the redness getting darker, the blisters getting bigger.” Anderson was dead in less than 48 hours. “He wasn’t one to complain about pain and to see him there begging for someone to do something, it was very helpless,” said Cox. “Honestly, it was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.”

There have been almost two dozen cases of Vibrio in Alabama over the last five years, according the Alabama Department of Public health. Florida recorded 160 Vibrio cases from 2007-20012, with 54 of them being fatal. There have been more than 30 cases in Florida this year. An Escambia County man died in October. A 43-year-old Milton woman, Tracy Lynn Ray, died on November 1st. Relatives tell News-5 she was a frequent beach goer.

Arias recommends that people at the beach not touch the tar balls with their bare skin. “You may have micro-abrasions so you don’t even know you have a cut,” said Arias. “So, I would stay away from the tar balls.” But the results of Arias’ research have not been widely reported. As Tropical Storm Karen last month washed in a new batch of tar balls at Orange Beach, sunbathers and beach walkers were oblivious to the dangers. “No, not really, it doesn’t seem to be a concern,” said Mike Hadley of St. Louis Mo. “I don’t think that a tar ball that has sand and shells on it is going to impact my health or me enjoying the beach at all,” said another beach goer.

The bacteria-filled tar balls are an object of beach goer curiosity.”I was just looking for shells in the sand and came across it,” said Tara Hadley of St. Louis. “Just looking, I picked it up thinking it was a shell.” Martha Ellison of Prattville, walking the beach with her teenage daughter, admits to handling tar balls on a routine basis. “Yeah. I’ve gotten them all over our fingers, stepped on them, gotten them on our feet.”

So far, there has been no documented case of someone getting the flesh-eating disease from tar balls. Still, Arias urges caution.
“We don’t know if you can get infected with Vibrio Vulnificus by touching a tar ball, but the possibility is there,” she said.
BP stresses that there has been no human case of Vibrio attributed to contact with tar balls. A BP statement sent to News Five read: “The Arias study does not support a conclusion that tar balls may represent a new or important route of human exposure for Vibrio infection, or that the detection of Vibrio in tar balls would impact the overall public health risk, since there are other far more common sources of Vibrio, such as seawater and oysters.”

BP says it asked the Alabama Department of Public Health in 2012, if its beach clean-up workers were at risk. Dr. Thomas Miller, ADPH Deputy Director for Medical Affairs, replied in a letter that there was no evidence of increased cases of Vibrio since the oil spill. Miller indicated, however, that could have been a result of fewer tourists being at the beach.
Arias says the only other significant study of Vibrio and tar balls was conducted following a spill off the coast of Nigeria and showed similar results. Arias has not done any follow-up work since 2010, citing a lack of funds, but says she would like to do further research.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels

National Geographic: Earthquake Study Points to Possible Carbon Injection Risks

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/11/131104-carbon-injection-earthquake-risks/
Photo of an oil well drilling rig near Peggy, Texas.
co2-injection-earthquakes-texas-oil_73105_600x450
Oil rigs like this one long have been a feature of the Texas landscape. But for the first time, a study has traced a link between small earthquakes in western Texas and an increasingly common practice, underground injection of carbon dioxide to boost production.

Photograph by America, Alamy

Joe Eaton

For National Geographic

Published November 4, 2013

A cluster of 18 small earthquakes in western Texas was likely triggered by the injection of carbon dioxide into oil wells, according to a study published Monday in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study is the first to link carbon dioxide injections to actual earthquakes, and may help scientists evaluate the risks of storing greenhouse gas emissions deep underground, a fledgling technology for managing climate change known as geologic carbon sequestration. (See related “Quiz: What You Don’t Know About Carbon Capture.”) This week, energy secretaries from 22 nations and the European Union are meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss how to spur global deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technologies.

The earthquakes evaluated in the study were magnitude 3 and slightly larger and occurred between 2006 and 2011 in the Cogdell oil field near Snyder, Texas. It was not the first time the area had experienced seismic activity. From 1975 to 1982, a number of earthquakes had struck the oil field. Scientists linked that seismic activity to the oil industry practice of injecting water into oil wells to increase production. When the water injections stopped, the earthquakes ceased.

Beginning in 2004, however, the oil industry injected carbon dioxide and other gases into wells in the Cogdell field, also in a bid to enhance production. Earthquakes returned soon after, according to the study.

