by Michael Conathan

The Weather Channel’s reality series “Coast Guard Alaska” gives viewers an exhilarating taste of what life is like for coasties stationed in the distant reaches of our 49^th state, conducting search-and-rescue and fishery enforcement missions in some of the harshest weather conditions known to man.

But starting this summer, the U.S. Coast Guard will have a new purpose in Alaska: babysitting. And you and I will be paying for it.

At a time when budget restrictions have forced belt-tightening across the Coast Guard’s suite of missions, it is making a major commitment of taxpayer dollars and limited assets to monitor Royal Dutch Shell’s Arctic Ocean oil and gas drilling.

The Coast Guard is already stretching is dollars to try to overhaul its fleet of cutters — most of which were built in the 1960s — while continuing to keep our waterways and mariners safe. Under the proposed budget for fiscal year 2013, it already faces funding cuts that even budget hawk Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R-AL) called “challenging for us to accept” because they “bluntly [gut] operational capabilities.”

Yet the Coast Guard plans to deploy key resources to the Arctic this summer exclusively for Shell’s plans to begin exploratory oil drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas — activities the insurance giant Lloyd’s of London called out for posing a “unique and hard-to-manage risk.”

The Coast Guard will send up one of the service’s three new National Security Cutters, a sea-going buoy tender, and two helicopters from the closest Coast Guard station in Kodiak, AK — over 1,000 miles away.

Taxpayers won’t just be paying the financial price. Because the service has a finite number of ships, aircraft, and personnel, we will also sacrifice part of the Coast Guard’s ability to carry out other missions, including homeland security, migrant and narcotics interdiction, fisheries enforcement, and search-and-rescue operations.

At a July 2011 Senate hearing on Arctic drilling, Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp seemed to question his service’s capacity to respond to a potential spill in the Arctic, saying “if [a spill] were to happen off the North Slope of Alaska, we’d have nothing.  We’re starting from ground zero today.” He elaborated on those comments at a December hearing, saying his “most immediate operational need is infrastructure.”

On April 16, Papp confirmed that the Arctic deployment, “will come at the expense” of other missions:

Most likely we’ll draw down drug interdiction missions to send a national security cutter up there. Or more fisheries are left unprotected, or something else out there…. Right now we’re keeping a pretty good balance [of missions], but it’s going to be a challenge going forward. We’ve got certain things we’re just not going to be able to do.

One can’t help but wonder how that will play out when a fishing boat runs into trouble a hundred miles off the Aleutian Islands this summer and the helicopter needed to rescue those fishermen is a thousand miles away.

Or when another semi-submersible loaded with cocaine slips through an increasingly perforated dragnet in the southern Pacific that could have been tightened by the presence of a state-of-the-art National Security Cutter.

Certainly, the Coast Guard must have a presence in the Arctic while Shell’s drilling operations are moving ahead. Given the lack of infrastructure detailed in the Center for American Progress report, Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America’s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic, it’s clear that greater investment must be made in developing the capacity to handle a potential worst-case scenario before drilling commences.

But this year, the sole purpose of Coast Guard operations in the region is to monitor Shell’s activity, thus taking away from other important activities. While Adm. Papp speaks to the need for his service to grow its Arctic capabilities, the inherently multi-mission Coast Guard will have a single mission to undertake in the Arctic: babysitting Shell.

Asking American citizens to sacrifice their tax dollars and compromise vital Coast Guard operations in service to Shell’s unacceptably risky Arctic drilling amounts to nothing more than just another Big Oil subsidy.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

by Kiley Kroh and Michael Conathan

Analysts at one of the world’s largest insurance markets are warning that offshore drilling in the Arctic would “constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk” and urged companies to “think carefully about the consequences of action” before exploring for oil in the region.

Lloyd’s of London, a large UK-based insurance pool, issued a report today outlining the severe environmental and economic risk of oil and gas drilling in Arctic waters. The stunning report comes as Royal Dutch Shell prepares for exploratory drilling operations in the Arctic – even while leading experts warn that there’s virtually no infrastructure in place to clean up an oil spill in the fragile region.

As Arctic ice continues to melt due to climate change, Lloyd’s estimates the region will attract $100 billion in new investment over the next decade. However, analysts warn that responding to an oil spill in a region “highly sensitive to damage” would present “multiple obstacles, which together constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk.”

The environmental consequences of disasters in the Arctic have the potential to be worse than in other regions. The resilience of the Arctic’s ecosystems in terms of withstanding risk events is weak, and political sensitivity to a disaster is high. As a result, companies operating in the Arctic face significant reputational risk.

It’s easy for oil companies to dismiss environmentalists concerned about the Arctic as politically-motivated. But when a centuries-old company that has made billions of dollars judging risks and insuring everything from Betty Grable’s legs to the World Trade Center’s new Freedom Tower, thinks an operation might be a little too edgy for them, it ought to make oil companies stand up and take notice.

Richard Ward, Lloyd’s chief executive, “urged companies not to ‘rush in [but instead to] step back and think carefully about the consequences of that action’ before research was carried out and the right safety measures put in place.”

Lloyd’s report includes a laundry list of reasons why oil companies ought to hit the pause button on offshore Arctic drilling, including:

• Significant knowledge gaps across the Arctic need to be closed urgently
• Arctic conditions will remain challenging and often unpredictable
• The environmental consequences of disasters in the Arctic are likely to be worse than in other regions
• The politics of Arctic economic development are controversial and fluid.

Here in the U.S., Shell is on the brink of permits to begin drilling in the pristine Arctic Ocean this summer, despite the concerns of environmental groups, Alaska Native communities, and even federal agencies such as the US Coast Guard and NOAA.  Aside from the long-term climate risk, their chief concerns revolve around Shell’s ability to respond to an oil spill challenging region – which can be dark, frigid, extremely remote, and sorely lacks even the most basic infrastructure.

