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Shale Gas Fracking Will Be Around For a Long, Long Time

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 28, 2013

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The Wall Street Journal reports that the shale gas boom is going to last for decades:

The most exhaustive study to date of a key natural-gas field in Texas, combined with related research under way elsewhere, shows that U.S. shale-rock formations will provide a growing source of moderately priced natural gas through 2040, and decline only slowly after that. A report on the Texas field, to be released Thursday, was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

….Looking at data from actual wells rather than relying on estimates and extrapolations, the study broadly confirms conclusions by the energy industry and the U.S. government, which in December forecast rising gas production. “We are looking at multi, multi decades of growth,” said Scott Tinker, director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the university and a leader of the study.

I don’t have access to the study of the Texas field, let alone the “related research” on other shale gas fields, but the press release from the University of Texas does include the chart on the right, which suggests that the Barnett field peaked last year and is now in decline. In 15 years it will be producing at half its peak rate.

But that’s still a lot of shale gas between now and 2050, when the field will be exhausted. And it’s going to require drilling a lot more wells along the way, since individual wells tend to produce for only a short time. Given this, it sure would be nice to work out the possible environmental damage of shale fracking on air and groundwater now, instead of waiting until 2030 or so, when it will be too late.

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Shale Gas Fracking Will Be Around For a Long, Long Time

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Can we afford to give a $40 billion gift to oil companies?

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 27, 2013

Can we afford to give a $40 billion gift to oil companies?

By John Upton

ShutterstockOne of America’s many gifts to oil and gas companies: billions of dollars worth of royalty-free drilling.

What present do you give to the corporation that already has everything?

In the case of Chevron, the U.S. has provided a gift of $1.5 billion in royalty-free drilling in the Gulf of Mexico since the 1990s.

That’s according to a new analysis [PDF] of Interior Department figures by the office of Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. He is calling on his colleagues in Congress to end the handouts.

BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell have received nearly $3 billion in royalty breaks, paying nothing for extracting 262 million barrels of oil and 361 billion cubic feet of natural gas, the report concludes. Chevron was the biggest winner, but more than 100 other companies, some owned by foreign governments, have also shared in spoils of leases signed during an era of low oil prices.

“The royalty breaks enjoyed by these companies have already cost $11 billion in forgone revenue,” a press release sent out by Markey’s office states, “and are expected to cost more than $15.5 billion over the next decade — exceeding previous estimates by the Interior Department — and may ultimately reach a total of $40 billion as oil and gas production rises.”

How is this possible? The Washington Post explains:

Once upon a time, the price of oil was so low — dropping under $11 a barrel in late 1998 — that Congress agreed that big oil companies needed incentives to drill for oil in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. So in 1995 it ordered the Interior Department to waive royalties on virtually all of the oil and natural gas that would come out of wells drilled between 1996 and 2000.

Markey thinks it’s high time the fossil-fuel sector starts paying more for the gas and oil that it drills out of the Gulf. Again from the Post:

Of course, oil prices have also grown markedly since 1995, up nine-fold from the nadir of 1998.

As oil prices soared, lawmakers and the Interior Department tried to revoke the waiver, invoking a clause requiring that royalties be paid when oil passed a price of $28 a barrel (adjusted for inflation) or when production volume passed certain thresholds.

But one of the companies, Kerr McGee, later acquired by Anadarko, filed suit and won Court of Appeals backing for its assertion that the Interior Department lacked authority under the 1995 act to impose price thresholds. After the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case, oil companies, which had been paying the royalties anyway pending an outcome to the case, received refunds. Markey says the provisional payments show that the companies did not need relief to begin with.

With record high oil prices, the 1995 deal looks worse and worse from the government’s point of view. And Markey is saying that undoing it could contribute a small portion of the revenues needed to avoid the looming automatic spending cuts known as sequestration.

In somewhat related news, federal efforts to improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles, weatherize homes, and roll out solar panels on federal lands could be slashed if Congress and the president can’t agree on a plan to avoid the sequester by Friday.

