Tag Archives: coast

A new proposal for shipping tar-sands oil: Use the thawed Arctic!

by BayalaHillesland628 Posted on February 5, 2013

A new proposal for shipping tar-sands oil: Use the thawed Arctic!

By Philip Bump

Oil companies in Alberta have learned a key lesson about the tar-sands business. Namely: Extracting tar-sands oil is one thing. Getting it refined and sold is another.

Tar-sands oil prices continue to fall as companies struggle to figure out how to get it to customers. There are three routes to do so, shown above. The route headed west (in blue) represents the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline — a project that is on the brink of being cancelled. Heading south into the United States (in red), Keystone XL, the tribulations of which are legendary. Headed east (yellow), a possible pipeline to the St. Lawrence Seaway which, as far as I know, exists only in theory.

But there’s another possibility, one previously unmentioned — and previously impossible: Build a pipeline due north, to the formerly frozen Arctic Ocean. From Bloomberg:

Alberta’s landlocked oil producers facing pipeline bottlenecks to the south, west and east are welcome to ship their product north, according to Northwest Territories leader Bob McLeod.

McLeod, 60, said the territorial government would consider proposals to ship crude from Alberta oil sands producers, which include Suncor (SU) Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources, to the Arctic. The territory would consider piggybacking on any new infrastructure to ship its own oil and gas, he said. …

“The reality is, it’s doable,” McLeod said. “With climate change, the Arctic ice pack has melted significantly.” Asked if Alberta’s difficulties getting oil to market presents an opportunity for his region, McLeod said: “We think so.”

Ah, yes, the long-anticipated Northern Coast of North America. As Arctic ice reaches new lows during the summer months, ships have increasingly been able to navigate the Northwest passage. The changing climate for which we can thank the consumption of fossil fuels could finally allow us to bring the pollution-intensive tar sands to market. It’s the circle of life.

There’s one catch, though, which McLeod may not have considered. The pipeline would have to be built across a stretch of permafrost — an increasingly unstable foundation as temperatures warm and frozen earth transforms into soft muck. Not to mention the challenge of building a port for ships that won’t shortly be inundated with ocean water from higher sea levels. What climate change giveth, climate change taketh away.

The odds that this northern pipeline will come to fruition are slim, McLeod’s dreams notwithstanding. The salvation for companies trying to sell tar-sands oil remains in the same direction it’s pointed for years: south, over the U.S.-Canada border, through the Keystone XL. Whether or not that’s a pipe dream, only time will tell.

Alberta tar sands.

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

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A new proposal for shipping tar-sands oil: Use the thawed Arctic!

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As Sandy aid finally arrives, FEMA unveils new flood maps

by vserko45 Posted on January 29, 2013

As Sandy aid finally arrives, FEMA unveils new flood maps

By Philip Bump

The flooded Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

Midnight tonight marks the three-month anniversary of Hurricane Sandy making landfall in New Jersey. To celebrate, Congress finally cleared the aid package for victims of the storm. You’ll forgive the East Coast if it doesn’t send a thank-you note.

From The New York Times:

By a 62-to-36 vote, the Senate approved the measure, with 9 Republicans joining 53 Democrats to support it. The House recently passed the bill, 241 to 180, after initially refusing to act on it amid objections from fiscal conservatives over its size and its impact on the federal deficit.

The newly adopted aid package comes on top of nearly $10 billion that Congress approved this month to support the recovery efforts in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states that were battered by the hurricane in late October.

The money will provide aid to people whose homes were damaged or destroyed, as well as to business owners who had heavy losses. It will also pay for replenishing shorelines, repairing subway and commuter rail systems, fixing bridges and tunnels, and reimbursing local governments for emergency spending.

Obama pledged to sign the bill as soon as it gets to him.

Yesterday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency presented its own gift to the community: new flood maps for the New York City area. The reassessment of risk to neighborhoods updates the existing, 30-year-old maps, adding some 35,000 new homes and businesses to at-risk areas.

New York Times

Revamped flood zones. Click to embiggen.

