Death Valley hits 130 degrees, thought to be highest temperature on Earth in over a century
Laura Newberry August 17, 2020
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park. The temperature in Death Valley hit 130 degrees Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. It could also be among the top-three highest temperatures to have ever been measured there. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
Temperatures in Death Valley skyrocketed to a blistering 130 degrees on Sunday — possibly the highest mercury reading on Earth since 1913.
If the National Weather Service’s recording is correct, it would also be among the top-three highest temperatures to have ever been measured in Death Valley, as well as the highest temperature ever seen there during the month of August.
The temperature in Death Valley hit 130 degrees at 3:41 p.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service said in a tweet.
Death Valley holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded on the planet: 134 degrees in 1913, according to Guinness World Records. That reading has been disputed, however.
The reading comes amid an epic heat wave that continues to grip most of the southwestern U.S.
Multiple daily heat records were set Saturday. The National Weather Service reported a high of 112 in Woodland Hills, breaking the record of 108 set in 1977, and a high of 92 at UCLA, breaking the record of 90 set in 2003. Downtown Los Angeles hit 98 degrees, tying a record set in 1994.
Oil Companies Wonder If It’s Worth Looking for Oil Anymore
Laura Hurst August 16, 2020
(Bloomberg) — A few dots near the bottom corner of the world map in the southern Atlantic, the Falkland Islands were once at the forefront of a new era for the oil industry as companies scoured the planet for resources.
Yet a decade after the discovery of as much as 1.7 billion barrels of crude in surrounding waters, the British overseas territory known for sheep rearing and tension with Argentina looks as remote as ever. Rather than the next frontier, the project to extract energy risks being added to a list of what companies call “stranded assets” that could cost them huge sums to mothball.
As the coronavirus ravages economies and cripples demand, European oil majors have made some uncomfortable admissions in recent months: oil and gas worth billions of dollars might never be pumped out of the ground.
With the crisis also hastening a global shift to cleaner energy, fossil fuels will likely be cheaper than expected in the coming decades, while emitting the carbon they contain will get more expensive. These two simple assumptions mean that tapping some fields no longer makes economic sense. BP Plc said on Aug. 4 that it would no longer do any exploration in new countries.
The oil industry was already grappling with the energy transition, copious supply and signs of peak demand as Covid-19 began to spread. The pandemic will likely bring forward that peak and discourage exploration, according to Rystad Energy AS. The consultant expects about 10% of the world’s recoverable oil resources—some 125 billion barrels—to become obsolete.
“There will be stranded assets,” said Muqsit Ashraf, senior managing director responsible for the global energy industry at Accenture Plc. “Companies are going to have to accept the fact.”
The Sea Lion project in the Falklands promised to be a world-class resource when Rockhopper Exploration Plc found the field in 2010. Hundreds of millions of dollars later and after enduring a flare up between Argentina and Britain over the legality of the project, the first phase still hasn’t brought any oil to market.
Premier Oil Plc, Rockhopper’s partner, suspended work on Sea Lion earlier this year, and on July 15 wrote off $200 million of investment because later phases looked unlikely to happen.
Larger companies have also begun voicing that realization for other projects. BP said in June it would evaluate its portfolio of discoveries and leave some undeveloped. Chief of Staff Dominic Emery already hinted last year at what kind of resources might never “ see the light of day.” Complicated projects could be shelved in favor of fields that are quicker to develop, such as U.S. shale, he said.
The pressure to curb emissions may also prompt companies to leave the most carbon-intensive reserves in the ground, as France’s Total SE acknowledged last month when it took an $8 billion writedown on carbon-heavy assets.
Quicktake‘Stranded Assets’ Risk Rising With Climate Action and $40 Oil
The list of projects most at risk includes deepwater discoveries off Brazil, Angola and in the Gulf of Mexico, said Parul Chopra, vice president for upstream research at Rystad. Canadian oil-sands projects such as the expansion of the Sunrise development in Alberta are also in doubt, he said.
The Sunrise deposit, a joint venture between BP and Husky Energy Inc., has an abundant supply of bitumen—potentially as much as 3.7 billion barrels. Extraction, though, is complicated. Most oil-sands projects resemble mining operations. The bitumen is dug out of the ground and processed into heavy crude, which must then be diluted with lighter hydrocarbons before it can be refined into fuel.
Sunrise is more complex and more costly. The deposit is too deep to be dug up, so instead it’s injected with steam to get the bitumen flowing into a well, from where it can be pumped to the surface.
Sunrise was meant to be built in three phases, ultimately producing more than 200,000 barrels of bitumen a day over 40 years. The first 60,000-barrel-a-day stage started in 2015, just as crude prices were slumping amid the first U.S. shale boom. Since March this year, output has shrunk to around 10,000 a day, net to Husky, amid plunging prices and restrictions on pipeline capacity.
Neither Husky, which runs the project, nor BP have disclosed a timeframe for the next stages of development. They’ll require crude prices well above current levels, suggesting an expansion isn’t imminent, said Mike Coffin, an analyst at research group Carbon Tracker Initiative. (The think tank has received support from the charitable foundation of Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.)
Beyond their economic viability, carbon-intensive oil sands also sit uncomfortably with BP’s ambition to become a “net-zero” company by 2050. No new oil-sands projects fit in a world compliant with the Paris climate accord, according to Carbon Tracker.
Husky has said its long-term plans include the potential to expand Sunrise, but declined to estimate timing or the oil price required. A BP spokesman said the company is reviewing oil-sands projects.
In the Falklands, there’s still hope the outlook will improve. Rockhopper has said the challenges aren’t insurmountable, despite the remoteness of the islands and the hostility of Argentina, which fought a war with Britain in the 1980’s and still claims sovereignty over the territory.
It pointed to the involvement of other companies—Premier joined the project in 2012 and Navitas Petroleum LP is in talks to take a stake—to suggest there’s little risk Sea Lion will become a stranded asset.
But a final decision on whether to proceed won’t come until next year at the earliest, according to Premier Chief Executive Officer Tony Durrant. Previous deadlines for final investment decisions have come and gone. The company declined to comment on whether Sea Lion was at risk of turning into a “stranded asset.”
