Drill, Baby, Drill Strategy Won’t Lower Gasoline Prices, Will Enrich Big Oil

North Dakota Oil Derrick. AP Photo.

This is a good news, bad news story, which the media, characteristically, gets half right.

The AP reports today:

U.S. oil output is surging so fast that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer. Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day.

This will be the fourth straight year of crude increases and the biggest single-year gain since 1951….

The increase in production hasn’t translated to cheaper gasoline at the pump, and prices are expected to stay relatively high for the next few years because of growing demand for oil in developing nations and political instability in the Middle East and North Africa.

So much for consumers benefiting from Drill, Baby, Drill. But hey, at least America can be #1 again:

The Energy Department forecasts that U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons, which includes biofuels, will average 11.4 million barrels per day next year. That would be a record for the U.S. and just below Saudi Arabia’s output of 11.6 million barrels. Citibank forecasts U.S. production could reach 13 million to 15 million barrels per day by 2020, helping to make North America “the new Middle East.”

Here is the ironic cover of that recent 92-page Citibank  report (which, it must be noted, never mentions either “climate change” or “global warming” as potential risks to this scenario):

See, when your farmland turns into the Sahara thanks to unrestricted emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas, you’ll have a bunch of cool oil derricks to show for it.

And lest you were worried that there aren’t enough oil and gas shale plays to cover all our future Dust-Bowlified farm land, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has this reassuring chart of North American shale plays, which can be tapped by fracking and horizontal drilling:

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by Peter Sinclair, via Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Heartland Institute, famous for billboard craziness (see above) and hosting the semi-semi-annual woodstock for wackjobs known as the International Conference on Climate Change (hereafter “Denia-Palooza) – which this year featured the (wildly applauded) racist rantings of “Lord” Christopher Monckton, once mere climate crank, now AIDS curer and full-on Obama birth certificate nut-job – that Heartland – has now released a press release pre-protesting whatever treatment they might get in tonights PBS Frontline production “Climate of Doubt”.

Heartland screed as follows:

On Tuesday, October 23, PBS’s “Frontline” program will broadcast a special titled “Climate of Doubt.” It promises to go “inside the organizations” that helped turn the tide of public opinion, and then of elected officials, away from excessive concern over the possible threat of man-made global warming.

The Heartland Institute is likely to be a central figure in this program as we welcomed “Frontline” producer Catherine Upin and her crew to our Seventh International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago in May. Heartland Institute Senior Fellow James M. Taylor also gave a three-hour interview to the film crew in August. Earlier this year, The Economist called Heartland “the world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change.”

We hope the program is accurate and fair, but past experience both with PBS and other mainstream media outlets leads us to predict it will be neither. Several Heartland staff will be watching the program and commenting live via Twitter and on our blog, Somewhat Reasonable.

The Frontline crew, rumor has it,  have been doing some exhaustive digging into the climate denial movement. My only hope would be that the affair doesn’t boomerang with too much face time for crazy people, and not enough for explanatory science.

Moreover, at that conference, a well known denier told me that his biggest concern about public opinion was that it might be swayed by extreme events. I told him to bet on it.  That was a few weeks before we knew that the corn crop was in trouble – and subsequent polling has confirmed his premonition. This summer was a hinge-point in US Public awareness of climate change.

If you think Mitt Romney’s recent threats against Public Broadcasting were about budgets or Big Bird, think again. The reason the right hates PBS is that sometimes it commits the unpardonable sin of journalism.

Peter Sinclair is editor of Climate Denial Crock of the Week. This piece was originally posted at his website and was reprinted with permission.

When Consol Energy, a leading U.S. coal and gas company operating in Appalachia, announced it would be closing its flagship mine in Virgina, Republicans were quick to blame their favorite scapegoat: the Environmental Protection Agency.

Shortly after Consol said it was furloughing 620 workers at its Buchanan Mine, Virgina Republican Representative Morgan Griffith blamed “the administration’s ongoing war on coal,” for the company’s troubles. Days later, state Republican officials did the same, saying “the Environmental Protection Agency has followed through” with regulations that shut down the mine.

But the mine is coming back online as expected, bringing workers with it. And the critics are silent.

According to a press release from last week, “Consol Energy expects to produce 13.4 – 13.8 million tons during the quarter, including 0.6 million at the Buchanan Mine, which is expected to re-start on the week of November 5.” (Hat tip to Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones for flagging).

At no point did the company blame EPA regulations in its announcement. Rather, Consol pointed to weak demand for metallurgical coal, which is used for iron and steel production, not power production.