The challenges posed by these harsh and unpredictable conditions are outlined in the Center for American Progress report, Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America’s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic.  As the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy approaches, it is critical to remember the plethora of personnel and resources needed to facilitate the largest, most coordinated oil spill response effort in our nation’s history. A similar undertaking would be impossible in the Arctic.

These warnings are echoed in the Lloyd’s report, as well as in a new independent federal report issued by the Government Accountability Office, which concluded that Shell’s “dedicated capabilities do not completely mitigate some of the environmental and logistical risks associated with the remoteness and environment of the region.”

As both the CAP report and Lloyd’s recommend, a substantial commitment to science and monitoring is necessary to “close knowledge gaps, reduce uncertainties and manage risks.”  In addition, “full-scale exercises based on worst-case scenarios of environmental disaster should be run by companies,” as well as a significant investment in infrastructure and monitoring to facilitate “safe economic activity.”

If the world’s largest insurance market is warning companies to slow down because we are unprepared for the enormous risks of Arctic exploration, then the U.S. ought to think carefully before we encourage drilling.

Kiley Kroh is Associate Director of Communications for Oceans Communications at the Center for American Progress. Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

In the last two weeks, dozens of members of Congress, hundreds of scientists, and tens of thousands of concerned citizens have expressed their concerns about the environmental impact of drilling in Arctic waters.

In an open letter signed yesterday by 60 members of Congress, federal lawmakers called on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to halt all leases for the Arctic in the agency’s five-year plan until a more sound review of disaster-response capabilities can be conducted:

“Successful oil spill response methods … cannot simply be transferred to the Arctic. The Arctic is a unique environment with significant hurdles that the DOI and related agencies must genuinely address before considering any new leasing in the region prior to including Arctic areas in a five-year plan.”

This follows a months-long investigation into disaster preparation in the Arctic by the Center for American Progress oceans team, which found a complete lack of infrastructure to deal with an oil spill:

There are no U.S. Coast Guard stations north of the Arctic Circle, and we currently operate just one functional icebreaking vessel. Alaska’s tiny ports and airports are incapable of supporting an extensive and sustained airlift effort. The region even lacks such basics as paved roads and railroads. This dearth of infrastructure would severely hamper the ability to transport the supplies and personnel required for any large-scale emergency response effort. Furthermore, the extreme and unpredictable weather conditions complicate transportation, preparedness, and cleanup of spilled oil to an even greater degree.

Just two weeks before, 573 scientists sent a letter to the White House urging the Obama Administration to take a science-based approach to issuing leases in the Arctic and to avoid opening up the region because of political pressure to expand drilling:

“Doing so prior to authorizing new oil and gas activity in the Arctic Ocean will respect the national significance of the environment and cultures of U.S. Arctic waters and demonstrate the value that your Administration places on having a sound scientific basis for managing industrial development of the Outer Continental Shelf.”

If one were to follow these concerns about taking a science-based approach to their logical conclusion, it’s highly unlikely that anyone would consider drilling for more fossil fuels in the Arctic. In its environmental impact statement, the Department of Interior even admits that “the Arctic is experiencing variations that are accelerating faster than previously realized” due to climate change — ironically making the region more attractive for oil and gas extraction as sea ice continues its downward spiral.

Apparently, the plan isn’t sitting well with many interested citizens either. Today was the final deadline for public comments, and almost 400,000 people have asked President Obama to stop the sales of leases in the Department of Interior’s five-year plan, according to the Alaska Wilderness League.

The Obama Administration is set to approve exploratory Arctic drilling permits to Royal Dutch Shell for operations next summer — a company that recently spilled 218 tons of oil in the North Sea and has the worst spill record in the UK since 2000.

Below is the summary of a comprehensive report on the inadequate disaster response capabilities in the Arctic.

by Kiley Kroh, Michael Conathan and Emma Huvos

When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in the early morning hours of April 20, 2010 it spawned one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. BP Plc’s Macondo well blowout lasted 89 days, spewing nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and taking the lives of 11 men. The catastrophe showed the clear need for a massive, well-coordinated response when disaster strikes.

Though the refrain “never again” was echoed time and again in the wake of the BP oil catastrophe, we are now facing a new oil spill threat. After spending over five years and $4 billion on the process, the Royal Dutch Shell Group is on the cusp of receiving the green light to begin exploratory drilling in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas next summer. Though Shell emphasizes it would drill exploratory wells in shallow water rather than establishing deep-water production wells like Macondo, the fundamental characteristics of the vastly unexplored and uninhabited Arctic coastline may increase the likelihood of a spill and will certainly hamper emergency response capability.

The decision to move forward with drilling in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth has deeply divided Alaska Native communities, drawn stark criticism from environmental groups, and caused other federal agencies such as the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to raise concerns about the glaring absence of sound science in the region. This is highlighted in a recent letter to the Obama administration, signed by nearly 600 scientists from around the world, calling on the president and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to follow through on their commitment to science and enact recommendations made by the U.S. Geological Survey before approving any drilling activity in the Arctic. In addition to the lack of a scientific foundation, the Arctic has inadequate infrastructure to deal with an oil spill, and response technologies in such extreme environmental conditions remain untested.

As we detail in this report, the resources and existing infrastructure that facilitated a grand-scale response to the BP disaster differ immensely from what could be brought to bear in a similar situation off Alaska’s North Slope. Even the well-developed infrastructure and abundance of trained personnel in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t prevent the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Our Arctic response capabilities pale by comparison.

There are no U.S. Coast Guard stations north of the Arctic Circle, and we currently operate just one functional icebreaking vessel. Alaska’s tiny ports and airports are incapable of supporting an extensive and sustained airlift effort. The region even lacks such basics as paved roads and railroads. This dearth of infrastructure would severely hamper the ability to transport the supplies and personnel required for any large-scale emergency response effort. Furthermore, the extreme and unpredictable weather conditions complicate transportation, preparedness, and cleanup of spilled oil to an even greater degree.

