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April Flooding Could Affect Cleanup of 2010 Michigan Oil Spill
Heavy rain that pushed the Kalamazoo River over its banks last month is being factored into the next stage in the long-running cleanup of the nation's biggest and most expensive oil pipeline spill—the 2010 accident that dumped more than 1 million gallons of oil into and around the river near Marshall, Mich.
The April flooding created the potential for the marble-sized globs of oil that had settled to the bottom of the river to be picked up by the swift current and swept into parts of the river previously untouched by the spill.
A month before the river crested, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered the pipeline's owner, Enbridge Inc., to remove large pools of oil that remain at the bottom of three areas of the river. The order was triggered by the findings of a yearlong survey of nearly 6,000 locations along the 40 miles of river contaminated when pipeline 6B ruptured in July 2010.
As part of the survey, a team of 14 federal, state and local organizations coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey modeled the river to show how it would behave at various flood levels.
In Age of Electronic Democracy, Keystone Voices Get Wide Audience
WASHINGTON – Stu Luttich of Geneva, Neb. is just one of the thousands of ordinary Americans who sat down in early March and gave the State Department their two cents worth on the Keystone XL pipeline.
Luttich has what he calls "some ground" in Nebraska that he'd like to restore to native grassland, and he works with other Nebraskans trying to do the same thing. So when the State Department opened its 45-day public comment period on the Keystone draft environmental impact statement, he offered his take on the matter.
"The new route does not avoid fragile soils or ecosystems," Luttich wrote. "Breaking aboriginal prairie sod is basically a one-time event, and, will require centuries, if not millennia, to be completely restored to the original unbroken condition. This fact was not even addressed, nor questioned, in any of the Environmental Impact Statements. TransCanada Ltd. simply stated their intentions to restore the land to as it once was; but, they will not, because they can not. The capability and understanding for doing so does not yet exist. When the plow enters the sod, what is turned asunder is what has required multiple thousands of years to create. It is analogous to trying to put the proverbial 'Humpty-Dumpy back together again'; and, we simply lack the technical ingenuity, skills and understandings to accomplish the task within the context of the lifetimes of those living.
"Yes, we can, and, likely will, make a feeble restoration effort," he added, "but, what results will not be the same as once was ... That chapter is over!"
Analysis: Bill to Fast-Track Keystone Pipeline Loses Democratic Support. But Why?
WASHINGTON – Republicans in the House of Representatives pushed through a bill on Wednesday that would force federal approval of the Keystone XL pipeline without further review. The vote was 241 to 175.
The legislation is the latest of several attempts by Congress to force the Obama administration's hand. It is unlikely to be taken up in the Senate and the White House has threatened a veto.
If anything, the bill's backers may have lost ground this time, and ended up with a much more partisan divide. Only 19 Democrats voted for the pipeline on Wednesday, compared to 69 in a vote last year.
What happened? The most persuasive theory is that the Republicans over-reached by waiving several environmental laws and choking off potential court challenges to the pipeline project.
To Defeat Keystone, Environmental Movement Goes From Beltway to Grassroots
As decision day nears on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, the environmental movement looks different than it did in 2009—the last time a major climate policy fight took center stage in Washington.
Then, the nation's largest green groups were the main engine behind a movement to pass federal climate change legislation. They spent vast quantities of financial and political capital lobbying congressional negotiators and corporations, before the bill failed in 2010.
This time, the main force of opposition is a messy amalgam of disparate grassroots efforts stretching from Maine to Utah that has found common cause in stopping the Canada-to-Texas pipeline and other tar sands projects. Instead of relying mainly on inside-the-Beltway tactics, these activists are taking to the streets in protest, engaging in civil disobedience and public education, in the hope of applying enough public pressure to move President Obama. Mainstream green groups are still involved, but much of the momentum is coming from community campaigns—with 350.org, a grassroots climate group founded by Bill McKibben, playing a key role.
With U.S. Awash in Oil, Nat'l Interest Argument for Keystone Weakens
U.S. oil production is suddenly growing so fast that some analysts are questioning how much the country really needs the Canadian tar sands oil that would move through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
This month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said it expects domestic crude oil production to surge 20 percent by the end of 2014 from its level at the start of this year. That means an additional 1.4 million barrels of U.S.-produced oil will be available each day—about twice as much as the Keystone would bring in from Canada.
