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

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

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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Record-high average gas prices in 2012 are almost certainly great news for oil companies

Record-high average gas prices in 2012 are almost certainly great news for oil companies

These prices are actually low by today’s standards.

The Wall Street Journal is tremendously incensed about gas prices. For the record, it tells us in the headline of an article, gasoline was the most expensive ever in 2012.

The national average price of [gasoline] for the year was $3.60 a gallon, a significant jump from the previous record of $3.51 set in 2011. While 2008 is famous for a huge summer spike that drove the average above $4 a gallon, price[s] weren’t as consistently high as this year, leaving 2008 in third place overall at $3.25. …

AAA said the national average has broken a daily record high for a total [of] 248 days in 2012, including 134 consecutive days of records. April 5 and 6 marked the highest daily national average of the year at $3.94 a gallon … while the price dropped to its low point of $3.22 on Dec. 20.

The paper’s heavily conservative readership might be puzzled by this news. After all, this is what domestic oil production is doing:

And as we know from Republicans, increased drilling means gasoline prices should be going down. But they aren’t (as we’ve noted before). They’re bouncing all over the place.

GasBuddy.com

If we’re to believe that the key to reducing gas prices is more drilling, the second chart in this post should look like the first, except upside down. It doesn’t. It looks like this chart …

Post1.org

… which is the price of a barrel of oil over time. Because that’s what gasoline prices correlate to: how much a barrel of oil costs on the international market.

That gas-prices chart also looks a little like this one.

Data from DailyFinance.com

This graph shows quarterly earnings for oil companies. Up in the summer of 2011, back down, then up again. The correlation is between how much gas costs and how much oil companies earn.

At the end of this month, those companies will start releasing their 2012 profits. If the all-time high average price is any indicator, Exxon and Valero and Chevron and BP probably had a pretty good year.

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

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Caught on video: Mudslide from rain-soaked hill derails freight train

Caught on video: Mudslide from rain-soaked hill derails freight train

It’s a normal, unremarkable scene: A freight train runs along the edge of a parking lot next to a hillside. The sort of thing you see all the time.

Until the hillside gives way.

This happened yesterday in Everett, Wash., just north of Seattle. The Seattle Times describes how it happened:

The surface slide came off an oversaturated 100-foot cliff that geotechnical engineers had been scheduled to check right after the 66-car train passed, according to [Burlington Northern Santa Fe] spokesman Gus Melonas.

A BNSF-led crew of at least 50 people are cleaning up some of the general grocery store merchandise that spilled — products including soap, lemon juice, solvents and disinfectants. The Seattle-bound train came from Chicago carrying a wide variety of general merchandise including meat, ovens and other things.

Here’s what the rainfall totals in Everett have looked like over the past 10 days, in inches per hour. Sunday and Monday were deluged. And Tuesday, the hillside slipped.

WolframAlpha

It wasn’t the only mudslide in the area. In addition to providing bus service around this slide, Amtrak is re-routing passengers around another stretch of track between Olympia and Tacoma.

Luckily, the contents of the train were fairly inert; initial reports that it was a chemical train seem a bit overblown. But it’s nonetheless disconcerting, as more and more oil and other toxics are shipped by train and as we learn that one of the ways in which the climate has been destabilized by warming is a huge increase in storm size and precipitation.

Could have been much worse, like a tar-sands-oil train knocked off the rails by a climate superstorm. It wasn’t that. Yet.

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

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Caught on video: Mudslide from rain-soaked hill derails freight train

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Adorable little Michigan town has big plans for cutting carbon emissions

Adorable little Michigan town has big plans for cutting carbon emissions

Ann Arbor is a small town in Michigan that, like so many small towns across the Midwest, has been hard-hit as industry has increasingly moved away or overseas. A pleasant place with small hills and tree-lined streets, Ann Arbor has never had any distinguishing characteristic: no classic architecture, no famous music hall, no museums of note. Just a standard small town with a little main street, like so many other thousands littering the region.

But now, at last, Ann Arbor has done something to help it stand out, something of which — after so many years! — it might rightly be proud.

mike_miley

This is the town’s train station! Adorbs.

From AnnArbor.com (it doesn’t even have a real newspaper!):

The Ann Arbor City Council took action Monday night to adopt a Climate Action Plan, a 188-page document that outlines dozens of ways to reduce the community’s carbon footprint.