Much of the Arctic region quite simply remains a mystery, largely untouched by human activity. Yet other Arctic countries are moving forward with oil and gas exploration—Russia signed a $7.9 billion exploration deal with BP last year and Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. are both expected to drill off Greenland over the next few years. Last year Norway rejected plans to drill in some areas north of the Arctic Circle, but has indicated it intends to ramp up production in the Barents Sea, a region it shares with neighboring Russia.

Due to the need for specially designed equipment, long supply lines, and limited transportation, a recent analysis from the nonpartisan U.S. Energy Information Administration found that “studies on the economics of onshore oil and natural gas projects in Arctic Alaska estimate costs to develop reserves in the region can be 50 to 100 percent more than similar projects undertaken in Texas.” Despite these hurdles, some in the United States are eager to keep pace with other Arctic nations by tapping into the “great opportunity” for economic gain they believe lies beneath the pristine Arctic waters. Drilling for oil in this fragile region, however, should not be pursued without adequate safeguards in place. If we’ve learned anything from the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, it’s that the importance of preparedness cannot be overstated.

To read the whole report, visit the Center for American Progress website.

Kiley Kroh is the Associate Director for Ocean Communications, Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy, and Emma Huvos is an intern at the Center for American Progress.

A comparison of the oil spill response capability in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. Click to enlarge.

In “Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America’s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic,” the authors, Kiley Kroh, Michael Conathan, and Emma Huvos, investigate the prospect of drilling in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth, and find the preparations by the oil and gas industry, federal agencies, and Congress are inadequate, overstretched, and untested:

This report outlines the specific shortcomings in both Shell’s response plans and the private- and public-sector response capabilities to a devastating oil spill in the Arctic region of the United States. Failing to meet the targets laid out here will expose the residents and natural resources of one of the last unspoiled places on the planet to an unacceptable level of risk. Until the oil and gas industry and its federal partners can demonstrate with certainty that they can identify and respond to a true worst-case scenario incident, the Arctic should remain off-limits to exploration and drilling.

In one telling example of dangerous shortcuts in the rush to drilling, Shell’s spill response plan describes a “worst-case scenario” of a spill happening in the relatively warm month of August, although it submitted plans to drill into the drastically harsher month of October.

The report also contrasts the very limited infrastructure for oil spill response in Alaska to the robust infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico (which was still unable to prevent serious harm from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster).

In October, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator Jane Lubchenco told ThinkProgress Green that the implications of accelerating climate change by drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic has “huge implications for the global system.” Although NOAA is the nation’s top oceanographic agency, its scientists play only a minor, advisory role in the government’s approval of offshore drilling, which is run by the Interior Department. NOAA plays a larger role in cleaning up after oil spills.

Below is the summary of CAP’s recommendations for what needs to happen before offshore Arctic drilling should proceed:

For Shell:
– Develop a credible worst-case scenario—have a well-designed and vetted emergency plan in place that includes proof of the ability to respond to a worst-case blowout/oil spill
– Demonstrate that a blowout can be contained, including the required installation of redundant emergency shut-off systems
– Ensure adequate response capabilities are in place before drilling operations commence

For the federal government:
– Require and oversee oil spill response drills in the Arctic that prove the assertions made in company drilling plans prior to plan approval
– Improve weather and ocean prediction and monitoring capabilities to ensure a safe and effective oil spill
– Engage other Arctic nations in developing an international oil spill response agreement that includes an Arctic Ocean drilling management plan

For Congress:
– Appropriate adequate funds for the Coast Guard to carry out its mission in the Arctic, including increasing our icebreaking capability
– Significantly increase the liability cap (currently $75 million) for oil companies in violation of drilling safety rules
– Appropriate additional funds for NOAA research and development to increase oil spill response capacity in the Arctic

Kiley Kroh is the Associate Director for Ocean Communications, Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy, and Emma Huvos is an intern at the Center for American Progress.

Download the “Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling” report.

We, the undersigned 573 research scientists, call upon the Administration to follow through on its commitment to science by acting on the USGS recommendations. Doing so prior to authorizing new oil and gas activity in the Arctic Ocean will respect the national significance of the environment and cultures of U.S. Arctic waters and demonstrate the value that your Administration places on having a sound scientific basis for managing industrial development of the Outer Continental Shelf.

“Already stressed by rapidly melting summer ice, the whales, walrus, ice seals, polar bears, and other wildlife in these waters are especially vulnerable to oil spills and industrial activity,” the Pew Environment Group and the Ocean Conservancy explain in a full-page ad they will run in the New York Times and Politico highlighting the letter.

Drilling for fossil fuels in a melting Arctic would accelerate the potentially catastrophic destabilization of the planet’s thermostat. As National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco told ThinkProgress Green, “We don’t fully understand what the consequences of that are going to be.”

An upcoming report from the Center for American progress, due to be released later this month, will examine in greater detail America’s deficiencies in regard to Arctic infrastructure and oil spill response preparedness, and suggest steps to be taken before activities, such as drilling, commence in the world’s last unspoiled frontier.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster ruined Florida's shores.

Pipelines are the safe way, building those rigs, into our shores is the best way to create a good economy and a safer Florida.

Watch it:

But Santorum ignores that more than 1 million people are currently employed by Florida’s tourism economy and recreation contributes $67,595 million annually to the economy and generates 794,841 jobs in the South Atlantic region.

Santorum, however, says this industry is more threatened by high oil prices than by the risk of an oil spill. The question still remains for the GOP candidates why Florida should risk its beaches to save Americans mere pennies in gas prices.