In a separate story, the Times reports:

The maps will not formally go into effect for about two years, but the mayor’s office was already preparing an executive order to help owners of damaged homes rebuild to higher standards. That means that a badly damaged home that was not in the old flood zone, but is in the new one, would be allowed to rebuild to prepare for dangers predicted in the new maps. For instance, a home could be hoisted onto posts or pilings, which might have previously been disallowed because of zoning. …

To help offset the costs, [Michael] Byrne, of FEMA, said homeowners with federally backed insurance policies could get up to an additional $30,000 for rebuilding their homes to comply with new codes. Mr. Holloway said it was hoped that federal aid in the wake of the storm would include money to help homeowners better protect their homes.

According to the agency, owners of a $250,000 home with a ground floor built four feet below sea level could pay up to $9,500 a year for flood insurance, compared with $427 for homes built three feet above the flood line.

You may remember that the first, $10 billion package approved by Congress went to bolster FEMA’s ability to pay out claims. For years, the agency has been charging flood-insurance premiums that don’t reflect the actual risk of flooding across the country, meaning that it has been operating at a loss. Homeowners in areas that have been added to the newly mapped flood zones will have to pay higher insurance rates, but not for another few years. Which means FEMA will continue to bring in less money than it needs and will be constrained in paying out claims.

Worse still, FEMA’s new maps reflect only the present conditions: current sea levels, current storm estimates.

Mr. Byrne said the maps were based on current conditions. “We’re not taking into consideration any future climate change,” he said.

Within a decade, then, even FEMA’s new maps will be out-of-date. Sea-level rise is happening faster than anticipated, and New York Harbor is witnessing that directly. If FEMA waits another 30 years to update the maps, the harbor could be almost four inches higher than it is today.

The constraint is financial. Elements of the government are loathe to spend on preventative measures and are reluctant to provide additional funding to programs like FEMA. It took them three months to OK even minimal aid to the largest city in the country. How many years will it be before Congress approves resources to combat climate change preemptively?

Source

Congress Approves $51 Billion in Aid for Hurricane Victims, New York Times
Twice as Many Structures in FEMA’s Redrawn Flood Zone, New York Times

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As Sandy aid finally arrives, FEMA unveils new flood maps

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The 32 most alarming charts from the government’s climate change report

by olikellopas Posted on January 14, 2013

The 32 most alarming charts from the government’s climate change report

By Philip Bump

Just reading about the government’s massive new report outlining what climate change has in store for the U.S. is sobering. In brief: temperature spikes, drought, flooding, less snow, less permafrost. But if you really want to freak out, you should check out the graphs, charts, and maps.

For the more visually oriented bunker builders out there, here are the 32 most alarming images from the 1,200-page draft report. (Click any of them to embiggen.)

Things will be different.
Analysis suggests that temperatures could rise as much as 11 degrees by the end of the century. On this chart, note the lines labelled SRES A2 and SRES B1. Those are the two greenhouse gas emission scenarios used as worst- and best-case scenarios in many of the charts that follow.

It’s possible that sea levels could only rise eight inches. It is also possible that they could rise over six-and-a-half feet.

Over the past 30 years, we’ve already seen hundreds of billion-dollar weather disasters — heavily centered on the South and Southeast.

We will be hot.
Over the past century, temperature changes have varied by region.

Depending on the emissions scenario, we could see an average of four degrees of temperature increase — or 10 degrees across the country.

Under the worse-case emissions scenario, annual days over 100 degrees will spike in the Plains, Southwest, and Southeast.

The whole country will see more frost-free days — but particularly in the Southwest.

We will be wet.
Precipitation has been increasing across the country …

… but that increase isn’t uniform.

We will also be dry.
Under a higher-emissions scenario, the southwest will see far less rain.

Drought will increase significantly …

… and we’ll see significant increases in water withdrawal.

Very heavy precipitation — far bigger storms — will increase dramatically in the Northeast.

Flooding in the northern Plains and Northeast will increase.

