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Shell fined $1.1 million for polluting Arctic air during error-plagued drilling efforts

by Natalia681 Posted on September 9, 2013

Shell fined $1.1 million for polluting Arctic air during error-plagued drilling efforts

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U.S. Coast GuardWorkers were evacuated after Shell’s exploratory oil rig ran aground. 

In the words of then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Shell completely “screwed up” its efforts to tap Arctic oil reserves last year. A series of accidents in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, off the North Slope of Alaska, led to the abandonment of drilled wells and damage to both of the company’s Alaskan exploratory oil rigs, one of which ran aground. Those blunders prompted the Obama administration to bar Shell from the region this year. They also claimed the job of Shell Vice President David Lawrence, who once described drilling in the Alaskan Arctic as “relatively easy.”

But that’s not all. As we told you in January, amid its chain of mishaps, the company was also sullying the Arctic air and violating the Clean Air Act. Now it has been fined for those air-pollution transgressions. From an EPA press release:

Based on EPA’s inspections and Shell’s excess emission reports, EPA documented numerous air permit violations for Shell’s Discoverer and Kulluk drill ship fleets, during the approximately two months the vessels operated during the 2012 drilling season.

In today’s settlements, Shell has agreed to pay a $710,000 penalty for violations of the Discoverer air permit and a $390,000 penalty for violations of the Kulluk air permit.

The $1.1 million in penalties is, of course, chump change for an oil giant that has already spent more than $4.5 billion on its Three Stooges-like efforts to plunder the Arctic.

But it’s nice to know that the federal government is at least keeping one eye on Shell’s Arctic operations.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Shell fined $1.1 million for polluting Arctic air during error-plagued drilling efforts

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Fracking industry says fracking made you $1,200 richer last year

by bibw6a Posted on September 6, 2013

Fracking industry says fracking made you $1,200 richer last year

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Want to get rich? Just take from the environment.

If you keep a close eye on energy news, you probably know by now that fracking for oil and natural gas is injecting $1,200 a year into the bank accounts of American households.

Fricking awesome, right? Go on out right now and buy that 65-inch plasma TV on credit — you’re good for it. Because of fracking.

Or maybe not.

A new report [PDF] from consulting firm IHS CERA claims that fracking increased household disposable income in the U.S. by more than $1,200 last year, and that the industry supports 2.1 million jobs. Reuters, CNBC, Forbes.com, and the Los Angeles Times reported the study’s key findings.

But as Media Matters for America notes, “These figures are much larger than the findings of many previous economic studies.” Media Matters also points out that the aforementioned media outlets didn’t bother reporting who paid for the study. It’s all there at the bottom of the report’s third page:

This research was supported by the American Chemistry Council, America’s Natural Gas Alliance, the American Petroleum Institute, the Fertilizer Institute, the US Chamber of Commerce – Institute for 21st Century Energy, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Natural Gas Supply Association, Rio Tinto, and the Society of the Plastics Industry.

Well, golly, if the industries that frack and use much of the fracked gas and oil say fracking is great, then who are we to argue?

Bloomberg tries to inject a small dose of ecological reality into the conversation, noting that the report “didn’t account for the potential environmental impacts of fracking.”

Environmental impacts? Pffft, industry bodies that represent massive corporations don’t care about environmental impacts, so why should we? Free hypothetical money for everybody!


Source
What The Media Left Out: Pro-Fracking Report Was Funded By Gas Industry, Media Matters for America

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Fracking industry says fracking made you $1,200 richer last year

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Coal company accidentally turns a creek into concrete

by MayeskiLatouf679 Posted on September 4, 2013

Coal company accidentally turns a creek into concrete

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Global mining giant Xstrata sent contractors with truckloads of grout to repair gaping cracks and chasms it created on a hilly ridge in an Australian conservation area while mining for coal.

You’re probably wondering to yourself, “How could this possibly go wrong?”

When the contractors got there, they made a blunder that would be hilarious were it not so devastating.

