Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Surprise ending to director’s oil sands visit
James Cameron did not meet expectations with his high-profile visit to Alberta’s oil sands, and that’s probably to the Canadian-born filmmaker’s credit.
An earlier contention by the director of “Titanic” and “Avatar” that development of the massive energy resource was a black eye for Canada had industry supporters in a tizzy.
Surely, his trip to oil sands plants and native communities in the region would be just another example of some celebrity seeking to burnish his green cred without knowing the real story, they said.
On the other side of the emotional debate, some green groups staunchly opposed development expected Cameron to fully side with them. They had trumpeted comparisons between the oil sands and resource extraction portrayed on the fictional planet Pandora in “Avatar.”
In the end, he proved them both wrong.
After his tour this week, he told Reuters he realized the complexities of what is the largest crude deposit outside the Middle East and a major environmental battleground, and that there are no easy answers.
Cameron impressed oil industry, environmental and political officials alike with a firm grasp of the key issues facing Alberta and Canada as the continent thirsts for the oil, and a pragmatic approach to many of them.
The Green Gauge: Chevron slides on oil spill news
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico strikes close to home for Chevron as it faces a $27 billion lawsuit brought on by the indigenous people in the Amazon region of Ecuador for water pollution, and a fresh Chevron oil spill in Utah, a bi-weekly analysis of companies in the news by ASSET4 data providers shows.
Company selections were made by Christopher Greenwald, director of data content at ASSET4, a Thomson Reuters business that provides investment research on the environmental, social and governance performance of major global corporations. These ratings are not recommendations to buy or sell.
Here is a breakdown of the companies that made headlines June 5 to June 18 for winning or losing credibility based on environment-related activity.
The recent news surrounding the creation of a $20 billion escrow fund to pay for claims in the Gulf of Mexico has led to renewed attention in the past weeks to the $27 billion case against Chevron brought by indigenous people in the Amazon region of Ecuador.
The lawsuit which has stretched on for nearly 17 years seeks reparations for environmental- and health-related damages caused by the dumping of over 18 billion gallons of polluted water in Ecuador by Texaco between 1964 and 1990. Last week two protesters were arrested during a House Energy Committee meeting after attempting to give a bottle of contaminated water from the Amazon region to Chevron’s Chairman John Watson.
To find out more about Chevron in Ecuador visit: http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/
Americans are ready for a climate bill
Rona Fried is the CEO of SustainableBusiness.com, a news, networking, and investment site for green business, including a green jobs service and a green investing newsletter. The following opinions expressed are her own.
We are in a dire situation. One that our president recognized in his oval office address on Tuesday night: America has postponed overcoming our oil addiction for decades. The first call to wean ourselves from oil came more than three decades ago by President Carter in the late 1970s. Had we done it then, the job would have been completed in 1985. It is beyond time to end our dependence on oil. And Americans are finally ready to do it.
Recent polls say Americans want the government to prioritize renewable energy. One conducted by Benenson Strategy Group found that 63% of voters support an energy bill that limits pollution and encourages companies to use and develop clean energy.
Why, then, is the energy bill languishing in the Senate? The House approved a bill a year ago, and versions have passed in Senate committees. It’s time for a Senate vote. But like every single bill since Obama has entered office, Republicans have filibustered it, forcing 60 votes for passage instead of a simple majority.
Those 60 votes are nowhere to be found because conservative Democrats and all Republicans are against the bill. How can that be if the majority of Americans are in favor of it?
The climate and energy bill, known as the American Power Act, will boost our economy, create jobs and reduce costs for American families and businesses. Typical criticisms of the bill — it will destroy jobs, destroy our economy and increase taxes — simply are not true.
Boom or bust in oil spill fight
The giant Gulf of Mexico oil spill is breaching some of the apparently threadbare defenses that are being used contain it.
The National Wildlife Federation took a group of journalists on Thursday on a tour of some of the affected south Louisiana wetlands. Scientists on the tour took samples of oil that have washed into wild cane fields that tower more than 10 feet above the water.
The smell of oil hung thickly in the humid air and its presence was clear at the base of the green cane and reeds, which was darkly discolored.
