Daily Comment
In Bonn, Trump’s Answer to Global Warming? Drill, Baby, Drill!
By Elizabeth Kolbert
November 15, 2017
Every year around this time, negotiators from across the globe meet in one city or another—Montreal, Marrakech, Copenhagen, Paris—to resolve that the world really ought come up with a plan to do something about climate change. This year’s Conference of the Parties, the twenty-third such gathering, is taking place in Bonn, and in addition to the usual impediments to progress—mistrust, inequality, bad faith—there’s now the Trump Administration to contend with. On Monday, the U.S. delegation used its sole official appearance at COP23 to tout fossil fuels.
[…]
Then, on Tuesday, the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris, released its annual “World Energy Outlook.” One of the agency’s key findings is that global energy demand will continue to rise through 2040. Another is that, owing to technological advances like fracking, the United States is poised to become a major exporter of fossil fuels. “By the mid-2020s, the United States [will] become the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter and a few years later a net exporter of oil,” the agency predicts. It’s hard to say which of these announcements was the most depressing, but, on some level, it doesn’t really matter, since they’re all connected.
[…]
However incompetent the Administration may be in other realms, it has proven itself remarkably adept in this one.
[…]
Here at home, the Administration has promoted fossil fuels so aggressively that, at times, its efforts have bordered on self-parody. A comprehensive list of its fossil-fuel-boosting activities would fill several Web posts…
[…]
What’s key about all these moves is that they will lead to more investment in fossil-fuel infrastructure. Once a new offshore oil platform or natural-gas well is completed, it’s likely to live out its useful life. (Call it establishing facts in the ground.) At events like COP23, this is known as “lock in”; the more fossil-fuel infrastructure that gets built, the more carbon emissions get “locked in.” Whatever happens (or doesn’t) this week in Bonn, the Trump Administration and its cronies in the fossil-fuel industry—the two groups are, admittedly, often interchangeable—are making it that much harder to curtail emissions. The future that’s being “locked in” looks increasingly grim.
Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorkersince 1999. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.”
Where to start? In two previous posts, I addressed the idiocy of not realizing that coal will remain one of the top three energy sources well-into the mid-21st century and that natural gas to nuclear is the only pathway to low-carbon energy (if such a pathway was necessary). So, I won’t dwell on that here.
So… It is ironic that the media and green mafia are bashing President Trump for his promotion of fossil fuels, carbon sequestration and nuclear power, when they should know that this is the only rational approach to AGW… if there actually was a need to have a rational approach to AGW.
Left-wing pseudo-intellectuals are a never-ending source of entertainment. The New Yorker literally brags about Ms. Kolbert’s scientific illiteracy by citing her “2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”… not to mention the scientific illiteracy of those who awarded her a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction for a work of enviro-fantasy… Anyone who describes the current extinction rate as a “sixth” mass extinction is mind bogglingly ignorant of basic science. And then, Ms. Kolbert outdoes herself here…
No, Ms. Kolbert, offshore oil platforms and other oil & gas infrastructure do not “live out” their useful lives. Nor do they even *out live* their useful lives. We are often forced to remove offshore oil platforms and other infrastructure long before they have out lived their *useful* lives.
In 2010, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE, pronounced “Bessie”) issued NTL 10-5, ostensibly to require the swift removal of oil & gas infrastructure no longer needed for oil & gas exploration in Federal waters. However, the letter of the regulation says:
Capable of production in paying quantities for a well means it can produce enough oil, gas, or sulphur to yield a positive stream of income after subtracting normal expenses. These expenses include actual royalty payments based on the well’s production and the direct lease operating costs allocated to the well.
Basically, BSEE can force an operator to plug and abandon a well, dismantle and remove a platform, pipeline or other infrastructure, if they determine that it is not economic for the oil company to continue operating such infrastructure. BSEE does not take the cost of abandonment under consideration – A platform can operate for years with a negative income stream and still have a greater net present value than the cost of abandonment. Nor does BSEE take the potential future value of the infrastructure for offsetting exploration and production under consideration, often critical for deepwater projects.
If anything, offshore platforms and other oil & gas infrastructure under live their useful their useful lifetimes.