Darren PatemanSugarloaf’s concrete creek. Reproduced with permission of The Newcastle Herald © Copyright 2013

As grout was being poured into a crack at the top of the cliff, it was gushing out of another crack at the bottom. An estimated 200 tons of grout — enough to fill 12 cement trucks — flowed into a creek. There it hardened, turning what had been a tranquil waterway in the Sugarloaf State Conservation Area into a 370-yard concrete pathway. From the Newcastle Herald:

To make its descent [the grout] had swamped smaller trees, flooding around rocks and logs along its path.

Cascading down the hill like a miniature glacier, the set overflow looks pretty similar to a thick coating of marzipan on the forest floor.

It’s impossible to know how many plants, holes, gaps and even animals may lay beneath the stony substance. …

In places, it’s barely the width of a narrow garden path.

At others, it could pass for a single-car garage slab that nobody bothered to level.

Being a coal company, Switzerland-based Xstrata decided to keep its little accident a secret from the public. Nearly three months later, after the debacle was exposed by the Herald, the state government ordered a cleanup. But how do you remove hundreds of yards of grout from a creek? The company has until September to come up with a plan, but it won’t be easy.

“I have no idea how it can be cleaned up,” said an unnamed worker involved in the restoration effort. “The problem is just too massive.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Coal company accidentally turns a creek into concrete

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Safety inspectors target oil-hauling trains

by Vladyslava7u1 Posted on September 3, 2013

Safety inspectors target oil-hauling trains

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Federal officials are trying to keep railway safety on track amidst a boom in oil hauling.

All that combustible fuel being produced by America’s fracking boom has federal transportation safety officials on edge.

Inspectors have started scrutinizing train manifests and tank car placards on trains departing from North Dakota’s Bakken region. The region is producing copious quantities of fracked oil, which is being carried to refineries in railway cars — many of them in a railcar model that’s prone to explode.

Operation Classification, aka the Bakken Blitz, was launched last month, just weeks after one such train carrying Bakken oil derailed and exploded in Quebec, killing 47 people and leveling much of the formerly scenic town of Lac-Mégantic. The U.S. Department of Transportation says it began planning the inspections in March after officials noticed discrepancies between the contents of rail cars and the hazardous warnings they bore. From Reuters:

“We need to make sure that what is in those tankers is what they say it is,” Cynthia Quarterman, administrator of the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, told reporters.

Highly combustible, light crude from the Bakken region is particularly dangerous, Quarterman said, and inspectors will make sure the fuel is properly labeled and handled with care.

Officials want to make certain that those responsible for the shipments know how dangerous their cargo is.

“The flashpoint needs to be taken into account,” Quarterman said, referring to the combustibility of flammable liquids that can vary according to the type of crude.

The Obama administration is also mulling new safety rules to address the boom in oil hauling; a draft version should be released within weeks. On Friday, the administration introduced temporary emergency rules designed to prevent a repeat of the Lac-Mégantic disaster on American soil, including a ban on leaving vehicles unattended if they are carrying hazardous materials.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Levitating train breaks speed record in Japan

by charlenedean Posted on September 3, 2013

Levitating train breaks speed record in Japan

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P.S. Lu

This train goes fast.

It sounds like something from a Japanamated techno-fantasy. But a real-life maglev train in Japan just passed its latest real-life test, levitating using magnets as it surpassed speeds of 310 miles per hour — faster than any other train in the world.

Journalists aboard last week’s 27-mile test run could see on overhead screens how fast the train was traveling, but they said they could barely feel a thing. From Phys.org:

The train does have wheels — it rides on them when the train is at low speed — then rises up above the track when it reaches approximately 93 mph. On the test run, the train reached its peak speed just three miles into the trip, which would suggest riders would feel pushed back into their seats, but those on board reported no such sensation. …

Maglev trains are able to travel very fast all while using less energy than conventional trains because they allow the train to ride on a cushion of air — friction from the wheels on the track is eliminated. Most in the field expect they will require less maintenance costs as well.