Sea Lion only needs oil prices in the low- to mid-$40’s to break even, but probably requires at least $50 a barrel to secure debt, Rockhopper said. Benchmark Brent crude is currently trading around $45, having slumped by a third this year.
Ultimately, with oil in abundance, doubts about the strength of long-term demand and pressure to eliminate the most carbon-intensive production, it’s a calculation that may become increasingly stacked against projects like Sunrise and Sea Lion.
“Many assets are already stranded from an oil-price cycle perspective,” said Christyan Malek, head of EMEA oil and gas research at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “But when you then add the carbon curve, that takes a bigger chunk out.”
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Plastic pollution dumped into oceans will triple by 2040
Isabella O’Malley, The Weather Network
Plastic pollution dumped into oceans will triple by 2040
Despite the growth of biodegradable materials and bans on single use plastics, a recent study finds that there could be 600 million tons of plastic in the oceans by 2040, which is equivalent to the weight of over three million blue whales.
Recycling has become increasingly popular over the years, but the study says that the complex composition of plastic materials limits the ability for technologies to easily sort and reprocess them.
For example, black plastic cannot be recycled in Canada because technologies do not recognize them on the sorting belt and pizza boxes cannot be recycled if they are greasy. Many people are in the habit of checking for the optimistic recycling symbol, but the reality is that many recycling facilities cannot save multi-material plastics and 86 per cent of discarded plastics in Canada end up in landfills.
The researchers say that their ominous projection is plausible due to several factors including the rapid growth in plastic production, the prevalent ‘throw-away’ culture and insufficient capacities of waste management systems at a global level.
Single use plastics are projected to increase by over 40 per cent in the next ten years and the amount of plastic flowing into oceans each year will more than double by 2040. However, the researchers reassure us that 78 per cent of plastic pollution can be solved in just two decades by using current knowledge and technologies.
The researchers projected several global outcomes based on different plastic solutions between 2016 and 2040 and found five possible scenarios: ‘Business as Usual’, ‘Collect and Dispose’, ‘Recycling’, ‘Reduce and Substitute’, and an integrated ‘System Change’ scenario that features all of the possible interventions. The reality that plays out will be determined by the level of effort that governments and corporations invest in solving the plastic crisis.
The ‘Business as Usual’ scenario provides a baseline that shows us what the volume of plastic pollution could look like if nations choose to not implement policies that curb it and if we resist changing our consumption habits. If no action is taken, between 11 to 29 million tons of plastic waste will be generated in the next 20 years, which is equivalent to nearly 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of plastic on each metre of coastline in the world.
Compared to ‘Business as Usual’, the annual combined land and ocean plastic pollution rates were reduced by 57 per cent in 2040 under the ‘Collect and Dispose’ scenario and by 45 per cent under the ‘Recycling’ scenario.
Under the ‘Reduce and Substitute’ scenario, the annual combined land and ocean plastic pollution in 2040 decreased by 59 per cent while annual plastic production decreased by 47 per cent. This scenario focused on pre-consumption solutions that reduced the volume of plastics used and replaced plastics with other materials including paper, coated paper and compostables.
The ‘System Change’ scenario yielded the most promising impacts, with the annual land and ocean plastic pollution decreasing by 78 per cent in 2040. This scenario is defined by the conservation of resources, enthusiasm from corporations to design biodegradable and recyclable materials, minimizing waste generation, reducing greenhouse gases and better managing disposed waste.
While the level of pollution significantly differed in each scenario, the costs only varied by less than 20 per cent. The ‘System Change’ and ‘Recycling’ scenarios were the cheapest, whereas the ‘Collect and Dispose’ scenario was the most expensive.
The ‘System Change’ scenario was 18 per cent cheaper than the ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and our current global strategy because of savings from reduced plastic production, revenues from the sales of recycled materials. Waste management costs were the only expenses in this scenario and the study states that this is generally financed by taxpayers.
Many countries, states and corporations have created initiatives to reduce plastic pollution, including straw bans and fees for plastic bags at grocery stores. But a stark environmental lesson COVID-19 has taught us is that in times of an emergency, the demand and reliance on single use plastics will skyrocket, and recycling systems will be stalled.
Some of the biggest challenges that the study identified include scaling collection to all households in the world and increasing the role of ‘waste pickers’ (the informal collection and recycling sector who bring municipal solid waste to recycling centres in low- and middle-income settings).
The researchers say that the ‘System Change’ scenario could be put into action by consumer, corporate and policy actions that both lower the demand for plastics and increase the rate that plastic waste is reused and recycled.
“Further innovation in resource-efficient and low-emission business models, reuse and refill systems, sustainable substitute materials, waste management technologies and effective government policies are needed,” the study states.
“Substantial commitments to improving the global plastic system are required from businesses, governments and the international community to solve the ecological, social and economic problems of plastic pollution and achieve near-zero input of plastics into the environment.”
CANADIAN COMPANY USES PLASTIC AND FISHING GEAR TO MAKE SYNTHETIC LUMBER:
Drive the plastic highway? How a California company’s innovative repaving process could lead to the ‘holy grail’ of road construction.
Jorge L. Ortiz, USA Today August 9, 2020
Plastic bottles by the side of a road are a common sight, an unseemly reminder of how often consumer products are discarded carelessly.
Now some of those bottles may become part of the road.
A California company has devised a process that integrates recycled plastic into road repaving, an innovation that could revolutionize the industry while yielding environmental benefits.
Sean Weaver, president of TechniSoil Industrial in the northern California city of Redding, says the polymer-infused roads churned out by the company’s pavement process are sturdier, flatter, safer and more durable than those made with regular asphalt.
More appealing to environmentalists, they incorporate 100% of the old asphalt – sparing the air from dozens of trips by trucks hauling away and bringing in building material – and provide a new market for plastic products that could otherwise wind up in a landfill.
