Energy News
Could the Climate Bill be D.O.A.?
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WASHINGTON – A historic environmental protection bill is in danger after a massive oil spill put a new focus on the perils of offshore drilling, a feature that was supposed to win wider support for the legislation.
The bill, supported by President Barack Obama, calls for new offshore drilling — a concession by environmentalists. But with the tragedy off the Gulf Coast growing daily, even conservationists who have waited a decade for the legislation are now saying it will fail if offshore drilling remains in the bill.
“When you’re trying to resurrect a climate bill that’s face-down in the mud and you want to bring it back to life and get it breathing again, I don’t think you can have offshore drilling against the backdrop of what’s transpiring in the Louisiana wetlands,” said Richard Charter, energy adviser to Defenders of Wildlife. “I think it’s flat-lined.”
Some Democrats, including two of New Jersey’s congressmen and both of its senators, threatened Friday to pull their support if offshore drilling is included in the bill designed to curb emissions of pollution-causing gases blamed for global warming.
Introduction of the legislation was postponed on Monday for an unrelated reason. The bill aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and it also would expand domestic production of oil, natural gas and nuclear power.
Obama called for new offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean from Delaware to central Florida, and the northern waters of Alaska. He also asked Congress to lift a drilling ban in the oil-rich eastern Gulf of Mexico, 125 miles from Florida beaches.
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Seven Thoughts on The Deepwater Horizon Disaster – by Robert Bryce
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As the first oil from the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico starts reaching the Louisiana coast, here are a few thoughts on the spill and what it will mean over the coming months:
1. This a “reputational disaster” for the entire US offshore business. That’s the assessment of David Pursell, a managing director at Tudor Pickering Holt and Company, a Houston-based energy investment banking firm. The results of that will likely be:
– Drastically higher insurance rates for all operators working in the Gulf of Mexico. Rates had gone up dramatically after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Now they’ll go yet higher which will mean higher costs for the whole industry.
– The spill also means less offshore drilling in US waters. The chances of the Obama administration approving more offshore leases in the wake of this disaster are slim and none. And as my father used to say, “Slim left town.”
– Those factors will mean increased oil imports in the future. Any decline in US offshore oil production (30% of US oil production comes from the Gulf of Mexico) will necessarily mean more imports.
2. The best experts in the industry still don’t know what happened. It may have been a bad cement job. No one knows why the blowout preventers didn’t work or why they still can’t be activated.
3. The environmental damages caused by the spill will almost certainly eclipse those of the Exxon Valdez disaster. The volume of oil spilled in the Gulf will almost certainly be far less than the 11 million gallons spilled by the infamous tanker, but the cleanup from the Alaska spill was largely contained within Prince William Sound which had rocky beaches that could be steam cleaned. The oil that is heading into the Louisiana marshes cannot be corralled or managed in anything like the manner used in Alaska. And the Valdez spill happened on the surface. This oil is emerging from leaks 5,000 feet below the surface, which means the oil can bubble to the surface long distances from the well. Once on the surface, it can now drift
4. What the hell is wrong with BP? Just a few years ago, BP launched a hugely expensive ad campaign touting itself as “beyond petroleum.” The reality is that BP’s safety record is beyond pathetic.
In March 2005, BP’s Texas City refinery was hit by explosion that killed 15 and injured dozens. That accident resulted in a record $87 million fine against the company by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. A few months later, the company’sThunder Horse platform, a $1 billion investment in the Gulf of Mexico, almost sank. Then came the problems with leaking pipelines in Alaska. Now comes the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Expect litigation, and lots of it, aimed at BP. I’m no fan of lawsuits, but BP will richly deserve all of the lawsuits and all of the bad publicity that it gets. The Texas City disaster should have been a wake up call. It wasn’t. And now the entire oil and gas industry is being – pardon the pun – tarred with the same brush as BP.
Click to read the other three thoughts from Mr. Bryce.