Many of these small islands of wetlands were surrounded by the white protective boom which has been laid out to prevent the oil from seeping in. Clearly, the oil was flowing beneath it and/or washing over it, a point underscored by the dark splotching on the boom itself.
It is a well-established fact that this is not 100 percent effective. The boom in this case, I was told, is absorbent boom, which is designed to repel water and soak up oil.
But with more oil expected to come in from the Gulf, the boom effort seemed almost futile.
What have the elected GOP leaders of the Gulf States, Boo hoo Bobby Jindahl, Haley Barbour, Saxby Chambliss, etc – been doing with all the royalty money they collected from oil & gas companies for the privelege of decades of drilling? By now, they should have a huge slush fund put aside to deal with emergencies. But NO. Instead, the GOP leasdership looks to the Feds to save them. The same thing would be true in Alaska. Ask Lisa Murkowski what type of emergency fund she has developed with all her roaylty money?
What a bunch of lying hypocrites. A death sentence for GOP incumbents is the only answer, and maybe brain transplants for the voters who keep electing these shills.
This oil leak is different
– Willy Bemis is Kingsbury Director of Shoals Marine Laboratory, collaboratively operated by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire, and professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell. Any views expressed here are his own.–
Earth Day 2010 will be remembered for the explosion and fire on the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, from which 11 workers are missing and presumed dead.
One week later, the resulting oil leak now seems certain to become one of the greatest ecological catastrophes in United States history.
From the first reports of the disaster that afternoon, I have been extremely worried about this prospect. In addition to ecological damage, the economy of Gulf Coast communities will be changed. Oil and gas workers, fishermen, tourists, and all manner of coastal businesses are already being affected.
Yesterday, Louisiana opened its shrimping season early so that shrimpers can fish before the slick’s arrival. This oil slick is not like a typical coastal hurricane, where people can begin to assess damage within hours or days after the storm.
This is more like a stationary hurricane that threatens to cause damage for a long time to come.
How about sinking a large oil tanker over the hole and using it to reduce the pressure from the oil leak. Pre-fit the top of the oil tanker to pump escaping oil up to other tankers on top of the water or use the opportunity to seal the leak around the tanker at the bottom.
Goldilocks and the three fuels
– Richard Heinberg is the author of eight books, including “Peak Everything”, “Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis” and “The Party’s Over”. He is also a senior fellow with the Post Carbon Institute. The views expressed are his own. –
Recent shale gas projects, including those involving the massive Marcellus Shale in several northeastern states, have been yielding significant quantities of fuel. Reserves of the stuff are enormous. But drilling costs and per-well decline rates are high, so producers can make a profit only if gas prices are near historic highs.
Where are oil prices headed in 2010? Forecasts for the year are all over the map, from more than $100 a barrel to under $50.
The difference hinges mostly on assumptions about whether the economy will recover or relapse. Yet it may be that price volatility has become an inherent feature of the oil market—and fossil fuel markets in general—for reasons that can perhaps best be explained with the help of a little history and an old children’s story.
Once upon a time (about a dozen years past), oil sold for $12 a barrel and a lot of people thought it would get even cheaper because the market was glutted.
But instead the price rose: many big oilfields were aging and yielding less, and it was getting harder to find new ones—especially in places easy and cheap to drill.
The silent revolution in energy efficiency
– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own —
Current debates about cutting energy consumption and carbon emissions often carry a strong undercurrent of asceticism.
There is an almost missionary zeal to save the planet by reverting to a simpler and more satisfying past when energy consumption was lower (or at least encourage other people to make necessary sacrifices).
But the post-war experience of the United States and other industrialized economies suggests it is possible to combine rising living standards with the same or lower energy use.
Berkeley Physics Professor Richard Muller has described the phenomenon as “comfortable conservation”, the idea that it is possible to curb greenhouse emissions without sacrificing quality of life. Given correct price signals, the advanced economies have made huge advances in using energy more efficiently, with most of the gains coming in the 1970s and 1980s in response to the dramatic rise in real energy prices after the oil shocks.
If China and other emerging markets match these gains in future it would avoid a substantial part of the projected emissions increase.