“Everybody that’s looked at it said this will be one of the most transformative road-construction technologies ever,’’ Weaver said. “We’re recycling what’s there, and we’re delivering a road that’s better than the original, at no higher cost than it would cost you to rehab that road the traditional way.’’
TechniSoil workers get the newly repaved road ready before the steam roller flattens it.
The process involves four large construction vehicles linked together in what’s called a “recycling train,’’ which scoops up the top 3 inches of asphalt on a lane, grinds them on a mill and mixes them with TechniSoil’s G5 binder, containing from 2%-20% of liquefied plastic. The blended product is deposited back on the road, paved and rolled over.
There’s no heat involved in the operation, which essentially replaces the traditional binder – bitumen, a leftover from refining oil – with a sturdier plastic composite. The other elements of asphalt, such as crushed rock, gravel, sand and filler, remain in place.
Weaver said his company is the only one that recycles the entirety of the asphalt – typically only up to half is reused – which makes the new technique cost-effective.
Caltrans tries TechniSoil for first time; Los Angeles plans real-life test in October
Last week, the California Department of Transportation replaced three lanes of a 1,000-foot highway segment in the Butte County town of Oroville with the TechniSoil approach, the first time Caltrans had paved a road using all recycled materials.
Caltrans told USA TODAY via email that it is considering other similar pilot projects.
“Plastic recycling has a potential to not only repurpose a material with high availability, but also reduce our dependence on oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating more durable and resilient roadways,’’ the agency said.
The city of Los Angeles, which paved about 2,300 miles of roads last year – that’s the flight distance from L.A. to Washington, D.C. – is also eager to implement the new technology.
Adel Hagekhalil, executive director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services – better known as StreetsLA – said the city conducted extensive lab tests of the TechniSoil product and came away impressed, calling it a potential “game-changer.’’
The “recycling train” scoops up the old asphalt, grinds it, blends it with a binder and lays it down to form the new pavement.
The city intended to try it under field conditions in March, introducing a newly repaved street in front of the iconic Disney Concert Hall with a ceremony featuring Mayor Eric Garcetti, but those plans were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The real-life test is now scheduled to start in October, on a quarter-mile stretch of downtown L.A. that’s uphill and heavily trafficked by buses, leading the asphalt to degrade quickly. Further review and analysis will follow, but Hagekhalil is optimistic this technique could be the future of asphalt.
“This is ideal because it’s going to be under ambient temperature, using plastic and using recycled asphalt and reducing the waste stream,’’ he said. “I think it’s a win-win in every way. But what got me really excited is the durability. It’s pliable like asphalt but hard and sturdy like concrete, so we’re very excited about it.’’
Will ‘huge demand’ for PET products stunt TechniSoil’s future growth?
For every lane mile of pavement, the TechniSoil system recycles about 150,000 of what’s known as PET bottles – the initials stand for polyethylene terephthalate – a type 1 plastic. Those are the containers used for water, soda and other common household goods.
While ridding the world of all those empty bottles may seem like a great benefit, environmental experts say type 1 and 2 plastics are in high demand, especially by beverage makers that have committed to increasing the recycled content of their bottles.
They can also be used to make fleece jackets and carpets, which provide higher value than blending them into roads, said Ted Siegler, a principal in the Vermont consulting firm DSM Environmental Services.
“All you’re doing is trying to take a relatively high-value recycled material and divert it to a lower use,’’ Siegler said. “There are other plastics that don’t have much value, and if they’re using those in asphalt, that makes total sense. But to take PET and divert it to asphalt doesn’t make a lot of sense.’’
The reason so many plastic bottles wind up in a landfill or the beach is because of lack of education and convenient recycling locations, Siegler said, not because no one wants them.
TechniSoil president Sean Weaver, right, looks over the work with contractor Darren Coughlin.
In fact, Roland Geyer, an assistant professor of environmental science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said TechniSoil may soon run into stiff competition from beverage giants for those bottles.
“There’s going to be a huge demand in the future for end-of-life PET products, so I have a feeling TechniSoil is going to run out of supply very quickly,’’ Geyer said. “From a plastic-waste management perspective, if that technology could work with 3-7 plastics, the environmental allure would be so much more obvious.’’
The market for those plastics shrank considerably last year when China said it would not accept them anymore. Weaver said he believes that decision boosted interest in his company’s innovation, as the U.S. sought ways to dispose of or recycle excess plastic.
As it is, Weaver said TechniSoil is exploring two ways to incorporate those less-desirable plastics into its asphalt binder. He also pointed out the huge possibilities of the new process are likely to encourage states and municipalities to invest in equipment to sort out plastics from regular trash for their waste-management plants.
Weaver and StreetsLA’s Hagekhalil said they have discussed a public-private partnership, and Weaver said he has fielded interested calls from several other states and some foreign countries.
“The recycled plastic part of this is awesome,’’ Weaver said. “But before I even cared about recycled plastic, we were looking at a technology that was going to recycle 100% of the road. The holy grail of the road-construction industry has been to find a way to recycle 100% of the road stronger than the original road. That’s what we did.’’
A grapefruit-scented perfume ingredient that’s toxic to ticks and mosquitoes is the first new insect repellent to be approved in a decade
Andrea Michelson August 13, 2020
A European dog tick. imv/Getty Images
The EPA has approved a new ingredient, nootkatone, for use in insecticides and insect repellents.
Nootkatone is effective at repelling and killing mosquitoes, ticks, and other biting pests.
The chemical is nontoxic to humans and has been used in perfume and food for its grapefruit aroma.
The introduction of a new insect repellent ingredient could help slow resistance to insecticides.
The Environmental Protection Agency approved a fragrant and relatively safe chemical as a defense against ticks and mosquitoes on Monday.
The chemical, nootkatone, smells and tastes like grapefruit and is naturally found in the rind of the fruit, as well as in Alaskan yellow cedar trees.
Nootkatone protects from bug bites at similar rates as insect repellents currently on the market and has a staying power of up to several hours, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found. It’s the first new chemical to be approved for this purpose since 2009.