On Monday, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) closed its acquisition of bankrupt Canadian tar sands producer OPTI Canada Inc. CNOOC gets OPTI’s 35 percent working interest in Long Lake and three other project areas located in the Athabasca region of northeastern Alberta, split with Canadian operator Nexen Inc. The deal cost $34 million for OPTI stock and $2 billion in debt. [Reuters]

On Wednesday, CNOOC and Nexen formed a joint venture, giving CNOOC a 20 percent working interest in the Kakuna, Angel Fire, and Cypress deepwater exploration wells in the Gulf of Mexico. [BusinessWeek]

These dirty investments in North American fossil fuel projects are just the latest in a rapid string of deals to give China access to high-polluting carbon energy from the Americas. Over the last three years, China-owned companies have invested over $18 billion in tar sands, shale gas, and coal projects in Canada and Venezuela:

November, 2011: China signs a $6 billion deal with Venezuela to develop tar sands — $4 billion to the Chinese-Venezuelan tar sands company Sinovensa to increase production from 118,000 barrels a day to 1.1 million barrels a day in 2014, and $2 billion to Venezuela’s state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela for refining projects, drills, and equipment. [Channel News Asia]

October, 2011: Sinopec spends $2.2 billion to acquire shale gas producer Daylight Energy, which controls 300,000 acres of oil and gas property, at a 70 percent premium. [Bloomberg]

May, 2010: China Investment Corporation spends $1.25 billion on Alberta tar sands — $817 million for a 45 percent stake in the Peace River tar sands project owned by Penn West Energy Trust, and $435 million for a 5 percent interest in the company. [Penn West Energy]

April, 2010: Sinopec spends $4.65 billion to buy ConocoPhillips’ 9 percent stake in tar sands producer Syncrude Canada. [New York Times]

February, 2010: PetroChina spends $1.73 billion to purchase 60 percent of AOSC’s MacKay River and Dover tar sands projects. [CRI]

July, 2009: China Investment Corporation spends $1.5 billion to purchase 17 percent of Teck Resources, Canada’s largest metallurgical coal and copper mining company. CIC was recently granted a seat on Teck’s board of directors. [China Daily]

In 2005, PetroChina and Enbridge signed a $2 billion deal to help the Canadian tar sands company develop the Northern Gateway Pipeline, a project intended to deliver 400,000 barrels of tar crude a day from Edmonton, Alberta to the British Columbia port town of Kitimat, giving China access to direct tar sands shipping.

The pipeline has been unbuilt for years, facing stiff opposition and economic challenges. This Friday, Gitxsan First Nation announced it would become “the first aboriginal partner” for the pipeline. On Thursday, 130 native groups in Western Canada pledged to block the project. Enbridge has offered up to a 10 percent stake in the pipeline to first nations who sign on.

Today, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals will debate a proposal to jump start oil shale production, which could be one of the dirtiest forms of energy in existence if it were to become viable. Subcommittee Chairman Doug Lamborn’s (R-CO) bill would codify midnight regulations on oil shale that the Bush administration passed just as it was leaving office in early 2009.

You’re not alone if you haven’t heard of oil shale, which should not be confused with the viable energy producer “shale oil.” In order to develop the oil shale, a type of rock, power plants must be built to heat the rock up to nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and produce crude oil that still needs to be refined. This takes a large amount of energy and money, as well as 3-5 barrels of water per barrel of oil produced, a dangerous issue in the parched West.

Politicians and oil companies have extolled the virtue of this “new” form of energy since the early 1900s, yet not a single barrel of oil from oil shale has been commercially sold. That does not stop today’s politicians and oil CEOs from using the same language as their decades old predecessors. In a field hearing this summer, the Checks and Balances Project developed a bingo card with old-timey oil shale phrases — all of which but one were used. You can follow along today to see if the same arguments are used yet again (click on the card for a larger version).

Oil companies and proponents of oil shale claim it can “solve our energy crisis,” and Lamborn recently claimed that it is “one of America’s greatest natural resources.” Yet, despite decades of experimentation and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, oil shale has never been produced commercially in the United States. Even the director of the Center for Oil Shale Technology and Research admitted that:

All of the major companies are doing oil shale because they think it’s an interesting and high-potential area, but they’re not in a hurry to make it productive…

Oil companies already have research and development leases on public lands, but they now seeking even more public lands on which to experiment. Lamborn’s bill continues to reward dirty fossil fuel companies for chasing what some have called “the petroleum equivalent of fool’s gold.” Throughout his career, Lamborn has received $126,962 from the oil and gas industry.

On Wednesday, House Natural Resource Committee Republicans held their 20th oversight hearing on how to drill more. In addition to oil shale, todays legislative hearing will feature bills to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to mandate offshore oil and gas lease sales.

Tomorrow, less than a week after issuing the most recent five-year leasing plan for offshore oil and gas development, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is slated to testify in front of the House Natural Resources Committee on “The Future of U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Development on Federal Lands and Waters.” As part of the committee’s 19 previous hearings, members of the committee have accused the Obama administration and the Secretary of “dramatically declined permitting,” imposing “constant obstacles,” and putting “the brakes on” American energy development.

As described in more detail below, we are drilling more in this country than we have since 1987. So why are we sitting through a 20th hearing on oil and gas drilling when the committee has only held four on wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower combined? Follow the money. We have compiled a chart of the members of the Natural Resources Committee who can count the oil and gas industry among the top five contributors to their election campaigns over the course of their careers.

Using data from opensecrets.org, ThinkProgress has also determined that Republicans on the committee have already taken in $485,506 for next year’s election, compared with Democrats who have received at most $79,000 in donations. So, the party holding a majority of seats in the House — and therefore in charge of setting the hearing schedules—has taken six times as many campaign contributions from Big Oil in 2012 cycle compared to the minority.

