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Category: oil & gas
Can New Climate Vows and “All of the Above” Co-Exist?
As you undoubtedly heard, climate change was mentioned prominently by President Obama in his second inaugural speech. Greens are applauding the strong words but based on his record (or lack thereof) on the climate issue (some believe he is unfairly maligned), and his lofty (unfulfilled) 2008 promises, many are taking a wait-and-see approach.
Meanwhile, what to make of the President’s surprising elevation of climate change into the public discourse? Let’s game out a few of the possibilities. Fair warning: What follows is a mixed metaphor palooza. Read More
Doomsday Chronicles, cont'd
This might be true:
The United States continues to slumber while a catastrophe lies in wait. Increasing numbers of analysts and policymakers are warning of another super price spike for oil and the likelihood of “peak oil” more generally.
But I wish the author good luck with this:
It is time for public discussion of this issue to reach the same prominence as climate change. Indeed, many solutions to these “twin crises” are the same because reducing petroleum dependence will ameliorate peak oil and climate change.
One way to kickstart such a conversation on peak oil would be for President Obama to mention it tonight during his State of the Union Address.
You can stop laughing, now. Yeah, I know: that’s as likely as him delivering a 2 minute call-to-arms mini-speech on climate change. (But I still half-expect something on green jobs and energy security. Hey, the guy’s gotta throw a bone after throwing Browner out the door.)
And even then, the discussion would be over by Friday, supplanted by the start of week-long Super Bowl hype.
What might trigger a national conversation on peak oil? Well, everybody knows what that would be, right?
Legacy of an Energy Boom
Yesterday, I took an expansive, meta perspective on who’s responsible for climate change and the U.S. addiction to fossil fuels.
But make no mistake, the legacy of George W. Bush’s two terms, in all things related to domestic energy development, from deliberate lax oversight to eye-popping corruption, looms large today. Rebecca Lefton at The Center for American Progress (CAP) has written a very useful post and timeline, documenting how the federal government, under Bush, became a handmaiden to the oil and gas industry.
I spent a lot of time in the 2000s covering the consequences from some of the events and policies that Lefton highlights. My focus was on the coalbed methane and natural gas boom in the West. The searing impacts never really gained critical mass in the mainstream media and certainly were not much appreciated by the rest of the country. But the industry imprint chokehold was (and still is) felt acutely in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and New Mexico, where the gas drillers reign.
Among the many stories I wrote, I chronicled the devastating impacts to ranchers, to wildlife, to archaeology, and to public health. I wrote so much (and in varied venues, such as Science, Mother Jones, and Backpacker) about BLM Utah’s egregious capitulaton to the oil and gas industry that the state office in Salt Lake City stopped talking to me in 2008. None of what I documented in all these pieces has ever been challenged by BLM, nor has anyone ever been brought to account.
While I’m on the subject of Utah, I should mention that Selma Sierra, the person who served as BLM’s state director during the Bush Administration’s second term (prior to that she was Gale Norton’s chief of staff at Interior), was only just reassigned to Siberia the BLM Eastern States office, where she will serve in a “leadership position” overseeing the 30,000 surface acres in the 31 states east of the Mississippi. She’s actually swapping positions with Juan Palma, who will now manage Utah’s 23 million acres of public land.
Sierra’s legacy in Utah, like Bush’s legacy in the West, will be felt for many years to come.
The Offshore Drilling Decision
Liberal bloggers are befuddled, enviros are outraged, and the opposition party, as President Obama likely anticipated, is scornful.
Most of the conventional analysis is trying to make sense of the Administration’s decision in the context of the Senate’s tortured energy bill negotiations. And because that doesn’t seem to make sense, people are scratching their heads.
Fortunately, the president laid out his rationale in a speech:
Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.
Given our energy needs. That’s the key here. And it’s what Greens conveniently ignore. Now I happen to think that everything else in that phrase from the speech is mostly window dressing. There are many regulatory hurdles for companies to overcome before they can start “exploratory” drilling. And even then, it’s an open question whether it’ll be worth it to them.
So if the Administration’s gambit isn’t intended to influence wavering Republican senators on the climate bill, and won’t increase our domestic supply of crude for at least a decade, what’s really going on?
Perhaps the offshore announcement is intended for a different audience. Foreign Policy raises that intriguing possibility here. If that’s the case, then the Obama team, while saying all the right things about renewable energy, is keeping one cold eye on projected estimates of worldwide energy consumption rates, and the other on one very worrying scenario.
UPDATE: I think Tom Yulsman is on to something here:
Politically, Obama is looking at rapidly rising petroleum prices right around the time of his reelection campaign, if not sooner. Economically, he’s looking at a potential crunch just when things are supposed to be getting better. And while opening these new regions to drilling isn’t going to solve the problem (because even if large amounts of oil are lurking there the supply won’t come on line for about a decade), at least he’s now given himself political cover.
Russia's Carbon Addiction
Germany’s leading magazine, Der Spiegel, has a fascinating interview with Russia’s President Dimitry Medvedev, which includes this exchange:
SPIEGEL: In a recent article that you wrote entitled “Go, Russia,” you spoke of your country’s “humiliating” economic “backwardness.” Why hasn’t Russia managed to overcome its dependency on natural resources in the time since the end of the Soviet Union?
Medvedev: Because people quickly get addicted to drugs. Trading gas and oil is our drug. People can’t get enough of it, even when prices are going through the roof. Five years ago, who could have imagined an oil price of $150 a barrel? Trading in natural resources is easy, it leads to the illusion of economic stability. Money flows in — considerable sums of money. Acute problems can be effectively resolved with it. You don’t need any economic reforms; you don’t need to deal with diversifying production. We could rid ourselves of this lethargy if we would only learn the right lessons from the crisis.
What would those lessons be? I sense one of those patented Thomas Friedman columns in the making.
A Devilish Dilemma
I’m confused. Several weeks ago Stephen Payne at Oil and Gas Investor said the latest James Bond movie taught him a valuable lesson, which he boiled down to this:
in order to have access to oil, geopolitics unfortunately requires politicians to have a sort of flexible morality when it comes to from where we import our energy.
Payne fantasized about reading the riot act to Putin and telling “Hugo Chavez to stick his oil where the sun don’t shine, but that’s not a realistic move.”
The moral of the Bond movie, according to Payne:
Until we find a more viable source of energy, it seems that we’re going to have to continue to do business with disreputable business partners.
However, the recent sight of Barack Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez has given Payne second thoughts. This, says Payne, “does not bode well for the American public.”
I’ll be looking forward to similar pangs of moral concern from Payne when Obama is photographed shaking hands with Putin and America’s other “disreputable business partners.”
Flexible Morality
Folks over at Oil & Gas Investor are finding consolation in the latest James Bond movie. And pretending to learn something new about the role oil plays in geopolitics.
After seeing “Quantum of Solace,” Stephen Payne got to thinking about the world we live in and writes that, “unfortunately,” politicians need
to have a sort of flexible morality when it comes to from where we import our energy.
Gosh darnit, Payne “would love to tell Hugo Chavez to stick his oil where the sun don’t shine, but that’s not a realistic move.” And he’d love to tell Putin “to stop playing God with Eastern Europe’s gas supplies,” but that’s not in the cards either.
So Payne throws up his hands and shrugs:
Until we find a more viable source of energy, it seems that we’re going to have to continue to do business with disreputable business partners.
Hey Stephen, thanks for sharing that news flash. More importantly, you feel better now?
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