Building on previous environmental goals set by the City Council, the new plan recommends three targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.

That includes a goal of reducing the entire community’s emissions by 8 percent by 2015, by 25 percent by 2025, and by 90 percent by 2050 — all relative to 2000 baseline levels.

I mean, first of all it’s cute that such an insignificant town has a city council! Just goes to show you that democracy can take root in even the driest soil.

But, second, this is a good idea. The city’s plan includes improved energy efficiency, transitioning to renewable energy production (right now, I believe they use an old coal furnace out back of Doc Bridge’s), increasing food labeling so that residents know how much carbon dioxide was produced for each item, and reducing recycling and garbage pickup. Interesting steps that could probably only fly in such a small backwater.

The city has already seen a drop since 2000 in the amount of carbon dioxide produced in its commercial and industrial sectors — a success that it hopes to increase across the board.

“This is one more step in a long history of action that we’re taking and recognizing that a global problem like climate change is more than we can handle on our own,” [Council Member Chuck] Warpehoski said.

I mean, how great is that? It’s like when they have a big pledge drive on TV and a little kid sends in a quarter from her piggy bank because she wants to help. Ann Arbor, you are the cutest little thing. Let’s hope that this, if nothing else, gives you something to be proud of.

P.S.

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

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Senator famous for shooting cap-and-trade bill argues for gun control

Senator famous for shooting cap-and-trade bill argues for gun control

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) pledged to always defend West Virginia. To that end, in an infamous 2010 campaign ad, the good senator (then governor) loaded up his rifle and shot a hole in the already-dead cap-and-trade bill.

In Manchin’s mind, that’s defending West Virginia — halting policies that would demand coal companies incur the costs of their pollution. And what better visual metaphor than the gun? Blam. Shot dead.

But Manchin’s had a change of heart. Now, it seems, he sees the error in that ad. No, not the part about how he was arguing against a policy that held coal to account. No, now Manchin thinks we need more limits on guns.

From Politico:

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — who has an “A” rating from the NRA and is a lifetime member of the pro-gun rights group — said Monday that it was time to “move beyond rhetoric” on gun control.

“I just came with my family from deer hunting,” Manchin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I’ve never had more than three shells in a clip. Sometimes you don’t get more than one shot anyway at a deer. It’s common sense. It’s time to move beyond rhetoric. We need to sit down and have a common-sense discussion and move in a reasonable way.” …

“I don’t know anyone in the hunting or sporting arena that goes out with an assault rifle,” he said. “I don’t know anybody that needs 30 rounds in the clip to go hunting. I mean, these are things that need to be talked about.”

These are things that need to be talked about. With the memory of dead first-graders all too fresh in mind, we need to talk about how unchecked gun ownership, the unlimited ability to own weapons and ammunition, is a threat to public health.

Meanwhile, coal killed some 13,000 people in the U.S. in 2010 — and there will be uncountable future deaths resulting from the carbon dioxide that coal leaves in the atmosphere.

Manchin is right about revisiting gun laws, of course. But one can’t help but wonder what evidence he’ll need before he sees that casually shooting anti-pollution legislation was a misjudgment in more than one way.

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

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New Yorkers create three pounds of garbage per person per day

New Yorkers create three pounds of garbage per person per day

Twelve years ago, New York City residents created nearly four pounds of garbage per person per day. It was broken down as follows:

27 percent thin pizza crusts
20 percent tourists
18 percent surliness
14 percent unused Mets tickets
11 percent lox
6 percent rejected New York Post headline ideas
4 percent ticker tape

Today, good news: The figure has declined to less than three pounds a day, about 12 ounces of which is recycled material. That’s an estimated drop from 32 million pounds of garbage a day to 25 million pounds.

Not that the city is all that happy about it. From The New York Times:

While that’s the lowest amount since at least 2000, the cost of collecting and disposing of the garbage has remained relatively constant, ranging from a low of about 70 cents [per person per day] in 2002 to a high of more than 80 cents in 2008. In 2012, the average cost per person daily was about 75 cents. The cost figures are all in 2012 dollars.

Refuse accounts for most of the garbage, but recycling, which is more expensive per pound, makes up nearly half the daily expenditure.