The train might be fast, but the project is moving slowly. The first leg of the new railway, between Tokyo and Nagoya, is supposed to open in 2027. The full line between Tokyo and Osaka is scheduled to be completed in 2045, at a cost of $90 billion. From Bloomberg:

Faced with the challenge of tunneling under Tokyo’s skyscrapers and the Japanese Alps, the project is unlikely to be completed on time even as Japan’s population is projected to shrink, eroding travel demand.

“I think it’s going to be finished very, very late,” said Edwin Merner, president of Atlantis Investment Research Corp. in Tokyo, which manages about $3 billion in assets. “If the population projections are correct, then the use of the bullet train will go down.”

Meanwhile, America’s first bullet-train project, which is still in the planning phase in California, is getting bogged down in lawsuits. The $68 billion California High-Speed Rail project is expected to link San Francisco with Los Angeles by 2029, carrying passengers at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.

Why is the U.S. lagging on bullet trains? Slate ponders that very question:

There were once plans for a California-Nevada maglev train, but they never left the station, and the money for planning them ended up being reallocated to a highway project.

Why are we so far behind Japan in transportation technology? The reasons are many, and perhaps the biggest is that the United States has been built around the automobile. Sprawling suburbs make mass transit really difficult. But it’s been clear for years that our McMansion-and-SUV version of the American Dream isn’t sustainable in the long term. And as our cities grow denser and our existing infrastructure ages, it’s just silly that we aren’t making more of an effort to replace it with something better and more futuristic.

The real obstacle today is a lack of political will to plan for the future, especially from the Republicans who torpedoed President Obama’s high-speed rail plans in his first term. Those plans were far from perfect, but they would have been a great start.

The following Reuters video shows the train traveling freakishly fast and Japanese dignitaries on board managing to look stoic and bored:

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Farm kills millions of bees with illegal pesticide spraying, gets slap on wrist

by cur07jqm Posted on August 30, 2013

Farm kills millions of bees with illegal pesticide spraying, gets slap on wrist

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Orange you glad you aren’t a bee in Florida?

A huge Florida citrus farm is being fined by state officials for poisoning millions of honeybees to death — but it’s not being fined very much.

Ben Hill Griffin Inc., one of the state’s largest growers and a supplier to Florida’s Natural orange juice, is accused of illegally spraying pesticides (i.e., not following the directions on the labels) in ways that led to the deaths of bees kept by nearby beekeepers. One apiarist told officials that the farm used crop-dusters to douse its groves at least a dozen times — presumably to control Asian citrus psyllid, which spreads the devastating citrus greening disease. He estimated his losses at $240,000 worth of bees and reduced honey production. Another beekeeper says he is down $150,000.

So how much is the Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Department fining the company? A paltry $1,500.

“That laughable penalty has environmentalists and beekeepers fuming,” reports the Miami New Times.

“Every four days, they were spraying seven or eight different types of chemicals,” beekeeper Randall Foti told the Palm Beach Post. “A $1,500 fine is not much of a deterrent.” Added beekeeper Barry Hart, “$1,500 ain’t nothing to the grove people.”

As the Post reports, “The $1,500 state fine last week is believed to be the first time a Florida citrus grower was cited in connection with a bee kill.” But the fine could have been a lot bigger: “The maximum fine allowed by state law is $10,000 per occurrence,” a government spokesperson said.

Daily Kos provides some helpful context, pointing out that Ben Hill Griffin pulls in $126 million annually.

So the fine amounts to 0.001 percent of the company’s annual profits. Think that will teach ‘em a lesson?

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Cool news: Big fridges to get more efficient under new Obama rules

by bvds34dfsg Posted on August 29, 2013

Cool news: Big fridges to get more efficient under new Obama rules

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Michael Kappel

Soon Ben & Jerry’s will get to live in more efficient freezers.