The newfound insect repellent shows promise as a protector against ticks in particular, insect toxicology expert Joal Coats told Insider. Compared to synthetic chemicals like DEET, nootkatone is equally effective at repelling mosquitos but much better at warding off ticks.
Nootkatone has superior staying power and efficacy compared to other natural repellents
While nootkatone is poisonous to insects, the chemical is nontoxic to humans and other mammals, so much so that it’s commonly used in perfumes, foods, and drinks.
Other essential oils derived from plants such as peppermint and lemongrass have been found to have some insect repellent properties but poor staying power. Those oils wear off after an hour or two, but Coats estimated that nootkatone could last up to three times longer.
Nootkatone is also more effective at killing ticks than other natural products, public health entomologist Thomas Mather told Insider. In an evaluation of minimal risk natural insecticides, he found nootkatone was 83 percent effective — comparable to the synthetic standard — while most other natural products failed.
As biting insects develop resistance to products on the market, nootkatone could offer an alternative
The introduction of a new insect repellent comes at a time when pests are developing resistance to commonly used chemicals and insect-borne diseases are on the rise.
A CDC report found in 2018 that diseases caused by ticks, mosquitoes, and fleas — such as Lyme disease, West Nile, dengue, and Zika — have tripled in the United States in the past 15 years.
Adding some variety to the arsenal of insect killers and repellents will slow the development of resistance and help the fight against insect-borne diseases.
The discovery of nootkatone takes advantage of naturally-occuring compounds that plants use to protect themselves, Coats added.
“Terpenes, or naturally compounds occurring in plants, have lots of importance from a chemical ecology perspective,” Coats said. “They’re in plants as some sort of defensive strategy to prevent insects from attacking those plants, so it’s great that we’re starting to learn how to use those more and more for our benefit.”
CLEARING THE PR POLLUTION THAT CLOUDS CLIMATE SCIENCE
The Bakken Boom Goes Bust With No Money to Clean up the Mess
By Justin Mikulka August 8, 2020
More than a decade ago, fracking took off in the Bakken shale of North Dakota and Montana, but the oil rush that followed has resulted in major environmental damage, risky oil transportation without regulation, pipeline permitting issues, and failure to produce profits.
Now, after all of that, the Bakken oil field appears moving toward terminal decline, with the public poised to cover the bill to clean up the mess caused by its ill-fated boom.
In 2008, the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) estimated that the Bakken region held between 3 and 4.3 billion barrels of “undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, ” starting a modern-day oil rush.
This oil was technically recoverable due to the recent success with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and gas-rich shale, which allowed hydrocarbons trapped in the rock to be pumped out of reservoirs previously unreachable by conventional oil drilling technology.
The industry celebrated the discovery of oil in the middle of North America but realized it also posed a problem. A major oil boom requires infrastructure — such as housing for workers, facilities to process the oil and natural gas, and pipelines to carry the products to market — and the Bakken simply didn’t have such infrastructure. North Dakota is a long way from most U.S. refineries and deepwater ports. Its shale definitely held oil and gas, but the area was not prepared to deal with these hydrocarbons once they came out of the ground.
Most of the supporting infrastructure was never built — or was built haphazardly — resulting in risks to the public that include industry spills, air and water pollution, and dangerous trains carrying volatile oil out of the Bakken and through their communities. With industry insiders recently commenting that the Bakken region is likely past peak oil production, that infrastructure probably never will be built.
Meanwhile, the petro-friendly government of North Dakota has failed to regulate the industry when money was plentiful during the boom, leaving the state with a financial and environmental mess and no way to fund its cleanup during the bust.
Haste Makes Waste: Booms Move Faster Than Regulations
After the USGS announced the discovery of oil in the Bakken, the oil and gas industry moved fast, with both the industry and state and federal regulators ignoring whether what amounted to essentially new methods of extracting and transporting large amounts of oil called for new rules and protections.
The Bakken’s big increase in oil production quickly exceeded its existing pipeline capacity, leading producers to turn to trucks to move their oil out of the fields. But as the Globe and Mail reported in 2013, this stop-gap solution wasn’t working well: “The trucking frenzy was chewing up roads, driving accident rates to record highs and infuriating local residents.”
The industry could have restricted production until new pipelines and processing equipment were built but instead moved to rail as the next transportation option. High oil prices motivated drillers to get the oil out of the ground and to customers as fast as possible. Moving oil by rail was essentially unregulated and would not require the permits, large investment, or lead times required for pipelines, leading to the Bakken oil-by-rail boom.
Moving large amounts of this light volatile oil on trains had never been done before — but there was no new regulatory oversight of the process. Without proper oversight, the industry loaded the Bakken’s volatile oil into rail tank cars originally designed to carry products like corn oil. That’s despite the National Transportation Safety Board warning that these tank cars were not safe to move flammable liquids like Bakken crude oil.
The industry waved away these warnings. July 6, 2013 marked the first major derailment of a Bakken oil train, resulting in a massive explosion, 47 deaths, and the destruction of much of downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. Bakken “bomb trains” (as train operators called them) continued to derail, creating large oil spills and often catching fire and burning for days. Regulators have still failed to address the known risks for oil trains in the U.S. and Canada.
Fracking for oil also resulted in large volumes of natural gas coming out of the same wells as the oil, further contributing to the financial troubles of shale producers. However, with no infrastructure in place to process or carry away that gas, the industry chose to either leave it mixed in with the oil loaded onto trains (making it more volatile and dangerous) or simply burn (flare) or release (vent) the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
More than a decade after the Bakken boom started, North Dakota was flaring 23 percent of the gas produced via fracking — making a mockery of the state’s flaring regulations. In July, The New York Times detailed the environmental devastation caused by flaring in the oil fields of Iraq, where they flare about half of the gas as opposed to the quarter of the gas that North Dakota has flared.
Also in July, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of Southern California published research that found pregnant women exposed to high levels of flaring at oil and gas production sites in Texas have 50 percent higher odds of premature birth when compared to mothers with no exposure to flaring.
Another major blindspot for the industry and regulators has been the radioactive waste produced during fracking. When the industry did finally acknowledge this issue in North Dakota, its first move was to try to relax regulations to make it easier to dump radioactive waste in landfills — a practice that is contaminating communities across the country.
