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France’s ban on oil drilling could keep 5 billion barrels in the ground.

For a country that already imports 99 percent of its oil, France’s decision to end all new oil development and phase out existing projects by 2040 may not seem all that meaningful. The Guardian called it a “largely symbolic gesture.”

But actually, as geoscientist Erik Klemetti noted, France is committing to keeping a massive oil reservoir in the ground. The Paris Basin, a region in northern France, may contain nearly as much underground petroleum as the huge Bakken Formation in North Dakota. Extracting that oil and gas would require extensive fracking.

Klemetti calculates that France could extract 100 years worth of oil for the country by fully exploring the Paris Basin — which could contain, according to the top estimate, 5 billion barrels of oil. At current oil prices (around $58 per barrel), that’s worth about $290 billion.

Instead, France decided to say au revoir to oil and gas altogether.

Earlier this year, the country also announced it would ban internal combustion engines by 2040. With decisions like these, France is positioning itself on the right side of history. And it’s sending a message to a world that’s floundering on climate change: A more just and prosperous future is possible, and it doesn’t require the dirty fuels of the past.

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Another Native-led pipeline battle bubbles up in New Jersey.

This year was chock-full of superlatives — and not the good kind — thanks to a sweltering El Niño on top of decades of climate change:

1. The longest streak of record-breaking months, from May 2015 to August 2016. It was the hottest January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and September since we began collecting data 137 years ago, according to NOAA.

2. The largest coral bleaching event ever observed. As much as 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef experienced record-breaking bleaching over the Southern Hemisphere summer, which also wreaked havoc to reefs across the Pacific in the longest-running global bleaching event ever observed.

3. The Arctic is getting really hot. Alaska saw its hottest year ever, with temperatures an average of 6 degrees F above normal. Arctic sea ice cover took a nosedive to a new low this fall, as temperatures at the North Pole reached an insane seasonal high nearly 50 degrees above average. Reminder: There is no sun in the Arctic in December.

4. The first year we spent entirely above 400 ppm. After the biggest monthly jump in atmospheric CO2 levels from February 2015 to February 2016, those levels stayed high for all of 2016.

5. The hottest year. Pending an extreme plunge in global temperatures in the next few days, 2016 will almost certainly be the warmest year humans have ever spent on the Earth’s surface.

Even if it weren’t the hottest year yet, context matters more than year-to-year comparisons. The last five years have been the hottest five on record. The last 16 years contain 15 of the hottest years on record. We are living in unprecedented times.

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Another Native-led pipeline battle bubbles up in New Jersey.

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The Next Keystone? Protesters Try to Stop Another Huge Oil Pipeline.

Mother Jones

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Tensions continue to rise over the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (known also as the Bakken Pipeline), a proposed 1,172-mile project currently under construction. Demonstrations over the pipeline, which will travel from North Dakota’s northwest Bakken region to southern Illinois, have grown steadily over the last few weeks. As many as 4,000 people have reportedly joined the Standing Rock Sioux in protesting the pipeline, which is slated to travel beneath sacred Native lands and cross under the Missouri River, the region’s main source of drinking water. The protesters have gathered along the border of the Standing Rock Sioux’s reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, blocking the construction site. (Read Mother Jones‘ report on the pipeline here.)

RELATED: The government quietly just approved this enormous oil pipeline

On Monday, according to the Bismarck Tribune, Greg Wilz, Division Director of Homeland Security, ordered the removal of the state-owned water tanks and trailers that had been providing the protesters with drinking water. Wilz attributed the decision to alleged criminal activity—specifically two complaints of laser pointers being shined in the eyes of pilots of surveillance aircraft monitoring the protest. “Based on the scenario down there, we don’t believe that equipment is secure,” he said. The supplies were provided last week by the North Dakota Department of Health at the request of the tribe.

Authorities in North Dakota have now arrested 29 protesters in the last two weeks, including the tribal chairman. A federal judge will rule by September 9 on the injunction filed by the Standing Rock Sioux to prevent construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Pipeline protesters—including actors Shailene Woodley and Susan Sarandon—have also gathered in New York and Washington, DC. Woodley has been protesting the pipeline for weeks, documenting the peaceful nature of the Standing Rock demonstration in North Dakota on her Twitter page before returning to DC for the rally, which took place Wednesday outside a federal court building where challenges to the permits were being heard.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben also weighed in on the pipeline with an article published Monday. Indigenous populations like the Standing Rock Sioux “have been the vanguard of the movement to slow down climate change,” wrote McKibben.

Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a press release of his own on Thursday, condemning the pipeline and upholding the grassroots efforts to stop it. “Regardless of the court’s decision, the Dakota Access pipeline must be stopped,” he wrote. “As a nation, our job is to break our addiction to fossil fuels, not increase our dependence on oil. I join with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the many tribal nations fighting this dangerous pipeline.”

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The Next Keystone? Protesters Try to Stop Another Huge Oil Pipeline.

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People want to frack the hell out of this giant piece of tiramisu

People want to frack the hell out of this giant piece of tiramisu

By on 16 Nov 2015commentsShare

The word Permian can mean very different things to very different people. To an evolutionary biologist, it might refer to the tail end of an era of the great animal diversification that began with the famous Cambrian explosion about 542 million years ago. To a brooding teenager who’s really into death right now, it might refer to the Permian-Triassic extinction, aka The Great Dying, that wiped out more than 90 percent of marine species and about 70 percent of land species, the most devastating die-off of all time. And to a modern-day oil tycoon, it might just mean dollar signs (and tiramisu).

It should come as no surprise that Texas, where everything is big and tasty, is home to the largest shale field in the U.S. — and one that people liken to tiramisu, because of its delicious oil- and gas-soaked layers of rock.

What is surprising about the Permian Basin, however, is that its production seems to be on the rise, even as other major basins in the U.S. like the Bakken and Eagle Ford are scaling back due to declining oil prices. Here’s Bloomberg with more on this delicious miracle of a basin:

Oil production in the Permian is forecast by the government to rise 0.6 percent in December to 2.02 million barrels a day, even as drillers have idled 59 percent of the rigs there in the past year. Output in rival shale fields like the Bakken and Eagle Ford has fallen 12% and 25%, respectively, as drillers pulled out after oil prices crashed last year.

… The Permian’s multiple layers of oil- and gas-soaked rocks, in some places stacked 5,000 feet thick, contain plenty of places to drill that will yield 30 percent to 40 percent rates of return with crude prices as low as $40 a barrel, Laird Dyer, a Royal Dutch Shell Plc energy analyst, said at a conference in Toronto Nov. 10.

According to Bloomberg, one layer of the basin in particular holds enough oil to keep the entire world supplied for two years. That layer is known as the Spraberry, which one can only assume, in the context of this tiramisu analogy, has some sort of berry flavoring.

And just as with the decadent Italian dessert, people are going apeshit over this chunk of ancient sediment. Exxon bought 48,000 acres of the stuff, Apache Corp. owns one of the largest shares at 3.2 million acres, and Concho Resources Inc. has 700,000 acres, Bloomberg reports.

At an oil conference in Texas last week, the chief commercial officer for Concho, Will Giraud, told a crowd that $50 billion in private-equity capital had already gone into the basin.

“It’s the last oil basin standing,” Giraud said. “It’s still the last place you can put together a material position. It’s the last place you can drill in this environment and make money. It’s the last place where there’s still a tremendous amount of resources to be discovered.”

If they didn’t serve tiramisu at that conference, somebody really dropped the ball. But more importantly, let’s briefly reflect on the many meanings of “Permian.” First, there was the period of prosperity in diversification of life on Earth. Then, there was the extinction so catastrophic that people call it “The Great Dying.” And now, we’re heading into another period of prosperity with this basin full of liquid and gas gold!

So if the pattern holds, that means we’re in for a devastating turn. Will it be The Great Injustice, The Great False Promise, or The Great Rumbling?

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Photographer: Brittany Sowacke/Bloomberg Oil Producers Hungry for Deals Drool Over West Texas `Tiramisu’

, Bloomberg.

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People want to frack the hell out of this giant piece of tiramisu

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Oil Field Workers Keep Dying, and the Feds Want to Know Why

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Journalism and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The oil boom in North Dakota and elsewhere has helped the US become the world’s leading energy provider and has captured the attention of Hollywood producers. It also has claimed the lives of dozens of oil field workers.