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Can we afford to give a $40 billion gift to oil companies?

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Mother of God, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson Made a Movie About Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Laws…

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 23, 2013

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Snitch
Summit Entertainment
95 minutes

This may come as a huge shock to you: The movie industry frequently markets their product in dishonest ways in their efforts to make money. For instance, if you watched the trailer or any of the TV spots for the newly released Snitch, you’d think it was just another action movie with cars and guns starring The Rock:

In reality, there’s roughly ten cumulative minutes of killing in the movie. Snitch, directed and co-written by ex-stuntman Ric Roman Waugh, is a family drama about a father (played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) who reunites with his estranged son after the kid is thrown in prison due to Draconian mandatory minimum sentencing laws. The dad then does everything he can—including becoming a top informant for a federal prosecutor and the DEA—to get his first-time-offender son’s sentence reduced from ten years to zero. (The AARP has declared that this Dwayne Johnson movie is “really about good parenting.”) Things get even bleaker when his good-natured and once college-bound son starts getting routinely harassed and, as the film implies, raped by the tougher and larger inmates.

Snitch features a lot of somber music and family members, understandably, in tears. It’s hyper critical of the War on Drugs and the real-life mandatory minimum penalties that foster a counterproductive culture of “snitching.” When the promotional materials read that the film is “inspired by true events,” what that means is the script was based on a 1999 episode of PBS’ Frontline titled, “Snitch: How Informants Have Become a Key Part of Prosecutorial Strategy in the Drug War.” The episode examines two cases in which minor offenders got severe sentences based on the testimony of “snitches” who received sentence reductions in return for cooperating with authorities. Unlike the movie, the episode of PBS’ acclaimed investigative news program does not feature a climactic car chase involving a 9mm submachine gun and a big rig.

So just to recap: Dwayne Johnson—a man most famous for pantomime wrestling, acting next to massive explosions, and knowing about the outcome of the Bin Laden raid pretty much before the rest of the world did—just made a movie slamming mandatory minimums that serves as a $35-million companion piece to a PBS documentary.

This is something that happened.

But in all seriousness, Johnson is an adept actor who handles the heavier emotions and grittier sequences here with ease and gravity. And Snitch is The Rock’s best critique of the War on Drugs since the satirical press-conference scene at the beginning of the 2010 Will Ferrell comedy The Other Guys—where New York cops played by The Rock and Samuel L. Jackson heartily defend inflicting $12 million worth of property damage in order to bust criminals carrying only a quarter-pound of weed.

Now check out this clip from the original Frontline documentary “Snitch”:

Watch “It Tore the Whole Family Up” on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Snitch gets a wide release on Friday, February 22. The film is rated PG-13 for drug content and sequences of violence. Click here for local showtimes and tickets.

Click here for more movie and TV coverage from Mother Jones.

To read more of Asawin’s reviews, click here.

To listen to the weekly movie and pop-culture podcast that Asawin co-hosts with ThinkProgress critic Alyssa Rosenberg, click here.

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Mother of God, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson Made a Movie About Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Laws…

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The Women’s Movement’s Next 50 Years

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 21, 2013

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

In 1968, the Phillip Morris Company launched a memorable campaign to sell Virginia Slims, a new brand of cigarettes targeting women, itself a new phenomenon. It had a brand-new slogan: “You’ve come a long way, baby.” The company plastered it on billboards nationwide and put it in TV ads that featured women of the early twentieth century being punished for smoking. In all their advertising, smoking was equated with a set of traits meant to capture the essence of women in a new era of equality—independence, slimness, glamour, and liberation.

As it happened, the only equality this campaign ended up supporting involved lung cancer. Today, women and men die at similar rates from that disease.

Still, women have come a long way since the mid-twentieth century, and it’s worth considering just how far—and just how far we have to go.