In 2016, a study from Duke University found “thousands of oil and gas industry wastewater spills in North Dakota have caused ‘widespread’ contamination from radioactive materials…”
The fracking boom in North Dakota has resulted in widespread environmental damage and is worsening the climate crisis, given its high flaring levels, methane emissions, and, of course, production of oil and gas. As major Bakken producers go bankrupt and continue to lose money while the oil field goes bust, who will pay to clean up the mess?
Like most oil-producing states, North Dakota had the opportunity to require oil and gas producers to put up money in the form of bonding which would be designated to properly clean up and cap oil and gas wells once they were finished producing. Unfortunately, the state didn’t put that precaution in place, and now bankrupt companies are starting to walk away from their wells.
“It’s starting to become out of control, and we want to rein this in,” Bruce Hicks, Assistant Director of the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division, said last year about companies abandoning oil and gas wells.
The state recently decided to use $66 million in federal funds designated for coronavirus relief to begin cleaning up wells the oil industry has abandoned — costs that the industry should be covering, according to the law, but that are now shifted to the public.
The Bakken boom made a lot of money for a select few oil and gas executives and Wall Street financiers. But as the boom fades, taxpayers and nearby residents have to deal with the financial and environmental damage the industry will leave behind.
Bakken’s Best Days Are a Thing of the Past
As DeSmog reporting has revealed, shale producers have not been profitable for the past decade, even though they have drilled and fracked most of the best available shale oil deposits. While the prolific Permian region in Texas and New Mexico still has some of the best “tier one” core acreage for oil production left, that isn’t the case in the Bakken.
In June, oil and gas industry analysts at Wood MacKenzie highlighted this discrepancy in remaining core acreage between the Permian and the Bakken. According to Wood MacKenzie, the top quarter of remaining oil well inventory in the Permian would result in over 8,000 new wells. For the Bakken, however, the analysts put that number at 333 wells.
This difference is why John Hess, CEO of major Bakken producer Hess Corporation, predicted in January that Bakken production would soon peak.
The drop in oil demand due to the pandemic has hit the industry as a whole, but the Bakken was already in decline, with the best producing wells a thing of the past well before the novel coronavirus reached U.S. shores.
In September 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported on the dismal outlook for Hess Corporation’s oil wells, noting last year: “This year’s wells generated an average of about 82,000 barrels of oil in their first five months, 12 percent below wells that began producing in 2018 and 16 percent below 2017 wells.”
Legal Reviews of Pipelines Potentially Causing Shutdowns
Even when the industry did try to construct oilfield infrastructure in the Bakken, its rush to build and manage pipelines hasn’t always worked out well. Legal challenges to two major Bakken pipelines, one old, one new, may shut down both of them soon.
The controversial Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) is facing a potential shutdown after a judge ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers did not properly address oil spill risks and now must complete a full environmental review, which could result in a long-term shutdown of the pipeline while the Corps completes the study. Energy Transfer, DAPL‘s owner, appealed that ruling, and a subsequent court decision has allowed the pipeline to remain in operation while the legal battle over the environmental impact study continues.
At the same time, the Tesoro High Plains pipeline — in operation since 1953 — is facing a shutdown because it failed to renew an agreement with Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation landowners on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, meaning the pipeline’s owner, Marathon, now is trespassing on that land.
These pipelines together ship more than one-third of the oil out of the Bakken, and if they are shut down, Bakken oil producers likely would turn to rail again to move their oil. However, rail is significantly more expensive than pipelines and not economically viable at current low oil prices.
However, at current production levels, existing pipelines (other than the two in question) and current long-term rail contracts can likely handle most of the Bakken’s oil production, especially as the region becomes less attractive to investors.
Energy consulting group ESAI Energy recently released a new report on U.S. pipelines, with analyst Elisabeth Murphy concluding, “An uncertain outcome for Dakota Access will have knock-on effects for the Bakken, such as capital being diverted to other basins that have better access to markets.”
The ESAI analysis also concludes that the Bakken will decline by approximately 270,000 barrels per day on an annual basis in 2020 and by a further 65,000 barrels per day in 2021.
With declining total production and new wells producing less than the past, Bakken producers are facing rising debts without the means to pay them back.
End of the Unconventional Bakken Boom
Oil produced by fracking is called “unconventional oil” due to the new technologies used to extract it from shale. However, it is unconventional in other ways as well. One, it has never been profitable. Another is a change in the boom-and-bust cycle, which has been a part of the oil industry since its inception in the U.S. in the 1850s.
Traditionally the boom-and-bust cycle for conventional oil production was tied to the price of oil. Low prices caused busts. This was true of the shale oil industry in 2014 when oil prices crashed. However, the industry returned to record production after that.
But it’s different this time. Unlike conventional oil fields, shale field production declines much more quickly. While shale producers could retreat to the top-producing acreage during the 2014 bust, most of that acreage is now gone.
The shale industry is faced with trying to come back from a historic downturn in which even the companies that don’t go bankrupt are saddled with crippling debts. That’s because for most of the past decade, shale companies borrowed more money than they made producing fracked oil and gas, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
All of the evidence strongly suggest that the Bakken is an oil field on the decline. Its best acreage has been depleted and the economics of the remaining acreage don’t pan out these days.
Seeking Alpha was purely commenting on the economics of oil production in the Bakken. However, the same could be said about the water, air, and land in the Bakken. Shale companies polluted the environment and are now walking away from the damage — leaving the cleanup bill to the public. It is a tried-and-true approach for industries in resource extraction. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
Hess Corporation CEO John Hess knows more about the economics of the Bakken than most people. In February Reuters reported, “Hess plans to use cash flow from the Bakken to invest in longer-term offshore investments.” A major Bakken producer is apparently no longer viewing the region as a good long-term investment.
From here, the outlook only gets worse for the Bakken.