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Gulf Coast Towns Brace as Huge Oil Slick Nears Marshes – New York Times
COCODRIE, La. — Oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico unabated Saturday, and officials conveyed little hope that the flow could be contained soon, forcing towns along the Gulf Coast to brace for what is increasingly understood to be an imminent environmental disaster.
The spill, emanating from a pipe 50 miles offshore and 5,000 feet underwater, was creeping into Louisiana’s fragile coastal wetlands as strong winds and rough waters hampered cleanup efforts. Officials said the oil could hit the shores of Mississippi and Alabama as soon as Monday.
The White House announced that President Obama would visit the region on Sunday morning.
Adm. Thad W. Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, who is overseeing the Obama administration’s response to the spill, said at a news conference Saturday evening that he could not estimate how much oil was leaking per day from the damaged underwater well.
“There’s enough oil out there that it’s logical it’s going to impact the shoreline,” Admiral Allen said.
The imperiled marshes that buffer New Orleans and the rest of the state from the worst storm surges are facing a sea of sweet crude oil, orange as rust. The most recent estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20 and sank days later, was gushing as much as 210,000 gallons of crude into the gulf each day. Concern is mounting that the flow may soon grow to several times that amount.
The wetlands in the Mississippi River Delta have been losing about 24 square miles a year, deprived of sediment replenishment by levees in the river, divided by channels cut by oil companies and poisoned by farm runoff from upriver. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita took large, vicious bites.
The questions that haunt this region are how much more can the wetlands take and does their degradation spell doom for an increasingly defenseless southern Louisiana?
Many variables will dictate just how devastating this slick will ultimately be to the ecosystem, including whether it takes days or months to seal the leaking oil well and whether winds keep blowing the oil ashore. But what is terrifying everyone from bird watchers to the state officials charged with rebuilding the natural protections of this coast is that it now seems possible that a massive influx of oil could overwhelm and kill off the grasses that knit the ecosystem together.
Healthy wetlands would have some natural ability to cope with an oil slick, said Denise Reed, interim director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans. “The trouble with our marshes is they’re already stressed, they’re already hanging by a fingernail,” she said.
It is possible, she said, that the wetlands’ “tolerance for oil has been compromised.” If so, she said, that could be “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
To an untrained eye, the vast expanses of grass leading into Terrebonne Bay, about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans, look vigorous. Locals use boats as cars here, trawling though the marsh for shrimp or casting for plentiful redfish. Out on the water, the air smells like salt — not oil — and seabirds abound and a dolphin makes a swift appearance.
But it is what is not visible that is scary, said Alexander Kolker, a professor of coastal and wetland science at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Piloting a craft through the inland waterways, he pointed out that islands that recently dotted the bay and are still found on local navigation maps are gone. Also gone are the freshwater alligators that gave the nearby town Cocodrie its name — French settlers thought they were crocodiles.
All evidence, he says, is that this land is quickly settling into the salt ocean.
The survival of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands is not only an environmental issue here. Since successive hurricanes have barreled up from the gulf unimpeded, causing mass devastation and loss of life, just about every resident of southern Louisiana has begun to view wetlands protection as a cause of existential importance. If the wetlands had been more robust when Hurricane Katrina’s waters pushed up from the ocean, the damage might not have been as severe.
But they were not. Levees holding back the Mississippi River have prevented natural land replenishment from floods. Navigation channels and pipeline canals have brought saltwater into fragile freshwater marshes, slowly killing them, and the sloshing of waves in boats’ wakes has eroded natural banks.
Since 1932, the state has lost an area the size of Delaware. Not all the damage is caused by humans: the hurricanes of 2005 turned about 217 square miles of marsh into water, according to a study by the United States Geological Survey.
Garret Graves, director of the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities, said that since Hurricane Katrina, extraordinary efforts at restoration had been made and, to some extent, had slowed the decline. But, he said, a severe oil dousing would change that.
“The vegetation is what holds these islands together,” Mr. Graves said. “When you kill that, you just have mud, and that just gets washed away.”