We will be itchy and sneezy and diseased.
Carbon dioxide increases will lead to more pollen, exacerbating allergies.

The natural range of ticks will expand.

Alaska will become a totally different state.
Under the higher emissions scenario, Alaska could see temperature increases of nearly 12 degrees.

That increased warmth will mean faster thawing of the permafrost, which is very, very bad news.

We will need boats, if we live on the coast.
The U.S. has seen huge population growth on its coasts, which is bad news.

Sea-level rise will affect different areas to different degrees — but note the map at lower right. On the Georgia coast, “hundred year” floods could happen annually.

In New York, which has seen sea rise quickly …

… the boundaries suggesting where a hundred year flood would stop will keep moving inland.

North Carolina will see rising whatever-they-call-its, too.

Across the country, airports built near the ocean, often on fill, will become more subject to flooding.

Power plants in California will be threatened by flooding.

Seattle will see huge areas of the city made vulnerable to flooding and surge. (You can read the details here.)

Or, in summary:
Here’s what you can expect depending on where in the country you live.

If you really want to sleep poorly tonight, open the full report and search for your state. If the temperature is only expected to go up five degrees, consider yourself lucky.

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

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The 32 most alarming charts from the government’s climate change report

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BP kinda hoping the government can ignore a few hundred million barrels of spilled Gulf oil

by oks23po Posted on January 14, 2013

BP kinda hoping the government can ignore a few hundred million barrels of spilled Gulf oil

By Philip Bump

British Petroleum, former record-holder for “most inept at U.S. offshore drilling,” has a favor to ask of the government. Yeah, sure, the government says that 4.9 million barrels of oil were spilled when the Deepwater Horizon went blooey, but if we could agree it was actually more like, oh, 4.1 million, that would save BP a few bucks.

From FuelFix:

The U.S. government has asserted that the well discharged 4.9 million barrels of oil, or 206 million gallons. BP stated again in its filing Friday that it believes the spill was significantly smaller, though it hasn’t publicly provided its own estimate.

With a finding of gross negligence, the 4.9-million-barrel figure would carry a maximum Clean Water Act fine of more than $21 billion.

How big a dent would this obviously scientifically accurate adjustment make?

Such a ruling could reduce BP’s fine by as much as $3.4 billion if the court were to rule that BP acted with gross negligence when its Macondo well blew out 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, leading to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

BP doesn’t understand why this little incident has to be so expensive.

Data for 2012 hasn’t yet been released, but in 2011, BP only managed to pull in about $24 billion in profit. So you can see that having to pay for all of the damage that the company actually did would be a major imposition. That’s an extra $3.4 billion the company could be putting toward drilling more holes in the ocean floor, after all, and we certainly wouldn’t want it to stop doing that.

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

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House Republican politicking is obviously more fun than supporting Sandy victims

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 11, 2013

House Republican politicking is obviously more fun than supporting Sandy victims

By Philip Bump

According to House Speaker John Boehner’s master plan, the House will next week consider the other $51 billion in Sandy relief funding that it punted on earlier this month.

House Republicans will absolutely not approve all of it. The question is how much they’ll sign off on. With a coda for pessimists: if any.

drpavloff

Advertising distribution mechanism Politico.com outlines how the vote is expected to go.

First, the House plans to call up a bill by Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) that totals $27 billion in relief. Then, it will immediately amend the bill to deduct the $9.7 billion in flood relief passed before Congress recessed — bringing the bill’s total to $17 billion.

Amendments will be allowed — including spending reduction amendments — and then the House will vote on passage of the Rogers amendment. This would set up $17 billion to be sent to the Senate.

But then leadership will allow Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) to offer an amendment that offers an additional $33 billion. Republicans think this can pass as well.

But efforts by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), who abstained from voting for John Boehner for speaker, could change the equation.

The South Carolinian has already offered multiple amendments seeking spending offsets, which if made in order could seriously complicate the pledge of Majority Leader Eric Cantor to move the legislation quickly.

Smart precedent by a representative of a state whose most tourist-friendly city lies right on the Atlantic Ocean.