The key point here is that we can and must change our current way of life, but that we can do so without changing the quality of life. We need to do so ASAP before the developing world makes the mistakes we did with our cities (automobile dependence, urban sprawl, environmental damage). Fortunately, there is an opportunity here to improve quality of life, while reducing environmental footprint if we focus on the right technologies and incentives, and are strong with vested interests that would hold the economy ransom rather than see such change.
Will biofuel from algae look like Big Oil or Big Agriculture?
Hundreds of companies and laboratories are racing to find an economical way to make “green crude” from algae. The biofuel industry is grappling with a series of hurdles, which players readily recognized at a summit this week in San Diego and we cover in this story.
One question asked by one of the sector’s early leaders is will biofuel from algae look like Big Oil or Big Agriculture.
Steve Mayfield, who directs a new center for algae biotechnology at the University of California, San Diego, believes it should be more like agriculture.
“We’re not going to grow it in the lab … We are going to grow it on rice patties,” Mayfield said at the Algae Biomass Summit in San Diego.
Mayfield also helped found Sapphire Energy, a privately held company that has pulled in $100 million from venture capitalists. The company is looking at gene-based techniques to create a strain of algae that can be grown and harvested on a massive scale.
“What we need to do is domesticate algae. We are taking wild type strains and asking them to do what never was asked to do or evolved to do in the wild,” Mayfield said, pointing to how genetic changes have boosted crop yields.
Photo credit: Reuters
i think it is dumb gross and crazy for them to do that
Calling Dr. Strangelove!
Perhaps you’ve heard about the Russian submarines patrolling international waters off the U.S. East Coast (if you haven’t, take a look at a Reuters story about it) in what feels like an echo of the old Cold War. The Pentagon’s not worried about this particular venture, but there are concerns from the U.S. energy industry about another Russian foray — this one in concert with Cuba. In rhetoric that may ring a bell with anyone who saw the 1964 satirical nuclear-fear movie “Dr. Strangelove,” the Washington-based Institute for Energy Research is sounding the alarm about a Russian-Cuban deal to drill for offshore oil near Florida.
“Russia, Communist Cuba Advance Offshore Energy Production Miles Off Florida’s Coast,” is the title on the institute’s news release. Below that is the prescription for action: “Efforts Should Send Strong Message to Interior Dept. to Open OCS in Five-Year Plan.” OCS stands for outer continental shelf, an area that was closed to oil drilling until the Bush administration opened it last year in a largely symbolic move aimed at driving down the sky-high gasoline prices of the Summer of 2008.
Environmentalists hate the idea. So does Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has made opposition to offshore drilling one of his signature issues. But as it turns out, it’s unlikely that anybody — from Russia, Cuba, the United States or anywhere else — is going to get petroleum out of the OCS in the immediate future.
For a start, it takes time to set up a deep-water offshore drilling rig. And any Cuban effort would be further hampered by the need to use equipment with less than 10 percent American technology, to comply with the long standing U.S. embargo against Cuba. As my Reuters colleague Russell Blinch reported in June, there may be scope for possible U.S.-Cuban cooperation here but no Cuban drilling platform is likely to be in the area this year.
Reports of a Russian-Cuban deal to explore for oil in the Gulf of Mexico prompted a quick response from the Institute for Energy Research, self-described as a free-market energy think-tank.
“This agreement between Russia and Cuba should serve as a wake-up call to Congress and this administration, especially (Interior) Secretary (Ken) Salazar, who is slow-walking a new offshore energy blueprint for the nation,” the institute’s president, Thomas Pyle, said in a statement. “If we are to remain competitive in the global market, our government must take its foot off the brake, and expand domestic energy production of all forms, onshore and off.”
What’s your take? Should the United States drill baby drill off Florida’s coast, reasoning that if U.S. companies don’t, Russia and Cuba will? Keep a congressional ban in place? Or wait and see?
…we need to apply all forms of energy that does not require electricity to create it in the first place, ranked from cheap to expensive. The environmental scale has tipped, to what the f ? maybe we can set jellyfish on fire with flints and see what happens.
