The Trouble With Political Obsessions

 Alberta Oilsands

To paraphrase Scotty, in the film The Thing From Another World , produced by Howard Hawks and directed by Christian Nyby, "That's the Republicans for ya! Smart all the way to the top!"

Today's news:

First job for new Republican Senate is Keystone XL: McConnell
Reuters
20 hours ago
 http://news.yahoo.com/first-job-republican-senate-keystone-xl-mcconnell-203827076.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new Republican-controlled Senate's first act in January will be approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday.

McConnell told reporters that the bill would be based on a measure that failed in the Senate last month that was co-sponsored by North Dakota Republican John Hoeven and Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu.

"It'll be open for amendment," McConnell said. "I will hope that senators on both sides will offer energy-related amendments but there'll be no effort to try to micromanage the amendment process." ...

 And this is all fine. They did win the mid-term election.

However,
Canadian heavy oil drops below US$40 as new oilsands projects rev up

Robert Tuttle, Bloomberg News | December 15, 2014 | Last Updated: Dec 15 3:58 PM ET

... Canada’s oilsands producers will probably be the first to cut output amid falling prices, Greg Sharenow, executive vice president of Pacific Investment Management Co. said this month.
Canadian crude produced from oilsands is some of the world’s most expensive to produce as it must be dug or pumped from the ground, turned into lighter synthetic crude and then transported by pipeline or rail thousands of miles to refineries...

Who knows?

And the trouble with political obsessions is the simple fact that what is does not always agree with a political viewpoint.

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Keystone Snake

 

Winona LaDuke and Faith Spotted Eagle Make A Stand

by John Isaiah Pepion, 2014

You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest.
You ask me to dig for stones! Shall I dig under her skin for bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again…

--Wovoka

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/

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note:

We may recall Wovoka as the founding voice of the movement referred to by ethnologists as Ghost Dance, or Spirit Dance.

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Fracking

Apparently, tap water does indeed ignite, but it may not be due to fracking, but instead the excess amounts of phlogiston within the aquifers from which the locals draw their water.

http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2014/01/marcellus-shale-documentary-project/

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The Meaning Of "Independence"

Pretend you are the nominee in 2016, and answer question about US energy exports raised at a candidates' debate based on the following 2 sources of information:


(1) 
The Christian Science Monitor(November 2013)
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/1107/Should-the-US-export-oil

Should The US Export Oil?

..."Exporting energy is good for the economy," wrote Blake Clayton, an adjunct fellow for energy at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a June policy memo. "Letting drillers reap extra profits from selling crude oil overseas, if the market dictates, would provide greater incentives for drilling, stimulating new supply. It would also encourage investment in oil and gas production in the United States rather than abroad."

[...]

 Supporting the free market and supporting open trade is a key priority for our industry as well as the President," API  (American Petroleum Institute) spokesman Reid Porter said in an e-mailed statement. "It creates efficiencies, creates jobs, and increases revenue to our government.  These points are often made as part of our public discourse in the context of API’s priority issues.”

(2)
SCITIZEN  (May 2012)
http://www.scitizen.com/future-energies/the-oil-industry-s-deceitful-promise-of-american-energy-independence_a-14-3746.html

 The Oil Industry's Deceitful Promise of American Energy Independence

 ... the industry wants us to hold two contradictory ideas in our heads. The first is, of course, the already debunked 100-year claim. The second is that we are going to vastly expand our use of natural gas: for more electricity generation (for cleaner air, of course!), for more natural gas-powered vehicles, and for more natural gas-based chemicals. 

The industry even wants us to believe that there will be enough left over to export to other countries. How the supposed 100-year supply--which is premised on the current rate of consumption--is going to last that long if the country continually grows that rate is simply glossed over. Add to that what any realistic analysis reveals, namely, that natural gas supplies will almost certainly turn out to be less than claimed, and it's easy to see why natural gas will never be the answer to American energy independence.6
We also have the truly bizarre claim that oil from deep shale formations in places such as North Dakota is going to provide the United States with enough production to reduce its imports to zero. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), however, puts the total technically recoverable resources of oil from deep shale formations at 24 billion barrels. This says nothing, of course, about whether such oil will be economically recoverable. And besides, 24 billion barrels constitutes only about 288 days of world supply or about 3 years of U.S. consumption. 

The rate of production of this type of oil, properly called tight oil, is expected to reach 1.3 mbpd by 2030. And, total U.S. oil production is expected to reach 6.7 mbpd by 2020 and begin to decline thereafter. Since U.S. consumption is projected to remain around 15 mbpd through 2030, the country will continue to import oil and oil products during this entire period...