Although the committee’s leadership have tried to make the case that the Obama administration is standing in the way of oil and gas development on federal lands and waters, the facts show that we are drilling for oil and gas more than anywhere else in the world. Here are some important pieces of information to keep in mind for tomorrow’s hearing:

- The Wall Street Journal reported in late August that U.S. oil drilling is “up nearly 60% in the past year and the highest total since at least 1987, when oil services company Baker Hughes Inc. began keeping track.”
- A June 2011 report by Headwaters Economics found that U.S. onshore drilling activity was at 91 percent of the 20-year high.
- There is more drilling in the U.S. than the rest of the world combined. As of today, there are 2,016 drill rigs operating in the U.S. and 1,697 rigs operating in the rest of the world, according to industry statistics.
– In 2010, total U.S. oil production (onshore and offshore) was the highest it has been since 2003.
- In 2010, the BLM processed 5,000 drilling permit applications; in 2011, that number is projected to be 7,200.
- Shallow water permits have averaged more than seven per month since fall 2010, about equal to 2009.
- Earlier this year, the administration announced a massive sale of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico
- Despite serious misgivings from the public, conservationists, and the Coast Guard, the administration approved initial permits for Royal Dutch Shell to commence exploratory drilling in the Arctic.

Meanwhile, the Big Five oil companies have posted $101 billion dollars in profits so far this year, which does not necessarily mean they will spend that money to put people back to work. From 2005-2010, BP, Shell, Exxon/Mobil, and Chevron combined to make more than half a trillion dollars in profits, and they reduced their U.S. workforce by over 11,000 jobs. In 2010 alone, while oil drilling increased nearly 60 percent, and they pocketed $73 billion, they handed pink slips to 4,400 Americans.

California Hits Renewable Energy Milestone: 1 GW of Solar Power Installed to Date

California has hit a major renewable energy milestone: 1 gigawatt — or 1,000 megawatts — of solar power has been installed on rooftops throughout the state, according to a report to be released Wednesday by Environment California, a statewide advocacy group.

One gigawatt is … enough energy to power 750,000 homes. Five countries have hit the 1 gigawatt installation mark to date: Germany, Spain, Japan, Italy and the Czech Republic. California has installed more solar power than France, China and Belgium.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OR COMMENT

The cumulative tally for California includes solar panels installed on existing homes and commercial buildings as well as new-home construction. It includes solar connected to the electric grid by large utilities like PG&E as well as solar within municipal utilities in cities like Palo Alto and Santa Clara.

The report credits the California Solar Initiative, the state’s aggressive program to encourage homeowners, businesses, local governments and nonprofit organizations to install solar panels on their roofs, with the milestone. About 600 megawatts has been installed through the California Solar Initiative.

“California can become the Saudi Arabia of the sun if it continues to get behind big, successful solar programs,” said Michelle Kinman of Environment California and co-author of “Building a Brighter Future: California’s Progress Toward a Million Solar Roofs.”

U.S. Wind Market May ‘Fall Off a Cliff,’ Vestas Says

U.S. wind turbine sales may “fall off a cliff” unless lawmakers extend tax credits supporting the market beyond 2012, said Ditlev Engel, chief executive officer of Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the biggest maker of the machines.

The so-called production tax credit gives an incentive of 2.2 cents a kilowatt-hour of wind power on payments by turbine operators. Markets have disappeared in the past when such relief is removed, Engel said yesterday in a telephone interview.

“Our concern is that if the PTC is not extended, history has shown us that these markets tend to fall off a cliff,” he said from the company’s main office in Aarhus, Denmark. “We should prepare ourselves for it.”

Ending the program would be a blow to producers including Vestas and General Electric Co., the third-biggest wind turbine maker, already struggling with falling prices amid increased competition from Chinese rivals. Lewis Hay, CEO of clean energy company NextEra Energy Inc., last week said he didn’t expect the business to develop any new wind projects in 2013 and 2014.

Vestas delivered 1,093 megawatts of turbines to the U.S. in 2010, or 19 percent of sales, according to its annual report.

Republicans test Senate’s will to stand up for EPA

Republicans will get a rare chance to test just how deep the Democrat-controlled Senate’s support for environmental regulations goes.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., plans to offer a resolution Thursday to block newly adopted regulations aimed at curbing power plant pollution that causes unhealthy air downwind.

The Senate has successfully blocked numerous GOP measures to roll back environmental regulations during this Congress. But now Paul is invoking the Congressional Review Act, a rarely-used tactic that requires a simple majority to pass. That means the bar for passage is lower than the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. And some Democrats — most likely from states with coal-fired power plants — can safely defect and side with Republicans.

For the GOP, it’s another chance to press the Democratic majority on one of its major election-year issues — rolling back environmental regulations Republicans claim will kill jobs and harm the economy. The Republican-controlled House already has passed a bill that would nullify the cross-state pollution regulation.

Obama back in treacherous political waters with new offshore drilling plan

The Interior Department on Tuesday announced a proposed five-year offshore oil-and-gas leasing plan that’s far less expansive than what the Obama administration envisioned before the BP oil spill.

The plan formalizes the White House’s retreat from opening areas off the Atlantic coast and deep into the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which was contemplated before the April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

It remains to be seen whether the plan will hit a political sweet spot for the White House or alienate Obama’s allies heading into 2012.

The administration’s Tuesday energy announcement arrives as President Obama’s overall energy agenda comes under the microscope.

The White House is weighing TransCanada Corp.’s application to build a major pipeline linking Alberta’s oil sands projects to Texas refineries, a plan that’s attracting intense lobbying from environmental groups battling the pipeline and major business groups pushing for its approval.

The oil-and-gas leasing plan’s scope is not a surprise: Interior officials announced they were scaling back the planned leasing expansion last December.

U.S. Solar Installers Oppose China Trade Complaint

A trade complaint filed against China’s solar manufactures three weeks ago has forced members of the U.S. solar industry to take sides. A group of 25 manufacturers and installers, including SunEdison and SolarCity on Tuesday said they are banding together to oppose the complaint.

