Category: Energy

A report on the energy and emissions benefits of converting manure to biogas.

http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/3/3/034002/erl8_3_034002.html

Yesterday the Department of Interior issued draft rules on oil shale exploration in Colorado, Utah and, Wyoming. As part of the rules, the royalty rates that companies pay for drilling on public lands would be reduced from 12 to 18 percent to 5 percent.

For an article:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/oil-shale-production-to-be-subsidized-under-bush-administration-plan.php

The recent energy price increases have caused a huge discussion of whether to expand exploration and recovery of domestic oil resources. Part of the discussion has been about the safety of the exploration and pipeline infrastructure…and folks have used the Katrina and Rita hurricanes as an argument on both sides of the issue.

Here’s a link to the report prepared for the Minerals Management Service assessing the damage:

http://www.mms.gov/tarprojects/581/44814183_MMS_Katrina_Rita_PL_Final%20Report%20Rev1.pdf

The federal agency appointed in 2005 by Congress to oversee the development of offshore wind, tidal, and wave energy projects has released its proposed regulation. It is 450 pages and reported to be far from easy to understand.

Tom Jensen, a lawyer who helps wave and tidal start-up companies navigate the federal permitting process, says “On the surface at least. a set of new rules as thick as a phonebook sends a strong signal that the infant renewable energy industry should expect a very heavy regulatory hand from the Interior Department.”

Wendy Williams, a Cape Cod-based science writer, wrote an editorial this morning in the Providence Journal regarding the Minerals Management Service’s proposed regulations. She’s followed the Cape Wind Project and written a book about it.

There has been for some years a proposal to put a wind farm off of Cape Cod’s south shore. It has been very controversial and the politics has been nasty. One of the primary opposing groups, Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, is a fossil fuel funded group. Ms. Williams and others see the hand of the Alliance’s cadre of attorneys in the proposed regulations.

Ms Williams states “The MMS proposed regulations call for a series of auctions for a particular site that proceed according to the sites use. A site will be opened for a bid for exploration of its feasibility, and, later another bid will occur for the final construction of a project. This means that a company could spend a lot of money finding out whether a particular site is appropriate for wind, wave, or tidal development, but,after gathering the data, not have enough money to succeed in the final bid to allow for project development. Some large company like Exxon could step in and take the site over.”

There’s nothing new in America’s industrial history about the pioneers get overwhelmed by monied interests. At least we could develop sensible governance of these emerging industries without ‘cooking the rules’ …which Ms. Williams implies. I’m still wondering if it is not easier to be fair in a principles-based governance vs a rules-based governance?

From an article by Lindsay Renick Mayer in Capital Eye:

The most recent personal financial disclosures show that members of Congress had at least 45 times more money invested in the oil and gas industry (at least $20.6 million) than in public companies that provide green products and services (at least $452,100). This includes companies that develop renewable energy products, manufacture energy efficiency products, recycle material or create wind or solar products.

The amount of money members have plunked down on these green stocks has actually decreased 23 percent since 2004, while investments in oil and gas have increased by 30 percent.

It get’s more interesting:

Democrats, who have tried repeatedly in the last year to pass legislation that would tax oil companies and use the money for wind and solar energy subsidies, have even less money invested in green stocks than Republicans in 2006, at least $59,300 compared with at least $392,600.

In 2006, lawmakers had at least $825,400 invested in the companies that stand to profit the most from corn-based ethanol production, including agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. Democrats had 75 percent of those investments (though Sen. John Kerry and his wife,  Teresa, own 60 percent alone).

From a Washington Post Article:

For the entire article:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/energywire/2008/07/oils_weird_week.html

Gas Drillers in Race for Hearts and Land
By PETER APPLEBOME
Published: June 29, 2008
WALTON, N.Y.

You could have taken a nostalgic drive through the past on Thursday night, through the dreamy green landscape at the outer edges of the Catskills, past sleepy fishing towns like Roscoe and Downsville, to the lovingly restored Walton Theater, built in 1914 for vaudeville acts, honored guests like Theodore Roosevelt and community events of all shapes and sizes.

And, if you got there, you would have received a distinctly less dreamy glimpse of the future. You would have heard an overheated mix of fear and greed, caution and paranoia, of million-dollar gas leases that could enrich struggling farmers, of polluted wells, pastures turned to industrial sites and ozone pollution at urban levels. You would have heard anguished landowners from Wyoming and Colorado, facing issues now improbably appropriate to the Catskills, present their cautionary view of an environment dominated by huge energy companies where some will get rich while their neighbors might just see a hundredfold increase in truck traffic without much else to show for it.