Now, that fallout from the boom is drawing renewed attention from government scientists.

In the largest study of its kind, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, said it intends to examine the factors that cause injuries and accidents in the oil fields in an effort to improve safety.

Scientists from the institute will distribute questionnaires starting next year to 500 oil field workers in North Dakota, Texas and one other state that will be determined in the coming months.

“This is a high-hazard industry, and different states have different levels of maturity when it comes to safety and health for this workforce,” said Kyla Retzer, a Denver-based epidemiologist with the institute’s oil and gas program, which will be administering the study.

A recent investigation by Reveal showed how major oil companies avoid accountability for workers’ deaths in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota and Montana. On average, someone dies about every six weeks from an accident in the Bakken—at least 74 since 2006, according to the first comprehensive accounting of such deaths using data obtained from Canadian and US regulators. The number of deaths is likely higher because federal regulators don’t have a systematic way to record oil- and gas-related deaths, and the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t include certain fatalities.

In response to Reveal’s investigation, the federal agency pledged to step up enforcement against major oil companies and scrutinize speed bonuses in the Bakken, which some critics fear undermine safety.

As part of the new study, workers will be asked the hours they work and whether they wear protective gear as well as whether employers typically provide written safety policies and make their employees aware of their right to stop a job when they spot a potential safety hazard. Truck drivers in the industry will be asked whether they are paid by the hour or the load and whether their employers require that they drive in bad weather. The institute is collecting comments from the public on the forthcoming survey through Sept. 8.

Scientists plan to ask energy companies for permission to invite workers at man camps, which house laborers; trucking centers and other facilities to participate in the survey. The results of the study, which will be finished by early 2017, will be published in peer-reviewed health and safety journals. In addition, scientists intend to share their findings with federal OSHA officials and make specific recommendations on potential improvements at safety or oil and gas industry conferences.

“Sometimes, health and safety is not a top priority,” Retzer said. “We haven’t had a lot of opportunities to talk to workers directly. We want to better understand what their concerns are and how we can address them.”

Kari Cutting, vice president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, dismissed the institute’s focus on hazards in the oil fields.

“I do not have any facts that would lead me to the conclusion that there are major concerns,” said Cutting, whose council represents more than 550 companies in the oil and gas industry. “I think North Dakota is very much in line with other states as far as putting safety as priority one. Gathering that kind of (survey) information will go a long way to pointing out the fact that the industry has a robust safety culture.”

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Oil Field Workers Keep Dying, and the Feds Want to Know Why

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Trains Hauling Crude Oil Across North America Just Keep Exploding.

Mother Jones

A train hauling more than 100 tankers from North Dakota’s booming oil fields derailed during a snowstorm on Monday in West Virginia. The accident sparked massive explosions that prompted the evacuation of two nearby towns, and an oil spill that threatened the water supply of thousands of local residents. The train was heading to Yorktown, Virginia, and came off its tracks 33 miles southeast of Charleston, West Virginia. A state of emergency was declared.

Oil spilled into the Kanawha River, and one home was destroyed during the inferno that continued for 10 hours after the derailment, according to CNN. One person was injured. Dramatic footage shows fire and smoke billowing through the snowy sky:

Bakken crude is regarded as potentially more flammable than traditional crude, thus posing an increased hazard. And since the derailment of a train hauling Bakken crude killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013, the type of tankers involved in these accidents has become the subject of intense scrutiny. Both Canada and the United States have called for tougher safety standards, including upgrading the tankers. In mid-January, Canada announced it would take older tankers, known as the “DOT-111”, off the network years sooner than the United States will, putting the two countries at odds over increased safety measures on the deeply integrated system.

Here’s a diagram of the weaknesses in the older DOT-111 model tanker, which is still in operation across the network:

Chris Philpot

You can read an in-depth Mother Jones report about the DOT-111 tankers here.

The train operator, CSX, has said that the train was not pulling DOT-111 tankers. Instead, the company says it was using a tougher, newer model, the “CPC 1232”, according to Reuters.