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Cape Cod Wind Project is Approved but Much to Chagrin of Residents (yes, energy is complicated)
HYANNIS, Mass. — The federal government may have described the Cape Wind project as a fait accompli, but Ian Parent does not expect to see turbines in the water or run the panini maker at his restaurant with electricity generated in Nantucket Sound any time soon.
“I bet this goes on for another five years,” said Mr. Parent, the owner of La Petite France Café, as he unwrapped cheese behind the counter on Wednesday afternoon.
Word that the federal government had approved a permit on Wednesday for Cape Wind Associates to build a 130-turbine wind farm off the coast here barely caused a ripple in Hyannis, where the installation will be visible from parts of the town, including a popular beach and many houses.
After a nine-year battle over the proposal, most here thought the decision would lead to even more years of litigation and waiting.
“I don’t think it’s over yet,” said Rob MacNamee, 42, a lawyer from Barnstable, Mass. “It’s been going on for how long? All the stickers for and against have washed off the cars, and the signs have blown down.”
The fight has dragged on for so long that many find themselves on both sides of the issue. That is, they now support the development of renewable energy, but just not here.
“I’m 100 percent for alternative energy, but just not in Nantucket Sound,” Mr. Parent said. “There’s no guarantee that the electricity will be cheaper. And once you put those windmills out there you can never take them away.”
Many in Hyannis, where the wind that would one day power the turbines whipped around rain and hail on Wednesday, thought the decision was to be expected from the Obama administration, which has dedicated billions of dollars to alternative energy sources.
Allen Rencurrel, a ship captain, speculated that the administration had deliberately waited until after the death in August of Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, one of Cape Wind’s biggest opponents, to make its call.
“Now that Teddy’s gone, that’s the only way they got it approved,” Mr. Rencurrel said from the deck of the Seafox, which harvests clams in beds near the site where the turbines would rise.
Mr. Rencurrel said he worried that the turbines would interfere with the routes he takes to some of his clam beds and challenge both experienced captains and recreational boaters.
“I feel sorry for the pleasure boaters out there — they’re inexperienced and are going to be running into these things,” he said.
Yet with unemployment high and affordable housing hard to come by, some here suggest that the construction and operations jobs could well make up for what might be lost in a vista.
“There’s a desperate need for work here,” said Steven Spagnohe, 46, a musician from Hyannis. “There’s a lot of skilled laborers and mechanical people out of work, and this would help.”
Mr. Spagnohe said that people opposed to the project are “old money” who “don’t want to lose tradition” while he sees Cape Wind as a step forward for the country’s energy policy.
“We’re going to get more electricity,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity for the United States, for America and for the Cape.”
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Dirty, Dangerous and Outdated Source of Energy Discussed in “The Great Coal Debate”
(ST. LOUIS, MO) – A leader from the country’s oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization, the Sierra Club, faced off against a representative from the largest private-sector coal company in the world, St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, in a debate about the future of coal in our country. “The Great Coal Debate,” which was hosted by the Washington University at St. Louis Student Union on Tuesday evening, was a lively discussion about what place, if any, coal has in the rapidly changing clean energy economy of the future. The debate took place in front of more than 500 students and community members at Graham Chapel on the campus of Washington University, and was watched live online by nearly 4,700 additional interested observers.
See the video of full debate on coal…
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Graham Pulls Support for Major Senate Climate Bill
WASHINGTON — In a move that may derail a comprehensive climate change and energy bill in the Senate, one of the measure’s central architects, Senator Lindsey Graham, has issued an angry protest over what he says are Democratic plans to give priority to a debate over immigration policy.
Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in a sharply worded letter on Saturday that he would no longer participate in negotiations on the energy bill, throwing its already cloudy prospects deeper into doubt. He had been working for months with SenatorsJohn Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, on the a legislation, which they were scheduled to announce with considerable fanfare on Monday morning. That announcement has been indefinitely postponed.
In his letter to his two colleagues, Mr. Graham said that he was troubled by reports that the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and the White House were planning to take up an immigration measure before the energy bill. Mr. Graham has worked with Democrats in the past on immigration matters and was expected to be an important bridge to Republicans on that issue, as well as on energy.
