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On To Frack or Not to Frack? Putting the Debate in Context
Very interesting and enjoyable to read. One question - under the section titled: "context is key" you give a cost for natural gas at $3 - 4 per gal in US and $8 per gallon in Europe. Is that liquid fuel equivalent or should the unit be per MMBTU or cubic feet? (or one of those fancy pants SI units.) But honestly, you presented the material well, trying to "keep between the ditches" in the argument of energy v. environment - in a transparent and concise way.
Units are a pain. That's why chemical engineers solved the physics using non-dimensional mathematical analysis. Or did 30 + years ago.
...edited to spell check - spelling too
On The Tier 3 Game: EPA Regulations
This is a bully's defence. API needs to re-think its public relations strategy - it's a complete failure. All costs incurred by production and refining have been passed down to the end user - the air breathers and water drinkers. And then some. Come back with your weak stock whining after a couple of unprofitable quarters, C-level executes are making less than 7 figures and API bloggers are working on spec.
With all those profits generated by O&G, quarter after quarter, one would think a fraction could go into hydro-treating and de-sulphurization improvements. How long has it been since the Claus Unit was invented? Like 75 years?
The big issue is with tar sands, which on average has a sulphur content of around 3 to 7 percent compared to light sweet crude of less than 1 percent. API wants tar sands freely flowing to refineries and will spend big bucks in the order of $1-6 billion per refinery for process upgrades, but won't spend the extra capital for dealing with all that sulphur emissions?
On Energy Demand Reductions Help Slash US CO2 Emissions: A Closer Analysis
You write: "The data is probably of little value." You do know you may have just implicated all US industries participating in voluntary emissions reporting? A program pushed by industry as an alternative to agency monitoring. If the data is of little value than fault also lies with industry.
On Energy Demand Reductions Help Slash US CO2 Emissions: A Closer Analysis
Excellent post. The EPA report was a presentation of data accumulated by industry via voluntary reporting. There was no analysis. Finally someone has looked into it deeper than a hunch, a tweet and a press release. Outstanding job!
On Keystone XL: Safe for the Environment
In the last paragraph Mark writes: "So let’s move on." Nope. If Keystone XL is to be completed and put into operation, let's force API and its member corporations to line the inside walls of every linear inch of steel pipe pumping tar sands in the US. This would include digging up old lines and new for Keystone and all the others pipelines pumping tar sands. Better yet, make the pipeliners double wall the pipe. Install leak detection monitoring every quarter of a mile. Hire pipeline walkers to inspect up and down the lines 24/7/365. Have on retainer and in place emergency response teams every 10 miles. Apply all federal regulations including RCRA and CERCLA. Tax every drop of tar sands and diluent for environmental protection and remediation including climate change mitigation and adaptation. And none of this cost can be put onto the end user. Oh, and ban all commodity financialization products like futures on tar sands.
Now that may add some jobs, but I still won't move on.
On Hydraulic Fracking & Water Pollution
I re-read your post. It is well written and insightful, but 25 years too late. United States environmental protection is at precipice, instead of say a fork in the road as an analogy. I'm not familiar with South African environmental law so won't comment on that.
The Republican party, starting with candidate Mitt Romney, were ready to close down the US EPA. That may have been mindless bloviating to stir up the stupid, but I'll take them at their word. Many people know that at the municipality, state and federal levels, regulations protecting our food, water, land and air are being eroded, i.e. less protection. This erosion started in the late 1980s and continues to this day. The issue isn't so much that Democrats think it's bad to feed your child still bottoms and benzo (a) pyrene and Republicans think that it's only the family's responsibility. Republicans and others believe ALL regulation is bad. (Except of course regulations protecting major corporations from competition and profit erosion).
Fracking could be safe I guess. O&G believes it should be fine. Politicians hope so. Non-government organization (NGOs) focusing on environmental policy are pretty sure its fine, if that what's its major donors want.
My problem with fracking is that it's being cowboy-ed, with almost no federal oversight and a bare minimum at the state and municipality levels.
For you to make a declaration on whether fracking is environmentally OK or not - is either naive or blatantly dismissive. There has been almost no pre-drilling characterization and perfunctory at best environmental monitoring during development and operations. Simply put, there's no baseline data upon which to compare to non-existing standards. We're beyond 25 years ago - more like 40 years before NEPA, CAA, CWA, SDWA, RCRA, CERCLA etc.
On Hydraulic Fracking & Water Pollution
Dr. McDermott writes:
"However, advocacy groups do their credibility few favours through the selective interpretation of – or pure disregard for – the existing scientific evidence regarding the extent of these risks."