Although the United States will still need foreign oil for years to come, declining demand and increasing supply are cutting into imports surprisingly fast. The Energy Information Administration, which is the Energy Department's data reporting and forecasting arm, expects the nation to import just 30 percent of its oil needs next year, the lowest since the mid-1980s. Under one particularly optimistic EIA scenario, the U.S. could even achieve the grail of zero net imports in the 2030s.
Exxon: No Plans Yet To Reopen Ruptured Pipeline, and No Answers Why
Almost two months after a ruptured pipeline sent at least 210,000 gallons of oil flowing through a neighborhood in Mayflower, Ark., the line's owner—oil giant ExxonMobil—remains largely silent on the future of its failed pipeline.
Most of the visible oil has been removed from the neighborhood and the ruptured section of pipe has been replaced and reburied. Yet Exxon hasn't asked the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) for permission to restart the 850-mile Pegasus line, which runs across four states from Patoka, Ill. to Nederland, Texas.
A company spokesman said Exxon is simply being thorough and cautious.
After Upset Election, Route for Tar Sands to Pacific Doesn't Close
Environmentalists suffered a setback on Tuesday when British Columbia re-elected a premier who left the door open for approval of two oil pipelines that would carry tar sands oil across B.C. to the Pacific Coast, where it could be exported to the world market.
Despite trailing in the polls, incumbent Christy Clark, the leader of B.C.'s Liberal Party, defeated Adrian Dix and his New Democratic Party. Dix had opposed both pipelines, and environmental groups had hoped his win would signal the end of the projects.
The two Canadian pipelines—along with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline across the United States—are crucial to the expansion of Canada's oil sands industry, which is based in the province of Alberta. The industry hopes to double in size over the next decade, but because Alberta is landlocked, more pipelines are needed to get the oil to the coast.
Like the Keystone project, the Canadian pipelines face grassroots opposition from local landowners and environmental groups.
SEC Upholds Shareholder Vote on Shower Heads Over Climate Concerns
Shareholders of one of the country's biggest hotel chains have struck down a resolution that would force the company to consider replacing energy-guzzling shower heads with more efficient ones—yet its backers are claiming victory.
Although only nine percent of Choice Hotels shareholders voted in favor of the resolution, the proposal is one of a handful of global warming resolutions that companies tried to dismiss in this year's proxy season—but that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said must be put to a vote. The trend reflects continued concerns by the SEC about the business risks of climate change.
"They're enforcing their rules in a way that allows a lot more climate-related resolutions to go through to a vote," said Rob Berridge, program manager at Ceres, a coalition of sustainability focused investors with $11 trillion in assets.
Both Sides in Climate War Blamed for Cherry-Picking Attribution Research
As if the public debate about global warming wasn't complex enough, a new field in climate research is coming of age, grabbing media attention and spawning seemingly contradictory headlines.
The work, called attribution research, doesn't challenge the scientific consensus that climate change is happening. Instead, it strives to understand the regional effects of global warming by determining whether increased greenhouse gas levels did—or didn't—cause a particular weather event. But the findings can be confusing. For instance, scientists say that climate change made Hurricane Sandy worse, but that it had nothing to do with historic floods in Thailand. Warming probably didn't cause this year's severe winter storm, Nemo, but it may have supercharged it. It caused some droughts, but not others.
Adding to the confusion is a trend that worries some experts: People on both sides of the climate divide tend to promote only those attribution studies that support their beliefs. Whether a conscious decision or not, this selective use of research is further polarizing the national conversation on climate change, experts told InsideClimate News.
See Also
A Rare Bipartisan Clean Energy Bill Is Ready for Passage
Congressional lawmakers from both parties are taking a step to catalyze the nation's clean energy economy: After 32 years of restricting a crucial investment tool to expanding fossil fuels, they're pushing to open it to renewables.
Legislation is moving through both houses to tweak the tax code to let clean energy developers form a master limited partnership, or MLP, a type of publicly traded company structure not subject to corporate taxes.
For three decades, coal, oil and gas companies have used MLPs to raise hundreds of billions of dollars for pipelines, refineries and other projects. The financing vehicle is credited with helping sustain the nation's current drilling boom.
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