The irony of a left-wing pseudo-intellectual ignorantly whining about President Trump’s “drill baby, drill” approach, while demonstrating total ignorance of oil & gas infrastructure and the English language is so… ironic.
Featured image from CNN.
Under the Harper government in Canada we had a very vibrant oil and gas sector. If you drove down any highway in the western provinces during this time there were numerous trucks carrying large skids and items to support the growth in these sectors. These materials were coming from every province in Canada with manufacturing capabilities and were supplying jobs across Canada. There was a shortage of skilled help to build and maintain the many projects that were been installed to meet the demand of energy needed. An example of the methods used to fill the short fall of skilled labor was there were 18 charter flights a week from Moncton New Brunswick in the east to the Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan oil fields. That was just some of the examples of the benefits a healthy resource sector supplies. Calgary Alberta had many engineering and design firms which specialized in energy projects to support the energy sectors head offices that were in Calgary. Enter Trudeau and his pack of Liberal destroyers and the energy sector is treated like an unwanted child. Since gaining office Trudeau has put a moratorium on the following by himself. No new tanker traffic off the coast of British Columbia. That killed Gateway pipeline 1.2 Billion barrels of production. No new drilling to be allowed in the arctic district. This moratorium was done without consulting any of the local residents who actually live in this area. In the past there has been numerous reserves proven out in this area but due to government meddling nothing has been brought to production. Think north slope times 2 for reserves. Changes made to the environmental regulations by un-elected advisors without any parliamentary vote or over sight. The former head of the World Wildlife Foundation for Canada is a “trusted” adviser to Trudeau and as such these changes were responsible for the cancellation of the Trans Canada pipelines Energy east project. As a result the three eastern Canadian refineries are using foreign conflict oil rather than Canadian ethical oil. Calgary has an unemployment rate of 15% most of that is in the high end design and engineering positions that do not exist anymore due to the cancellation of major projects due to lack of pipeline capacity. You should be happy in the US that Trump supports growth and not the destroyers we have here in Canada.
Here here! The selfie king is single handedly destroying Canada using the taxpayer to cost his dream of some sort of peace prize or heavens forbid, head the UN.
Trudeau: A word used to describe a spoiled, young douche who hasn’t had to work for what they have, a real pretty boy airhead. –from the Urban Dictionary.
BS!
Natural gas is a fossil fuel. Natural gas is not low CO2.
Nuclear power is a mature industry.
Taking credit for lowering CO2 by using natural gas is BS!
BS is my response to the oil and gas industry when they say they have safety culture. It is okay to kill your fellow workers and neighbors.
I do not have a problem with the oil and gas industry making a profit. Could you skip the BS about being better when it comes to safety and the environment.
Disclosure, I worked in the nuclear industry. I know that coal, oil, and gas provide an invaluable part of out economy. Skip the BA justifications and tell the French and Al gore to eat sh!t, pound sand, and bark at the moon.
Something about the horse you rode on too, but maybe only old sailor would get it. Irony not needed.
Natural gas is a low carbon fuel compared to coal. On a MW for MW basis, it would reduce carbon emissions, relative to coal, faster than any power source other than nuclear. Natural gas combined cycle is also currently the most cost-effective type of new power plant in the US. It is the only power source that could quickly and economically replace coal (if there was a need to replace coal).
If there actually was an urgent need to rapidly reduce carbon emissions, natural gas to nuclear is the only viable pathway.
In the future, please quote the exact words I posted with which you disagree.
Dave Middleton – you could add that nuclear would be a great solution if the industry could build a power plant without wild cost overruns and seemingly endless delays. If environmentalists and agw mavens would support nuclear as a solution then reforms leading to a practical nuclear industry would be possible.
“Natural gas to nuclear” is a pipe dream (forgive the bad pun) without wide public support, which is sorely lacking now. Natural gas is an excellent stand-alone solution so long as the price stays low.
Some of the many reasons why it’s “natural gas to nuclear,” rather than just “nuclear.”
Well, at least so far Trump has done the right thing(s) on energy.
He should take control of the tax fiasco himself and cut taxes across the board…otherwise it is not going to pass in the senate, which might be a good thing.
Congress definitely needs to cut the corporate taxes (large and small) which will get the economy going.
