The irony is, we are being told the polar ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, so why are they worried about needing an icebreaker again? The whole thing is bollocks. On one hand we have Obama telling us we need to end our dependence on foreign oil…
“I will set a clear goal as president: in ten years we will finally end our dependence on oil in the Middle East,” said Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. ” Source here
….then we have the EPA pulling this crap to prevent domestic oil production with the help of NGO’s.
EPA Shuts Down Drilling in Alaska
by Brian McGraw on globalwarming.org
Shell announced today, for now, it must end a project to drill for oil off the coast of Northern Alaska, because of a decision made by an EPA appeals board to deny permits to acknowledge that Shell will meet air quality requirements. This is not part of ANWR.
Companies that drill for oil must go through extensive permitting processes and invest billions of dollars as payments for leasing the land, exploring for possible oil fields, equipment, etc. This is all done with the understanding that assuming they follow the letter of the law, there is a chance that this investment won’t be flushed down the toilet at the end of the tunnel. It appears that in this case Shell has followed procedure and that emissions will be below any standards required by the EPA:
The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project. Environmental groups were thrilled by the ruling.
“What the modeling showed was in communities like Kaktovik, Shell’s drilling would increase air pollution levels close to air quality standards,” said Eric Grafe, Earthjustice’s lead attorney on the case. Earthjustice was joined by Center for Biological Diversity and the Alaska Wilderness League in challenging the air permits.
Talk about moving the goalposts. They must have been really desperate to cancel this project given that this was the best straight-faced excuse they could muster. Not only do you have to be below the legally required emission limits but you must also not even be “close” to the limits, as defined by unelected officials, one of whom is a former attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Events like this are a prime example of why many in Congress want to strip authority from the EPA. Shell had reportedly invested over $4 billion in this project. When companies make investment decisions, consideration is given to whether or not bureaucrats can make arbitrary decisions to shut the project down halfway through a multi-year process. There are many other countries with natural resource reserves who do not subject economic activity to such unpredictable insanity, and in the eye of a corporation, after an event like this these locations begin to look more preferable to dealing with the United States.
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Events like this are a prime example of why many in Congress want to strip authority from the EPA. Shell had reportedly invested over $4 billion in this project.
Ya think?
Who is “EarthJustice”?
Jean,
Earthjustice is a terrorist/lawyer NGO. But they sure do have a pretty website, don’t they?
Smokey says:
April 27, 2011 at 1:05 pm
SteveE,
Get up to speed here. The link in my post @12:34 above confirms that the U.S. has the largest energy resources of any country, Saudi Arabia and Russia included.
—–
I don’t think the LA times is a valid reference for oil reserves, especially the opinion pages…
David Middleton says:
April 27, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Ireland seems to think it has 130 billion barrels of oil on it’s atlantic margin, 100+ dry wells would suggest that while they’ve got a World class source rock there’s just not much in the way of oil trapped there.
Undiscovered estimates are just guesses to keep people investing. Doesn’t actually mean you’ll find anything or that it’ll actually be commercial.
The jeanne d’Arc Basin is just a bit closer to the US Atlantic OCS.
Hibernia Field has produced 700 million bbl. Remaining proved and probable reserves are currently booked at ~1.4 billion bbl.
The US Atlantic OCS has a few dozen exploration wells, drilled on 1970’s vintage seismic data. Several found oil & gas pay; but we’re deemed uneconomic. The technology to develop them did not exist thirty years ago.
Furthermore, the Atlantic OCS represents only a tiny fraction of the gov’t estimate of 116 bbl of undiscovered oil. More than 90% of the potential is in the Gulf and Alaska.
“Energy Independence” is an emotional delusion pushed by people who either do not understand where our energy comes from or basic economics.
While increasing exploration and drilling domestically will help reduce the price of oil it cannot replace foreign sources of cheap light crude like Saudi Arabia. The known reserves of light crude do not exist domestically. More expensive forms of petroleum like shale or coal to liquids will not be used until it is economical to use them. Natural gas is another possible far in the future replacement for oil but the market can determine this on it’s own and at an economic price. I am all for domestic exploration and drilling but am under no delusions, we need every foreign source of oil on the market that we can get and should be looking for more.
Increasing efficiency is another myth, as it just causes people to use more energy,
The Efficiency Paradox (Peter Huber, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, MIT)
We already have the best energy plan available – the free market.
****
Smokey says:
April 27, 2011 at 6:42 am
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that they’re deliberately kiling the goose that lays the golden eggs. But if it’s not a conspiracy, I’d like to know why they’re deliberately destroying the greatest prosperity engine in the world.