Once Upon a Time

These days it may be hard for some to believe, but before the women’s movement burst on the scene in the late 1960s, newspapers published ads for jobs on different pages, segregated by gender. Employers legally paid women less than men for the same work. Some bars refused to serve women and all banks denied married women credit or loans, a practice which didn’t change until 1974. Some states even excluded women from jury duty.

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The Women’s Movement’s Next 50 Years

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Motor vehicle deaths rose 5 percent in 2012

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 20, 2013

Motor vehicle deaths rose 5 percent in 2012

By Philip Bump

A hopefully non-fatal accident.

The National Safety Council yesterday released its estimates of 2012 motor-vehicle deaths in the United States. And: bad news. From the report [PDF]:

Motor-vehicle deaths up 5% in 2012.

Motor-vehicle deaths in 2012 totaled 36,200, up 5% from 2011 and marking the first annual increase since 2004 to 2005. The 2012 estimate is provisional and may be revised when more data are available. The total for 2012 was also up 2% from the 2010 figure. … The estimated annual population death rate is 11.49 deaths per 100,000 population, an increase of 4% from the 2011 rate. The estimated annual mileage death rate is 1.23 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, an increase of 4% from the 2011 rate. …

The estimated cost of motor-vehicle deaths, injuries, and property damage in 2012 was $276.6 billion, a 5% increase from 2011. The costs include wage and productivity losses, medical expenses, administrative expenses, employer costs, and property damage.

The deadliest month on the roads was July, followed by August and June. The safest: February — not a surprise, since it’s the shortest month.

The NSC also provided state-by-state data, which is revealing. Last November, we looked at a report suggesting that red states were more likely to experience traffic deaths. That report used preliminary data — but the data released yesterday seems to reinforce the idea. You wouldn’t notice it looking at the raw, per-state data, however.

Speaking of:

Deaths per month

Darker shades mean higher overall numbers. Not surprisingly, states with larger populations have more road deaths. (There was no data for Vermont.) This doesn’t tell us very much.

Population per road death per month

In the map above, a lighter color means a bigger number, which is good — it suggests that there are fewer road deaths as a function of population. Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, New Mexico, and the South have more road deaths by population than many other states — reinforcing the link between red states and traffic deaths. New York’s rate of death as a function of population is relatively low.

Rate of change since 2011

Darker shades mean an increase in the number of deaths; lighter shades mean a decrease. Interestingly, the Northeast has seen a larger increase in the number of road deaths than many other regions. Two adjacent states saw the biggest changes — South Dakota went up, Wyoming went down — but this is largely because they have small populations, making percentages more volatile.

The moral of the story is this: If you don’t want to die in a car accident, move to New York. Or go back in time to 2011. Or don’t leave the house. All viable options.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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John McCain Goes All-In on Benghazi "Cover-Up"

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 18, 2013

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Hoo boy, has John McCain lost it. Yesterday, on Meet the Press, he blathered on for a while about all the unanswered questions he supposedly has regarding Benghazi—most of which have been answered, of course—and then accused President Obama of a “massive cover-up.” David Gregory interrupted McCain and asked the question that regular readers know has also been nagging at me from the start: “What is the cover-up? Of what?” Here’s McCain’s McCarthy-esque spluttering when Gregory challenged him:

Do you care….do you care, David….do you care, David….do you care….I’m asking you, do you care….I’m asking you, do you care whether four Americans died?

….You said there’s a cover-up. A cover-up of what? A cover up of what?

Of the information concerning the deaths of four brave Americans.

So that’s that. When he’s challenged about the ridiculous cover-up charge, which has never made sense from the start, McCain’s answer is to accuse Gregory of not caring about the deaths of four brave Americans. Welcome to the modern Republican Party.