Consol idled two other mines earlier this year for 1-2 weeks due to weakening demand for thermal coal used in power plants. But this has mostly to do with natural gas eating into the competitiveness of coal — a trend Republicans have held up as a miracle of the free market. At no point did Consul blame EPA regulations for those brief closures either.

According to the Analysis Group, an economic consulting firm, most of the coal plants that are set for retirement would retire without any new air pollution rules from the EPA. That’s because our coal fleet is pretty old — the median age of U.S. facilities is 46 years. It’s also because a lot of coal plants are switching to natural gas.

The Brattle Group, another consulting firm, also recently issued an analysis of coal plant closures, concluding that there are “somewhat more retirements are likely (about 25 GW) than we foresaw in late 2010. However, that change is primarily due to changing market conditions, not environmental rule revisions, which have trended towards more lenient requirements and schedules.”

Read: new EPA regulations have had very little impact on any changes taking place within the coal industry.

The Associated Press recently reported on the market forces behind the shift:

by Katie Valentine

Last November, 12,000 people formed a human chain around the White House in opposition of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Now, nearly a year later, thousands again have gathered – this time, nearly 3,000 miles away from D.C. – to oppose a different pipeline, but with still the same goal in mind: to stop the spread of tar sands oil from the Alberta tar sands.

Protesters gathered in front of the British Columbia legislature in Victoria, B.C. on Monday in opposition to the Northern Gateway Pipeline, a proposed Enbridge, Inc. project that, if completed, would transport tar sands crude 731 miles from Bruderheim, Alberta to a port Kitimat, B.C., where it would be shipped on tankers to Asia.

The protest was organized by Defend our Coast, a coalition of Canadian environmental and social groups and First Nations leaders that formed in opposition of the pipeline. The protest was aimed at showing the provincial and federal government that British Columbians were not in favor of the pipeline’s construction. Though no one was arrested at the event, organizers made clear that civil disobedience had not been out of the question.

“Today in Victoria many thousands of Canadians came to the BC Legislature with every intention of getting arrested – if that’s what it would take to stop these tar sands pipelines and tankers,” Defend our Coast’s website, which live-blogged the event, states. “This was one of the largest acts of mass civil disobedience in the country’s history. Five thousand people gathered on the Legislature lawn, listened to speeches, and symbolically staked a 245 meter long ribbon of black fabric – the same length as a supertanker – into the ground.”

British Columbia Premiere Christy Clark has laid out five demands that must be met if the province is to approve the pipeline, including ensuring the province receives a fair amount of the project’s economic benefits – a requirement some protesters denounced, saying Clark would sell the coastline “for the right price.”

Some of the major reasons Canadians oppose the pipeline include:

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Climate change remained the threat-that-must-not-be-named in the final presidential debate. Even the center-right Politico mocked the candidates for ignoring “a global climate crisis that could result in unprecedented sea-level rise, drought and food shortages.”

So, I’m launching a new occasional feature — “quasi-climate quotes” — words an opinion maker says on some subject that far better apply to climate change.

At the debate, Romney explained why he thinks we need to increase military spending:

And our military — we’ve got to strengthen our military long- term. We don’t know what the world is going to throw at us down the road. We — we make decisions today in a military that — that will confront challenges we can’t imagine.

In the 2000 debates there was no mention of terrorism, for instance. And a year later, 9/11 happened. So we have to make decisions based upon uncertainty. And that means a strong military.

This quote makes little sense as stated, since U.S. military spending “is bigger than that of the next 17 countries combined,” as The Economist noted last year — a point Obama alluded to in the debate himself.

But if one were to apply it to the dangers posed by climate change and to spending on clean energy, then it would require a complete reversal of our current do-little climate policy.

The key point is that there is uncertainty in every major challenge we face. Arguably, reducing risk and avoiding worst-case scenarios are the major drivers of much national spending, from the military to health care. I’ll have more to say on that in a later post.

Uncertainty as it applies to the climate threat has been overstated by both scientists and anti-scientists. As demonstrated in the “Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts” — an analysis of more than 60 recent scientific studies along with numerous review pieces that each cover dozens of studies — we have an unusually high degree of certainty around future climate impacts if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path.

The main “uncertainty” we face on our current emissions path is whether climate change will be the worst catastrophe ever to befall humanity (at a warming of, say 5°F to 7°F) or whether it will mean multiple catastrophes (from warming >7°F) that leave Earth with a carrying capacity far below current population levels. Climate change, much more than military threats, will likely force us to “confront challenges we can’t imagine” — fearsome “unknown unknowns” or unexpected negative synergies such as the bark beetle devastation that wasn’t foreseen even a dozen years ago.