House Republicans are particularly concerned about measures in the package that don’t go directly to providing aid to the affected and displaced. Among those measures are ones meant to ameliorate future storms: to improve prediction ability, to bolster federal facilities, to encourage smarter reconstruction in affected areas. Given that Republican members of the House are far more interested in symbolic penny-pinching (particularly when it can screw over East Coast libruls), much of that will likely end up on the House floor. So to speak.

It’s been noted with some regularity that an aid package of $60 billion was authorized by Congress 10 days after Hurricane Katrina. Superstorm Sandy was 75 days ago. Meaning that private relief services have dried to a trickle while public ones are increasingly strained. For example, housing aid, as reported by the Huffington Post:

Nearly 1,000 Long Island households displaced by superstorm Sandy are waiting to find out whether their federal funding for hotel rooms will be extended beyond Sunday.

That’s the current “checkout date” for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s transitional sheltering assistance program, a spokesman for the agency said. However, the spokesman, John Mills, said Thursday that a decision about whether to extend the program could be made by the end of the day Friday.

Roughly 970 Long Island households — individuals or entire families — are staying in hotel rooms funded by the program, Mills said. Statewide, the program currently funds hotel rooms for about 2,360 households, he said.

There are two bright spots in this story. The first is that the “checkout” date has already been extended twice. The second is that FEMA is the only federal agency to have received aid from the Sandy bill the House passed last week — but just enough to keep it solvent.

Nonetheless, the checkout-date dilemma highlights the larger problem. The Sandy hourglass is down to its last few grains. More and more of the families that have spent nearly 11 weeks patching their lives back together will be unable to do so without help. Support is needed. Has been needed. And with each day that passes, we are 24 hours closer to another hurricane season for which the East Coast is only more vulnerable than before.

Update: FEMA extended the residency deadline until January 26.

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

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Oil company foils government inspectors with high-tech gadgets (coffee filters)

by trasze2aja Posted on January 10, 2013

Oil company foils government inspectors with high-tech gadgets (coffee filters)

By Philip Bump

For those of you who sleep well at night knowing that the government is competently and robustly working to protect the health of our environment, you may want to stop reading now. Here’s a story that flew under the radar last week from WWLTV in New Orleans:

An oil company admitted Thursday that coffee filters were used to doctor water samples and cover up the fact that it was dumping oil and grease into the Gulf of Mexico on its platform 175 miles south of New Orleans. …

[W&T Offshore] contractors used coffee filters to clean the water samples before submitting them to regulators.

Also, the company admitted that when they spilled some oil in November 2009, they not only failed to report it to the Coast Guard, but sprayed the oil into the Gulf and then hired a company that worked for three days to clean the platform to make it look like there never was a spill.

The company was fined $700,000 and will pay “$300,000 in community service,” whatever that means.

jlodder

The criminal mastermind’s tool for evading government oversight

Just to be clear, the reporting process goes like this.

  1. Company takes water sample.
  2. Company sends water sample to government.
  3. Government looks at submitted water sample and says OK.

And in order to get that OK, the company need only add step 1a: Pass them through a semiporous piece of paper. Got it.

How was W&T caught?

Inspectors from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement still found oil staining on the platform deck and visible sheen in the water, all of which W&T failed to report as required.

Thank God for irredeemable idiocy.

Source

Oil company admits using coffee filters to doctor water samples, WWL TV

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Shell’s Alaska mishap has a big PR cost — and a big cost to taxpayers

by olikellopas Posted on January 3, 2013

Shell’s Alaska mishap has a big PR cost — and a big cost to taxpayers

By Philip Bump

Even at 6:30 a.m. Alaska time today, three hours before sunrise, there was a hum of activity at the unified command center coordinating the response to Shell’s breakaway drilling rig off Kodiak Island on the state’s southern coast. The command — coordinating the efforts of Shell, the Coast Guard, the state, Noble Corporation (the drilling contractor), and local officials — is responsible for figuring out how badly the 28,000-ton Kulluk is damaged, if it’s leaking any of its 143,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and how it can be towed back out to sea. Three days after the rig broke free of two tugboats in bad weather and ran aground, only one of those questions can be answered: It isn’t leaking fuel. Yet.