Cliff Frohlich, study co-author and associate director of the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, said carbon dioxide injection is the only variable that changed significantly before the earth started trembling.

Although injecting carbon dioxide to extract oil differs from carbon sequestration, Frohlich said his study could help scientists better understand possible risks of the technology, which has shown promise for reducing carbon emissions to the atmosphere.

“I’m not an expert on climate engineering, but a number of solutions have been proposed,” Frohlich said. “Whether they are good ideas or not, the jury is still out. Anytime you mess with the environment, there are unintended consequences.”

The study sheds further light on a category of seismic risks that is receiving increased attention in recent years: manmade risks caused by energy development that involves the injection of fluids underground, often at high pressure. The disposal of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations has been linked to temblors in several cases. (See related, “Fracking Wastewater Disposal Linked to Remotely Triggered Quakes” and “Scientists Say Oil Industry Likely Caused Largest Oklahoma Earthquake.”)

A 2012 report by the National Academy of Sciences warned that carbon sequestration might have the potential to induce larger earthquakes than fracking or injecting energy industry wastewater into the Earth’s subsurface. (See related blog post: “Tracing Links Between Fracking and Earthquakes.”) The increased risk is a result of the large volumes of carbon dioxide that would be injected, the study said. (See related, “Report Links Energy Activities to Higher Quake Risk.”)

Other scientists, however, worry the public might overlook the possible benefits of carbon sequestration by focusing on the risks. Andres Clarens, an assistant professor of environmental and water resources engineering at the University of Virginia, said he is concerned that Frohlich’s study could slow efforts to develop the technology. (See related, “Amid Economic Concerns, Carbon Capture Faces a Hazy Future,” and “A Quest to Clean Up Canada’s Oil Sands Carbon.”)

“Climate change is a well understood and imminent threat, and we are in dire need of strategies for reducing emissions while we scale up carbon-free energy sources,” Clarens said. “Quiz: What You Don’t Know About Climate Change Science.”)

In September, Clarens published a paper in Environmental Science and Technology, a scientific journal of the American Chemical Society, that proposed storing carbon dioxide in hydraulically fractured shale deposits after the removal of methane gas. The study found that the Marcellus shale formation in Pennsylvania alone has the potential to store roughly 50 percent of future U.S. nontransportation carbon dioxide emissions from 2018 to 2030.

Carbon sequestration is currently being tested at 65 sites around the world, including in Norway and Algeria and at a project site near Decatur, Illinois, where carbon dioxide totaling one million metric tons is being injected into a saline reservoir over a three-year period.

Wayne Pennington, a professor of geological and mining engineering and sciences at Michigan Technological University, said Frohlich’s paper is important because it provides the first example of an earthquake caused by carbon dioxide injection.

But Pennington said the study should not be read as the final word on the technology, which is widely used in international oil production without event.

What’s most intriguing, Pennington said, is that many locations are exposed to higher levels of injection than the Cogdell oil field but do not experience earthquakes. “We don’t know why,” he said. “Our understanding is clearly incomplete.” (See related, “Carbon Recycling: Mining the Air For Fuel,” and “Out of Thin Air: The Quest to Capture Carbon Dioxide.”)

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visitThe Great Energy Challenge.

energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, oil pollution, tar sands

Common Dreams: First Nations to Resume Blockade in Canadian Fracking Fight

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Published on Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Renewed protests follow announcement that energy company will re-start shale gas exploration
– Sarah Lazare, staff writer
image_of_blockade

A Royal Proclamation day feast brought out over 300 to the anti-fracking blockade in Rexton, New Brunswick in early October. [Photo: Miles Howe]Elsipogtog First Nations members are heading back to the streets in New Brunswick this week to defend their land from a gas drilling company seeking to re-start exploratory fracking operations in the region.

The new wave of local anti-drilling resistance will resume an ongoing battle between the community members who faced a paramilitary-style onslaught by law enforcement agencies last month that sparked international outcry and a wave of solidarity protests.

“This is an issue of human rights and access to clean drinking water, and it’s fundamentally about sovereignty and self-determination.” –Clayton Thomas-Muller, Idle No More

The renewed protest follows a recent announcement by New Brunswick’s premiere that SWN Resources Canada, a subsidiary of the Houston-based Southwestern Energy Company, will resume shale gas exploration in First Nations territory after it was halted by blockades and protests.