After sitting on two energy-efficiency rules for more than a year and a half, the Obama administration finally released them on Thursday. They won’t be official until early next year, after the public has time to comment and regulators have time to consider those comments, but at least they’re now moving forward.

The proposed rules would require commercial refrigeration equipment, like restaurant fridges and deli cases, to use less energy. OK, that might not sound like the sexiest initiative, but efficiency matters — a lot. Plus this means you’ll soon have one more reason to feel better about buying Ben & Jerry’s.

As The Washington Post reports, “The proposals have a significant environmental impact because of the size of the appliances involved.” The White House says the new rules “could cut energy bills by up to $28 billion and cut emissions by over 350 million metric tons of CO2 over 30 years.”

Still, the White House had to be pushed to actually release the rules. From Bloomberg BusinessWeek:

The proposals were issued after environmental groups and state governments pressed for action from the administration of President Barack Obama. The draft rules were sent to the Office of Management and Budget for review more than a year ago, and missed the 90-day deadline for release.

Because of those delays, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman led 10 states in threatening legal action unless the rules were issued. Early this month, the administration settled with the states, and agreed to issue the proposals now and final rules in early 2014.

Earlier this month, the admin also proposed efficiency rules for the types of lights used in big-box stores and sports stadiums.

Efficiency is an important part of Obama’s climate plan, as laid out in his big June climate speech. And, fortunately, efficiency rules can be implemented without approval from an intransigent Congress.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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U.S. government paid $17 billion for weather-withered crops last year

by Jeff Howard Posted on August 28, 2013

U.S. government paid $17 billion for weather-withered crops last year

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Thomas

Drought-ravaged corn.

Desiccated corn and sun-scorched soybeans have been in high supply lately — and we’re paying through the nose for them.

The federal government forked out a record-breaking $17.3 billion last year to compensate farmers for weather-related crop losses — more than four times the annual average over the last decade.

The losses were mostly caused by droughts, high temperatures, and hot winds — the sizzling harbingers of a climate in rapid flux.

NRDCClick to embiggen

Could some of these costs have been avoided? The Natural Resources Defense Council says yes. In a new issue paper [PDF], NRDC analyst Claire O’Connor argues that these taxpayer-reimbursed, climate-related losses could have been largely avoided if farmers used tried-and-true conservation-oriented strategies. But she points out that the Federal Crop Insurance Program provides little incentive to farmers to employ techniques that save water and soil.

“By ignoring how on-farm management affects farmers’ ability to withstand weather events like the recent droughts and floods, the FCIP has become a crutch on which farmers will increasingly be forced to lean while taxpayers pick up the ever-growing bill,” O’Connor wrote in the report. From an introduction to the paper on NRDC’s website:

Rather than incentivizing farmers to adopt risk-mitigating farming practices, FCIP premiums are set using a formula that ignores how important healthy, regenerative farming practices — like conservation tillage, cover cropping and improved irrigation scheduling — are to farmers’ risk management as they increasingly face the threats of drought, floods and other extreme weather events.

Methods like no-till farming not only help soil retain moisture, but also limit erosion, improve soil health and increase a field’s capacity to grow high-yield crops. Such methods offer farmers short-term protections against each season’s catastrophic weather events, promote fertile fields into the future and benefit the environment.

O’Connor suggests that the FCIP offer lower premiums to farmers who reduce their risks by investing in soil- and water-conservation strategies — strategies that could help buffer their crops from the ever-worsening vagaries of climate change.

NRDCClick to embiggen.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Tesla Model S rocks safety tests, gets highest possible score

by Olesiacei Posted on August 21, 2013

Tesla Model S rocks safety tests, gets highest possible score

By Claire Thompson

The Tesla Model S.

First the Tesla Model S got the highest score of any car Consumer Reports had ever reviewed, blowing testers away with its “innovation,” “world-class performance,” and “impressive attention to detail.” Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has awarded the car its highest rating possible, a five out of five in every category. (Note to luxury sports-car enthusiasts: Grist does not condone reckless driving no matter how high a car’s safety rating or how low its emissions.)