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We Humans Are Terrible Earwitnesses

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 11, 2013

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Over the weekend I wrote a short post about how terrible most people are as eyewitnesses. Today I got this email from JB, a regular reader:

Human beings are terrible “earwitnesses,” too. I’ve been a lawyer specializing in air crash litigation — from the defense side — for 33 years, and witnesses often claim to have heard what are, essentially, impossible sounds. My favorite involves turbine-powered helicopters (I was a military helicopter pilot before entering law school), which earwitnesses invariably report as suffering engine “missing” (irregular piston firing) just before a crash, when turbine engines — you guessed it — don’t have pistons. Occasionally, you get a good report from a sophisticated witness like a pilot or mechanic, but most of the time the best you can hope for is some indication of either sound or silence at a given point before impact, about which you have to fill in the source from a menu of the possible.

This is no surprise, of course. Eyes, ears, whatever. We humans are just unreliable witnesses, especially when we’re under stress. Unfortunately, most of the time it really matters, we’re under stress.

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We Humans Are Terrible Earwitnesses

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Are solar panels the worst thing for the environment ever? Um, no

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 11, 2013

Are solar panels the worst thing for the environment ever? Um, no

By Philip Bump

Solar panel users.

Some very bad news, American consumers. You know those solar panels that you thought were so “green”? Turns out that they’re completely terrible for the environment. Seriously. Completely terrible and awful and you’re basically personally responsible for the eventual decline and collapse of modern civilization if you use one. It’s sad, but true.

From the Associated Press:

While solar is a far less polluting energy source than coal or natural gas, many panel makers are nevertheless grappling with a hazardous waste problem. Fueled partly by billions in government incentives, the industry is creating millions of solar panels each year and, in the process, millions of pounds of polluted sludge and contaminated water.

To dispose of the material, the companies must transport it by truck or rail far from their own plants to waste facilities hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of miles away.

The fossil fuels used to transport that waste, experts say, is not typically considered in calculating solar’s carbon footprint, giving scientists and consumers who use the measurement to gauge a product’s impact on global warming the impression that solar is cleaner than it is.

You there. With the solar panel on your roof. Thanks for killing America.

To be fair, pollution is bad. The AP report suggests that pollution in the solar industry may be unusually high because of the industry’s rapid growth. But what we’re talking about isn’t pollution from solar panels, it’s pollution from manufacturing. That’s been a challenge for far longer than solar panels have existed.

The AP outlines how much pollution we’re talking about, at least in California: “46.5 million pounds of sludge and contaminated water from 2007 through the first half of 2011.” That’s about 11 million pounds of sludge and water a year. By comparison, the fracking industry used at least 70 billion gallons of water a year [PDF] in 2010. Some of that was recycled, but the industry still produces about 584 trillion pounds of waste a year. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison, but a very small apple and a very, very large orange.

Anyway, the AP added this toward the bottom of the article:

The roughly 20-year life of a solar panel still makes it some of the cleanest energy technology currently available. Producing solar is still significantly cleaner than fossil fuels. Energy derived from natural gas and coal-fired power plants, for example, creates more than 10 times more hazardous waste than the same energy created by a solar panel, according to [San Jose State University environmental studies professor Dustin] Mulvaney.

Excluding, presumably, the greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Why count those?

As of my writing this, the Associated Press’ report hadn’t yet been picked up by Fox News or hailed by a Republican member of Congress. We will update the post when that eventuality occurs.

Never mind. Glenn Beck’s The Blaze picked it up. The headline is absolutely priceless. “Associated Press: Solar energy actually has a big ‘hazardous waste problem’ (and how much did Solyndra contaminate?)”

You can make this stuff up if you’re creative enough, but you never actually need to.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Are solar panels the worst thing for the environment ever? Um, no

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Ohio revokes drilling license of company caught dumping fracking fluid in the sewer

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 8, 2013

Ohio revokes drilling license of company caught dumping fracking fluid in the sewer

By Philip Bump

The semi-vacant Rust Belt city of Youngstown, Ohio, thought that fracking might be the solution to its epidemic of empty buildings. The revenue from drillers could allow the city to continue its policy of razing abandoned buildings, constricting the city and allowing it to better serve residents. But the explosion of fracking in the Utica shale formation on which the city sits may yield another revenue stream: fines for pollution.

chrismurf

Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company.