The formation of the group, called the Coalition for teAffordable Solar Energy (CASE), is the latest twist in a fight over complex issues about fair competition and the role of government subsidies. The trade complaint, filed by a group led by SolarWorld, contends that Chinese solar panel makers – which receive hefty financial support of the Chinese government – have been flooding the U.S. market with products at unfairly low prices. SolarWorld’s group is asking the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Commerce Department to investigate Chinese silicon solar cell and panel  makers and impose duties on what they export to the United States (solar cells are assembled to form solar panels).

Will Climate Change Kill Off Joshua Trees?

It’s hard to imagine the national park’s iconic Joshua trees disappearing, but a few ecologists say climate change could threaten the species.

Dr. Cameron Barrows, an assistant research ecologist at University of California at Riverside’s Palm Desert campus, has spent the last few years working with Joshua Tree National Park to study environmental changes and their affects on plants and animals. Barrows conducts many of the research initiatives at the university’s Center for Conservation Biology.

Barrows creates scientific models and uses what he calls “citizen scientists” to collect information in the field about Joshua tree distribution in JTNP.

“The models we create show how Joshua trees or other species change in response to a warming climate,” Barrows said from his office in Palm Desert Monday.

Based on his findings, Joshua trees will survive in the national park, but not at the levels we see them at today.

Yesterday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the Obama Administration’s highly anticipated plan for proposed offshore oil and gas leases from 2012-2017.  It focuses on exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and giving oil companies the chance to bid on drilling rights in Arctic waters, including the Beaufort and Chukchi seas and the Cook Inlet.

Because the plan targets areas with known potential for oil and gas development where exploration is currently active, the administration is ruling out drilling along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts — including an area near Virginia that had been slated for exploration prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The Arctic lease sales are scheduled late in the 5-year period to allow for further scientific study and data collection, and longer term planning for spill response preparedness and infrastructure. Deputy Secretary David Hayes also indicated that any expansion of Arctic exploration should account for the “Arctic’s unique environmental resources and the social, cultural, and subsistence needs of Native Alaskan communities.”

With the nearest Coast Guard station over 1,000 miles away and with few proven techniques for oil spill cleanup in extreme Arctic conditions, a spill in the Beaufort or Chukchi seas could devastate the entire region. “If a major spill were to occur in Arctic waters, cleanup crews would have to spend, on average, three to five days of each week simply standing by, watching helplessly as the blowout or spill continued to foul fragile Arctic ecosystems,” said World Wildlife Federation program director Rob Powell.

“Opening additional areas of drilling in the Arctic when we so clearly lack adequate response capabilities just confirms that we have apparently learned nothing from the worst offshore oil spill in our nation’s history,” said Michael Conathan, CAP’s Director of Ocean Policy in a statement to National Journal. “As tragic as the Deepwater Horizon disaster was, we must recognize that it occurred in relatively benign environmental conditions. That will not be the case with any spill in the Arctic.”

Shell plans to drill in the Beaufort Sea through October 31^st – for a snapshot of the actual worst-case scenario they should be prepared for at this time of year, one only needs to look to the hurricane-force storm, with 35-foot waves and 100mph winds, currently churning toward the Alaskan coast.  While the worst of the unprecedented storm is projected to target the Bering Sea, coastal residents along the Bering and Chukchi seas were urged to “not delay in taking needed precautions for this unusually severe and potentially life-threatening storm.”

While this plan would allow up to five additional years to develop adequate Arctic response capabilities, the Interior Department has not shown the same prudence in permitting Shell’s proposed drilling activity in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas under leases purchased earlier. Even though US Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp recently told Congress that the US was not prepared to respond to an oil spill in Arctic waters, and lacking any proven method for responding to an oil spill in the region, BOEMRE conditionally approved Shell’s exploration plan for the Beaufort Sea in August.

Meanwhile, continuing to push for expanding drilling in the gulf seems to ignore a report released by Salazar’s own agency earlier this year which found “more than 70 percent of the tens of millions of offshore acres under lease are inactive, neither producing nor currently subject to approved or pending exploration or development plans. This includes almost 24 million inactive leased acres in the Gulf of Mexico.” Rather than investing BOEM’s already strained resources in permitting new areas, oil companies should first use the leases they already have.

The public now has 90 days to weigh in on the draft environmental impact statement and the proposed lease program, before the Interior Department can issue a final environmental impact statement and proposed final program. After another 60 days of review before Congress, the government could finalize the OCS leasing plan.

— Kiley Kroh is Associate Director of Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress. CAP Intern Emma Huvos contributed to this report.

Royal Dutch Shell’s quarterly earnings report includes numbers that are almost too big to comprehend – profits of $7 billion in just the last three months, or $2.3 billion in the last month, or $583 million in the last week, or $83 million on Thursday.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll never see the amount of money Shell makes in one day in my entire lifetime. Granted, they are a huge multinational corporation with a budget that is bigger than many nation states. I’m a mere mortal. But with that much money — just in profits alone — you’d think that a multinational corporation like Shell could move mountains. Or at least step up to the challenge of putting together a viable plan to clean up an oil spill in one of the world’s most extreme, remote places — the Arctic Ocean.

Instead, Shell has put forward an oil spill response plan that looks like a fancy cut and paste job from the spill plans of yesteryear. (Remember BP’s Gulf of Mexico spill plan? The one that talked about walrus in Louisiana’s warm, tropical waters? Those are the plans I’m talking about.) It looks to me like Shell didn’t even bother spending a day’s profits on their spill plan for the Arctic. Instead, they’ve piled millions into PR about how great the plan is.

Shell’s latest Arctic P.R. scheme barely costs them a minute’s worth of profits. They recently announced that they will donate $5,000 in Inupiat language preservation grants to an Arctic community school that comes up with the best Inupiat name for one of the drill rigs they plan to use to drill 10 wells in the Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

But back to Shell’s plan to clean up an oil spill in waters completely covered by sea ice nine months of the year (and partially covered the other three months) — in an environment where temperatures plunge well below zero, there is no sunlight and where more often than not, hurricane force winds cause icebergs the size of apartment buildings to move at 40 mph. The Arctic gives foreboding a new zip code.

