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Tar-sands oil spills in Arkansas and Minnesota

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With pipelines at a premium, fossil-fuel companies get creative

by f45 Posted on February 15, 2013

With pipelines at a premium, fossil-fuel companies get creative

This is interesting: Pipeline company Enbridge wants to turn a natural-gas pipeline in the Midwest into a crude-oil pipeline. From The Globe and Mail:

The latest proposal would redeploy a variety of existing pipelines, including part of Energy Transfer’s Trunkline natural gas system, as well as Enbridge’s new Southern Access Extension, which is under development. …

The proposal is one of several initiatives being considered to move more crude from the U.S. Midwest and Canadian Prairies to refineries along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Canadian crude is currently being sold at a bigger discount than usual because of a lack of pipeline capacity and growing supplies from North Dakota and other states that are expanding output using advanced drilling methods.

That “lack of pipeline capacity” from the north will also be discussed this Sunday in Washington.

There are all sorts of interesting economic aspects to this, about the glut of oil and gas from North Dakota and rising natural-gas prices. But we mainly want to note that converting a natural-gas pipeline to one that transports oil is a smart move for Enbridge. If the company has a pipe that it knows doesn’t leak, it ought to run with it.

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

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Fish DNA database aims to fight seafood fraud and promote conservation

by olikellopas Posted on February 7, 2013

Fish DNA database aims to fight seafood fraud and promote conservation

By Susie Cagle

Matthew Kenrick

Over the past few years, the FDA has been compiling a fish DNA library to help combat seafood fraud. But despite its best efforts, many sushi eaters and other seafood diners are still chowing down on mislabeled and unsustainable fish species on the regular.

Now a Canadian team has gone a step further, compiling a DNA barcoding library of tens of thousands of Atlantic ocean fishes, and making much of it available directly to other research scientists and the public. You can thank Canadian biologist Paul Bentzen and his colleagues at Dalhousie University. Yes, despite the funny name, this is a real university. From Phys.org:

According to Paul Bentzen, Professor in the Department of Biology, “With growing pressures from fisheries, climate change and invasive species, it is more important than ever to monitor and understand biodiversity in the sea, and how it is changing. Our database provides a new tool for species identification that will help us monitor biodiversity. The availability of ever easier to use DNA sequencing technology can make almost anyone ‘expert’ at identifying species — and all it takes is a scrap of tissue.”

He continued, “There can be many steps in the supply chain between when the fish leaves the water and when it appears on a plate. With many desirable species becoming ever more scarce and expensive, there will always be temptation to substitute a cheaper fish (or an illegally harvested one) for a legal, more expensive one. We know it happens. DNA data never lie, unlike some seafood labels and restaurant menus. With the DNA database, it will be easier to detect seafood fraud when it happens.”

The database aims to fight fraud with readily available public information. The problem: It’s only searchable by wonky scientific names and jargon. That means it’s useful to other scientists, but not so useful to regular people. Until this kind of info gets funneled into an easily parse-able application, consumers and policy-makers will likely just feel like they’re drowning in data.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Alaska senator offers a fresh, new energy policy calling for more drilling in Alaska

by rakil23 Posted on February 4, 2013

Alaska senator offers a fresh, new energy policy calling for more drilling in Alaska

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) today unveiled a new energy plan, a document that she’d been hyping for weeks. In January, she called it “very comprehensive,” which is, I guess, an improvement over other people’s moderately comprehensive proposals.

usarak

Murkowski is the one who doesn’t appear to be only a head floating in space.

Murkowski very savvily linked the release to the Super Bowl power outage, noting that the darkened Superdome “helps to perhaps kick-start the debate” over exactly how much offshore drilling we should do. Oh, that was a spoiler: Murkowski thinks we should do a lot of offshore drilling. And if we had, the Superdome wouldn’t have gone dark last night, because the game could have been played by the light of burning barrels of crude.

So. The plan. Here’s how the Anchorage Daily News describes it. (We’ve gone ahead and removed the filler.)

Murkowski wants oil leasing off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. She wants an increase in drilling on federal lands, saying that will hasten independence from imported oil.

Her proposals include drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and overturning the Interior Department’s plan to set aside half the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska for wildlife, wilderness and recreation. Murkowski also wants to speed approval for resource production on Alaska Native lands.

Murkowski is resistant to federal regulation of fracking, the controversial process in which high-pressure water and chemicals are injected underground to free up the natural gas inside shale rock. Murkowski said the states already do a good job of regulating it. [Ed. – Ha ha ha ha ha]

She is pushing for immediate approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is opposed by environmental groups because it would tap Canadian oil sands that are higher in carbon emissions than other sources of oil.