Mr. Graham said that any Senate debate on the highly charged subject of illegal immigration would make it impossible to deal with the difficult issues involved in national energy and global warming policy.\
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Green Energy Rush Hit by Headwinds
OFF THE COAST OF KENT, England—A phalanx of sleek white windmills, rising nearly 400 feet out of the North Sea, is just the start of one of the world’s most audacious green-energy programs.
The turbines are part of a project expected to be the world’s largest offshore wind farm when it is completed later this year. But only for a while, because it’s a prelude to something much bigger. In a few years, its developer, Swedish energy company Vattenfall AB, plans to start a new project farther offshore, in deeper waters, with turbines as tall as London’s 580-foot Gherkin skyscraper.
Just one problem: Vattenfall has no idea how it’s going to build it. “The equipment we need to operate in such rough waters doesn’t exist yet,” says Ole Bigum Nielsen, the project manager.
Europe is making a huge bet on wind energy. Because there is little room in its crowded countryside for sprawling wind-tower complexes, planners are increasingly looking to the sea. Europe’s current 2,000 megawatts of offshore generating capacity will grow at least 40,000 megawatts by 2020, enough to power more than 25 million households, the European Wind Energy Association predicts.
Britain is making the biggest wind wager. By offering generous incentives, the U.K. already has built more offshore wind power than any other nation. Now it is planning a wave of vast new wind farms, in some of Europe’s stormiest waters.
The U.K.’s commitment is driven by stringent European Union targets. To meet them, Britain will have to raise the share of its electricity that comes from renewable sources to about 30% by 2020. It’s just 7% now. The U.K. also adopted a “carbon budget” a year ago, committing to reduce emissions to at least 34% below 1990 levels by 2018-2022.
Some dismiss the windmills as quixotic. Wind energy needs massive subsidies to be economic. The cost to carry out Britain’s plans is estimated at $150 billion. Some predict a consumer backlash against resulting higher energy bills. And many more challenges await, judging from those the project at Kent faced, ranging from the need to protect marine worms to a design flaw that causes turbines to sink into their foundations.
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Officials meeting on water contamination issue in S. Caddo Parish
CADDO PARISH, LA (KSLA) – The Caddo Sheriff’s office, Exco officials and the Department of Environmental Quality are meeting at this hour to determine what the current status is of the water well contamination that has affected more than 100 people in S. Caddo Parish.
Sheriff Steve Prator said he would hold a 5 pm. news conference to update everyone on the status of the contamination. You can get the latest information on the situation live during KSLA News 12 at 5.
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Updated news release from the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office on the water well contaminations in south Caddo Parish:
Representatives from the DEQ will continue monitoring water wells today in south Caddo Parish. Some areas where natural gas was detected in water wells will be retested, and new areas will also be tested.
In the meantime, the evacuation of about 135 families in the area will remain in effect. Residents will be allowed home for brief periods today to gather additional clothing and needed supplies. Residents are encouraged to gather any needed items during daylight hours.
Evacuated residents with pets can board their animals at local kennels, save their receipts, and be reimbursed by Exco Operating Company.
“We’re not ready to say your home is safe,” said Sheriff Steve Prator. “Testing will continue today, and another assessment on the status of evacuations will be made in the morning.”
For those families that remained in their homes, the DEQ cautioned against using well water for any reason. They also said to avoid smoking and open flames in the affected area.
Officials also announced today that “flaring” the well site has begun and is expected to produce flares up to 75 feet in height. This is a normal activity, officials said.
Exco officials will meet with evacuated residents at 6 p.m. tonight at the Comfort Inn, 6:45 p.m. at the Clarion, and 8 p.m. at the Hilton.
In the meantime, the information hotline established by the Shreveport Fire Department remains open. That number is 675-2255.
All currently announced road closures remain in effect.
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CADDO PARISH, LA (KSLA) – Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator says it will be at least another 24 hours before residents evacuated from parts of S. Caddo Parish can return home.