Hoping to figure out the extent of the Coast Guard’s role in recovery — how many of the 600 people working on the response are employees of the agency, or of the state of Alaska — I called the Coast Guard station in Anchorage this morning, and was quickly referred to the unified command. When I called there, I spoke with Destin Singleton over clamorous background noise. Singleton is the spokesperson for the recovery effort — and a Shell public relations staffer.

For what little progress has been made in assessing damage to the rig, the command has put together a pretty thorough communications system. The effort has a website, KullukResponse.com, a Twitter feed, and a page of photos on Flickr. Singleton, a PR professional, didn’t offer much information beyond what’s available on the website. So here’s the latest update:

A team of five salvage experts boarded the grounded drilling unit Kulluk [yesterday] to conduct a structural assessment to be used to finalize salvage plans, currently being developed by the Kulluk Tow Incident Unified Command.

The five-member team was lowered to the Kulluk by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter at about 10:30 [yesterday] morning. The assessment lasted about three hours. A helicopter safely hoisted the team from the drilling unit at about 1:30 p.m. The Coast Guard helicopter and crew also delivered a state-owned emergency towing system to the Kulluk, which will be used during salvage operations.

It’s clear that the Coast Guard is playing a significant role in efforts at recovery. The video at the top of the page is from one agency flyover of the rig. But Singleton wasn’t able to (or wouldn’t) say how many Coast Guard employees were involved, nor was she able to say how many of the people working on the effort were employed by Shell. (Save one, that is: herself.)

There’s no doubt that the effort is a complex one, requiring interagency coordination and careful consideration of safety risks. One of the main reasons that activists have been concerned about the prospect of drilling in the region is unstable, unmanageable weather like that currently impeding the recovery. But it’s also clear that Shell recognizes the public relations risk of its inability to control its drilling vessel. According to Politico, several environmental organizations plan to unveil a push to freeze drilling in the region in light of Shell’s ongoing problems.

Shell’s mistakes are costing it an enormous amount of money even before a single drop of oil has been extracted in the region. And it’s costing us money, too, though exactly how much isn’t clear — and the company isn’t saying.

U.S. Coast GuardRear Adm. Thomas Ostebo, commander, 17th Coast Guard District and D17 Incident Management Team commander, observes the conical drilling unit Kulluk from an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter during a second overflight Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013.

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

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Holiday shopping is down, mall blight is up

by olikellopas Posted on December 28, 2012

Holiday shopping is down, mall blight is up

By Susie Cagle

It seems a lot of Americans shifted the gift this holiday season. Early reports from retailers indicate this may well be the least shop-happy winter since the apocalyptic recession Christmas of 2008. And climate change sure isn’t helping.

Sean_Marshall

Reuters reports:

Shares of retailers dropped sharply on Wednesday, helping drag broader indexes lower, as investors realized they were likely to be disappointed when companies start to report results in a few weeks’ time.

“The broad brush was Christmas wasn’t all that merry for retailers, and you have to ask what those margins look like if the top line didn’t meet their expectations,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group.

Growth was always expected to slow this season, though an improving employment picture and rising home values had helped mitigate the worst fears. But then Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast in late October, mild weather blunted sales of winter clothing and rising concern about the “fiscal cliff” became more of a reality, dragging down already-pessimistic forecasts.

(T-minus how long until someone rebrands swimsuits as a great climate collapse fashion choice?)

Stores stand to scoop up nearly a third of their annual sales over the holiday season, so this drop could be significant — but could it be enough to push us closer to a more lasting shifting of the gifts?

Sales may be down on the whole, but they’re also moving from the brick and mortar world to the digital, leaving us with empty, useless retail spaces and dead, blighted malls from coast to coast. According to Atlantic Cities, shopping mall vacancy rates are now hovering around twice what they were 10 years ago. The head of a leading commercial real estate firm said of these ghost malls, “I don’t think we’re overbuilt, I think we’re under-demolished.”