Such gatherings are being repeated throughout a swath of upstate New York, from Walton to Liberty to New Berlin, as thousands of landowners, many of whom have already signed leases with landmen fanning out across the state, contemplate a new era of gas production now hovering almost inevitably over New Yorks horizon.

Its a development born of new technology, rising energy prices and insatiable demand that is turning the Marcellus Shale formation, which reaches from Ohio to Virginia to New York, into a potential trillion-dollar resource in the gut of the nations most populous and energy-hungry region.

Development of the Marcellus has been most advanced in Pennsylvania, but since the beginning of the year, development pressures, land prices and activity by oil and gas firms have increased exponentially across a broad expanse of New York from Lake Erie to the Catskills. Its kind of a frenzy here, said David Hutchison, a retired geology professor who attended the meeting.

Experts say the development will have enormous, barely glimpsed consequences for the upstate economy, the states finances and the way of life in quiet rural communities like this one, many of them now heavily influenced by the second-home market. There will be questions about the environmental consequences, especially the potential effect on the upstate reservoirs and watershed that provide New York Citys drinking water.

This is happening, its unstoppable, said Chris Denton, a lawyer in Elmira who is assembling big blocks of landowners to negotiate with gas companies. And the question is whether we do it in a way that makes sense or a way thats irrational and irresponsible.

The Marcellus Shale has been known to be a potential energy source for a century. But advances in horizontal drilling and soaring energy prices have made it attractive to energy firms. A few years back, farmers could lease their mineral rights for a dollar an acre. This year alone prices in many places have soared to $2,500 an acre from about $200.

So, for example, when Henry Constable, 77, a retired dairy farmer who owns 140 acres outside Walton, left the theater on Thursday night, his head was swimming with alternating visions of financial gain and environmental hazard. He did not quite know what he thought. Would he lease his land? Its definitely a two-sided deal, he said. I cant give you an honest answer. Ill probably sign something, but I dont know.

A stranger listening in offered him a business card and started giving him advice.

Let me give you fair warning, he began. Im a financial adviser and a landowner, so Im on both sides of this play. First thing, you need to have a good lawyer, to make sure you have a good lease that gives the right to sue or defend yourself if youre sued in local court. What these companies want to do is sue you in Minnesota or someplace. And you dont want to sign a walk-down-the-street lease. You need to be working with an oil and gas attorney.

The man, who declined to identify himself to a reporter, started adding up how much Mr. Constables land could be worth at $2,500 an acre and a minimum of 12.5 percent royalties. That could be $1.2 million per year for every 40 acres, he said. Do the math. Assuming youre just signing a lease and not some other monkey deal, youre suddenly J.R. Ewing. You have an estate tax problem. You have an income tax problem. Youve got to talk to somebody soon.

Most of the meetings have focused on just such issues of what landowners can do to maximize their return and control. This one, sponsored by the Catskill Mountainkeeper environmental group, featured presentations by landowners and environmental and citizens advocates like Jill Morrison of the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Sheridan, Wyo., and Peggy Utesch of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance in New Castle, Colo.

They said those royalty checks came at a huge cost: polluted air and water, industrial noise, well blowouts, toxic chemicals leaching into groundwater and wells and a fracturing of communities. Of paramount importance, many said, would be protecting the New York City watershed, an issue that could touch off regulatory and environmental disputes.

The first wells in New York, which have the required state permits, are already being drilled, and the process could play out over 40 years.

There are problems and challenges that people havent even conceived of, Ms. Morrison said. And I can tell you that those of us who have gone through it know it has consumed the last 10 or 15 years of peoples lives. I cant express enough the profound impacts this will have on peoples lives, on land, water, air, wildlife. You need to do an enormous amount of planning to get out in front of it, because this is the richest industry in the world, and theyre going to come whether you want them or not.
E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com

It takes about 7,000 tons of bunker-fuel to fill the tanks of a 5,000-container cargo ship for a trip from Shanghai to Los Angeles. Over the last year and half, the cost of that fuel has jumped 87% to $552 a ton, according to the World Shipping Council, boosting the cost of a fill-up to more than $3.8 million.

Below is a link to a recent LA Times article – “Envisioning a world of $200-a-barrel oil”

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-oil28-2008jun28,0,2080126,full.story