During a morning news conference, Prator said the DEQ had been monitoring the contaminated wells and that so far there was “not much progress.” DEQ will continue to test the contaminated wells during the day.
Prator also said more residents could get well contamination notices depending on what the testing shows.
Authorities, Exco officials and DEQ agents will meet again at 4 p.m. and will hold a media briefing at 5 p.m.
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CADDO PARISH, LA (KSLA) – UPDATE: Monday’s evacuations in South Caddo Parish could be expanded even further. Additional notifications went out to 100 more households in area just south of the Shreveport city limits just after 8:00 p.m., tripling the number of residents forced from their homes by potentially flammable well water. The additional evacuations were ordered as ongoing testing of the groundwater by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality found elevated levels of natural gas in 35 out of 45 private wells.
Residents in the affected area have been warned that, “though unlikely, the water from your well may have the potential of being flammable. Do not drink or use any well water and do not give well water to your pets. They are also advised not to turn on any faucets, flush the toilets, or smoke cigars, pipes or cigarettes.
Streets included in this expanded evacuation now include: Pueblo, Lariat, Goldsberry, Goldsberry Circle, Harris Ln., and Norris Ferry South of Southern Trace Parkway.
Streets already closed are Norris Ferry Extension, Debroeck, Willow Ridge, and Cypress Gardens.
All those without a place to relocate have been advised to “report immediately” to the Hilton-Shreveport Convention Center, located downtown at 104 South Market Street, where representatives are set up to provide further information.
More than 50 residents have already been evacuated throughout the day to other hotels in Shreveport.
In addition, the Shreveport Fire Department has activated an Information Hotline at 675-2255.
The DEQ has been testing wells in the area since early Monday morning, after workers at an Exco drill site noted elevated levels of natural gas in the air and irregular pressure readings while drilling one on three wells on the “super-pad” site located in the 11000 block of Norris Ferry Road.
Caddo Sheriff Steve Prator says two of the wells were filled with cement, and air contamination dissipated by early afternoon. But by 7:00 p.m., Prator revealed that plans are in place for those wells to be uncapped early Tuesday morning and “flared.” Flaring is a relatively common practice in the industry, intended to burn off excess gas.
Now the focus is on determining how far the flammable gas has gotten into the Wilcox Aquifer, which serves as the main water supply for Parish residents outside the city limits of Shreveport.
Sheriff Prator says another briefing is planned for Tuesday morning with updates on the DEQ’s groundwater testing, which will determine whether evacuations will continue or even possibly be expanded.
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CADDO PARISH, LA (KSLA) -The Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office reports about 25 homes in south Caddo Parish were evacuated as a precaution Monday morning, after gas vapors were detected at a well site.
Deputies say that vapors were first detected at the drilling rig near the 11,000 block of Norris Ferry Road around 8 p.m. Sunday night. The situation stabilized, but vapors reappeared around 4 a.m. today.
Initially, only a few residents within a 100-yard radius of the well were evacuated, but that area was soon expanded. Roads currently closed include Cypress Garden, Willow Ridge, Debroeck, and Norris Ferry south of Southern Trace.
Caddo Sheriff’s Haz Mat, Louisiana State Police Haz Mat, and DEQ remain on the scene. Officials are currently testing water and air quality to determine whether residents will be allowed back into their neighborhoods.
Click on the video to see Carolyn Roy’s live report from KSLA News 12 at 5.
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Wikipedia’s Entry on Global Energy Consumption
In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J) with 80 to 90 percent derived from the combustion of fossil fuels.[1] This is equivalent to an average power consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W). Not all of the world’s economies track their energy consumption with the same rigor, and the exact energy content of a barrel of oil or a ton of coal will vary with quality.
