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April 12, 2013
(PV Tech)
President Barack Obama yesterday put forward a budget that would see a 40% increase in clean energy funding, despite sweeping spending cuts due to the sequester.
Overall, Obama's fiscal year budget 2014 provides $28.4 billion in discretionary funds for the Department of Energy, an 8% increase from 2012. It also increases funding for the DoE's clean energy technology activities by over 40% above the 2012 level.
Daniel Poneman, the US deputy secretary of energy, said: "The United States faces one of the greatest challenges ahead, the opportunity to lead the global clean energy race. We must continue to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world to meet this challenge.
“This budget reflects strong commitments to fiscal responsibility and shared sacrifice, while embracing the President’s all-of-the-above energy strategy which expands both oil and gas production and investments in new clean energy technologies, while advancing our national security."
(Climate Central)
The Obama administration's Fiscal Year 2014 budget request, released on Wednesday, contains a modest funding increase for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its National Weather Service (NWS). The budget request would provide about $5.45 billion for NOAA, which is an increase of about $200 million from the Fiscal Year 2013 enacted level.
The administration’s budget does not include the across-the-board budget cuts that are now in effect due to mandatory spending reductions, referred to as "sequestration." Due to sequestration-related cuts, NOAA has imposed an agency-wide hiring freeze, so the budget request—if enacted by Congress in its current form, which is highly unlikely—would result in a major departure from how the agency is currently operating.
(The Weekly Standard)
President Barack Obama talked about "climate change" with the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, today at the White House. Via the pool report:
On North Korea: “We will continue to try to work to resolve some of those issues diplomatically even as I indicated to the Secretary General that the United States will take all necessary steps to protect its people and to meet our obligations under our alliances in the region.”
Obama said they talked about Middle East peace, where there is at least a window of opportunity for both Israelis and Palestinians to get back to the peace table. Explored how the U.S. is a strong friend of Israel and supports a Palestinian state. The U.S. will work with the U.N. to try to move that process forward, he said.
Also had an opportunity to talk more broadly about climate change, Obama said.
Last point, the Secretary General has shown significant progress in U.N. reform and making the institution more efficient and effective. Overall a useful conversation, Obama said.
(AFP)
U.S. oil giant ConocoPhillips on Wednesday announced it is suspending its offshore Alaska drilling program in the Alaskan Arctic due to changing regulations.
Two months after a similar move by Shell, ConocoPhillips cited "evolving" federal regulatory requirements in putting on hold its 2014 exploration drilling plans in the Chukchi Sea on Alaska's northern coast.
"While we are confident in our own expertise and ability to safely conduct offshore Arctic operations, we believe that more time is needed to ensure that all regulatory stakeholders are aligned," said Trond-Erik Johansen, president of ConocoPhillips Alaska, in a statement.
(The Hill)
The Interior Department is on the cusp of releasing a controversial, heavily lobbied proposal to regulate oil-and-gas "fracking" on public lands.
Outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told a House subcommittee Thursday that the draft regulations will surface soon.
"The rule is imminent," Salazar told an Appropriations Committee subpanel. “I expect that my successor will be announcing it in the very near future.”
It’s Interior’s second swing at the plan after pulling back an earlier version in January.
The measure will require disclosure of chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process, and also includes provisions on well integrity and management of "flowback" water.
(Central Valley Business Times)
The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board says it is investigating reports that Vintage Production California LLC dumped hydraulic fracking wastewater into an unlined retention pond near Shafter in Kern County without the proper permits, posing a risk to surface and ground water quality.
Vintage Production California is an oil company conducting hydraulic fracking in a recently drilled oil well near the North Shafter Oil Field. It is owned by one of the worlds largest petroleum giants, Occidental Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: OXY).
(The Asahi Shimbun)
Radioactive water continues to leak from tanks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Space is running out to store the hundreds of tons of contaminated water produced each day. And the initial plan to address the growing water problem now appears flawed.
That is the situation facing plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., which on April 9 admitted to another leak in an underground storage tank holding contaminated water.
The discovery at the No. 1 tank may force TEPCO to change its emergency plan to contain the water. Not only was the No. 1 tank receiving radioactive water from another faulty tank, but the latest leak indicates that TEPCO was wrong in its assessment of what was causing the spillages.
The company is throwing around ideas on where to keep the 400 tons of radioactive water created daily from the cooling of the damaged reactor cores at the Fukushima No. 1 plant.