But even newer cars like these are evidently not invincible: when a 105-car CSX train derailed in Lynchburg, Va., last April, a fiery CPC-1232 tanker careened into the James River and spilled 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil. And Washington state regulators are investigating CPC-1232 tankers, after a BNSF train carrying Bakken crude oil across Idaho and Washington in January was found to have leaking cars. The CPC-1232 also doesn’t quite live up to the US regulators’ proposed rules to upgrade the system, according to Bloomberg, which reports that:

The draft rule also would require that new cars be built with steel shells that are 9/16th of an inch thick, people familiar with the plan said. The walls of the current cars, both DOT-111s and the newer CPC-1232 models, are 7/16th of an inch thick.

The West Virginia accident on Monday is the second major derailment in three days across North America’s booming oil-by-rail network. A Canadian National Railway train detailed northern Ontario, Canada, on Saturday night, again resulting in an inferno and an oil spill: 29 railway cars in the 100-car train derailed. Seven caught fire, according to CTV.

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Trains Hauling Crude Oil Across North America Just Keep Exploding.

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New rules aim to stop rash of oil train spills and explosions

New rules aim to stop rash of oil train spills and explosions

John Wathen / Public Herald

Today, the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed new rules for improving safety standards around transporting large quantities of flammable materials by rail. The chief concern here is the movement of crude oil and ethanol, which the federal government has been ramping up through recent decisions to expand the exploration and extraction of domestic oil and gas.

The new rules, summarized here, focus on upgrades for train tank cars, new speed limits for trains carrying flammable fuels, improved braking operations, and more rigorous testing for the movement of volatile liquids. A recent rash of train crashes and oil spills, notably in North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Lynchburg, Va., prompted the new safety standards.

In a recent review of data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Politico found that train wrecks have done more than $10 million in damage as of mid-May this year, which is nearly triple the damage for all of 2013.

In a press statement, Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx called the proposal “our most significant progress yet in developing and enforcing new rules to ensure that all flammable liquids, including Bakken crude and ethanol, are transported safely.”

The Bakken oil mention is in reference to the train explosion last year in North Dakota, worsened by the fact that Bakken crude is more flammable than most all other oils. The Transportation department anticipates an increase in the volume of Bakken oil being shipped throughout the U.S., and across longer distances. On average, Bakken crude oil shipments travel over 1,000 miles from point-of-origin to refineries on the coasts.

According to the department’s website, 9,500 rail-carloads of crude moved through the country in 2008. Last year, there were 415,000 rail-carloads.

Given that many of those trains pass through or near communities of color and low-income, environmental justice organizations have long been concerned about the movement of goods by rail, especially chemicals and volatile liquids.

“For African Americans, we’ve gone from the ‘underground railroad’ being a route to freedom, to today’s railway system being a source of pollution and hazard,” said Jacqueline Patterson, director of the NAACP’s Climate Justice Initiative. “Coal trains come through communities of color leaving a trail of coal dust on our cars and in our lungs.”

The U.S. spilled more oil from trains in 2013  than in the previous four decades combined.

From McClatchy:

Including major derailments in Alabama and North Dakota, more than 1.15 million gallons of crude oil was spilled from rail cars in 2013, according to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

By comparison, from 1975 to 2012, U.S. railroads spilled a combined 800,000 gallons of crude oil. The spike underscores new concerns about the safety of such shipments as rail has become the preferred mode for oil producers amid a North American energy boom.

In light of this, “Any effort to regulate one of the threats facing oft-vulnerable communities — in this case trains carrying oil that are like ticking time bombs — is stridently welcomed,” Patterson said.

The National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (NEJAC) has advised the federal government on how to improve its “goods movement” infrastructure for years. It released a report offering recommendations on this in 2009. The report focused not just on the goods moved, but also on the impacts of rail and freight transportation itself, as it moves through communities beset by poverty and poor access to quality healthcare. Reads the report:

[Goods] movement related‐ activities can have negative impacts on air quality and public health. Adjacent communities bear the burden of such activities resulting from the growth and demand for goods. Across the country there are many communities near goods movement infrastructure that consist of large populations of low‐income and minority residents.

NEJAC recently sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy imploring her to check on whether the other federal cabinet agencies, including the Department of Transportation, are meeting with residents of the communities where trains are moving materials through, and asking for the agencies to create strategies to protect the health of those communities.

The Transportation department’s proposed rules focus more on the hazardous materials being carried. But they would also require carriers to perform a new analysis for routing trains that would be based on 27 safety and security factors. They would also require existing rail tank cars to be retrofitted to meet new performance requirements; those that can’t be retrofitted would be retired or repurposed.

