----- Original Message -----
From: Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2001 1:47 PM
Subject: Re: W. on the Environment L3
>
>
> Dan Minette wrote:
>
>>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
>
Well, I was referring to at the drill site itself. But, pipeline spills are
also worth considering. I read that article before we started this
discussion, because it sounded like a significant spill. But, when I read
further, I found additional information that made me believe it did not
represent a serious environmental risk.
1) It was at least 97% salt water.
2) It was confined to 1 acre
3) It was reported to be cleaned up within a week.
Worst case scenario, the salt from the salt water will damage the ecosystem
in that acre. But, as the site points out, dikes were established and the
entire acre was thoroughly flushed. I think the damage to that acre has been
limited.
Is one acre of moderate damage significant enough for you to want to shut
down operations to prevent it?
.
> >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."
>
Well, if that's the damage from one of the largest spills ever, I don't see
how the pipeline can be seen to be a significant hazard to the environment.
One of the best things about land spills of crude is that it can be cleaned
up fairly quickly, and is not likely to spread. I'd be happier with 0 of
course, but I would argue that the damage is far less than things we neglect
daily.
>
> I'm not sure what you would consider significant, but in my mind, anything
> termed major probably has some significance.
>
Sure, spills that are big enough to rate a lot of action and attention.
But, nowhere did I see that possible damage to a 200 ft x 200 ft square area
is a major ecological event.
> 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.
>
Well, what seems fair then is that Californians pay a tax equal to the
probable money that the lease rights would give the Federal Government. Why
should the rest of the US forgo income because you don't want the government
to lease offshore rights, like they do in the Gulf Coast?
Mayhaps Big Sur is more beautiful than South Padre Island. Mayhaps its just
in California.
>
> For more on that see the DoFW site at
> http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/issues1.html
> (towards the bottom of the page)
>
60,000 acres is equivalent to 10 miles x 10 miles if I can calculate. I'm
sure with directional drilling in place now, we could cut the footprint down
from that. It seems reasonable for environmentalists to push Bush to
compromise in that manner. I bet that one could get down to about 10,000
acres.
>
> 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.
>
Sorry, provided original figures on one spill at their plant. I looked at
the other links, and there was little hard original data there.
> > 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.
OK, what is your standard?
> >
> > >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,
Then tax consumption. But, you don't want to do that very much at all. I
don't understand. Is energy suppose to be cheap, readily available, and
used sparingly? That's not going to happen. I proposed concrete
conservation measures, and you said that they were extreme. What else will
promote conservation? TV ads don't work very well.
> 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.
>
You provided documentation which stated that, in Alaska, a 1 acre spill that
was mostly salt water and cleaned up in a week was one of the biggest
pipeline spills ever. Over 20 years, this doesn't add up to many acres. I'd
argue that the damage done here is a small fraction of the damage done by
the SUVs from one California town when they go off road.
I realize I've been criticized for being numerical, not by you Doug, but by
others. I would counter that words like major, a lot, or very good are soft
words that can describe wide ranges of events...depending on the persons
point of view.
> 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.
>
Yes, but most of them have no choice. California happily takes the lower
taxes afforded by drilling off other coasts. I'd be much happier if they
paid a "beauty tax" as the price for no leases off their coast.
> > 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.
If they did, they would have been stupid beyond measure. If they didn't,
they could get their same profit from long term contracts....only the public
would pay more for electricity. That last bit is what prompted the idea to
use spot market prices...at the valley in energy prices.
> 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.
Are the California papers that bad? Didn't anyone write that up? I wonder
if I looked in the archives, if there was really a good LA Times or San
Francisco Chronicle article on the risks of relying on spot prices. If
there wasn't, and if the electricity deregulation did get press, then they
showed incompetence.
>
> Wasn't publicized would be the correct way of putting it. But who would
have
> listned anyway?
That is the problem, isn't it. California took the short term approach,
assuming that the historical low in energy prices was the new paradigm.
There is a simple, straightforward way to conserve energy that is being
fought tooth and nail in California: raise prices. Heck, make it a tax that
is refundable based on previous use.
> > 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.
>
>
Not that much more expensive. Compared to cheap gas, sure its not viable.
But I can't imagine any other technique that does not produce greenhouse
gasses coming close as a large scale solution for decades.
>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%?
Even with the recent price rises, its much more than that. Right now petro
is about .80 pence/liter or about $4.30/gal. (Numbers are from last fall,
but that's conservative if anything. The NY spot unleaded price is about
$1.00 gal. Back then it was about $0.90/gal according to
http://www.quotewatch.com/charts/futures/NYMEX/HUM1-weekly.html
Subtract some for trans-Atlantic shipping costs, add some more for retail
markup, and you get somewhere around $1.10/gal without the tax. That makes
sense because the price in TX was about $1.35 back then and the tax was
about $0.38c. So, the tax is about 300% in GB. In France its lower, but I
think its still 200%.