(Wall Street Journal)
Exxon Mobil Corp. and Russia's OAO Rosneft said Thursday they could spend $15 billion building a proposed gas-liquefaction plant on Russia's Pacific coast in a move to jump start the country's attempts to ship the fuel to lucrative Asian markets.
The plant could start shipping gas from 2018, Rosneft's chief executive said, finally bringing significant sales of gas from one of the country's first energy joint ventures, which Exxon first agreed to develop in 1996.
(The Hill)
A corporate coalition that includes big clothing and food companies says in a new joint statement that confronting global warming is "one of America's greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century."
They're also offering a warning to climate skeptics.
"We cannot risk our kids' futures on the false hope that the vast majority of scientists are wrong. But just as America rose to the great challenges of the past and came out stronger than ever, we have to confront this challenge, and we have to win," states a joint declaration from more than 30 companies.
(Climate Central)
Sleet? Check. Hail? Check. Snow? Yup, got that too.
You name the type of precipitation, and odds are that it is falling somewhere between Texas and Minnesota on Wednesday, as ice storm warnings, winter storm warnings for heavy snowfall, and flood watches and warnings have all been issued across this region as a strong spring storm moves through.
Forecast high temperatures on Wednesday, April 10, showing the sharp contrast ahead of and behind the Arctic cold front.
The storm has smashed all-time snowfall records and set new benchmarks for a late season Arctic air outbreak in the West, while at the same time helping to pump record-breaking warm air along the East Coast, where temperatures soared into the 80s on Tuesday.
(Climate Central)
The extreme 2012 Central Great Plains drought was more intense than the Dust Bowl era droughts of the 1930s, according to a new federal assessment of the origins and predictability of the drought, released on Thursday. The team of 19 atmospheric scientists, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), found that global warming may have played a relatively small contributing role by helping to make the drought slightly warmer, and hence drier, than it otherwise might have been.
The biggest "proximate cause" of the drought remains unidentified, the report found, and it was most likely the result of random natural weather and climate variability.
The period of May through August 2012 was the driest such period in the Central Great Plains since 1895, eclipsing the records set during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, the report found. The drought caused the largest single-year loss in corn production since 1866, and the full economic impact of the drought, which in many areas is still ongoing, has not been tallied yet, but is likely to be greater than $12 billion.
April 10, 2013
(The Globe and Mail)
Anti-Keystone-XL protesters repeatedly disrupted a speech by Alberta Premier Alison Redford in Washington – marking the first time a visiting Canadian politician has been publicly challenged over the controversial pipeline.
Protesters have been dogging U.S. President Barack Obama for months and are expected to raise the pressure all summer before he rules for, or against, funnelling Canadian oil-sands crude to Gulf refineries.
(AP)
President Barack Obama's choice to lead the Energy Department pledged to increase use of natural gas Tuesday as a way to combat climate change even as the nation seeks to boost domestic energy production.
Ernest Moniz, a Fall River native and physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said "a stunning increase" in production of domestic natural gas in recent years was nothing less than a "revolution" that has led to reduced emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that cause global warming.
The natural gas boom also has led to a dramatic expansion of manufacturing and job creation, Moniz told the Senate Energy Committee.
Even so, Moniz stopped short of endorsing widespread exports of natural gas, saying he wanted to study the issue further.
(Gallup.com)
Democrats and Republicans retain markedly different views about global warming, with 75% of Democrats versus 40% of Republicans saying they personally worry about it a "great deal" or "fair amount."
Both groups' levels of concern about global warming have fluctuated in recent years. Republicans -- as well as independents, at 59% -- show slightly increased levels of worry in 2013, following 10-year lows in 2010 and 2011. Concern has held steady at a high level among Democrats throughout the past decade.
Since 2011, Republicans' views in particular have changed slightly; the percentage saying the effects of global warming have already begun increased to 40% in 2012 from 32% in 2011. Republicans' views on this issue are back to where they were during the George W. Bush administration.
(Reuters)
A pair of recent accidents that spilled Canadian crude oil in the United States is part of doing business in the energy industry and should not prevent the Keystone XL pipeline from moving forward, Alberta's premier said on Tuesday.
"We have to be honest about the fact that if we do have energy development, there is the risk of really unfortunate incidents," Alison Redford, whose province is home to Canada's oil sands, said during a panel at the Brookings Institution.