Warming beyond 7F is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e.  4°C [7F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level,” as climate expert Kevin Anderson explains here. Tragically, that appears to be the likely outcome of business as usual.

And that means moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News asked the quintessential quasi-climate question at the end:

What do you believe is the greatest future threat to the national security of this country?

Sadly the President whiffed on this, continuing his indefensible climate silence throughout these debates. And it isn’t like Obama spent most of his response answering the question. As Politico noted, “the moderators’ questions certainly didn’t stop the candidates from diverting the conversation to their talking points of choice.”

In this case, Obama quickly pivoted to a long digression on education. Yes, those focus-grouped-to-death suburban moms that both candidates are fighting for just love to hear about investments in education — but suburban moms and indeed the majority of independents, Democrats, and moderate Republicans support climate action and clean energy as poll after poll after poll shows.

Someday a Churchill will emerge who won’t duck the issue, who understands that discussing climate change “may actually enhance turnout as well as attract voters over to their side.” Let’s just hope he or she emerges in 2016, since time is the one resource we are running out of the fastest.

Here’s an energy-related foreign policy issue that isn’t getting any campaign attention: Coal exports are booming, fueling a surge in global warming pollution — and American taxpayers are picking up a good portion of the tab.

The latest figures from the Energy Information Administration shows just how strongly coal exports have risen. Boosted by growing demand in Asia, the U.S. is on track to ship record amounts of coal overseas this year, surpassing the previous all-time high set in 1981.

If coal exports — mostly steam coal for power generation — continue on pace through the rest of the year, it’s possible they could surge past previous projections for a record year. However, EIA says exports have fallen slightly in the second half of the year due to the global economic malaise and a slowdown in China. But that still won’t stop it from breaking the previous record:

Exports in August, the latest data available, reflect some of the weakening global demand for coal, falling 2 million tons from the record June levels. While declines in export levels inject some uncertainty, exports remain elevated with lower August exports still 13% above August 2011 levels. As a result, 2012 is still expected to surpass the 1981 record.

This increase in exports marks a significant reversal from the general downward trajectory of U.S. coal exports beginning in the early 1990s, which bottomed out in 2002 just under 40 million tons, the lowest level since 1961. Coal exports in 2011 rose 171% from 2002, with only a brief interruption by the global recession. Export growth accelerated after the recession, with consecutive post-2009 growth of more than 20 million tons per year, a level of growth not seen since the 1979-to-1981 export boom. Current data for 2012 (through August) show coal exports are growing even faster, and should more than double 2009 export levels, buoyed by growth in U.S. steam coal.

Asia didn’t get much attention in last night’s presidential foreign policy debate. But if we’re considering energy policy (which the candidates did not), the graphic below shows why the region is an important factor in our policy decisions. In 2011, four Asian countries — China, Japan, South Korea, and India — made up slightly more than a quarter of U.S. coal exports. And with coal consumption in the region expected to nearly double by 2020, a lot more coal could be headed from America’s mines to Asia’s power plants and steel mills.

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by Mackenzie Bronson

Mitt Romney, the American Petroleum Institute, and other fossil fuel allies constantly agitate to open more federal lands and waters to drilling, claiming that they aren’t getting enough access.

But a new report from Representative Edward Markey titled “Use It or Lose It”  finds that 131 oil and gas companies have 3,684 idle leases in the Gulf of Mexico alone. The Big Five oil companies — BP, Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips — are responsible for 40 percent of the 20.7 million acres “not undergoing exploration, development, or production” in the region.

According to the report, a majority of offshore leases and onshore leases are not being used by oil companies:

Oil companies have failed to explore, develop or produce these leases while simultaneously calling on Congress and the Interior Department to lease more federal offshore lands. This issue,  which has been hotly debated in recent years, came up in last Tuesday’s presidential debate when Republican nominee Mitt Romney wrongly accused President Obama of curtailing oil and gas drilling off America’s coasts and on public land. In fact, oil and gas production from public lands  is higher than it was during the last three years of the George W. Bush administration, and the Obama administration is trying to further boost production through “use it or lose it” policies for  idle federal drilling leases. Oil and gas companies are currently not using 72 percent of the total  acres leased offshore and 56 percent of the total acres leased onshore.