And, that's at high prices. Two years ago it was closer to 500% in GB
>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.).
It does here, with the exception of toll roads. Indeed, the state is
required to pay in cash for roads; no bonds.
> They could follow up by increasing the registration fee for gas hogs.
Etc.
> etc.
>
Right, and in 5-10 years we'd see some minor cut. The only way to obtain a
serious cut in consumption is to have a serious increase in the price of
energy. After the price of crude increased over 300% in real terms between
72 and 81, conservation measures were taken. Then when prices fell by more
than a factor of five, conservation went out the window.
> 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.
>
So, how do we reconcile these two views? I agree that these technicians
paint a poor picture. But, they did not cite numbers on the spills. That
always is a sign to me, when people won't give numbers when they can. The
easiest thing is to have an independent party investigate the complaints. I
presume that you think that the state is not independent, but I understand
why an oil company would not think Greenpeace is. If environmentalists
really wanted to do something, they'd push a compromise to have third party
safety inspections by a firm that makes its money by doing inspections to
high standards. That is reasonable. Simply taking a website at face value
is not.
> > 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?
Well, it is a struggle to worry about long term issues when you are laying
off half of your workforce. I find it frustrating that many people seem to
think that the norm is the energy industry losing money and firing people
right and left. Of course people will look for every cost cutting measure
that doesn't result in them having to fire folks who've done good work for
them for years. That needs to be resisted by regulators. But, one cannot
expect a company to run at a loss forever. Even with the cuts, my company
was losing money every month.
Back when this was happening, California mandated the purchase on the spot
market Spot prices were way down due to the energy glut. California
thought that was the key to long term savings on prices.
Maybe I should explain what spot prices are. Someone has a bit extra
capacity. If there is significant more capacity than needed, it pays to
sell that cheap, because the marginal costs are only a small fraction of the
total costs. So, when there are lotsa sellers and few buyers, it works for
the buyer.
But, when the demand increases, and demand starts to outpace supply, things
change very quickly. The spot price goes up, because now different buyers
are bidding on energy. Since retail prices don't rise, demand does not
slack off significantly with price. The imbalance doesn't have to be more
than a percent for prices to change tremendously.
Oil prices fell from $20.00/barrel to $10.00/barrel when there was a 2%
glut. With a 1%, or so, shortage, they went up to $35.00/barrel. This
isn't just the spot price, this is the overall price.
Does that give you a feel for price volatility with respect to the
supply/demand balance?
>
> > 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
The first step in conservation is for people stop complaining about high
energy prices and boost them some more. If people aren't willing to pay
higher prices, then, IMHO, they aren't serious about conservation.
Individuals may spend extra to conserve, but not large groups.
>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?
Do you seriously think that there are no significant technological barriers
that will be hard to beat with a well funded program? Let me give examples.
We have spent much more on fusion power than lowering the cost of drilling.
I personally know the people who are responsible for about half of the cut
in exploration costs. Their budget was < 10 million. Yet they outperformed
the folks who got billions. Why?
I'd argue the why is a that fusion energy is a much harder technical
problem. Some things are just hard to do. If you like solar, push for
solid state physics, mesoscopic physics, and material science. Then, maybe
in 50 years we will have efficient solar power. Wind may be possible
sooner, but there are still tremendous problems with that. One is that the
wind does not blow steadily. What is the 3 sigma variation in power
available if we are 50% dependant on wind. What sort of power storage would
be required to even this out? How much of the US would have to be wind
farms? Where could they go? Remember, right now wind farms are put in
optimum spots. The next spots will not be as good.
Now, everything that I've read indicates that they are not practical for
large scale application. The pro-wind sites do not address the problems
I've raised very directly. If it were that useful, then it would behoove
them to tackle the minuses straight on.
If I'm wrong, then the increase in price will open the door for people to
prove me wrong.
> I think the former is a dead end
Well, if you include all fossil fuels, we'll probably have enough for about
500-1000 years at present usage. This includes the higher prices needed for
shale oil, and the assumption that a reasonable amount nuclear power will be
used.
>and I don't think that screwing up the ANWR or the Big Sur coastline will
buy us anything.
What constitutes screwing up. Massive oil spills? Spills equal to the
spills from regular shipping? 10% of that number? 1%? Or just the fact
that derricks are not pretty?
>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.
Over how long? I'd guess about 50 years, right? I'm for conservation. But
even with the mandates for higher gas mileage, mileage is going down because
energy is cheap so SUVs are fine. Send prices up, and conservation will
happen.
Indeed, if taxes on energy were raised to 100% on electricity and 300% on
gasoline, then conservation would happen. But, we only had a 5% dip when
that happened naturally, so it may not do everything.
But, this isn't popular, so it probably won't happen. Unfortunately, I
think people want conservation, as long as someone else pays for it.
Dan M.