The rail industry, of course, is freaking out about the new safety proposals. From Amy Harder at The Wall Street Journal:

Railroads, oil companies and railcar owners have been expecting new federal rules meant to improve the safety of oil shipments in the wake of several fiery train accidents. The proposed regulation could impact several industries. The railroads have been worried that slower speed limits could cause major gridlock, while oil companies have fretted that new rules about tank car volumes might prevent them from shipping all the crude they wanted.

I guess, but business as usual could mean more explosions and spills, which communities would pay for with their health and lives. It’s the same bellyaching the oil and gas industry had when the Obama administration imposed new safety regs after the BP oil disaster. These industries have to understand that it’s healthier and less expensive to be safe than it is to be sorry.

Brentin Mock is Grist’s justice editor. Follow him on Twitter at @brentinmock.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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New rules aim to stop rash of oil train spills and explosions

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North Dakota’s red-hot, frack-fueled economy is starting to slow down

North Dakota’s red-hot, frack-fueled economy is starting to slow down

Lindsey GeeA fracking rig in North Dakota.

Remember that massive economic boom in North Dakota? That was so early 2012.

The Atlantic‘s Derek Thompson outlines the state’s slowdown at the end of last year. He starts with this graph:

Derek Thompson/Atlantic

Click to embiggen.

This chart tells two stories about America’s little petro state. First story: At the beginning of 2012 (much like in 2011 and 2010), North Dakota’s stratospheric job creation numbers made even the next frothiest states look like they’re were suffering a post-Soviet-breakup depression. Second story: Something happened in the second half of 2012. North Dakota’s economy fell back to earth. …

You might say, don’t be unfair, North Dakota never could have kept up its 2011 rate!, and I might respond, you’re right. If the U.S. had experienced Dakotan growth across 2011, we would have added about 400,000 jobs per month, and that’s just absurd.

Why the slowdown? In part, because drilling (and ancillary costs) gets more expensive as it gets more popular. Supply and demand.

The rig count across North Dakota, and particularly in the rich Bakken shale, dropped sharply in September and hiring has slowed since the summer, as drilling companies have turned their focus to efficiency as capital costs (and concerns of regulation) rise in the Bakken. That’s probably had spill-over effects in transportation hiring.

And in housing: A massive spike in new house construction at the beginning of 2012 leveled off as oilfield hiring slowed.

Thompson notes that the state is not seeing a bust, just a slowdown. So if you want to get in on that North Frackota action, you still can. But open a hotel, not an oil well.

Source

Is North Dakota’s Miraculous Boom Already Over?, Atlantic

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

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Oil companies turn to trains instead of Enbridge’s leaky pipes

Oil companies turn to trains instead of Enbridge’s leaky pipes

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Enbridge — the Canadian company responsible for the worst onshore oil spill in American history when a pipe near Kalamazoo, Mich., ruptured in 2010 —  is suffering from oil companies’ newfound fondness for rail.

From Bloomberg:

Enbridge Inc.’s North Dakota pipeline system has been underused for the past three months as railroads move more oil out of the Bakken shale play, a refining company told U.S. regulators. …

Railways have emerged as a competitor to pipelines as production from shale fields has grown faster than pipeline space. While rail is typically more expensive than pipelines, railcars can reach markets that pipelines don’t, yielding higher prices for producers.

How big is the capacity difference?

The largest oil rail-car shipper in the Bakken is Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The company plans to boost its crude-oil shipments by 40 percent to 700,000 barrels a day by the end of this year, Chief Executive Matt Rose told Bloomberg in a phone interview this month.

Enbridge’s North Dakota system can transport 210,000 barrels a day from Minot to Clearbrook, Minnesota, according to the company’s website.

That’s a difference of half a million barrels. Even if Enbridge’s plans to expand its pipeline system go through, it won’t be enough to meet demand.

A possible other factor: I read somewhere that Enbridge was responsible for the largest onshore oil spill in American history. One of the primary considerations of oil companies when deciding how to ship their oil is almost certainly confidence that the oil will get where it’s supposed to go, and not end up in a river somewhere. It is hard to sell river oil, Enbridge! You should write that down.

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

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