Dan Minette wrote:
> But, even this does not address my question. What spills have been noted
> from drilling in the Arctic? The example you give below refers to a minor
> spill that didn't get beyond the gravel. I have not seen the environmental
> web sites cite any significant spills in Purdon Bay. That leads to
> believe that there have not been any.
>
See the Anchorage Daily News (Published April 17, 2001) article at
http://www.adn.com/nation/story/0,2360,258384,00.html
>From the article:
"In what may be one of the largest spills ever on the North Slope, 92,400
gallons of saltwater and crude oil leaked from a pipeline at the
Kuparuk oil field Sunday night."
"This is the fourth major spill on the North Slope this winter and the second
due to erosion or corrosion." ^^^^^^^^^^^
I'm not sure what you would consider significant, but in my mind, anything
termed major probably has some significance.
> >I know how the oil derricks blemish the Coast near Santa Barbara.
>
> That sounds to me like NIMBY (not in my back yard.) Is it much better that
> the African coast or the Texas Coast have derricks that interfere with
> aesthetics? My feeling is that one should be willing to put up with
> production of what one consumes in one's own back yard. On shore drilling
> will not meet world demand. Most good fields are off shore.
We treasure the pristine beauty of our coast, if that's NIMBY then so be it.
Marring it with oil platforms would be like drawing a mustache on the Mona
Lisa. And the oil extracted would be insignificant in the long run.
> > Have any of your friends helped construct this website:
> > http://www.anwrnews.com/?
>
> Probably not. I went to that site and it
>
> 1) Didn't address my statement that the footprint of oil exploration is
> relatively small
For more on that see the DoFW site at
http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/issues1.html
(towards the bottom of the page)
> 2) Cited one accident that cost tens of millions of dollars but resulted in
> no injuries.
Well it cited the article about the oil spill that I posted above and did you
see the article about inoperable safety valves that it cited? I didn't read
everything there but it looks to me that there's a lot more than one accident
cited.
<snip>
> > California is 49th of 51 in per capita energy consumption (2) (Texas is
> > fourth).
>
> Its first in total consumption though.
So what? We have, by far, the most people of any state in the Union. The
more important thing is that we are among the most frugal in the country when
it comes to energy consumption.
It is a net importer of energy.
As is just about every state in the Union.
> Let me ask a question. Is it even possible for oil well drillers to do a
> good enough job to satisfy you? Will there be any way for them to meet your
> standards?
Yes, but they are no where near that standard now.
>
> >I dare say that most other state's oil production is a lower percentage of
> their consumption, but who cares >anyway.
>
> I do. I think NIMBY is not a good tendency in the US.
Well I don't think that continued increased consumption is a good tendency,
and I don't see that f**king up the coast line with oil derricks is going to
solve anything in the long haul. If people want to live in a place where they
spew pollutants into the air and water and screw up the natural beauty by
erecting ugly structures for a few weeks worth of oil, they can live in places
where that's allowed. Here, we're not going to do that.
We have half the
> refining capacity in the US within about 60 miles of where I live. It does
> indeed affect the air quality. But, that's a lot of refining. AFA It would
> be practically impossible to open enough refineries for California gasoline
> in California. Why should California expect others to refine their gas when
>
You answer your own question, Dan. If you have half the capacity of the U.S.
in and around Houston, then you refine everyone's gas, not just California's.
Why are you singling out California?
> If they refused to grow veggies but insisted on cheap veggies from
> California, sure. But, that's not the case. If California couldn't, it
> would be different. California is a net importer of energy. It consumes
> more than it produces.
As do ~47 other states.
> It was interesting that the liberal wing insisted that there be no long term
> contracts. They felt that the a long term contract would be a sweetheart
> deal.
What I've read suggests that it was PG&E and SoCal that insisted on the spot
market stuff. I'd like to have a reference for that but don't have the time
to
look right now.