The Obama administration is expected to decide late this summer on whether to approve TransCanada Corp's proposed 800,000 barrel-per-day Keystone XL pipeline. The project would connect the oil sands, the world's third largest petroleum deposit, with refineries in Texas.
(Beacon News)
Most of the attention of pipeline proponents and opponents these days is focused on the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines.
Less well known is the Enbridge line 9 conversion, which would require converting its existing 37-year-old pipeline – known as Line 9 – to carry diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in Eastern Canada.
These products would end up displacing oil currently imported (at Brent prices) for use in the east. Canada imports nearly half of its actual oil consumption, even as we export much of what we produce.
(NPR)
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
When it comes to both energy policy and environmental policy, the Keystone XL pipeline has proven to be one of the most contentious issues for President Obama. The State Department is expected to decide soon whether to give the pipeline final approval. It would carry oil from the tar sands of the Canadian province of Alberta all the way to the Gulf Coast for refining and export. Just this week, a coalition of environmental groups launched a new campaign to stop the pipeline, arguing in ads like this one that it's not in the national interest.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADVERTISEMENT)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Keystone XL doesn't go to the U.S. It goes through the U.S., sending oil to places like China and Venezuela, putting us at risk while big oil gets the rewards.
CORNISH: Our next guest is likely to disagree with that. Getting this pipeline approved may be the most important issue for her. She is Alison Redford, the premier of Alberta. And she's here in D.C. on a lobbying trip. Premier Redford, thank you for being here.
ALISON REDFORD: Well, thank you very much for having me.
CORNISH: Now, first of all, obviously, you are here to argue that the pipeline is not only good for Canada but that it's good for the U.S. What's your argument there?
(Bloomberg)
Alberta is taking steps to limit the potential environmental damage of building TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, the Canadian province’s premier said in a bid to win U.S. support for the project.
The government has adopted land-conservation policies, set limits on greenhouse-gas emissions and monitors industrial development for harm to the environment, Premier Alison Redford said today in remarks prepared for delivery in Washington.
Pipeline opponents “proclaim that either you stand against the oil sands, or you write off the environment, along with any hope for a sustainable existence,” Redford said. “That is completely wrong.”
(The Hill)
A top official with TransCanada Corp., the developer of the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, said a White House decision on the project appears to be “many more months down the road.”
Alex Pourbaix, a top TransCanada official, made the comment in testimony for Wednesday’s House hearing on legislation that would approve the Alberta-to-Texas pipeline.
Pourbaix expresses support for the GOP-led bill, which some conservative Democrats are co-sponsoring.
He noted that the State Department’s latest environmental study is currently receiving comment, and that when it’s finalized, several more steps will follow.
(Edmonton Journal)
An Alberta firm that violated the province's Water Act at one of its work sites in the oilsands has been fined $100,000, with a majority of funds earmarked to establish wetlands that contain plants of cultural significance to aboriginal communities.
In provincial court in Fort McMurray last month, Grizzly Oil Sands ULC pleaded guilty to breaching conditions of a water usage licence obtained in conjunction with construction and exploration activities at one of its bitumen mining properties in the region.
(SustainableBusiness)
Companies that trade in California's cap-and-trade program will also be able to trade in Quebec because they are connecting their programs.
Governor Jerry Brown approved the proposal from California's Air Resources Board (ARB), which has been working for five years to develop compatible programs with Quebec.
The two systems are expected to link January 1, 2014. They need to test their auction platforms and trading systems to make sure they're fully compatible.
British Columbia also plans to join soon and ARB is exploring the same with Australia. South Korea and Mexico recently passed laws to create carbon trading and have expressed interest in linking to regional programs.
(Bloomberg)
California's dream of billions in windfall oil revenue from the Monterey shale deposit that runs through the center of the state may fall short as its complex geology rewards industry efforts with only mixed results.
The formation is vast yet disjointed, partly because of the state’s earthquakes, and can be too unpredictable to make drilling economical, even with developments in hydraulic- fracturing techniques known as fracking, said Jason Marshall, chief deputy director of the state Conservation Department. The agency regulates the industry.
(The Hill)
COMING WEDNESDAY: The delayed White House fiscal 2014 budget plan.
The budget will likely revive President Obama's fight with Republicans and oil-patch Democrats over petroleum industry tax breaks.