****
It hasn’t technically been a “conspiracy” for decades. Much worse than that, it’s an entire culture — they’ve split off from the “working” culture to an “entitlement” culture (just another form of the old “elitist” culture). One profound characteristic of these elitists is dishonesty — they tell you something & do the exact opposite. The Obamanation is a perfect example. They hide & obscure the details of their motives, but operate right out in the open.
Eventually, greed & lack of ethics & morals can destroy any economic system or government.
Well, then, let the free market work.
A few points…
1) Athabasca oil sands are economically competitive with the OPEC basket… Green River formation oil shales are superior, by a wide margin, to Athabasca oil sands. The Green River oil shales would yield 100,000 bbl of 38° API sweet refinery feed per 160,000 tons of ore & overburden. Athabasca oil sands yield 100,000 bbl of 34° sweet refinery feed per 430,000 tons of ore & overburden. The unconventional oil is actually very light and very sweet; the OPEC Basket is actually heavier (32.7° API). Athabasca is economically competitive now. Green River could be economically competitive now. The only obstacles are environmental
terroristsactivists and the US government.2) “The known reserves of light crude do not exist domestically” because the areas most likely to host giant and near-giant discoveries are effectively off limits (Chukchi Sea, ANWR) or in the infancy of exploration and under a permitorium (Lower Tertiary GOM).
3) The Efficiency Paradox is only a “paradox” to Luddite environmental
terroristsactivists. Increasing efficiency enables industry to do more work (generate more value) per unit of energy consumed. Using less energy is stupid – It destroys wealth linearly. Using more energy, more efficiently is smart – It creates wealth exponentially.David Middleton says:
April 28, 2011 at 4:32 am
Acutally I think you’ll find that off-shore Morocco is a better analogue for the US Atlantic margin than the area around the Hibernia Field.
SteveE says:
“I don’t think the LA times is a valid reference for oil reserves, especially the opinion pages.”
Steve, the reference I provided was to the Congressional Research Service, which states that the U.S. has the largest energy resources of any country, Saudi Arabia and Russia included. The CRS was the source, not the LA Times piece, which only referred to the original source. Sorry you don’t like their conclusion, but there it is.
The U.S. has enormous reserves of coal and oil waiting to be produced. The only problem is the eco-dictators that control the Obama Administration. They and Obama are solely responsible for our extremely high gasoline and energy prices. The fault is theirs alone.
As the previous Administration showed, by simply announcing that the U.S. will produce more energy, the price of oil fell by 80%, and the cost of gasoline fell from $4.50 a gallon to under $2. Then Obama took office, and preached that the cost of energy must necessarily continue to rise. See, it’s his fault.
And I notice that in this entire thread other commentators have provide numerous links and citations, while you just give your opinions. That doesn’t make for a very persuasive argument.
@ur momisugly David Middleton
1) Oil Sands and Oil Shale are “competitive” at a certain price point and that is when world oil prices are higher than what it costs the OPEC countries for production. Because neither is can produce remotely cheaper than OPEC 1 on 1. It is only when worldwide demand outstrips what OPEC can supply do they become players. Effectively the oil sands are now. Neither can replace OPEC they can only SUPPLEMENT them.
I am all for going after all the resources but shale is a risky investment that has been tried before and failed,
Exxon Abandons Shale Oil Project (The New York Times, May 3, 1982)
Shale-Oil Group Abandons Efforts (The New York Times, October 3, 1983)
Group Scraps Shale Project (The New York Times, January 1, 1986)
Oil will have to stay very high for some time before these companies feel comfortable investing in shale again and it is more than just environmentalists, it is basic economics.
2) Even with ANWR and such they will not replace OPEC,
– 32 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in ANWR, NPRA and the Central North Slope in Alaska (USGS)
– 260 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in Saudi Arabia (EIA)
– 80 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in Venezuela (EIA)
3) The efficiency paradox has nothing to do with environmentalists,
The Virtue Of Waste (Peter Huber, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, MIT)
The Jevons Paradox (CounterPunch)
You obviously have not studied this topic very long. Using energy more efficiently is the reasoning behind forcing us to use eco-bulbs. It is a waste of time and will not change a damn thing.
The point hasn’t changed, “energy independence” is an emotional delusion spread by those who either don’t know anything about energy (where it comes from and how much it costs) or don’t understand economics.