Most of the world’s energy resources are from the sun’s rays hitting earth. Some of that energy has been preserved as fossil energy, some is directly or indirectly usable; for example, via wind, hydro- or wave power. The term solar constant is the amount of incoming solar electromagnetic radiation per unit area, measured on the outer surface of Earth’s atmosphere, in a plane perpendicular to the rays. The solar constant includes all types of solar radiation, not just visible light. It is measured by satellite to be roughly 1366 watts per square meter, though it fluctuates by about 6.9% during a year—from 1412 W m−2 in early January to 1321 W m−2 in early July, due to the Earth’s varying distance from the sun, and by a few parts per thousand[clarification needed] from day to day. For the whole Earth, with a cross section of 127,400,000 km2, the total energy rate is 174 petawatts (1.740×1017 W), plus or minus 3.5%. This value is the total rate of solar energy received by the planet; about half, 89 PW, reaches the Earth’s surface.[citation needed]
The estimates of remaining non-renewable worldwide energy resources vary, with the remaining fossil fuels totaling an estimated 0.4 YJ (1 YJ = 1024J) and the available nuclear fuel such as uranium exceeding 2.5 YJ. Fossil fuels range from 0.6-3 YJ if estimates of reserves of methane clathrates are accurate and become technically extractable. Mostly thanks to the Sun, the world also has a renewable usable energy flux that exceeds 120 PW (8,000 times 2004 total usage), or 3.8 YJ/yr, dwarfing all non-renewable resources.
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Natural gas: Fuel of the future – CNNMoney.com
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The world seems awash in natural gas.
In the United States, new production from once hard-to-tap shale rock is booming in places like Texas, Louisiana and the Northeast. There are also plans to construct a mammoth gas pipeline through Canada to bring Alaskan North Slope gas to market.
In Australia and Qatar, liquefied natural gas terminals have started supplying fast-growing Asian countries, and more are under construction.
In Africa, rich natural gas deposits off the coast of Angola are slated for both the domestic market and export to Europe, which still gets a big part of its supply from Russia’s huge reserves. Plans are also underway to supply both Europe and Asia with the sizable gas reserves in Iran and Iraq.
Forecasting agencies, long known to play it safe before touting new trends, are only predicting a modest increase in gas’ share of the world’s overall energy mix by 2030.
But some analysts are saying it could be much higher, with big implications for the electricity markets – and coal-fired power plants in particular.
How much do we have?
In the United States, it’s this shale natural gas that’s got everyone so excited.
This gas has been known about for some time, but new drilling and extraction technology has now made it commercially viable. There are some concerns over the environmental impact of this drilling, especiallywater pollution, but the sheer amount of new gas is getting major attention.
“We’ve basically won the lottery,” Michael Ming, president of Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America, an organization that studies new natural gas developments, said during a recent Time Inc. conference on energy technologies.
The amount of gas reserves in these new shales could double the nation’s known stockpile of natural gas, according to U.S. Geological Survey estimates.
Yet the U.S. Energy Information Administration is only forecasting a rise in natural gas production of under 20% by 2030. And as our overall energy use is expected to rise as well, natural gas’ share of our overall energy mix will be little changed. EIA’s estimates are in-line with other private forecasts.
Ming is among those who believe estimates for natural gas use are too small. He pointed to estimates from 10 years ago that said just 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas was likely in Texas’ Barnett Shale. That estimate is now 50 trillion cubic feet.
“There’s a lot of conservatism right now,” he said in an interview with CNNMoney. “We’re just at the very tip of this pyramid.”
What we use it for
Natural gas can be used for many things – to power cars, heat homes, cook, or generate electricity.
It’s this last use that will likely represent the biggest opportunity for gas in the next couple of decades.
For the last several years utilities have scrapped plans to build coal-fired power plants in favor of natural gas plants, which emit about half the carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. This move has become known in the power industry as the “dash to gas.”
But that dash has been only half-hearted, said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm.
Over a decade ago utility execs were promised natural gas would be abundant and cheap. But the production didn’t pan out as planned, and gas prices spiked even before oil prices did earlier this decade.
Prices have since dropped significantly, partially due to all the new shale gas, but utility execs are still leery this resource is for real.
‘It’s a question of believing,” said Tertzakian, who also thinks the estimates for future natural gas use are low. “Once they believe the trend, gas demand is more likely to gain momentum.”
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