Past budget plans have consistently called for stripping billions of dollars in tax incentives from oil and gas, but Congress hasn’t gone along.
The budget could also put meat on the bones of other White House energy-related plans that Obama has touted in recent months, including his call to steer $2 billion over a decade from offshore oil-and-gas royalties into the development of technologies that wean the transportation sector off oil.
(AP)
Exxon Mobil Corp. was found liable Tuesday in a long-running lawsuit over groundwater contamination caused by the gasoline additive MTBE, and the jury ordered the oil giant to pay $236 million to New Hampshire to clean it up.
The jurors reached their verdicts in less than 90 minutes, after sitting through nearly three months of testimony.
The panel awarded the state all $236 million it was seeking to monitor and remediate groundwater contaminated by MTBE. The chemical was added to gasoline to reduce smog but was found to travel farther and faster in groundwater than gasoline without the additive.
(Reuters)
Brazil's oil regulator, the ANP, said on Monday that it authorized Chevron Corp to restart output from an offshore oil field more than a year after a November 2011 spill forced the No. 2 U.S. oil company to stop Brazilian production.
Output at the field could begin within days, a source with direct knowledge of the ANP's decision said on Monday.
Chevron was granted permission to restart output from four wells at the Frade field for one year and conditional approval for up to two months to produce from two other wells if they are needed to balance oil and natural gas pressure in the reservoir, the ANP said in a statement.
The ANP also imposed additional, unspecified limits on the flaring of natural gas from the field. Flaring is the burning of gas that can't be shipped to market or reinjected in the well.
(The Daily Climate)
Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady" of British politics who died Monday at the age of 87, is being lionized as the woman who tilted British domestic and economic policy to the right.
Less noted is how seriously she viewed the threat of climate change and the robustness, more than 20 years ago, of climate science and the United Nations body tasked with assessing the state of that science.
In a 1990 speech at the second World Climate Conference, in Geneva, Thatcher compared the threat of global warming to the Gulf War, which was then just escalating following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
And Thatcher, who spent 11 years as the United Kingdom's prime minister, called the work of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "remarkable" and "very careful."
(New York Times)
A small water agency in southern New Mexico has moved to force state agencies that control water distribution to deprive some users of their supplies.
The local agency, the Carlsbad Irrigation District, or C.I.D., acted to ensure that its alfalfa farmers receive the supplemental deliveries to which they say they are entitled.
The irrigation district voted unanimously last week to make what is known as a "priority call" on the Pecos River, a move that could force New Mexico’s Office of the State Engineer to reallocate supplies, relying on a longstanding priority list and assigning water to all the users of the river based on their seniority. On Tuesday, the district was pressing its case at meetings with state officials.
(Reuters)
Residents of the central United States braced for a night of nasty weather on Tuesday, with high wind, rain, sleet, hail and possible tornadoes forecast from north Texas through Nebraska.
Meteorologists said the stormy weather would result from a clash of warm southern air with a cold air mass sweeping through eastern Colorado, where heavy snow in Denver closed the airport and forced the cancellation of 535 flights on Tuesday.
"These are a couple of last hurrahs for winter," said Mike July, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Kansas City. "We are going through that phase of the season when we can have some rapid changes."
April 9, 2013
(The Houston Chronicle)
Critics of Keystone XL are ramping up their efforts against the pipeline by launching a new coalition, nationwide commercials and online ads focused on convincing influential Democratic voters and donors that the project is a bad idea.
A major goal is leveraging the power, influence and money of those Democrats to put pressure on President Barack Obama as he nears a final decision on whether to approve TransCanada Corp.’s proposed pipeline.
The campaign — under the banner of the new “All Risk, No Reward” coalition — is “reaching out to some of the people who have the most (power) to communicate with their set, with the people in their community,” said Bill Burton, senior adviser of the League of Conservation Voters.
(The Dallas Morning News )
Even in the distilled legal narrative of a court filing, the allegations are chilling.
In August 2000, an Indonesian man identified only as John Doe II was thrown into a truck, taken to a military camp, and severely beaten and tortured “using electricity all over his body, including his genitals.”
After three months of torture, the court papers said, his captors “took off his blindfold, took him outside the building where he had been detained and showed him a large pit where there was a large pile of human heads.” The captors threatened to “add his head to the pile.”
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