CLEARING THE PR POLLUTION THAT CLOUDS CLIMATE SCIENCE
Trump’s Golden Era of Energy Is Turning to Lead
By Justin Mikulka July 25, 2020
It was just over a year ago that President Trump announced, “The golden era of American energy is now underway,” saying that his policies focused on exploiting oil, gas, and coal were “unleashing energy dominance.”What a difference a year makes. On July 10, the Financial Times ran an article with a headline that asked, “Is the party finally over for U.S. oil and gas?” And there is no doubt that it has been quite a party for the last decade. At least, for the fracking executives who have enriched themselves while losing hundreds of billions of dollars investors gave them to produce oil and gas. Meanwhile, profits never materialized.
Lately, prospects for the broader fossil fuel industry look more like lead than gold.
For starters, the oil and gas industry in America is facing an era of losses, bankruptcies, canceled projects, and declining demand. It is highly likely that history will show that this point in time was the beginning of the golden era of renewable energy and the decline of the fossil fuel industry.
Fracked Shale Oil and Gas Industry Failing
President Trump’s 2016 campaign was backed heavily by the oil and gas industry, with strong support from fracking CEOs like Continental Resources’ Harold Hamm. The story of record American oil production due to fracking was even being touted by President Obama, who rightfully took credit for the fracking boom that occurred on his watch. That’s despite President Trump recently taking credit for it as well.
But as we have documented over the last two years at DeSmog, the fracked oil industry has been a financial failure for more than the past decade. The industry produced record amounts of oil and gas but lost huge sums of money in the process. And now even industry leaders are admitting the U.S. oil industry has already peaked, a little more than a year after President Trump declared the beginning of the “golden era.”
In extensively detailing the failures of the shale oil and gas industry, The New York Times recently noted, “The industry’s decline may be just beginning.” It cites industry analysts’ predictions that as many as 250 oil and gas companies could file for bankruptcy by the end of 2021.
The U.S. fracking boom gave President Trump and many others the confidence to talk about unleashing America’s energy dominance. Yet today, the industry is a financial disaster, and even its leaders are admitting its best days are behind it.
Declining Demand for ‘Freedom Gas’
Weeks after President Trump’s “golden era” statement, the U.S. Department of Energy put out a now-famous press release touting the future of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports and referring to LNG as “freedom gas” and “molecules of U.S. freedom.”
America is awash in natural gas from the fracking boom. That includes the gas that shale drillers intentionally sought out, as well as the large amounts of “associated gas” that comes from fracked oil wells. Due to this oversupply, at times the price for natural gas in the Permian region of Texas has gone negative.
With so much cheap natural gas in America, the industry has been racing to build out hugely expensive LNG export terminals and the supporting infrastructure needed to export this gas to the world. However, as DeSmog reported in May, the U.S. is just one of many countries flushing the global market with LNG, and the economics here no longer pencil out.
This year, global buyers are canceling orders for U.S. LNG, leading natural gas producers in America to seek out storage for the gas they can’t sell. And now the U.S. natural gas market is facing a storage crisis just like the one that ended up driving U.S. oil prices negative in April. According to The Wall Street Journal, Goldman Sachs recently told its clients that the U.S. could run out of gas storage capacity by October.
A new report from Global Energy Monitor is warning of a “gas bubble.” The industry is certainly facing long-term troubles. The Wall Street Journal recently summed up the U.S. gas problem: “There is simply too much of it.”
New Pipelines Face Increasing Challenges
New pipelines to move oil and gas were part of the rush to take advantage of the expected golden era of energy in America. However, oil and gas industry finances, combined with ongoing legal challenges from activists, mean the pipeline industry has also taken some serious blows recently.
On July 5, Duke Energy and Dominion Energy — the two firms behind the proposed $8 billion Atlantic Coast pipeline that would have brought fracked gas from West Virginia to North Carolina and Virginia — announced they were cancelling the project. The companies cited ongoing legal challenges from activists who have opposed the pipeline for the past six years as the reason for the decision.
However, Dominion Energy has since sold its pipeline business to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and is planning major investments in renewable energy. These moves indicate that the cancellation might have also been a financial decision and not one driven solely by opposition from activists.
In early July, a federal judge also ordered the shutdown of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) until the U.S. Army of Corps of Engineers conducts a comprehensive environmental review for the pipeline’s impacts. But the U.S. Appeals Court since ruled on July 14 that the pipeline can operate until the legal issues are resolved. DAPL is owned by Energy Transfer, whose CEO, Kelcey Warren, recently held a fundraiser for President Trump.
The Keystone XL pipeline also lost another legal battle that will further delay its potential completion, in a situation that has broader implications for the pipeline industry. In May, the state of New York rejected the proposed Williams pipeline, which would have brought fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New York.
This certainly doesn’t look like a golden era for new oil and gas pipelines in the U.S., despite multiple efforts by President Trump to ease their construction.
U.S. Coal Industry Declining Rapidly
In 2018 President Trump declared that “the coal industry is back.” In reality, the U.S. coal industry is trapped in a death spiral. Coal is in even worse shape than the oil and gas industries, leading to headlines such as, “Are We Witnessing the Death of Coal?”
Year-to-date U.S. coal production is down almost 27 percent compared to last year. Furthermore, government projections show that, for the first time, renewables are on track to power more power of the U.S. than coal in 2020. With such a steep decline, the U.S. coal industry has experienced a wave of bankruptcies under Trump.
Perhaps the best indication of how poorly the U.S. coal industry is doing comes from utility companies which are choosing to close coal power plants, sometimes years ahead of schedule — and replace them with cheaper renewable energy sources.
Even outside of considering the climate impacts, the economics of using coal for electricity in the U.S. do not make sense going forward.
The End of an Era
Despite President Trump’s policies and ongoing rhetoric, the U.S. fossil fuel industries are in decline and serious financial trouble. At the same time, the costs for wind and solar power and energy storage have fallen dramatically, making them competitive with fossil fuels for power generation.