I prefer the across-the-board taxcuts, too, but there is a very narrow margin in the U.S. Senate so I think Trump is going to settle for corporate tax cuts and middleclass taxcuts. I have heard people like Speaker Paul Ryan claim that all taxpayers will get some kind of reduction, but it’s kind of hard to tell right now.
The Republican Senate better pass something or the whole Republican party and the conservative movement could be in trouble.
All we need is for Nancy Pelosi to gain control of the House and start stonewalling Trump and trying to impeach Trump. Something like this would pretty much bring progress to a halt, and it is a real possibilty if Republicans demonstrate they are unable to take effective action.
Our goals should be to pass a taxcut and work on repealing Obamacare, and work very hard to get additional conservative Republican Senators elected in 2018 and hold on to the House seats.
Success in passing a few bills will payoff with success at the polls.
Looks like BSEE is an opportunity to reduce cost and waste.
Ha! Good one Dan although you forgot the (sarc). Very, very expensive in time and labor for the offshore operators, both Big and Little Oil.
There has been some talk about re-combining BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) and BSEE into a single agency. BOEM and BSEE were the result of the Obama maladministration’s restructuring of the MMS (Minerals Management Service) as part of its incompetent, malfeasant, malicious, Marxist overreaction to Macondo. Industry requires a stable, smart, predictable regulatory environment, not a pernicious, dynamic regulatory environment.
The Trump administration has made significant progress in restoring a stable, smart, predictable regulatory environment… but they could do even better.
“the idiocy of not realizing that coal will remain one of the top three energy sources well-into the mid-21st century and that natural gas to nuclear is the only pathway to low-carbon energy (if such a pathway was necessary)”
Given that coal is not going to grow though (I think the IEA does show a 1% increase to 2040, but historically has been too conservative on impacts/scale of renewables) and that outside the US there is little increase in natural gas generation and that nuclear is now only going to be deployed in China and India…
Griff you can’t get anything right you need to stop reading the guardian. I have gotten every number right we have so far argued about so I would pay attention to the numbers I am about to give you.
Natural gas consumption increases by 1.4%/year it is projected to increase faster post 2020 because renewables had been increasing at 2.3%/year but most of the easy fruit has been done and the rate is projected to fall. The likely prediction is they will both settle at around 2%. Nuclear power as the third option is expected to rise to around 1.5% but relies on China and India decisions yet to be made. Any shortfall in nuclear power will be met by coal which will probably be less than your 1% more like 0.6%/year in growth.
Overall we will be using 40% more energy in 2040 compared to date and no country can do that trajectory and stay inside the Paris agreement ambitions.
The only hope we have of not setting a new record CO2 emission for next year is if the situation with Merkel and the failure to form government unsettles the European market. The emissions control path laid out by Paris is already dead and those attending are just plundering whatever they can from a hopeless cause.
“nuclear is now only going to be deployed in China and India…”
Griff missed a few.
The one that I find most interesting is the 4 large reactors being built by the South Koreans in UAE. International competition used to dominated by the west.
UAE exports LNG. By building nukes, more gas to sell.
David Middleton, Great article!
However I don’t think Elizabeth Kolbert is “ignorant” since all the facts are at her disposal. Perhaps Elizabeth Kolbert would better described as “moronic” or lacking in cognitive capacity to adequately analyze the available facts. Just saying.
I was trying to be polite… 😉
I conclude that calling the advocates of the green blob “moronic” both oversimplifies the issue and libels the mentally deficient.
Ms Kolbert has the mental capacity to actually do research as to her belief system, it is the evident fact that she either did not do the research or it did not affect her conclusions is a real problem. Fanaticism has shown itself to have been much more of a threat in recent history than any disaster scenario various True Believers push.
I wouldn’t chacterize libtards as ‘moronic’. I like to say they exhibit a blithe and measured ignorance of facts and reason.
Just a continuation of the standard ‘Progressive’ mantra which is ‘Why tell the truth if you can lie and get away with it!’
Isn’t “The Sixth Extinction” the title of a craptacular disaster/survival movie? One where doomsday arrives because meteor impacts turn people into vampires? (Yes I know, “WTF”.)
Oh yes! Behold the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWoBqnqe5mY
And yet, at this point the space vampires apocalypse sounds slightly less unbelievable than all this global warming hysteria saying for the past 20 years that the world will end next tuesday.