According to Tesla, “approximately one percent of all cars tested by the federal government achieve 5 stars across the board.” More from the company’s press release:

Of all vehicles tested, including every major make and model approved for sale in the United States, the Model S set a new record for the lowest likelihood of injury to occupants. While the Model S is a sedan, it also exceeded the safety score of all SUVs and minivans. This score takes into account the probability of injury from front, side, rear and rollover accidents.

The Model S achieved such a high score in large part because it’s an electric vehicle. The front of the car has only trunk space where a gasoline engine block would normally be, so it has a much longer “crumple zone” — the part of the car that absorbs impact in a head-on collision. And the battery pack’s location beneath the floor gives the car a low center of gravity that substantially lowers its rollover risk.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that the Model S doesn’t have a combustion engine (which carries the risk of, you know, combusting). Tesla says that none of its lithium-ion batteries have caught fire so far (though it admits that’s “statistically unlikely to remain the case long term”).

Aside from its out-of-reach price tag, the Model S is starting to sound like the best car on the market. Matt Yglesias points out that Tesla has more incentive than your typical car company to make that the case:

Because Tesla makes electric cars, anything that happens to the Model S isn’t just a car story. It’s a business story, it’s a politics story, it’s an energy story, it’s an innovation story, it’s an interesting story. …

Any failure they have will be a much bigger deal than a failure at a comparably sized car company would be. But conversely, any time they manage to excel at anything they can guarantee that it’ll get noticed. … “Our sedan is the safest car in the world” sounds boring. But when your sedan is also an all-electric vehicle that’s scored off-the-charts rave reviews in other respects, now you’ve got a nice feather in your cap.

Now, if they ever make a more basic version of the Model S that somehow drops into an accessible price range, I may suddenly find myself interested in car ownership.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Fracking frenzy slows as oil and gas assets plummet

by Sylvesterax6 Posted on August 20, 2013

Fracking frenzy slows as oil and gas assets plummet

By Claire Thompson

Shutterstock

Yes, we know this isn’t a fracking pump, but it’s way prettier.

You know that domestic oil-and-gas boom that’s been sweeping the country for the past few years, turning places like Williston, N.D., into Sin City? Well, the party’s winding down — or maybe it was never that ragin’ in the first place. Oil and gas shale assets, possibly overvalued to begin with, are plunging in price thanks to an oversaturated market and wells whose production hasn’t always lived up to expectations.

Bloomberg Businessweek reports:

The deal-making slump, which may last for years, threatens to slow oil and gas production growth as companies that built up debt during the rush for shale acreage can’t depend on asset sales to fund drilling programs. The decline has pushed acquisitions of North American energy assets in the first-half of the year to the lowest since 2004. …

North American oil and gas deals, including shale assets, plunged 52 percent to $26 billion in the first six months from $54 billion in the year-ago period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. During the drilling frenzy of 2009 through 2012, energy companies spent more than $461 billion buying North American oil and gas properties, the data show.

Improvements in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques in the early 2000s made drilling possible in previously inaccessible areas. As more frackable shale deposits were discovered, energy companies snapped up property. But the boom started backfiring:

As overseas buyers moved in, booming production soon led to oversupplies, and gas prices plunged to a 10-year low in 2012, forcing companies to write-down the value of some of their assets. Companies were also hurt when some fields thought to be rich in oil proved to contain less than anticipated.

Shell downgraded the value of its North American assets by $2 billion last quarter, and announced that it expects drilling here to remain unprofitable until at least next year. Companies are cutting off drilling in fields where it’s not worth it and selling off properties.

As Philip Bump pointed out in Gristmill earlier this year, what’s happening with fracking is kind of the same as what’s happening to the coal industry — but on a super compressed timeline (think 10 years, not 100). What seemed like a bonanza just four years ago is already struggling to deliver.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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