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Wind Farm Mortality

 A Cuisinart For Four and Twenty - Or More - Blackbirds

Wind farms, although green with respect to energy, are red and bloody with respect to the local flying population.

Hiding “Avian Mortality”: Where ‘Green’ is Red (Part I: Altamont Pass)

by Jim Wiegand
September 4, 2013

“The wind industry is hiding over 90% of the bird and bat mortality caused by their turbines. This statement is supported by the industry’s own data and reasonable adjustments for its manipulations.”

“The wind industry is … producing faulty, misleading and even fraudulent documents to hide the serious and growing mortality. This situation has continued for years but has been shielded by state and federal agencies and other supporters of wind power.”

A “green energy” wildlife genocide is depopulating wildlife habitats across the world where vital species once found refuge. Industrial wind turbines have invaded these habitats and are devastating bird and bat species.

http://www.masterresource.org/2013/09/hiding-avian-mortality-altamont-pass/#more-27387


Bats control insects, and birds often are pollinators...

I believe that the case has been made that the only successful large-scale energy resource is and will be solar. I shall look it up. I have a reference somewhere. Read the above in the meantime.

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Leviathan Socialism

Meaning the Fossil Fuel Industry... of which I own stock, I hasten to state. I own stock in a company whose turn it now is to have some billion dollar problems. As the schemes and ruses employed to wring more and more oil out of Mother Earth become more arcane and more complex, the inevitable accidents will become more and more expensive.

In fact, they will probably reach a point where we must treat them like Nuclear Energy and essentially let the taxpayers pay for disasters or otherwise bail them out, or we could cut them adrift and embrace some other source of energy.

However, in the meantime, in this happy, happy Indian Summer of Oil and other fossil fuels, we may as well get some background on Shell, the world's biggest oil company.

http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/1701281-john-donovan-shell-s-nightmare
John Donovan, Shell's Nightmare

and his site:

http://royaldutchshellplc.com/

I think it will provide us with the required background for the decidedly science-fiction type of energy future we will be facing soon.

Now to the Socialism.
Socialism of Risk is the situation where the risk and the cost of the risky outcomes are borne by society at large, such as Bail-Out of Banks and Bail-Out of Nuclear Energy (Fukushima, e.g.)

In Bloomberg we read:

Shell’s Alaska Plan Doesn’t Eliminate Spill Risks, GAO Says 
By Katarzyna Klimasinska
Mar 30, 2012 4:00 PM ET

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA)’s plan for oil drilling off Alaska’s north coast fails to deal with some risks linked to operating in the remote region, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said...

Any clean-up would be paid by the taxpayers.
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The Return of Socialism

After having marked the anniversary of Fukushima, we turn and find that the nuclear energy industry has emerged from the cloud under which it had been cast, and it is resurgent and an important part of the Energy Mix, or Energy Mosh-Mish, according to your taste.

Nuclear Energy signals the return to Socialism, and it indicates that the old Myth of American Know-How and inventiveness - at least in the field of Energy - is still dead or moribund, having been left for dead by the fossil fuel industry.

Never forget that Nuclear Power is, by its very nature, an industry which is always "Too Big To Fail".
Nuclear cannot be insured, because the scale of disaster when something goes seriously wrong - and it does now every 10 years or so - is too great for any one insurance company and too great for any pool of insurers. Thus, Nuclear has always been uninsured when it comes to disasters:
Nuclear Power has always been a hand-in-hand effort of Government and the Nuclear Industry. The role of Government in nuclear energy has never been of a limited time or scope, as government help has been many, many times to many industries over the course of our history; rather, Government has always remained an active partner.

When Nuclear goes wrong, we pay the bill; add that to the cost of energy.
Many of the people who decry Socialism in Health embrace Socialism in Energy. I can only assume it it because that the socialism in energy is so well-disguised that these people cannot see it. However, when it comes to the Nuclear Option, everybody has to pitch in: no one can opt out.

Someone like Romney may opt out of Medicare, but he cannot opt out of active participation in the socialized risks of Nuclear Energy if it returns big time.
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The Paradox of Power

This will change thinking on the whole business of long-term energy policy... or, at least it would in a fairly sane society. We shall probably ignore it for a couple centuries.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328491.700-power-paradox-clean-might-not-be-green-forever.html

Power paradox: Clean might not be green forever
30 January 2012 by Anil Ananthaswamy and Michael Le Page

 "Sagan used to preach to me, and I now preach to my students," says Chaisson, "that any intelligent civilisation on any planet will eventually have to use the energy of its parent star, exclusively." More specifically, they will be limited to the solar energy that is normally absorbed by their planet - anything extra, including space-based solar, is out.

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