What about climate change, you ask? Well: “Her proposal opposes ‘any policy that would increase the price of energy or limit consumer choice.’” She disavows her 2007 push for a cap on carbon emissions, arguing that the economy is worse now. Besides, cheap energy should be embraced! And then she said, presumably not ironically, that access to cheap energy means America is great.

“We like to be comfortable in our temperatures. We like to be able to move around. This is the mark of a successful and an economically healthy world. Where you have energy these are the prosperous areas,” she said.

Well, Sen. Murkowski, you’re going to love Alaska in 2100 when it’s 15 degrees warmer. All that cheap energy, making Alaska comfortable in its temperatures (if at the expense of the rest of America and the world).

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There is literally nothing in Murkowski’s proposal which in any way “kick-starts” any debate. It’s only “very comprehensive” in the sense that it comprehensively includes all of the same policies as the GOP’s awesomely named “DEJA” proposal last year, which itself was such a retread that we basically only bothered to make fun of the name when reporting on it.

Murkowski loves oil, loves oil companies, and can thank the industry, in part, for her remarkable 2010 write-in Senate victory. This isn’t an energy plan; it’s a fundraising email for 2016 sent to Shell and ExxonMobil.

But nice Super Bowl hook. Maybe that got a few more eyeballs on this same, tired nonsense.

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

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Keystone XL decision unlikely before June — and that’s good news

by donseoo Posted on February 1, 2013

Keystone XL decision unlikely before June — and that’s good news

MCLA

Well, Keystone XL protestors, kiss your springs goodbye. Looks like you’ll be fighting TransCanada’s proposal to run a mega-pipe from the Alberta oil sands to Oklahoma until June.

From Reuters:

The Obama administration’s decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline will not be made until at least June, a U.S. official said, which would delay the project for months and frustrate backers of Canada’s oil sands.

“We’re talking the beginning of summer at the earliest,” said the source, who did not want to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the TransCanada Corp project, which has been pending for more than four and a half years. “It’s not weeks until the final decision. It’s months.”

This can actually be considered good news. As we’ve noted multiple times, insufficient distribution outlets for tar-sands oil means that its sale price is plummeting — meaning that developing the oil sands makes less and less economic sense.

The Reuters article says as much:

The delay is painful in Canada which is suffering persistent, discounted prices for its oil because of tight pipeline capacity. The premier of the Western Canadian province of Alberta warned last week that it faced a $6 billion revenue shortfall due to current pipeline constraints.

Canada had another door slammed in its face today by the European Union. From another Reuters article:

Canada’s urgent hunt for buyers for its oil is being thwarted as the European Commission sticks to a plan to label fuel from tar sands deposits as highly polluting, deterring refiners bound by environmental rules. …

Intense pressure from Canada, seeking new markets to compensate for dwindling U.S. buying and discounted sales, has not convinced the EU executive to abandon its proposal to brand tar sands oil as more carbon-intensive than conventional crude. …

EU member states approved legislation in 2009, called the Fuel Quality Directive, with the aim of cutting greenhouse gases from transport fuel sold in Europe by 6 percent by 2020.

That leaves one big market for the oil: Asia. And with the Northern Gateway pipeline — perhaps the only viable route from Alberta to the Pacific — in jeopardy, Asia appears to be hard to reach as well.

It’s not clear why it will take the State Department until June to make up its mind. But with every day that passes, the Keystone XL pipeline makes less and less economic sense.

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

Keystone XL decision unlikely before June — and that’s good news

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One step forward, one step back for tar-sands protesters

by 7MelansonHayden940 Posted on January 28, 2013

One step forward, one step back for tar-sands protesters

By Susie Cagle

It’s a bittersweet moment for direct environmental action against nasty tar-sands pollution. (So many moments are bittersweet in the fight against nasty tar-sands pollution …)

On the sweet side, Canada’s Idle No More movement has gone global today, mobilizing protests around the world to highlight mistreatment of indigenous peoples and the environment. The movement has been galvanized by plans to pipe tar-sands oil across First Nations land in British Columbia and by the Canadian government’s attempts to roll back environmental protections for most of the country’s waterways. Actions are already rolling across Canada, at U.N. headquarters in New York, and as far away as Australia and Greenland.

“This day of action will peacefully protest attacks on Democracy, Indigenous Sovereignty, Human Rights and Environmental Protections when Canadian MPs return to the House of Commons on January 28th,” organizers said in a statement.