Independent Budget Office

Click to embiggen.

Not only has the amount of garbage dropped, so has its number of components. According to an expert whose name we will make up if pressed, this is what comprises the city’s garbage now:

83 percent artisanal things of various kinds
17 percent rubble from Sandy

Some progress, anyway.

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

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Gas line break creates massive fireball in W. Va.

Gas line break creates massive fireball in W. Va.

WOWKTV

A natural-gas transmission line in West Virginia ruptured this afternoon. From WOWKTV:

[An] explosion rocked Sissonville shortly before 1 p.m. today, setting several homes on fire and forcing officials to issue a shelter in place for local residents.

The explosion caused huge flames to race throughout the area, lapping both sides on Interstate 77, which has been closed to all northbound and southbound traffic.

Sgt. Michael Bayless with the West Virginia State Police said the investigation into the cause of the explosion is still ongoing and very preliminary. He said crews with Columbia Gas are working to shut off the pipeline to control the fire. However he said that process is very delicate because they don’t want to reignite the explosion.

So far, no injuries have been reported.

The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward is tweeting updates; we’ve compiled information about the blast below.

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

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Milk sales have declined sharply, perhaps because we aren’t all babies

Milk sales have declined sharply, perhaps because we aren’t all babies

No one drinks milk anymore! The Wall Street Journal:

Per-capita U.S. milk consumption, which peaked around World War II, has fallen almost 30% since 1975, even as sales of yogurt, cheese and other dairy products have risen, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. The reasons include the rise in popularity of bottled waters and the concern of some consumers that milk is high in calories.

Chelsea PhillipsBlech.

Here are other reasons, probably:

Milk is kind of gross. When you hear something described as “milky,” do you think: Hey, yum, that sounds good? No, you think: Gross. That sounds gross.
Milk is what cows feed their babies, in theory. If you’re anything like me, it’s been years since you’ve suckled on your mother’s breast. And even when you used to do that, if you did, I bet you never found yourself faced with the dilemma of whether you would rather drink milk from your mother or from a cow. Even if you grew up on a farm, even if you were breast-feeding in the barn, and even if you were old enough to make rational decisions (which I hope you weren’t), I doubt you thought, maybe that nipple dragging around in that hay is better! When you drink milk, you are basically wrapping your lips around a cow body part that is like two feet from its anus, but with some intermediary sanitation.
I say “in theory” above because the way we get cow milk now is bananas. Seriously. It’s weird. Here’s everything Grist has written about milk. I’m not going to get into it right now, but let’s just say that forced pregnancy and hormones and giant milk vacuums all play a role in industrial milk production. Makes direct suckling seem like a decent option.
People naturally become lactose intolerant. Your body isn’t stupid. It gets what milk is for. When you’re a baby, milk is like 5 Hour Energy and Powerade and probably Axe Body Spray rolled into one: a quality product. Then your body is like, welp, all grown up now, time for beer, and your stomach starts doing that little dance it does when you drink milk and are lactose intolerant. Most of the population becomes lactose intolerant at some point, which is your body’s way of saying, hey, idiot, stop drinking milk. If coffee gave you a stomach ache and diarrhea every time you drank it, would you drink it? I mean decaf coffee, of course; you’d obviously still drink regular coffee.
Those “Got milk?” ads are super played-out. And how gross were they? What the hell was wrong with America in the ’80s and ’90s that we’d see random silver-medal-winning Olympians in full-page ads in George and think, yeah, that guy’s cream-coated lip sure is making me thirsty? How many times did you head down to the local diner, slap your magazine on the counter, point at Bo Jackson’s photo and say, gimme one of those! Zero. No one ever did this.

Rest assured, the milk industry has all sorts of new ideas for how to get you to drink more milk. Well, I have an idea, too, milk industry: Take all of your containers of milk and empty out the milk and put beer in them and sell beer.

You are welcome.

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

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America wants to unleash its gas on other countries

America wants to unleash its gas on other countries

Gregory Perry

Guys, thanks to fracking, we have so much natural gas. So much. Like, if you filled up party balloons with the natural gas America produces in a year, you’d have enough to fill your whole house, I assume.* Also: Do not smoke near that.