On Jan. 31, Ohio Department of Natural Resources inspectors caught employees of a fracking company in the act of dumping oil and brine into a city sewer. From the Tribune-Chronicle:

“On Jan. 31, 2013, division inspectors, acting on one of the anonymous tips, visited 2761 Salt Springs Road and observed two individuals disposing of substances from a hose connected to a frac tank into a storm sewer,” Ohio Department of Natural Resources officials spelled out in an order that they delivered Wednesday to D&L Energy. …

The men observed by ODNR inspectors discharging the brine [Ed. – fracking fluid waste] drove away from the site in a truck labeled “Mohawk” before inspectors began taking samples of the liquids they had dumped, reports say.

That sewer flows into the nearby Mahoning River. You can read the official incident report here.

Yesterday, the state revoked the permits of the companies involved in the dumping — even as they sought additional injection well permits. From the Akron Beacon-Journal:

Under the ODNR’s orders, D&L Energy must cease all injection well operations in the state of Ohio.

Permits for its six injection wells have been revoked by the state of Ohio. That includes operating injection wells in Trumbull and Ashtabula counties and three under construction: two in Mahoning County and one in Trumbull County. The sixth well in Youngstown exists only on paper.

The state’s order does not affect the 9,200-foot-deep Youngstown injection well that is widely blamed for the earthquakes. That well may be switched to a new corporate owner, officials said.

Oh, right. The earthquakes. D&L was also blamed for a series of 2011 earthquakes after it drilled into “basement rock,” bedrock under the city of Youngstown. Quality operation.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that even if D&L had properly disposed of its waste fluid in its injection wells, the odds that it would eventually seep out are high. A report from ProPublica last year suggested that such wells are often filled at pressures in excess of what’s intended. By dumping waste fluid directly into the sewer, D&L may have just been skipping a few steps.

There’s a lot of money in fracking. And where there’s a lot of money, there are a lot of people trying to cash in. Youngstown figured it might as well try and do so, but also learned a lesson about what kind of company you keep when you go after dollar signs.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Obama to Nominate REI CEO as Secretary of Interior

by greenenergy4 Posted on February 6, 2013

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According to numerous reports, President Obama will announce on Wednesday that he is nominating Recreational Equipment Incorporated CEO Sally Jewell to serve as the next Secretary of Interior. Jewell, as Washington State native, is certainly a nontraditional pick for a job typically given to Western politicos, and the selection is drawing interesting responses.

(Full disclosureâ&#128;&#148;I’m an REI junkie. The flagship store in Seattle is basically my happy place. You can get many products that are made with recycled materials or made in the US, and you can return anything. OK, end of disclosure.)

Environmental groups issued excited press releases about the selection, noting that Jewell and REI have partnered with both Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation on programs to promote the outdoors. “Whether it’s been through her work to get more kids outside or her accomplishments in building a business that recognizes the passion Americans have to explore the outdoors, Sally Jewell has demonstrated that she knows just how important our wild places are to our national legacy and our economy,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a press release.

But members of Congress from states heavily involved in energy development were much more cautious. “The livelihoods of Americans living and working in the West rely on maintaining a real balance between conservation and economic opportunity,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “I look forward to hearing about the qualifications Ms. Jewell has that make her a suitable candidate to run such an important agency, and how she plans to restore balance to the Interior Department.”

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), chairman of the Public Lands and Environmental Regulation subcommittee of the Natural Resources Committee, said he has “reservations” about the Jewell appointment, including concerns that REI has “intimately supported several special interest groups and subsequently helped to advance their radical political agendas” (i.e., Sierra Club and NWF).

Before coming to REI, Jewell worked as an engineer for Mobil Oil and a banker. See Sarah van Schagen’s Grist profile of Jewell from 2007 for more.

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Obama to Nominate REI CEO as Secretary of Interior

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