What advocacy groups? How are they selectively interpreting or disregarding risk?
You may want to change your writing style, it comes off more shrill than earnest. A cowboy hat wearing Texas oilman seems way more honest to me than an environmentally sensitive hipster economist. Shell is sponsoring this post - not good intentions.
On Just Say No to Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
By making your argument simply doesn't make it correct. It's flawed. There's about 9 million direct and indirect oil and gas jobs in the US. This is about 5 to 10 percent of the economy. Oil and gas companies and its relatively few investors get rich. The rest of the economy gets hampered by the reliance on expensive oil and gas, since investment gets funneled into producing more oil and gas rather than other more productive and value added things. We can decide whether its important to employ welders for pipelines and terminals or for other areas. Either way these are relatively short term jobs. Unless of course the Keystone XL needs to get repaired frequently due to leaks.
On Just Say No to Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
Your analysis is way off. So what you're saying is cheap oil and gas or any commodity is bad for the world's economy? No cheap oil is bad for oil and gas companies and feudal petrostates like Great Britain and Saudi Arabia. There wouldn't be Alberta tar sands and the need for Keystone XL if oil was much below $80. It would not be profitable. There'd be fewer oil jobs of course, but more jobs in other areas to attract investment dollars.
During the 1990s the US economy took off and added many jobs with cheap oil. It was bad for oil producers, but good for the rest. I can only imagine what you think of energy efficiency, alternative energy and use reduction.
On Just Say No to Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
Your analysis got me thinking. So if oil magically goes up to $200/barrel the pipeline would produce 725,000 jobs? And if oil were to drop to $50/barrel only 181,250 jobs are created. I don't think commodity exploitation works the way you think. For instance, oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia produces lots of oil, but not many jobs. The spoils don't trickle down necessarily to job creation. Plus oil and gas production, refining and marketing traditionally have low employment revenue-wise compared to other industries. The overall goal is to increase production without adding a commensurate number of jobs.
On Rising Natural Gas Prices Not Enough to Save Kewaunee's Cheap Nuclear Energy
The issue is that the current owner Dominion wanted to sell the plant. There were no buyers. Wind has almost nothing to do with it since Wisconsin has all but banned wind power integration (see Tea Party crazies and ALEC). The $1 billion decommissioning price tag and inability of utilities and marketers to weasel out of that commitment is probably why they're looking at gas. Department of Homeland Security has mussle under both parties typically.
Here's an article from Chemical and Engineering News titled Nuclear Retirement Anxiety. It's a pretty good premier on the subject of nuke plant operating life, security and decommissioning:
http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i13/Nuclear-Retirement-Anxiety.html
From the article:
"Yet to be seen will be the impact on aging power plants of new safety and maintenance requirements springing from NRC’s analysis of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan. That tragedy happened two years ago this spring. Under a phased schedule, NRC is requiring new safety additions for 31 U.S. reactors that are similar in design to the three Japanese reactors that suffered a meltdown and released radioactive materials following an earthquake and tsunami.
The new requirements include emergency backup power and instrumentation to ensure spent-fuel pools operate adequately. All these reactors must also now have hardened vents for reactor containment structures to relieve pressure and discharge built-up hydrogen during a reactor vessel accident. NRC is also contemplating requiring filters to capture vented radioactive material."
On The Price of Ignoring Energy Innovation
Quoted from the post:
"And Levi ventures onto the scientific fringe when he writes that “high temperatures could lubricate the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, helping it slowly slip into the ocean” leading to “massively” rising sea levels “over time.”"
After reading Levi's review paper on fugitive emissions from shale gas operations in Colorado, I'll say he has every right to "venture onto the scientific fringe." The paper was a bit pedantic for my liking, but well done, highly scientific and rigorously fundamental. So I can vouch for his capabilities (unless there's a staff of chemical engineers just sitting around the CFR office). I'm not using pedantic pejoratively. Emissions testing and sampling requires some gut analysis along side phase equilibrium calculations. Emissions monitoring and air sampling is highly dependent on standardized methods and thorough understanding and review of procedures before jumping too far into review and critique.
Regardless of the debate between he and NOAA (indications of flaws and fatal flaws on both sides), his paper is an essential review piece and should not have been taken so quickly from science and forced into the logrolling PR blogosphere churn. Here's Levi's pre-published paper he made available on his blog.
http://blogs.cfr.org/levi/files/2013/03/JGRResponse-Accepted.pdf
FWIW, my gut says shale gas operations emissions are unacceptably high regardless or 2, 4 or 7 percent, bottom up or top down monitoring. Especially when shale gas is being sold as an environmentally preferred alternative to burning coal.