> On the whole, California suffered from the same collective wishful thinking
> that was being "the new market" that is not based on future profits. They
> looked at the low spot market prices for electricity and thought it would
> last forever.
Collective wishful thinking my ass. How many people here do you think even
knew we were buying energy on the spot market before this winter? I sure as
hell didn't.
> Ah, no plants were built for years. The ones that were proposed faced
> opposition. Y'all grew. There is an old website that says 18% of California
> power was bought from out of state. The requirement that no long term deals
> could be made wasn't public?
Wasn't publicized would be the correct way of putting it. But who would have
listed anyway? In general people don't know whether or not buying energy on
the spot market is a good or bad thing, that's normally the kind of minutia
that you expect the experts to deal with. In any case we are building power
plants now, and you can bet that as the crisis worsens this summer and beyond,
that people will find ways to alleviate the problem. The result may be that
many new ways to conserve energy are found, and many old ways are revived.
And what's better, the rest of the country will follow suit.
> It is possible to design buildings to withstand the strongest California
> earthquake. Its just a bit more expensive. If it were that impossible,
> then LA will have casualties in the millions in the big quake. But, from
> what I've seen, even apartment buildings can be designed safely.
But that makes them more expensive/less economically viable.
> >We have high gas taxes, but I think that a 250% tax would be a little
> silly.
>
> Why, that's how Europe promotes conservation. I don't get it. You seem to
> be arguing for cheap, abundant, energy that people will be careful to use as
> little of as possible. I proposed taxing it as a means of conservation, and
> you call it silly.
I meant it was silly to immediately impose a huge tax. That's not how they
did
it in Europe is it? And isn't the tax in Europe more like 100%? A gradual
increase in taxes _would_ be acceptable to me. They could start by requiring
that fuel use pay for the infrastructure required (road's bridges, etc.).
They could follow up by increasing the registration fee for gas hogs. Etc.
etc.
> > I refer you to anwrnews.com again. BP owns the rights. Is it wise to let
> > them in there?
>
> Well, what's their safety and environmental record? I've dealt with BP
> folks and the rules on North Sea wells. On the whole, I've been fairly well
> impressed. From what I've read, there would be no way that BP could
> possibly defend themselves against this allegation to your satisfaction.
read
http://www.anwrnews.com/docs/20010110_Letter_from_Technitians_to_Charles_Hamel.asp
some snippets:
"With the lack of monitoring, and the resultant leaks, almost every well house
in Prudhoe Bay is now truly a Documented contaminated site."
and
"Our emergency shutdown systems are unreliable, and have no integrity. There
has been no preventative maintenance program on these safety systems and
equipment for some time. We now employ procedures that include closing
additional valves during emergencies instead of repairing the Safety Valves
that leak. There are no integrity checks to verify that these critical Shut
Down Valves (SDVs) actually hold pressure."
Doesn't sound too impressive to me.
> I'm not automatically assuming that they are right, but you appear to be
> assuming that they must be wrong, because they are a corporation. The
> website talked about the cost cutting measures at BP. Well, everyone in the
> oil patch went through desperate cost cutting measures in the late 90s.
So we can expect that safety and environmental measures will be the first to
go
when the economy goes sour?
> I'm arguing that one has to assume that the is something special about the
> US that gives us the right to use production elsewhere but prohibit it in
> our own country. Using it because its cheap elsewhere is one thing;
> prohibiting it is another.
We are at a crossroad. Do we continue to rely on fossil fuels until they
become so expensive that we _have_ to find alternative sources, drilling every
nook and cranny that might prove economically viable, or do we start now to
find more economical means to use the energy we produce now and make serious
investments in the development of alternative sources? I think the former is
a
dead end and I don't think that screwing up the ANWR or the Big Sur coastline
will buy us anything. On 60 minutes last night they said that by increasing
auto fuel efficiency by 1 or 2% we could save the same amount of energy as
would
be produced by drilling in the ANWR. I'll bet we can do a lot better than
that.
Doug