1) The main cause of recent high oil prices is inflation caused by Obama’s reckless deficit spending, a worthless “stimulus” (well it stimulated the price of oil!) and the Fed’s “quantitative easing”,
Dollar Index
2) The second is the Obama administration’s restrictions on domestic oil drilling and production.
3) The third is the turmoil in the middle east, especially oil producing states like Libya
Obama belongs with the AGW religion and this includes ‘hate the West, especially America’. There is no question of the US being free of Arab oil. The US will be ground down to a supplicant of these barbaric states unless of course US citizens exercise their right and get rid of him. I have not forgotten his wife’s comment about the first time she was proud of her country (when he was nominated). It tells you a lot about their mind-set.
I don’t know what we’ll find until we’re actually allowed to explore the US Atlantic Margin.
The US Atlantic Margin and Morocco kind of “divorced” a long time ago. They were fairly well separated by the Cretaceous…
Cretaceous Atlantic
And the sedimentary volume of the US Atlantic Margin is just a bit larger than offshore Morocco…
Marine Sediment Isopach
Oh… And the US Atlantic Margin only represents less than 3% of the total US undiscovered potential.
Simple solution, Shell shuts down all refineries in the U.S. in the name of CO2 reduction until the EPA “reconsiders”.
Oil Facts:
– Only 14% of U.S. oil imports come from the Middle East (EIA)
– Only 40% of U.S. oil imports come from OPEC (EIA)
– The largest supplier of oil to the U.S. is Canada (EIA)
– The second largest supplier of oil to the U.S. is Mexico (EIA)
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm
Don’t underestimate all the tools that the EPA and this administration have and will use to strangle our industry. The fact that the US has ample fossil sources is not Revelant.
See below
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/158051-industry-calls-for-stay-of-epa-boiler-rules
EPA issued its final boiler regulations in February under a court-ordered deadline. The rules require that boilers and incinerators install “maximum achievable control technology” to reduce harmful emissions. The agency says the regulations will prevents thousands of deaths and heart attacks at a reasonable cost to industry.
The boiler regulations have come under fire from Republicans and some Democrats, who say they will impose major costs on industry — one of a series of attacks on EPA regulations in recent months.
EPA revised its draft standards, issued last year, after industry groups said the regulations were unworkable. Since the final rules differ so much from the draft rules, EPA opened up a reconsideration period in which the public can comment on and review the final standards.
In a petition for an administrative stay on the regulations, the industry groups say the agency should halt requirements that companies comply with the boiler rules during this reconsideration period.
Carbon isotope effects in the open-system
Fischer–Tropsch synthesis
Yuri A. Taran a,*, George A. Kliger b, Vyacheslav S. Sevastianov c
a Institute of Geophysics, UNAM, 04510 Mexico DF, Mexico
b Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis, RAS, Moscow, Russia
c Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry, RAS, Moscow, Russia
“1. Introduction
The Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (FTS), which generally
can be defined as the heterogeneous catalytic reduction of
oxidized carbon compounds by molecular hydrogen, is
widely accepted as a process potentially responsible for
the presence of organic compounds in meteorites, submarine
hydrothermal systems and igneous rocks (e.g. Lancet
and Anders, 1970; Shock, 1990; Salvi and Williams-Jones,
1997; Yuen et al., 1984; Foustoukos and Seyfried, 2004;
Horita, 2005). This ‘‘inorganic’’, ‘‘abiotic’’ synthesis has
also been considered to be important in global geologic
processes including production of methane and petroleum
and finally, as a source of prebiotic compounds on the early
Earth (Szatmari, 1989; Charlou et al., 2002; Sherwood Lollar
et al., 2002; Horita, 2005, among others).
6. Conclusion
[…] “On the other hand, there are no doubts that the abiogenic synthesis
of organic matter on the modern and early Earth does and
did exist and in a large extent is and was realized by the
FTS-type processes in crustal environment (moderate temperatures
and pressures and local or regional appropriate
redox conditions).”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by Russian Academy of Sciences
and personally by N.A. Plate´, Director of Institute of Petrochemical
Synthesis and E.M. Galimov, Director of the Vernadsky Institute
of Geochemistry. We thank S.N. Khadgiev for the permission
to use facilities of the Catalytic Synthesis Laboratory. The authors
are grateful to W. Bandy for polishing English, E. Cienfuegos and
E. Dubinina for H-isotope analysis, A.N. Shuykin and E.I. Bogolepova
for the assistance. This paper benefited from careful reviews
by T. McCollom and an anonymous reviewer. Many thanks to J.
Horita for very important suggestions and a great patience when
editing the first versions of the manuscript.