But for the bitter: The Tar Sands Blockade, which is fighting ongoing construction of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas, faced a significant setback in court on Friday.

In a lawsuit against 19 individual activists as well as the groups Tar Sands Blockade, Rising Tide North Texas, and Rising Tide North America, pipeline builder TransCanada sought $5 million in damages, stating that the activists had disrupted pipeline construction and caused financial losses for the company (despite at other times claiming they had no impact at all). Activists settled the lawsuit without paying damages, but agreed not to trespass on Keystone XL property in Texas or Oklahoma.

“TransCanada is dead wrong if they think a civil lawsuit against a handful of Texans is going to stop a grassroots civil disobedience movement,” said Ramsey Sprague, a spokesperson for the Tar Sands Blockade.

Sprague is right. This court loss might be bitter, but I wouldn’t count out the blockaders in this fight. And when even the Sierra Club is preparing to tape up and jump in the ring, you know the real shit is still yet to go down.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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The ongoing drought may reverse the flow of the Chicago River

by Myrna Posted on January 10, 2013

The ongoing drought may reverse the flow of the Chicago River

The state of Michigan has an advertising campaign, “Pure Michigan,” that highlights the state’s many natural attractions. The skiing! The parks! The beautiful Great Lakes!

The beautiful, non-potable Chicago River

I’m curious how they’ll rebrand the effort once those Great Lakes become home to raw sewage from Chicago. From ABC 7 Chicago (and via Stephen Lacey):

Water levels on Lake Michigan are the lowest in recorded history. If the level continues to drop, the Chicago River could reverse itself and send untreated sewage into Lake Michigan. …

“Our river is 70-percent sewage. I think we need to recognize that. This is an open sewer. It depends upon gravity to go away from us. If that gravity does not work with the lake going down, it goes the other way, and we have done nothing to deal with the contaminants that we need to actually invest in fixing,” Henry Henderson, Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it is carefully monitoring the situation, and if lake levels continue to drop, they may have to modify how they operate the locks to limit the amount of water that goes into the lake, which would have an impact on recreational boats and barge traffic.

Why is the river full of sewage? Blame the Dave Matthews Band. Why might the river reverse? Blame the ongoing Midwest drought. Forty percent of the state of Illinois is still under drought conditions. And as reported by Reuters last November, Lake Michigan has been hit particularly hard by the drop in water levels.

The water level in Lake Michigan is within two inches of its December record low set 48 years ago. The lake is one of the five lakes that make up the Great Lakes, which cover 94,000 square miles and straddle the United States and Canadian border. …

Drew Gronewold, research hydrologist with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Great Lakes environmental research laboratory said water levels have been dropping since the 1990s.

“Water levels naturally fluctuate and have been at low levels for 10 years. But this year of extreme high water temperatures increased evaporation rapidly and that helped draw down water levels,” Gronewold said.

Imagine a watering can with a long spout near its top. If the can is completely filled, water pushes up into the spout. As water evaporates, water drains back down from the spout into the can itself. Now imagine that the water in the spout is 70 percent untreated sewage.

Some good news: A lock at the end of the Chicago River may ensure that the river’s garbage water doesn’t contaminate the lake too badly. From Fox 32 Chicago:

In an operations center where Water Reclamation District engineers monitor and control flows between Lake Michigan and three local waterways, computer screens told an unusual story. The surface of the Chicago River was a tiny bit higher than the surface of Lake Michigan: 6/100ths of an inch, to be exact.

But, they said, very little water from the polluted river would end up in the lake, thanks largely to a network of recently modernized seawalls and gates.

Which is good news for the Michigan tourism bureau. “Mostly Pure Michigan” still has a ring to it. And it will be easy to spot parts of the lake to avoid. Right after St. Patrick’s Day, for example, you’ll be able to see a green plume where Chicago River seeps into the lake. The rest of the year, the plume will be brown.

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

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Potential secretary of state candidate Susan Rice faces questions over TransCanada investments

by Myrna Posted on November 29, 2012

Potential secretary of state candidate Susan Rice faces questions over TransCanada investments

Yesterday, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s OnEarth magazine dropped a bombshell. United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, widely rumored to be the leading contender to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, has large investments in both TransCanada, the company seeking to build the Keystone XL pipeline, and other businesses with a stake in seeing it built. The secretary of state, you may remember, is responsible for granting any permit to build the border-crossing pipeline.

In addition to TransCanada stock valued between $300,000 and $600,000, OnEarth outlines the breadth of her investments.

[A]ccording to financial disclosure reports, about a third of Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th parallel — including companies with poor environmental and safety records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine. That includes Enbridge, which spilled more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 — the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history.