Perhaps the strongest indicator of the troubles facing the fossil fuel industries is the fact that this scenario has unfolded under perhaps the most fossil fuel-friendly president in history. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is run by a former coal lobbyist; yet the coal industry is still failing. This administration continues to repeal environmental, health, and safety regulations to help the oil and gas industry — although the courts are blocking some of those efforts. The oil and gas industry continues to spend generously on advertising campaigns selling the false idea that natural gas is “clean energy” and a climate solution.
The fossil fuel industries still retain significant power in U.S. politics, both nationally and in many energy-producing states, but even that power can no longer hide the painful economics facing these industries — no matter what President Trump says.
Editorial: Trump’s continued disregard for the environment and climate change poses a mortal threat
The Times Editorial Board
President Trump’s persistent efforts to undermine environmental protections places us all at grave risk. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
It’s fitting that President Trump invoked an interstate highway expansion in Atlanta last week to announce final rules that, if they survive the inevitable legal challenges, will undermine one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act. American voters face a fork in their own road this November — stay on the Trump expressway to environmental degradation and catastrophic climate change, or shift to the road, bumpy as it may be, to a cleaner environment and more sustainable future of wind, solar and other energy sources that do not involve burning fossil fuels.
The COVID-19 pandemic understandably has seized the nation’s attention, but that hasn’t lessened the risk we all face from air and water pollution and carbon-fed global warming. Trump has unabashedly sought to dismantle federal regulatory structures to speed up construction projects while forging a national energy plan based on producing and burning fossil fuels.
His embrace of the oil, gas and coal industries defies the global scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases that make the Earth less habitable by warming the atmosphere, feeding stronger and more frequent storms, triggering devastating droughts that propel human migration, and pushing up sea levels so that they encroach on cities and other human settlements. In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week that unusually high tides led to record flooding among one-quarter of Atlantic and Gulf Coast communities where the agency maintains tide gauges. Climate change is no dystopian vision of the future; it is here.
Trump’s efforts to eviscerate regulatory oversight of the environment is rooted in his belief that regulations are for the most part unnecessary hurdles to economic progress. He bewails the amount of time it takes for projects to clear environmental reviews and related court challenges, adding what, in his mind, are unnecessary costs and delays. To be honest, he may have something there. NEPA came into being five decades ago — signed into law by President Nixon — and it’s not out of line to suspect that there are places where the law and the regulations that arose from it could use some reasonable revising. But Trump and his industry-connected advisors are not the ones to trust with such a task.
These new rules are not reasoned updates. By requiring environmental impact analyses to be completed within two years (now they often take twice that), the administration seeks to cut short the consideration of those most affected by major projects — often people of color and low-income households — and disarm the environmental activists fighting to ensure that necessary environmental protections are respected. The rules also would require regulators to no longer weigh the cumulative effects of a proposed project and limit their review to effects “that are reasonably foreseeable” and “have a close causal relationship” to the work being done. So, for example, a proposed project’s emissions could not be added to those of other nearby emitters to determine whether their cumulative impact creates an excessive burden on a specific community.
Separately, the Government Accountability Office reported last week that the administration tweaked the formula for measuring the “social cost of carbon” so that estimates of the potential harm from emissions are seven times lower than they used to be. It’s foolhardy — and dangerous — to look at environmental impacts through such a narrow lens.
Meanwhile, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, after lengthy negotiations with progressive environmentalists who had backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), released a $2-trillion plan for quickly shifting the nation from its reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources.
It’s not the controversial “Green New Deal” that progressives have been pushing, but it’s in the neighborhood. Getting such a measure through Congress even if both chambers were controlled by Democrats would be no easy task, but Biden’s proposal at least recognizes the dire future we all face if the nation — and the world — do not fundamentally alter how we produce and consume energy.
The world cannot afford to backslide on environmental protections and the all-important fight to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Yes, jobs are important, but survival more so. The errors and consequences of the past are crystal clear. The question is, will we heed those lessons?
Editorial: Trump’s continued disregard for the environment and climate change poses a mortal threat
The Times Editorial Board July 19, 2020
President Trump’s persistent efforts to undermine environmental protections places us all at grave risk. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
It’s fitting that President Trump invoked an interstate highway expansion in Atlanta last week to announce final rules that, if they survive the inevitable legal challenges, will undermine one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act. American voters face a fork in their own road this November — stay on the Trump expressway to environmental degradation and catastrophic climate change, or shift to the road, bumpy as it may be, to a cleaner environment and more sustainable future of wind, solar and other energy sources that do not involve burning fossil fuels.
The COVID-19 pandemic understandably has seized the nation’s attention, but that hasn’t lessened the risk we all face from air and water pollution and carbon-fed global warming. Trump has unabashedly sought to dismantle federal regulatory structures to speed up construction projects while forging a national energy plan based on producing and burning fossil fuels.
His embrace of the oil, gas and coal industries defies the global scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases that make the Earth less habitable by warming the atmosphere, feeding stronger and more frequent storms, triggering devastating droughts that propel human migration, and pushing up sea levels so that they encroach on cities and other human settlements. In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week that unusually high tides led to record flooding among one-quarter of Atlantic and Gulf Coast communities where the agency maintains tide gauges. Climate change is no dystopian vision of the future; it is here.
Trump’s efforts to eviscerate regulatory oversight of the environment is rooted in his belief that regulations are for the most part unnecessary hurdles to economic progress. He bewails the amount of time it takes for projects to clear environmental reviews and related court challenges, adding what, in his mind, are unnecessary costs and delays. To be honest, he may have something there. NEPA came into being five decades ago — signed into law by President Nixon — and it’s not out of line to suspect that there are places where the law and the regulations that arose from it could use some reasonable revising. But Trump and his industry-connected advisors are not the ones to trust with such a task.
These new rules are not reasoned updates. By requiring environmental impact analyses to be completed within two years (now they often take twice that), the administration seeks to cut short the consideration of those most affected by major projects — often people of color and low-income households — and disarm the environmental activists fighting to ensure that necessary environmental protections are respected. The rules also would require regulators to no longer weigh the cumulative effects of a proposed project and limit their review to effects “that are reasonably foreseeable” and “have a close causal relationship” to the work being done. So, for example, a proposed project’s emissions could not be added to those of other nearby emitters to determine whether their cumulative impact creates an excessive burden on a specific community.