The glut of natural gas on the market has been a boon, of sorts, if only because it’s driving down carbon dioxide emissions. But those low, low prices, the result of domestic oversupply, are bad news for producers. So they’d like to ship the stuff overseas.

Last week, the government released a report compiled by NERA Economic Consulting on the feasibility of natural gas exports. As the Council on Foreign Relations summarizes:

The study reaffirms that allowing exports would be good for U.S. economic growth. No matter how NERA sets up its model — different assumptions about U.S. gas resources, domestic demand, or international markets — the U.S. economy as a whole benefits from allowing exports. This shouldn’t be a surprise: the fact that economies gain from allowing trade is pretty robust.

The negative headline from the report is that allowing exports would lower average real wage income. This happens despite little or no impact on nominal wages; it is due to higher natural gas prices, which imply slightly lower average real wage income.

(That second point, clarified: More exports means higher natural gas prices in the U.S. due to less domestic supply, which means we pay more for natural gas, which means less real wage income.)

But!

Despite these often-massive export volumes, NERA projects consistently limited natural gas price impacts. In only one scenario — higher than expected U.S. shale resources and massive international demand leading to very large exports — do prices rise by more than a dollar for a thousand cubic feet in the next decade. (They rise by $1.11 in that case.) Most results see an increase closer to fifty cents.

The Washington Post is excited about the prospect of exports, because free trade and so on. (Post Company employee Matt Yglesias is more skeptical.) The head of Shell’s U.S. arm thinks the president will OK an export plan that would ship 21 billion cubic feed of liquefied natural gas overseas every day — though this would require a big expansion of export facilities.

If you use ships. There is, however, an easier way.

* If you’re curious, in September, the country produced 2.4 million million cubic feet of natural gas. A party balloon holds about .5 cubic feet. So that’s 4.8 trillion party balloons. Per month. Probably too big for your house.

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

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Renewable energy consumption is expected to keep rising in the U.S. — sort of

Renewable energy consumption is expected to keep rising in the U.S. — sort of

The U.S. Energy Information Administration has what seems, at first blush, like bad news. Renewable energy consumption in the U.S. is expected to drop 2.6 percent this year. Here’s a graph of the dip. (Note: Both the 2012 and 2013 values are estimates.)

Click to embiggen.

But buried in the data is the explanation: The drop is only due to hydropower “[beginning] to return to its long-term average.” Take out hydropower, and you have a 4.2 percent increase.

Click to embiggen.

But there’s another caveat. The estimates are based on two assumptions.

The first is that the wind production tax credit (PTC) is renewed. This is a pretty big “if.” The tax credit, you may remember, is a bolster that allows the wind industry to compete in the rigged production game with fossil fuels. Fossil fuel companies are eager to see the PTC expire as it’s slated to at the end of the month, with one Koch-allied group pushing hard on the issue. If the PTC isn’t renewed, it’s safe to assume that the projections above will prove to be far too optimistic.

That said, there is some good wind news today. The New York Times notes that the government is holding another offshore auction next year — but this time, for wind energy. How much is generated by that auction — in terms of money and electricity — depends on what happens on Capitol Hill by the 31st.

The other caveat in those EIA projections is that solar continues to grow at about 30 percent a year. The solar industry (whose own PTC is expiring at the end of 2013) isn’t sitting on its hands. Over the weekend, the Times reported on how the industry is taking a page from Tupperware in selling its panels.

Environmentalists, government officials and sales representatives have been trying to get Americans to go solar for decades, with limited success. Despite the long push, solar power still represents less than 1 percent of electricity generated in the United States. Home solar panel setups, which typically run $25,000 or more, are considered by many consumers to be the province of the rich or idealistic.

So now solar companies are adhering to a path blazed by Tupperware decades ago, figuring that the best sales people are often enthusiastic customers willing to share their experiences with friends and neighbors — and perhaps earn a referral fee on any sales that result.

It’s a smart strategy: As we’ve noted before, peer pressure shows a demonstrable effect on solar panel adoption.

And, finally, some context. Here’s the breakdown of energy consumption between renewables, nuclear, and fossil fuels.

A 4 percent increase in renewable consumption is better than a decrease. But it will take a whole lot of solar-ware parties before we’re actually making a real dent in our greenhouse gas emissions.

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

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