Rice also has smaller stakes in several other big Canadian energy firms, as well as the country’s transportation companies and coal-fired utilities. Another 20 percent or so of her personal wealth is derived from investments in five Canadian banks. These are some of the institutions that provide loans and financial backing to TransCanada and its competitors for tar sands extraction and major infrastructure projects, such as Keystone XL and Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would stretch 700 miles from Alberta to the Canadian coast.

USDA

Susan Rice and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

OnEarth then describes the possible conflict:

Were she to become Secretary of State, Rice would be in charge of the new environmental review process and would be in a position to decide whether to issue TransCanada a permit for sections of Keystone XL stretching from Oklahoma to the Canadian border.

The revelation prompts a lot of questions, to be sure. For one: Why does the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. hold so much stock in Canadian companies? Perhaps in part because her husband, Ian Cameron, is Canadian.

But more importantly: Should this be considered a disqualifying revelation?

It’s important to remember that we’ve already had a secretary of state who faced questions about improper relationships to TransCanada: Hillary Clinton.

In 2011, environmentalists began asking questions about TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliott, who had served as Clinton’s deputy national campaign manager during her 2008 run for the presidency. Friends of the Earth, which uncovered emails between Elliott and staffers at the State Department after making a Freedom of Information Act request, suggested that the emails “indicate bias and complicity” and that State Department employees were “cozy with the oil industry.” Even Clinton’s husband spoke in favor of the project earlier this year, suggesting that America “embrace” the pipeline.

Ultimately, of course, the Keystone XL permit was denied in January of this year. The final authority at the State Department isn’t the secretary of state — it’s the president. And the president making the call was Barack Obama, same president who will be running State until 2016. With the Keystone permit due for reconsideration next year, the buck stops with him.

Rice’s investments are disconcerting and, for many, disappointing. But it’s hard to see how they would disqualify her from the post, a role that encompasses far more than this one decision. They are almost certainly, however, grounds for recusal from discussions about the Keystone XL permit — and they are certain to raise any number of questions during that process that may be uncomfortable to answer.

Source

Secretary of State Candidate Has a Major Financial Stake in Canadian Tar Sands, OnEarth

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

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Please don’t be thankful for America’s unsustainable love affair with big-box retail

by Myrna Posted on November 21, 2012

Please don’t be thankful for America’s unsustainable love affair with big-box retail

By Susie Cagle

If you’re reading this on your phone from a line outside an electronics store, congratulations — you’re a real American! And you’re probably way more excited about the 50th anniversary of big-box retail in this country than the rest of us are.

Fred Watkins

In 1962, when gas cost about 28 cents a gallon and the suburbs were growing faster than you can say “sports utility vehicle,” Walmart, Target, and Kmart were all born.

NPR’s Morning Edition talked to retail historian Marc Levinson about their rise to prominence and dominance.

One of the prerequisites for the big-box was the car. Everybody had to have a car because the big-box was sitting out in a parking lot somewhere. The big-box made shopping into a family experience. Mom and dad and the kids all piled into the car, they went out to this big store, and they could spend several hours there because there was, by the standards of the day, an enormous amount of merchandise.

Today’s stores are about four times the size, but hey, so are our cars!

Since ’62, the big boxes, especially Walmart, have grown like an infectious pox upon our nation. Even Friday’s planned worker strikes at upwards of 1,000 Walmarts across the country may do nothing to slow the monster’s growth. From The Daily Beast:

The company is huge enough, as the world’s largest private employer, to weather this storm of protests, whether it’s a trickle of malcontents or a hurricane of workers all over the country. With 200 million customers visiting 10,300 stores in 27 countries every week, even if 10 percent of its customers decided they’d never shop there again, the company would survive.

The only way to strike big retail where it hurts is to just stop shopping. But that’s hardly the American way, even in financially fraught times. When big boxes cry “sustainability” and try to up their green cred, our response tends to be to buy more crap from them.

At stores that sponsor battery and gadget recycling programs, more than half of would-be recyclers end up buying more than just replacement gadgets, according to a study commissioned by Call2Recycle, “a product stewardship organization.”

Of those surveyed, 54% in the U.S. and 45% in Canada consider retailers a key source for learning about recycling programs where 18% of the U.S. population and 24% of the Canadian population participates in retail “take back” programs for the collection and recycling of batteries and cellphones.

Does it seem counterintuitive and kind of gross that we’d be learning how to recycle from the very same people who are selling us all this junk that we need to recycle? Does it make you want to soothe your conflicted feelings with some retail therapy? Well resist, damnit, resist!

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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