Real Clear Politics Real Clear Energy April 10, 2015 The Daily Bulletin - April 10, 2015 By _Editors_ (http://www.realclearenergy.org/authors/editors/) MOVE OVER TEXAS, BRITAIN DISCOVERS OIL The big news in Britain today is the discovery of a significant amount of oil only a few miles south of London, about halfway between the capital and Brighton, which is Londoners favorite seaside resort. Here’s the report from John Moylan of the BBC: “There could be up to 100 billion barrels of oil onshore beneath the South of England, says exploration firm UK Oil & Gas Investments (UKOG).Last year, the firm drilled a well at Horse Hill, near Gatwick airport, and analysis of that well suggests the local area could hold 158 million barrels of oil per square mile. But only a fraction of the 100 billion total would be recovered, UKOG admits. The North Sea has produced about 45 billion barrels in 40 years. ‘We think we've found a very significant discovery here, probably the largest [onshore in the UK] in the last 30 years, and we think it has national significance,’ Stephen Sanderson, UKOG's chief executive told the BBC. UKOG says that the majority of the oil lies within the Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge formation at a depth of between 2,500ft (762m) and 3,000ft (914m).” Imagine the road to Brighton bristling with oil derricks. _Somehow it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen._ (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32229203) WHY FRACKING IS SPLITTING ENVIRONMENTALISM Brad Plumer of Vox takes note of one of the most blatant contradictions of the environmental movement. Although they inevitably back natural gas when it comes to closing down a coal plant, they don’t like DRILLING for natural gas. Fracking has nearly doubled our natural gas output and is the only thing that is making the shutdown of coal plants possible. Here’s the way he describes it: “Here's a very rough breakdown of the debate: Supporters of fracking tend to argue that the US natural-gas boom, driven by hydraulic fracturing, has actually been one of the big environmental success stories of the past decade. Electric utilities are now using more cheap gas and less dirty coal to generate power. Since gas burns more cleanly, that curbs air pollution: US carbon dioxide emissions have plunged roughly 10 percent since 2005. A big debate: Should fracking be regulated more tightly — or banned? That, in turn, has given momentum to President Obama's big push to tackle global warming and curtail power plant emissions further via EPA regulations. ‘You have to ask,’ Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations told me last fall, ‘does the emergence of a cheap, reliable option for cutting emissions make regulators more willing to force power plants to cut their emissions? And the answer is yes. We're seeing that play out.’ Many green-minded supporters of fracking will also concede that there are real problems with the practice — like water pollution — but they often focus more on patching those problems than on banning it altogether. Advocates of this approach include the Environmental Defense Fund, as well as, crucially, the Obama administration.” _ But then maybe we just shouldn’t expect consistency from the environmental movement._ (http://www.vox.com/2015/4/8/8370401/fracking-debate-environmentalists) THE EMERGING CLIMATE DENIER DIVIDE While environmentalists are divided about the virtues of fracking, climate deniers have their own differences, according to David Roberts of Grist. He notes that establishment Republicans such as George Bush, Jr. and John McCain were willing to deal with climate change but the Tea Party took over around 2010 and took a much tougher stance. “Now that the public and the media are paying more attention, denial is starting to make the GOP look like, to borrow a phrase from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the stupid party. Denialism is increasingly seen, not only among elites but in popular culture, as atavistic and conspiracy-minded. Climate has become one of those issues where the gulf between the insular far right and the rest of American (to say nothing of Western) culture has become so vast that it is serving like a moat, keeping out the very demographic groups the GOP needs in coming years. What to do? GOP pols have been fumbling with this and they’ve ended up all over the map. It’s happening but it’s not human caused. It’s happening but it’s not that bad. The scientists are playing politics. And lately: ‘ I’m not a scientist.’ They’ve been mocked plenty for that last one, but it ’s the one that reveals what’s really going on in right-wing messaging meetings these days, namely a growing pressure to stop talking about the science at all. There is a divide growing in the GOP between the establishment, chafing at being associated with crank conspiracy theories, and the grassroots base, where the war against ‘climate alarmists’ has taken on near-theological overtones.” Probably the real question is whether the issue is important enough so that it’s going to be critical in deciding elections. _The most telling statistic is that the voting public generally ranks climate concerns last among the issues they think are important._ (http://grist.org/climate-energy/theres-an-emerging-right-wing-divide-on-climate-denial-heres- what-it-means-and-doesnt/) INFRASTRUCTURE IS PUTTING CANADA’S ENERGY SUPERPOWER AT RISK It’s been more or less assumed that Canada is going to be an energy superpower with its development of tar sands, fracking for gas and other major projects. But the question of how Canada is going to deliver all this energy to the world is beginning to become a real question. Here’s the way Rita Trichur of the Wall Street Journal reports it: “Canada’s ability to realize its potential as an ‘energy superpower’ is at risk because of infrastructure gaps preventing oil and gas companies from properly accessing global markets, says a top executive at Bank of Nova Scotia. Scotiabank Chief Executive Brian Porter, in remarks prepared for the bank’s annual meeting in Ottawa, cautioned that stalled energy-infrastructure projects, such as pipelines, coupled with Canada’s overreliance on the United States as an export market, will have significant consequences for the country’s economy. Toronto-based Scotiabank is Canada’s third-largest bank by assets and is a lender to the energy industry. Even so, it is rare for a Canadian bank CEO to take such a strong stance on a public policy issue viewed as controversial by some. His remarks come as swooning oil prices are weighing on Canada’s economic growth prospects and companies, including TransCanada Corp. , are facing cost overruns and lengthy delays for its proposed Keystone XL project amid political resistance in the U.S. Although Mr. Porter didn’t name Keystone specifically in the prepared text of his remarks, he stressed that Canada’s inability to make headway on energy infrastructure projects is hurting the price of exports even though the country is the world’s fifth largest producer of crude oil and natural gas.” _Who would think that all that energy could remain bottled up by environmental objections?_ (http://www.wsj.com/articles/infrastructure-gaps-put-canadas-energy-superpower-potential-at-ris k-1428589644) -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[RC] Energy News
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Fri, 10 Apr 2015 13:46:19 -0700
