Energy seems to be the issue of the day. FINALLY!!! In my daily
battle against the El Paso Corporation, lots of information comes my way. I'd like to continue sharing it with you all.
Once again, that you to BB, JA, ML, Jill, Steve and others.
Past diaries in this series:
Energy News Roundup #1
Energy News Roundup #2
Energy News Roundup #3
This week:
The WAPO throws more "fuel for the fire" regarding the environmental destruction wrought by our addiction to fossil fuels - the Post continues it's good line of in-depth stories re: impacts from tar sands development --- is this what we want western CO and eastern UT to look like Sen. Hatch?
"The river used to be blue. Now it's brown. Nobody can fish or drink from it. The air is bad. This has all happened so fast," said Elsie Fabian, 63, an elder in a native Indian community along the Athabasca River, a wide, meandering waterway once plied by fur traders. "It's terrible. We're surrounded by the mines."
From her home on the bluff of the river, she can see billowing steam rising from a vast strip mine 10 miles away. There, almost 200 feet below what was once a forest, giant machines cleave the earth into a cratered moonscape. Immense shovels plunge into the ground, wresting out massive chunks. Trucks the size of houses prowl the pit. They deliver the black soil to clanking conveyers and vats that steam the tar from the sand.
Here's an interesting discussion on alternatives to gasoline. Will the alternative transportation fuels movement be economically sustainable? What will happen to the movement if oil prices decline? In my humble opinion, our nation would be better off finding transportation alternatives (buses, trains, bikes, etc.) than gasoline alternatives.
Here are two articles from New Mexico newspapers. The articles focus on roadless area protection for the Valle Vidal Unit of New Mexico's Carson National Forest, although the petition covers 1.7 million acres of other national forests in New Mexico as well. The Albuquerque Journal article can be found here. This could be big for our fight to protect this place. The AP Article in the Santa Fe New Mexican says Congresswoman Heather Wilson is against leasing the Valle Vidal for natural gas industrialization, although Wilson has not taken any apparent, concrete legislative action to protect the Valle Vidal. Tell her about it.
On May 31, the New York Times has a Great Op-Ed about increasing fuel efficiency and the atrocities that G.M. is engaging in by offering consumers incentives for purchasing Hummers, Suburban, etc:
Is there a company more dangerous to America's future than General Motors? Surely, the sooner this company gets taken over by Toyota, the better off our country will be.
Why? Like a crack dealer looking to keep his addicts on a tight leash, G.M. announced its "fuel price protection program" on May 23. If you live in Florida or California and buy certain G.M. vehicles by July 5, the company will guarantee you gasoline at a cap price of $1.99 a gallon for one year -- with no limit on mileage. Guzzle away.
The Billings (Montana) Gazette reprints an article from the Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune on management alternatives for "produced water" from coalbed methane industrialization practices. Note that the industry to date has "captured" only five percent of the estimated coalbed methane gas resource in Wyoming.
Grist magazine reports that the public is not yet sold on the idea of more nuclear power. D'uh.
The first solar-powered residence in Farmington, New Mexico demonstrates cost considerations and metering options. Another article (sorry no link) says that the Public Service Company of New Mexico is reconsidering biomass and solar power options to meet state law on using renewable energy sources. In the article is an interesting cost comparison: The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) of Palo Alto, CA estimates the average cost to generate a kilowatt-hour of power was 4.1 cents for coal plants, 6.7 cents for natural gas, 4.1 cents to 4.7 cents for nuclear, 4.6 cents to 6.4 cents for wind, 6.7 cents for biomass, and 18 cents for solar.
The WAPO points out what many of us here at Dkos have been saying: high oil prices have more to do with geopolitical tension than anything else. At the bottom of the article, OPEC President Edmund Daukoru expresses his fears that alternative competing fuels will divert investment away from the oil industry. Note again the reference to hedge funds playing a role in global oil pricing. (Hedge funds also play a big role in natural gas pricing.)
Here's a goody. Just sit tight for awhile while the drillers do their thing in your back yard, and your property values are guaranteed to soar. I like the qualifiers:
"...price often rebounds at least partially when drilling is complete..."
Note that they don't say much about the decades-long time lag facing property owners re economic recovery - but who cares about people's lives in the long-term economic big picture anyway?
Related, in Montana, the the Prairie Star reports that:
To encourage more responsible oil and gas development, six groups, and several individuals asked the federal government today to improve reclamation standards, financial assurance, and oversight of oil and gas development.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) and four of its member groups, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, and five individuals have submitted a rulemaking petition with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The Oil and Gas Industry Responsibility Petition would require the oil and gas industry to reclaim land damaged by drilling and to provide financial assurance bonds to protect taxpayers and landowners from restoration costs.
"For more than 10 years, WORC, other conservation and community organizations, government auditors, and the BLM itself have called for better reclamation plans and financial assurances to reflect new energy development realities," said Donald Nelson, WORC chair and farmer/rancher from Keene, N.D. "The BLM has not responded. This country needs responsible oil and gas development based on the demands of the 21st century."
The costs of reclamation are huge and the industry dumps the majority of that cost back on the taxpayers. Then, they dont even do a decent job.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the oil and gas industry is killing us. Literally:
Toxic air emissions from oil & natural gas industrialization in the NE Denver, Colorado metropolitan area threaten the area with "nonattainmant" status re staying within federal clean air limits. The table at the end of the article shows numbers that differ significantly with the opinion of Colorado Oil and Gas Association apologist Ken Wonstolen. Twenty years from now, the West will be full of cancer cases from the current oil and gas boom. Just like the uranium miners, the downwinders, etc. And, while the government dolls out millions to people who are dying, most will be saying : 'how could we have known?'
Halliburton spills Acidizing Composition, a compound used in the fracturing process for wells, in a residential area of Farmington, NM, causing more than 220 people to be evacuated.
Mestas said the chemical's trade name is Acidizing Composition, an anhydride acid. He said they use the acid for fracturing gas wells. Halliburton had a 600-gallon tank of the chemical, of which 30 to 60 gallons leaked, he said.
Nobody, it seems, realizes just how bad this is going to be.
Felicity Barrenger at the New York Times (sorry no link) reports on how the debate over wind energy is creating riffs within the environmental community. This is stupid and destructive. I agree with this:
"The broader environmental movement knows we have this urgent need for renewable energy to avert global warming," said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace U.S.A. "But we're still dealing with groups that can't get their heads around global warming yet."
As well as this:
"There's no free lunch," said Paul Hansen, executive director of the Izaak Walton League of America, a venerable sportsmen's group. " 'Not in my backyard' is not environmentalism."
The wind energy industry has been very good at working with conservation groups to get good placement and low impact for wind energy farms. The short-term thinking of some in the environmental community is astounding.
Here's one about Fish and Wildlife Service's failure to act on a DeBeque milkvetch Endangered Species Act listing petition yesterday (they were required to make a preliminary finding on the petition by January 2005 and haven't done anything). Oil and gas drilling is running the entire species towards extinction.
Finally, and a tad bit off topic, the Denver Post reports on changing attitudes about the values and uses of public lands in the western USA. It is a continuing argument for protecting New Mexico's Valle Vidal is its role in supporting a long-term sustainable economy if left to its current uses - as opposed to the short-term, unsustainable boom-and-bust economy promised by natural gas industrialization. The same goes for most of the West.