Here are some of the highlights of Shell’s plan:

- Shell assumes that it can recover an unprecedented 95 percent of oil spilled in Arctic water using mechanical containment and recovery efforts (like booms and skimmers), despite the fact that such efforts only recovered 8 percent of oil after the Exxon Valdez spill, and only 3 percent of oil after the Deepwater Horizon spill.

- A 2000 spill drill in the Arctic (the last public spill drill) showed that traditional mechanical recovery techniques were a complete “failure.”

- Shell only plans for a “worst case” spill in relatively warm and ice-free August conditions despite the fact that Shell wants to drill through late October, when ice, darkness and bad weather prevail.

- After more than a year, Shell still has not completed the design of its capping and containment structure to collect oil from a leaking well. This technology has never been used in the Arctic, raising serious concerns as to whether it could be deployed, or would work in the icy waters of the Arctic.

- Shell claims it clean up an oil spill in Arctic conditions, but environmental conditions in the Arctic can sometimes make it impossible to respond to an offshore oil spill. A recent Canadian response gap study concluded that spill countermeasures are often not possible due to environmental conditions that prevail during the proposed drilling season and no response is possible for the seven to eight months of winter.

Despite all this, the Obama administration continues to approve Shell’s plans to drill in America’s Arctic. With no viable plan to clean up an oil spill, in a marine environment about which so little is known — except for the fact that it is already greatly imperiled by climate change — Shell is taking an irresponsible gamble with our one and only Arctic. They aren’t interested in making sure that the Inupiat people have a future or that polar bears, ice seals, walrus, beluga whales and more don’t become relics of the past. They don’t care if the Arctic — our planet’s air conditioner –- is destroyed. No, as we all know, Shell is only interested in making their billions.

Right now, there are several imminent decisions about Shell’s Arctic drilling on the table. The Obama administration has the chance to make it clear that reckless, substandard drilling plans are not acceptable.

It is up to the Obama administration to stop Shell, before it’s too late.

In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress Green, Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), discussed the vicious circle of oil and gas greenhouse pollution melting the Arctic sea ice, making it possible for new oil and gas drilling in the region that will melt the ice even faster. Lubchenco had just appeared in a panel on threats to oceans at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference on Friday morning, discussing ocean acidification and the unexpectedly rapid decline of Arctic sea ice, both results of greenhouse pollution from burning fossil fuels.

“Less sea ice means greater access to reserves for gas and oil that are there,” Lubchenco said in the TP Green interview, agreeing that “increased production of oil and gas means less sea ice.” When asked whether there are civilizational risks to a world without permanent Arctic sea ice, Lubchenco explained that “what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic”:

Well, what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. It has huge implications for the global system. And one of the reasons people are legitimately concerned about melting of sea ice are the uncertainties associated with the consequences of that for the rest of the planet. We’re entering a no-analogue world here. We’ve never experienced the kinds of changes that we’re seeing now in the Arctic and elsewhere. And we don’t fully understand what the consequences of that are going to be.

Watch the interview:

The United States and other nations with access to the Arctic are taking steps to support the expansion of drilling in regions made accessible by global warming pollution. Although Norway is concerned about the costs of a Deepwater Horizon-like disaster, the government is still encouraging Arctic drilling. In August, Exxon Mobil signed a blockbuster deal with Russia’s Rosneft to explore the Russian reaches of the Arctic ocean for oil. This month, the Department of Interior announced it is moving forward with 500 oil drilling leases sold during the Bush administration for the Chukchi Sea. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency granted Shell an air permit for exploratory drilling in the Beaufort Sea.

The Arctic Ocean is estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to have vast reserves of oil and gas. Burning of those fossil fuels would add tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide to our already overheated atmosphere.

Although NOAA is the nation’s top oceanographic agency, its scientists play only a minor, advisory role in the government’s approval of offshore drilling, which is run by the Interior Department. NOAA plays a larger role in cleaning up after oil spills.

Transcript:

TP GREEN: One of the things that people are talking about was the question of Arctic sea ice decline and positive feedbacks. Is it fair to characterize oil and gas exploration that’s opened up because of declining sea ice in the Arctic and thus increasing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere, is that reasonable to call that another positive feedback loop –

LUBCHENCO: [Laughter.]

TP GREEN: — another manmade feedback?

LUBCHENCO: That’s an interesting way to frame it. You know, I think regardless of that the challenges are how do you provide clean energy for the country that addresses our energy security needs while also addressing the realities of climate change. And they’re really in a transition now and there are a lot of different things to be balanced.

TP GREEN: In all seriousness, looking at it from a global civilizational perspective, because the question of Arctic drilling is not solely a US one, but a global one –

LUBCHENCO: Absolutely.

TP GREEN: And you look at it from the basic carbon budget question and the reserves that are potentially locked up there –

LUBCHENCO: Less sea ice means greater access to reserves for gas and oil that are there.

TP GREEN: Is it fair to say that increased production of oil and gas means less sea ice?

LUBCHENCO: Yes, absolutely. That’s what’s driving the –

TP GREEN: Are there any plausible civilizational risks to a world without Arctic sea ice?

LUBCHENCO: Well, what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. It has huge implications for the global system. And one of the reasons people are legitimately concerned about melting of sea ice are the uncertainties associated with the consequences of that for the rest of the planet. You know, we’re entering a no-analogue world here. We’ve never experienced the kinds of changes that we’re seeing now in the Arctic and elsewhere. And we don’t fully understand what the consequences of that are going to be.

TP GREEN: Thank you.

China Targets GE Wind Turbines With $15.5 Billion War Chest

China has taken on General Electric Co. and Western peers that control the $70 billion wind-turbine market, striving to repeat its 2010 coup when the Asian nation sold more than half the world’s solar panels for the first time.