Separately, the Government Accountability Office reported last week that the administration tweaked the formula for measuring the “social cost of carbon” so that estimates of the potential harm from emissions are seven times lower than they used to be. It’s foolhardy — and dangerous — to look at environmental impacts through such a narrow lens.
Meanwhile, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, after lengthy negotiations with progressive environmentalists who had backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), released a $2-trillion plan for quickly shifting the nation from its reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources.
It’s not the controversial “Green New Deal” that progressives have been pushing, but it’s in the neighborhood. Getting such a measure through Congress even if both chambers were controlled by Democrats would be no easy task, but Biden’s proposal at least recognizes the dire future we all face if the nation — and the world — do not fundamentally alter how we produce and consume energy.
The world cannot afford to backslide on environmental protections and the all-important fight to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Yes, jobs are important, but survival more so. The errors and consequences of the past are crystal clear. The question is, will we heed those lessons?
A 20,000-tonne oil spill is contaminating the Arctic – it could take decades to clean up
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Permafrost near Norilsk, Russia. Romzes333 / shutterstock
After a storage tank in Norilsk, northern Russia, collapsed in late May, 20,000 tonnes of diesel fuel was released into the environment. Strong winds caused the oil to spread more than 12 miles from the source, contaminating nearby rivers, lakes and the surrounding soil.
The spill perhaps didn’t get the international attention it warranted as it happened in the midst of a global pandemic and just a few days after the death of African-American George Floyd, which sparked a wave of Black Lives Matter protests. But the spill was a major disaster with serious implications.
As experts in Arctic ecosystems, we are worried about the long-term impacts of this diesel spill in such pristine environments where cold, harsh conditions mean that life is limited. While bacteria are known to “clean up” oil spills elsewhere in the world, in the Arctic, their low numbers and slow rates of activity could mean diesel products linger for years, if not decades.
A diesel spill differs from other oil spills
Major oil spills such as that of the Exxon Valdez in 1989 or Deepwater Horizon in 2010 typically involve thick, gloopy crude oil that sits on the surface of seawater. For these sorts of spills, clean-up best practice is well known. However, the recent Norilsk spill involved thinner, less gloopy diesel oil in freshwater, making clean-up more difficult.
Diesel – in dark red – spreads along the Ambarnaya River near Norilsk. Source: European Space Agency
Diesel oil contains between 2,000 and 4,000 types of hydrocarbon (the naturally occurring building blocks of fossil fuels), which break down differently in the environment. Typically, 50% or more can evaporate within hours and days, harming the environment and causing respiratory problems for people nearby.
Other, more resistant chemicals can bind with algae and microorganisms in the water and sink, creating a toxic sludge on the bed of the river or lake. This gives the impression that the contamination has been removed and is no longer a threat. However, this sludge can persist for months or years.
How different parts of the ecosystem respond
At the bottom of the food chain in rivers and lakes are microscopic plants and algae that need sunlight to create energy through photosynthesis. When oil first enters the water it sits on the surface and forms a sort of oily sun block, and so these organisms rapidly decrease in number. Zooplankton (tiny animals) that feed on them also eventually die off.
Over time, wind and currents help disperse this oily layer, but some oil will sink to the bottom and, with their predators diminished, algae will return in even greater numbers.
Soils in the Russian Arctic harbour fewer organisms than elsewhere in the world, thanks to cold, harsh conditions, where the ground is often frozen, liquid water is scarce and there are few nutrients available. But nonetheless, these soils are still teeming with life and badly affected by oil spills.
Initially, oil coats soil particles, reducing their ability to absorb water and nutrients, negatively affecting soil organisms as they are unable to access food and water essential for survival. This oily coat can last for years as it is very hard to wash off, so often the soil has to be physically removed.
As of July 6, Nornickel, the mining company that owned the storage tank, says it has removed 185,000 tonnes of contaminated soil (about 14 times the weight of the Brooklyn Bridge). The soil is being stored on site to be “cleaned” by certified contaminant experts by early September.
The “cleaned” soil will then likely be returned to its original site. Also, 13 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of fuel-contaminated water has been pumped from the river to a nearby industrial site where harmful chemicals will be separated and the “clean” water will likely by returned to the river.
This is better than nothing, although toxins will likely remain in both the water and soil. Over months and years, these toxins will build up within the food chain, starting with the microscopic organisms and eventually causing health problems in larger organisms such as fish and birds.
Some of these small, largely invisible organisms in both the soil and freshwater can in theory be part of the solution. Diesel contains carbon (which is essential for all life) and some microorganisms actually thrive on fuel spills, helping to break down contaminants by using the carbon as a food source.
Normally, cold Arctic conditions hinder microbial activity and bio-degradation. The current Arctic heatwave may speed up this process initially, enabling oil-degrading microorganisms to grow, reproduce and consume these contaminants more rapidly than normal. But due to the region’s lack of water and the nitrogen and phosphorous needed for growth, even a heatwave can only help these microorganisms so much.
This will probably happen again
May 2020 temperatures compared to the longer-term average. Norilsk is right in the dark red area.Copernicus Climate Data Source, CC BY – SA Russian authorities have blamed the collapse on the poor state of the fuel tank and have requested Nornickel pay “voluntary compensation” for environmental damage. Nornickel denies negligence and says the fuel tank failed due to rapidly thawing permafrost.
This spring saw Siberia experience temperatures 10°C warmer than average and, with permafrost underlying most of Russia, the region is highly vulnerable to climate warming. Indeed, 45% of oil and gas extraction fields in the Russian Arctic are at risk of infrastructure instability due to thawing permafrost.
Without more stringent regulations to improve existing infrastructure then more spills are likely to occur, especially given how rapidly permafrost is melting in these areas causing unstable ground.
While nature and her oil-degrading microbial communities can help clean up our mess, we should avoid relying on a largely invisible force that we don’t fully understand to fix a much larger human-generated problem. And how can a environment already on the edge of devastation ever fully recover?