Below is a chart showing the change in oil drilling on public lands between the Bush and Obama Administrations:

Romney’s complaints about permits imply that the number of drilling permits is the best measure of oil production from federal lands and waters – but they are not.  The best measure is the amount of oil produced from these places.  The Energy Information Administration reports that there was more oil produced from federal places in every year under President Obama compared to each of the last three years under President Bush.  Total oil production from these places during these two time periods was 240 million barrels of oil higher under Obama than under Bush.

So much for Romney’s claims about the reduction in oil production from federal areas.  And total U.S. oil production under President Obama is at a 17-year high.

The next time Romney or his big oil allies beleaguer about permits or drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it is essential to remember that there are nearly 3,700 idle leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mackenzie Bronson is an intern with the energy policy team at the Center for American Progress.

by Douglas Fischer, via Daily Climate

A new “addendum” to be released as soon as this week purports to update with the latest science a 2009 federal assessment on the impacts to the United States of climate change.

The addendum matches the layout and design of the original, published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Cover art, “key message” sections, table of contents are all virtually identical, down to the chapter heads, fonts and footnotes.

But the new report comes from the libertarian Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute. And its findings – that science is questionable, the impacts negligible and the potential policy solutions ineffective – are more a rebuke than a revision of the original report and of accepted science both then and today.

“It’s not an addendum. It’s a counterfeit,” said John Abraham, an associate professor at the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota who studies clean power sources. “It’s a continued effort to kick the can down the road: A steady drip, drip, drip of fake reports by false scientists to create a false sense of debate.”

The 2009 assessment, titled Global Change Impacts in the United States, was presented to Congress as the federal government’s best assessment of the science and potential impacts. It is part of an ongoing effort by the National Climatic Data Center to assess the state of climate change science.

The Cato Institute bills its report as a “primary reference and a guidepost for those who want to bring science back into environmental protection.” In the introduction to a review copy obtained by DailyClimate.org, Cato president Ed Crane wrote that  the effort “grew out of the recognition that the original document was lacking in scope and relevant scientific detail.”

The Cato report does its share of omitting, however, as well as selectively picking data and reviving long-discredited data and arguments.

Smaller subset

The first example is on the cover: Both reports show a satellite image of the United States, with a bar-chart showing temperature changes running along the bottom. Yet the original 2009 report graphs the dramatic rise in global temperatures from 1900 through 2008, while the Cato report uses a much smaller subset – temperatures only from the United States, and just from 1991 through 2010 – to show a seemingly random pattern.

Other examples:

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Protesters clashed with police in Haimen last December during a protest against coal pollution.

People protesting against the building of a coal-fired power plant in a southern Chinese town threw bricks at police who fired volleys of teargas and detained dozens in the country’s latest environmental dispute, residents say. [Guardian]

A few computer models have conjured up a storm of epic proportions for the mid-Atlantic and/or Northeast next week. But before anyone presses the panic button, other models keep the storm out to sea. [Weather Gang]

Circumstantial evidence suggests that something new is underway. A variation of El Niño has been detected in the central Pacific, well away from the ocean’s eastern edge where it is normally born. This phenomenon, known as El Niño Modoki (Japanese for “looks like, but slightly different from”), causes unusual effects—including a lowering of tide heights, a strengthening of waves, and a tendency to make storms move south. [Economist]

Climate change never emerged as a topic in the three presidential debates, disappointing greens who say President Obama and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney have avoided discussing the issue. [The Hill]

Given the absence of the topic at the two preceding meetings between Obama and Romney, the close of Monday night’s event marked the first time in roughly a generation that climate change has failed to receive an airing at any of the presidential debates. [Huffington Post]

Nebraska agriculture faces serious consequences going into the 2013 growing season if drought conditions persist through the winter. [The Independent]

Across the nation’s Corn Belt, even as the worst drought in more than 50 years has destroyed what was expected to be a record corn crop and reduced yields to their lowest level in 17 years, farmland prices have continued to rise. [New York Times]

A study relating climate to conflict in East African nations finds that increased rainfall dampens conflict while unusually hot periods can cause a flare-up, reinforcing the theory that climate change will cause increased scarcity in the region. [Los Angeles Times]

More than two-thirds of UK citizens would rather have a wind turbine than a shale gas well near their home, according to a new opinion poll published on Tuesday. [Guardian]

Ikea Group, the biggest home- furnishings retailer, more than doubled planned spending on wind farms and solar parks to as much as $2 billion as increased use of renewable power protects it from volatile fossil-fuel prices. [Businessweek]