Armed with at least $15.5 billion in state-backed credit, China’s biggest windmill makers Sinovel Wind Group Co. and Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. won their first major foreign orders in the past year. They plan to set up plants abroad, including China’s first in the U.S., easing entry into markets for delivering machines that can weigh 750 tons each.

Sinovel and Goldwind may counter the quality concerns of customers and overtake Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems A/S as the biggest supplier by 2015, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance survey forecast. That can erode sales and margins for suppliers such as GE and Vestas that already face cutbacks in European subsidies and a 22 percent plunge in turbine prices from their 2008 peak.

“The Chinese dragon is coming,” said Jose Antunes Sobrinho, chief executive officer of Brazil’s Desenvix SA, a wind developer that ordered 23 Sinovel turbines in September….

A shift to Chinese suppliers could even nudge down the cost of wind power enough for it to compete with coal and natural gas in the U.S. and Europe when the wind is blowing, threatening fossil fuel-based business models at utilities such as Germany’s RWE AG and Centrica Plc of the U.K.

Gore Links Climate Change to Great Lakes Problems

Former Vice President Al Gore linked climate change to a rash of environmental catastrophes Thursday, from floods in Pakistan to drought in Texas and rampant algae blooms sucking oxygen from Lake Erie.

The fallout from a warming planet is being felt around the world, Gore said in a speech during the annual meeting of the International Joint Commission, which advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on issues affecting shared waterways. Things will get worse unless people reject a campaign of denial orchestrated by the fossil fuel industry and make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

“We’re still acting as if it’s perfectly OK to use this thin-shelled atmosphere as an open sewer. It’s not OK,” Gore said. “We need to listen to the scientists. We need to use the tried and true method of using the best evidence, debating and discussing it, but not pretending that facts are not facts.”

Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign to awaken people to the climate change threat, said warmer temperatures could nullify much of the progress made in recent decades to heal the battered Great Lakes.

Increasingly, severe storms made worse by greater volumes of water vapor in the atmosphere are causing wastewater treatment system overflows that dump raw sewage into the lakes, he said. That forces beach closures and promotes growth of algae blooms that create oxygen-deprived zones where fish can’t survive.

Study: Gulf Seafood Unsafe for Pregnant Women and Children?

Is Gulf seafood safe to eat? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the green light following the BP oil spill that dumped nearly 5 million barrels of crude off the coast of Louisiana last year, but now an environmental watchdog group says the agency’s standards are “based on outdated science” and underestimate the risk of cancer-causing contaminants to pregnant women and children eating seafood from the Gulf.

At issue are what the FDA considers safe levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), compounds found in oil, coal and gasoline that have been linked to cancer in animals and humans. According to Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a researcher with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the FDA accepts 100 to 10,000 times more PAH contamination in seafood than the NRDC deems safe for vulnerable populations.

That conclusion was published online Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. On the same day, the NRDC filed a petition [PDF] asking the FDA to reevaluate its science and set new limits for PAHs in seafood to ensure public safety, especially for vulnerable populations like pregnant women and children.

U.S. Allowing BP to Bid on Leases in the Gulf

After an internal debate, the Obama administration announced on Thursday that BP would be allowed to bid on new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

Just a day before, the Interior Department cited BP, the British oil company, and its two principal contractors for numerous safety and environmental violations related to the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010.

Michael Bromwich, the head of the new Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, disclosed the decision at a House committee hearing. The committee was reviewing the findings of a government investigation into the BP disaster, which left 11 workers dead and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

“The question is, ‘Do you administer the administrative death penalty based on one incident?’ ” Mr. Bromwich told reporters after the hearing. “And we’ve concluded that’s not appropriate.”

Mr. Bromwich told the House committee that his agency had “thought about this issue quite a lot” before deciding to let BP participate in the first scheduled auction of offshore leases since the accident. Two million deepwater acres will be opened for exploration and drilling in the western gulf.

Solar Panels Start to Outshine Mirrors

Factories in China have been churning out solar panels so fast that prices have plunged. Just ask the folks at Solyndra, the bankrupt photovoltaic-cell maker that has gotten the Obama Administration into hot water over loan guarantees. Those Chinese manufacturers are now disrupting another corner of the solar industry: so-called solar thermal installations, which make electricity by bouncing sunlight off mirrors to boil water, creating steam that drives turbines.

At least four companies have abandoned plans for solar thermal plants in the U.S. in favor of electricity-producing solar cells, which have fallen in price by nearly half this year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That means it may no longer make sense to complete many solar thermal projects, typically vast installations in deserts that take years to build. For solar thermal, “the future in the U.S. looks very challenging,” says Brett Prior, an analyst at energy consultancy GTM Research.

In the past two years developers have switched nine thermal projects with about 4.5 gigawatts of capacity to solar panels, GTM reports. In August, Germany’s Solar Millennium (SMLNF) made the change at a $2.9 billion plant 200 miles east of Los Angeles. Then on Oct. 6 the company sold all four of its U.S. projects to another German company, Solarhybrid (SHL), which said it planned to shift the entire operation to panels. Solar Millennium said it sold the plants to focus on thermal in other countries.

Marine Contractors Seek Jobs in U.S. Offshore Wind Supply Chain

Marine contractors and equipment suppliers are seeking a share of the nascent U.S. offshore wind energy industry, executives said.

Kokosing Construction Co., a closely held construction management company, is bidding to lay undersea cables to transmit power from several planned wind farms off the Atlantic coast, Bill Wenger, estimating and marketing manager at its Durocher Marine unit, said today.

There are no wind farms in U.S. waters, and this lack of infrastructure is creating a market for contractors, shipbuilders, oil-rig installers and other companies with experience building large structures at sea.

“We are optimistic about this industry and see it as a big potential business for us,” Wenger said in an interview today at the American Wind Energy Association’s Offshore Windpower Conference in Baltimore.