[Elisabeth Kolbert quote]”Then, on Tuesday, the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris, released its annual “World Energy Outlook.” One of the agency’s key findings is that global energy demand will continue to rise through 2040. Another is that, owing to technological advances like fracking, the United States is poised to become a major exporter of fossil fuels. “By the mid-2020s, the United States [will] become the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter and a few years later a net exporter of oil,” the agency predicts. It’s hard to say which of these announcements was the most depressing, but, on some level, it doesn’t really matter, since they’re all connected.”
In the 1970’s, when the United States depended on oil exports from the Middle East, we used to line up in cars for miles at 6 AM at gas stations, which frequently ran out of gasoline by 9 or 10 AM, and cars with odd-numbered license plates were only allowed to buy gas on odd-numbered days of the month, and ditto for even numbers. All our genius President [Carter] could tell us was turn down the thermostat and wear sweaters indoors. Now THAT was depressing!
Instead of begging tinpot dictators for oil, exporting it at OUR price sounds great for America!
“In the future, please quote the exact words I posted with which you disagree.”
I wonder what part of BS David does not understand?
“Natural gas is a low carbon fuel compared to coal.”
BS! Plot the three base load sources of new generation together on a bar chart. Coal and natural gas look about the same compared to nuclear.
“On a MW for MW basis, it would reduce carbon emissions, relative to coal, faster than any power source other than nuclear.”
More BS! There are only three choices for large new baseload. According David bad is better than worse.
“Natural gas combined cycle is also currently the most cost-effective type of new power plant in the US.”
BS x 100! I am thinking that David lives in Texas and works for the oil/gas industry.
All steam plants are expensive. They are built to last 60 years. So what is the ‘delivered’ cost of fuel for 60 years?
I sure we can all trust the oil/gas industry to not charge what the market will bare for natural gas. I am sure state and local governments will not tax the hell out of natural gas driving the price of electricity up and blame power companies for passing along the cost to ratepayers.
Oh wait, looking at the last 15 years that is just what happened.
“industry could build a power plant without wild cost overruns and seemingly endless delays.”
I suspect that in the case of scraft1 this statement is more ignorance than BS. This is the nature of large capital projects and power plants in general.
The important criteria is how well and how long does a power plant run after it is built.
Ignorance may be bliss… but, “bad” is actually “better than worse.” As “bad” as natural gas might be, coal is “worse” regarding CO2 emissions…
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11
Natural gas combined cycle has, by far, the lowest LCOE of any base load source…
If you were even remotely literate, you would know that I have advocated natural gas, coal and nuclear power in my posts on energy.
However, it is a cold, hard fact that new natural gas combined cycle power plants are currently the most cost-effective sources of base load generation. And, relative to coal, natural gas reduces carbon emissions faster than any power source other than nuclear power.
*If* there was an urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, nuclear power would be the fastest route; natural gas would be the most cost-effective and second fastest route.
Ouch! Stay down Kit.
So cephuso you do not think David is peddling BS?
Are you in the oil/gas industry too?
David is just wrong wrong wrong! Typical of folks who are expert is one field but think they understand how other things work. People like David will not even consider that they could be wrong.
“regarding CO2 emissions…”
CO2 emissions are listed in gCO2 per kwh. David got the units wrong.
The methodology for determining this is Life Cycle Assessments (LCA aks Cradle to Grave) per ISO 14000. David was wrong again.
LCA is a useful tool in reducing the environmental impact of doing things.
For example, improvements at existing US nuke plants is equivalent to building 26 new nukes. No item for this on David’s DOE table. Huge reduction in ghg at very little cost.
Improvements in mining and enrichment of uranium is also huge. Fuel utilization is also huge. We get twice as much electricity per fuel pellet because of fuel assembly design.
None of these things were done to reduce CO2. They were done reduce costs of making customers power.
I would also point out that the coal industry has made great improvements too.
David is just wrong about CCGT being a good way to reduce CO2. Just BS.
As far as levelized costs, David is basing his claims on DOE models for 2022.
My crystal ball is a little foggy for natural gas prices for 60 years.
The power industry has not forgotten how it got burned (pun intended) by the natural gas industry.