Arctic Oil Drilling Given Final Approval by Obama Administration

image On Aug. 17, 2015 Shell received the final approval from the US Department of Interior to begin conducting exploratory oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea off the Northwest Alaskan coast. Shell had obtained and paid for the leases to drill during the previous administration of President George W. Bush.

In 2012, Shell attempted exploratory oil drilling activities in the Arctic, but was forced to discontinue its drilling program due to a series of accidents, including the loss of control and grounding of one of its oil drilling rigs.

The annual window of opportunity to drill in Arctic waters is short due to weather conditions, and normally takes place between July and October. Shell’s Arctic drilling operations this year are already behind schedule after a ship carrying emergency well-plugging equipment was damaged by an underwater shoal while in the Arctic. The ship had to return to harbor in Portland for repairs and was prevented from leaving Portland harbor for nearly two days in late July by Greenpeace activists who blocked the ships passage by repelling off the St. Johns Bridge.

Environmental activists were angered by the Obama administration’s approval of drilling in the Arctic. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the drilling will “despoil our last pristine ocean and spew massive amounts of carbon pollution into our atmosphere… This wrong-headed decision also will expose the Arctic to the likelihood of catastrophic spills in ice-choked waters more than 1,000 miles from a Coast Guard base and other critical clean-up infrastructure.” The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management forecast “a 75% chance of one or more large spills occurring” over a 77-year oil extraction scenario.

Source: procon.org

Keystone XL Pipeline: EPA Criticizes State Dept. Environmental Review

Keystone XL Pipeline ConstructionThe Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a public letter on Mon. Apr 22 criticizing the conclusions of a Mar. 1, 2013 State Department environmental review of the proposed Keystone XL tar sand pipeline.

According to the EPA, the State Department had concluded in its “Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Review" that tar sand oil would continue to find its way into the US market regardless of whether or not the pipeline is built, and therefore, approval of the pipeline would "not by itself substantially affect GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions or contribute to climate change.”

The EPA letter criticized those findings, arguing that the State Department report did not properly assess the higher costs associated with rail transport of tar sand oil. The EPA reasoned that higher transportation costs could reduce the total amount of tar sands oil that is extracted and refined, thus reducing future greenhouse gas emissions.

Jack Spencer, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, challenged the EPA’s conclusions stating that the “EPA’s objections to the State Department’s draft [environmental impact statement] demonstrate once again that the EPA is more interested in promoting a political agenda than protecting public health and safety… The XL pipeline has been studied extensively and has been found to be environmentally safe twice.”

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been opposed to the pipeline stating that he is “disturbed by the proposal” and questions “why in the world would we ever consider approving a new Big Oil pipeline to carry dirty fuel and keep America addicted to oil, when we could save money, create jobs, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by moving to stronger fuel economy standards?” Dr.James Hansen, former Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, has argued that “exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts.”

What are tar sands and or oil sands?

The US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Argonne National Laboratory, stated the following on their 2012 Oil Shale & Tar Sands Programmatic EIS website, on the page titled “About Tar Sands,” available at ostseis.anl.gov (accessed Apr. 10, 2013):

“Tar sands (also referred to as oil sands) are a combination of clay, sand, water, and bitumen, a heavy black viscous oil. Tar sands can be mined and processed to extract the oil-rich bitumen, which is then refined into oil. The bitumen in tar sands cannot be pumped from the ground in its natural state; instead tar sand deposits are mined, usually using strip mining or open pit techniques, or the oil is extracted by underground heating with additional upgrading…

Tar sands are mined and processed to generate oil similar to oil pumped from conventional oil wells, but extracting oil from tar sands is more complex than conventional oil recovery. Oil sands recovery processes include extraction and separation systems to separate the bitumen from the clay, sand, and water that make up the tar sands. Bitumen also requires additional upgrading before it can be refined. Because it is so viscous (thick), it also requires dilution with lighter hydrocarbons to make it transportable by pipelines…

Much of the world’s oil (more than 2 trillion barrels) is in the form of tar sands, although it is not all recoverable. While tar sands are found in many places worldwide, the largest deposits in the world are found in Canada (Alberta) and Venezuela, and much of the rest is found in various countries in the Middle East. In the United States, tar sands resources are primarily concentrated in Eastern Utah, mostly on public lands. The in-place tar sands oil resources in Utah are estimated at 12 to 19 billion barrels.”

How the US Uses Oil I. Graph of US Oil Usage by Sector (gallons per year) The US consumed approximately 317.1 billion gallons of oil in 2006. This amount equals about 868.8 million gallons per day or 2.9 gallons per person per day. The following...
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How the US Uses Oil

I. Graph of US Oil Usage by Sector (gallons per year)
The US consumed approximately 317.1 billion gallons of oil in 2006. This amount equals about 868.8 million gallons per day or 2.9 gallons per person per day. The following chart divides US oil usage by four primary sectors: commercial; residential; transportation; and industrial, which includes the agricultural, manufacturing, construction, and mining industries.

II. Products Made from Oil (percentage of total US oil consumption)

III. Common Products Made from Petroleum-based Petrochemicals

(via Alternative Energy - ProCon.org)

Source: alternativeenergy.procon.org