But we shouldn’t be knocking these places down! We should save the energy and resources that would otherwise be needed to demolish and rebuild, and instead creatively reuse retail space for community centers and social services. But not for shark aquariums though, please. Please.

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The $400 million plan to unsink a giant cruise ship

by olikellopas Posted on December 27, 2012

The $400 million plan to unsink a giant cruise ship

By Susie Cagle

Nearly a year after it crashed into a very picturesque rock on the coast of Giglio Island in the Mediterranean, the Costa Concordia cruise ship is still lying on its side in the middle of a marine wildlife preserve. The island’s mayor called the ship “an ecological timebomb,” but while it’s not (currently!) leaking oil into the sea, the Concordia is basically a massive amount of pollution still waiting to happen.

Roberto Vongher

There are only two things to do: Chop it up, sink it, and say sorry, or spend $400 million towing the failed monstrosity away from nature.

The latter it is!

Business Insider calls the plan, “the riskiest, most complicated, and most expensive salvage plan ever undertaken,” and no one is entirely sure it will actually work.

The process consists of stabilizing the ship with massive cables (almost complete); drilling an underwater platform into the sea floor; attaching massive floaties to each side of the ship, tipping it upright, and (hopefully!) towing it away from the protected coastline still mostly intact.

Workers had to take a four-day rock climbing course before beginning the work, which will take months.

The (many) companies undertaking this plan say, “it best fulfills the main objectives of the operation: removal of the wreck in one piece, minimal risk, minimal environmental impact, protection of Giglio’s economy and tourism industry, and maximum safety of the work.”

When the only other option is to sink the ship and walk away, it doesn’t really matter if the salvage plan is serious about preserving the Mediterranean ecosystem or just desperate to salvage the tourist dollars on which Giglio’s economy relies. But just think of all the wonderful things we could do with that $400 million if we weren’t building these big dumb toys and crashing them into islands.

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Something is leaking from the Deepwater Horizon site, but it’s not clear what

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 19, 2012

Something is leaking from the Deepwater Horizon site, but it’s not clear what

By Philip Bump

The Deepwater Horizon is the gift that keeps on giving. Usually, that gift is more oil. Right now, though, perhaps because of the holidays, it’s leaking something unknown. It’s a special present that will reveal itself on Christmas, maybe! That’s fun. Thanks, BP.

From CBS News:

An “unidentified substance inconsistent with oil” is emitting from several areas of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig wreckage, but no sources of leaking oil were identified. That’s according to the Coast Guard, which oversaw BP’s recent week-long mission to inspect the undersea wells and wreckage from the 2010 explosion.

The exact content of the leaking substance and how much is coming out is one mystery. But if it’s not oil, then it means the source of recurring oil sheens that have recently been spotted around the Deepwater Horizon site remains unknown.

The expression “unidentified substance inconsistent with oil” leaves a lot of leeway for what it might be. Pepsi, maybe? Hair gel? Possibly footballs? Is it stardust? Exposed Kodak film from the 1960s? Maybe it’s donuts? Is it blood? I bet it’s blood. Creeeepy.

But, seriously? What could it actually be? This is ominous:

The Coast Guard said BP’s main Macondo well was observed during the subsea operation and found to be secure. Two relief wells, the riser pipe and the previously leaking containment dome were also to be re-examined, but the press release made no mention of them and the Coast Guard declined to answer further questions.

This is how horror movies start. A hasty press conference, a quick statement that something unknown, unprecedented is happening, a refusal to be more specific. The uniformed government agents step away from the mic and out of the room leaving behind confused and quizzical reporters.

In other words: We were right and it was blood. And the holiday BP is recognizing isn’t Christmas, it’s Halloween.

Source

Coast Guard: “Unidentified substance” leaking from BP’s Deepwater Horizon, CBS News

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Something is leaking from the Deepwater Horizon site, but it’s not clear what

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