One of the biggest corruption cases faced by the oil industry in recent years is due to resume in Milan on Wednesday as...
Thursday, June 14, 2018 - 17:29 • Sharon Kelly
Back in 2011, The New York Times first raised concerns about the reliability of America's proved shale gas reserves. Proved reserves are the estimates of supplies of oil and gas that drillers tell investors they will be able to tap. The Times suggested that a recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule change allowed drillers to potentially overbook their “proved” reserves of natural gas from shale formations, which horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) were rapidly opening up.
“Welcome back to Alice in Wonderland,” energy analyst John E. Olson told The Times, commenting on the reliability of these reserves after the rule change. Olson, a former Merrill Lynch analyst, is best known for seeing the coming Enron scandal 10 years before the infamous energy company imploded in 2000.
Today, those same rules have allowed shale drillers to boost their reserves of oil, as well as natural gas. As a result, these “proved” reserves, which investors and pipeline companies are banking on, could potentially be much less proven than they appear.
And the unprecented degree to which this is happening in the shale industry casts a shadow of doubt on the purportedly bright future of America's booming oil and gas industry.
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Monday, June 18, 2018 - 17:03 • Ben Jervey
Read time: 4 mins
There’s a major sector of the automobile industry that is unwavering in its support of strong clean car standards: auto parts manufacturers.
Carmakers, through the powerful Auto Alliance trade group, have flip-flopped on fuel economy and emissions targets for cars and light duty trucks — claiming they aren’t for rollbacks even after lobbying for them. On the other hand, auto parts suppliers have consistently argued on behalf of strong national standards, going against the direction currently pursued by the Trump administration.
Monday, June 18, 2018 - 12:30 • Guest
Read time: 3 mins
By Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Crossposted with permission from EcoWatch.
More than 300,000 U.S. coastal homes could be uninhabitable due to sea level rise by 2045 if no meaningful action is taken to combat climate change, a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) study published Monday found.
The study, Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods and the Implications for U.S. Coastal Real Estate, set out to calculate how many coastal properties in the lower 48 states would suffer from “chronic inundation,” non-storm flooding that occurs 26 times a year or more, under different climate change scenarios.
Friday, June 15, 2018 - 15:50 • Guest
Read time: 10 mins
By Simon Evans, Carbon Brief. Originally posted on Carbon Brief, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Renewable energy grew by the largest amount ever last year, while coal-fired electricity also reached a record high, according to new global data from oil giant BP.
However, set against continued rapid rises in energy demand fuelled by oil and gas, renewables were not enough to prevent global CO2 emissions rising significantly for the first time in four years, the figures show.
Thursday, June 14, 2018 - 22:41 • Guest
Read time: 7 mins
By Dan Zegart, crossposted from Climate Investigations Center
In a split decision Thursday, Pennsylvania state regulators allowed the aging Mariner East 1 (ME1) pipeline to resume transporting highly explosive natural gas liquids (NGL), but continued an emergency shut-down of work on a section of a second NGL pipeline, the almost-complete Mariner East 2 (ME2).
Wednesday, June 13, 2018 - 17:10 • Justin Mikulka
Read time: 7 mins
As attendees of this year's annual Energy Information Administration (EIA) conference walked into the Washington, D.C., Hilton Hotel on June 4, there was a bit of confusion. The only conference sign in sight was for a meeting on the “Effects of Climate Change on the World’s Oceans.”
Eventually, conference organizers remedied the problem, and the sign for the climate change conference would be the last time EIA meeting attendees would hear about the warming of the planet and its impacts.
Instead, the EIA conference, hosted by the federal agency that tracks energy industry trends and statistics, would focus on a decidedly different topic: the booming oil and gas industry.
Monday, June 11, 2018 - 12:45 • Sharon Kelly
Read time: 11 mins
By Dan Zegart and Sharon Kelly
A rally in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on Saturday drew a crowd of roughly 200 opponents to Sunoco’s Mariner East projects, who cited a litany of concerns about the company’s plans to pipe natural gas liquids like propane, butane, and ethane from the Marcellus shale 350 miles across Pennsylvania for export.
“This project has made many of us in this community and across Pennsylvania unlikely pipeline activists,” said Ginny Marcille-Kerslake, a resident of West Whiteland Township who lived across the street from a Sunoco drill site. “Opposition to this project has brought together parents, grandparents, neighbors, legislators, emergency responders, business owners, school boards, Republicans, and Democrats alike.”
Sunday, June 10, 2018 - 08:39 • Guest
Read time: 7 mins
By Chris Sellers, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York); Lindsey Dillon, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Phil Brown, Northeastern University
The Environmental Protection Agency made news recently for excluding reporters from a “summit” meeting on chemical contamination in drinking water. Episodes like this are symptoms of a larger problem: an ongoing, broad-scale takeover of the agency by industries it regulates.
Saturday, June 9, 2018 - 08:19 • Guest
Read time: 5 mins
By Martin Bush. Reposted with permission from ClimateZone.org.
Several major economies, including the U.S. and Canada, rely heavily on fossil fuel production and exports. But the surging market penetration of renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency improvements, and climate emission policies are certain to substantially reduce the global demand for fossil fuels.
In a seminal paper published a week ago in Nature Climate Change, researchers present the results of sophisticated multi-dimensional modeling of the macro-economic impacts of future technology transformations and climate change policy, as the demand for fossil fuels declines and the price of oil falls.
Friday, June 8, 2018 - 14:17 • Guest
Read time: 3 mins
By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch. Reposted with permission from EcoWatch.
President Donald Trump headed for the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Canada on Friday but will be leaving before Saturday's meeting on climate change, clean energy and oceans. The White House said an aide will take Trump's place, CNN reported.