Elsipogtog members announced Monday they will join with local residents and other First Nations communities—including the Mi’kmaq people—to “light a sacred fire” and stage a protest to stop SWN from fracking.

“SWN is violating our treaty rights. We are here to save our water and land, and to protect our animals and people. There will be no fracking at all,” said Louis Jerome, a Mi’kmaq sun dancer, in a statement. “We are putting a sacred fire here, and it must be respected. We are still here, and we’re not backing down.”

“The people of Elsipogtog along with local people have a very strong resolve and will be there as long as they need to be to keep the threat of fracking from destroying their water,” said Clayton Thomas-Muller, a campaigner with Idle No More, in an interview with Common Dreams.

Community members previously blocked a road near the town of Rexton in rural New Brunswick to stop energy companies from conducting shale gas exploration on their land without their consent.

In early October, the government imposed a temporary injunction on the New Brunswick protest, bowing to pressure from SWN.

Claiming the authority of the injunction, over 100 Royal Canadian Mounted Police launched a paramilitary-style assault on the blockade in late October, bringing rifles and attack dogs and arresting 40 people.

First Nations communities and activists across Canada and the world launched a wave of actions in solidarity in response to the attack.

“Within 24 hours of the paramilitary assault on the nonviolent blockade by the fed police, Idle No More and other networks organized over 100 solidarity actions in over half a dozen countries,” said Thomas-Muller.

Days later, a Canadian judge overruled the injunction on the protests. Yet the federal and provincial governments continue to allow SWN to move forward fracking plans on indigenous lands, in what First Nation campaigners say is a violation of federal laws protecting the sovereignty of their communities.

“This is an issue of human rights and access to clean drinking water, and it’s fundamentally about sovereignty and self-determination,” said Thomas-Muller. “Support for the Elsipogtog and their actions to reclaim lands in their territory is something that is powerful and united from coast to coast and around the world.”

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energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, tar sands

Common Dreams: TransCanada CEO: Anti-Pipeline Campaign Effective, But Keystone XL Will Be Built

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/31-8

Published on Thursday, October 31, 2013

Russ Girling still sees project going forward, with or without White House approval
– Andrea Germanos, staff writer

The CEO of TransCanada, the corporation behind the tar sands-carrying Keystone XL, recognized the power of activists in fighting the project but said that even a rejection from the White House won’t deter the pipeline from being completed.

transcanadaceo
(Photo: Emma Cassidy via tarsandsaction/cc/flickr) Russ Girling, head of the Calgary-based energy giant, was in Washington on Tuesday to meet with the State Department about the pending approval of the pipeline, and offered his thoughts about Keystone opponents and the future of the pipeline in a handful of interviews on Wednesday.

Girling acknowledged the power activists, who have given “good sound bites” that have caused the average person to be fearful of the project, have had in fighting the pipeline, in an interview with Politico. Speaking to Bloomberg, he said that Keystone foes have been able to slow down the approval process and have been “very successful in creating the impression that the pipeline equals emissions.”

“There’s no question that the noise outside is having an influence on the process,” Girling told Bloomberg. “The project has been hijacked by activists that are opposed to the development of all fossil fuels.”

The reach of the message of Keystone XL opponents forced the company to launch extensive PR campaigns to fight back, Girling conceded.

While now in a fifth year of waiting for White House OK for the Keystone XL, which he expects in early 2014, Girling is optimistic, but said that even a “no” from the president won’t deter the project from moving forward.

In June President Obama declared :

Our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net effects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward.

A widely criticized draft environmental statement on the pipeline from State Department issued in March indicated it would have minimal impact.

Girling told The Hill he sees no reason for the White House to reject the pipeline in its final assessment, and, contradicting reports from environmental groups, said, “It is impossible to get to a conclusion that the pipeline causes any significant increase in [greenhouse gas] emissions.

He said supporters of the project that TransCanada has already sunk $2 billion into have shown no signs of leaving, despite years of waiting.

“Nobody is going to pack up their tent and leave,” Girling told Bloomberg. “We will get through these hurdles. The marketplace will determine whether these projects get done.”

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