Example: There are two Nuclear Power plants in California, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating station and the Diablo Canyon Power plant. Both are built on/or near Earthquake fault zones. Both are near the Ocean. Both have design flaws. Yet at least one, the The Diablo Canyon plant, due to a Supreme Court decision was not even required to submit an Earthquake response plan. Since the Diablo plant was built, a new fault line has been discovered less than a mile from the plant. The original plans accounted for a fault that was 3 miles from the plant?
We should probably state here that we are a proponent of the use of Nuclear power. However a read of the stories of these two plants can be construed as an exercise in Government/Corporate arrogance, incompetence, short sightedness with a dash of stupid. Absolutely no thought given to the blowback on the citizenry as a result of unintended consequences. What impact would a major incident at either plant have on the rights of area individuals to be involved in their own pursuits of free market capitalism? Lives, businesses and economies would be ruined. But then they assure us that won't happen. Tell that to the Japanesse please.
So what does the above pertaining to Nuclear Power have to do with Oil?
Think Fracking! The argument is still ongoing regarding frackings impact on drinking water and earthquakes. We suggest that readers go to this site for many links leading to many discussions on fracking and make up their own minds. We only ask that readers read a lot of both sides of the argument so that whatever conclusion they may come to will be at least informed.
Earthquake Hazard Map From the US Geological survey:
Think Pipelines! From Wikipedia:
The Ogallala Aquifer, part of the High Plains Aquifer System, is a vast yet shallow underground water table aquifer located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. One of the world's largest aquifers, it covers an area of approximately 174,000 mi² (450,000 km²) in portions of the eight states of South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming,Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. It was named in 1898 by N.H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska.[1]About 27 percent of the irrigated land in the United States overlies this aquifer system, which yields about 30 percent of the nation's ground water used for irrigation. In addition, the aquifer system provides drinking water to 82 percent of the people who live within the aquifer boundary.[2]
This is the area Trans Canada wanted to build their Pipeline over. At the very least questionable planning. More so in light of the current drought. In the future water will be the new oil? Do we really want to take the chance of destroying that which is quickly being depleted?
Of course oil and gas companies will be the first to say they can accomplish these tasks safely. The evidence indicates that they can not. Pipeline spill map from the New York Times as of Sept. 2011:
Note that over 50% of the spills are attributable to human error, equipment failure, installation and construction. Enbridge, Inc is one of the largest pipeline operators in the U.S. and Canada. This year in cooperation with Enterprise Products Partners they reversed the Seaway pipeline to bring Bakken oil from Cushing, Oklahoma to Gulf refineries. Enbridges record of Spills and negligence:
Using data from Enbridge's own reports, the Polaris Institute calculated that 804 spills occurred on Enbridge pipelines between 1999 and 2010. These spills released approximately 168,645 barrels (26,812.4 m3) of crude oil into the environment.[12]
On July 4, 2002 an Enbridge pipeline ruptured in a marsh near the town of Cohasset, Minnesota in Itasca County, spilling 6,000 barrels (950 m3) of crude oil. In an attempt to keep the oil from contaminating the Mississippi River, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources set a controlled burn that lasted for 1 day and created a smoke plume about 1-mile (1.6 km) high and 5 miles (8.0 km) long.[13]
In 2006, there were 67 reportable spills totaling 5,663 barrels (900.3 m3) on Enbridge's energy and transportation and distribution system; in 2007, there were 65 reportable spills totaling 13,777 barrels (2,190.4 m3) [14]
On March 18, 2006, approximately 613 barrels (97.5 m3) of crude oil were released when a pump failed at Enbridge's Willmar terminal in Saskatchewan.[15] According to Enbridge, roughly half the oil was recovered.
On January 1, 2007 an Enbridge pipeline that runs from Superior, Wisconsin to near Whitewater, Wisconsin cracked open and spilled ~50,000 US gallons (190 m3) of crude oil onto farmland and into a drainage ditch.[16] The same pipeline was struck by construction crews on February 2, 2007, in Rusk County, Wisconsin, spilling ~201,000 US gallons (760 m3) of crude, of which only about 87,000 gallons were recovered. Some of the oil filled a hole more than 20 feet (6.1 m) deep and contaminated the local water table.[17][18]
In April 2007, roughly 6,227 barrels (990.0 m3) of crude oil spilled into a field downstream of an Enbridge pumping station near Glenavon, Saskatchewan.[15]In 2009, Enbridge Energy Partners, a US affiliate of Enbridge Inc., agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle a lawsuit brought against the company by the state of Wisconsin for 545 environmental violations.[19] In a news release from Wisconsin's Department of Justice, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said "...the incidents of violation were numerous and widespread, and resulted in impacts to the streams and wetlands throughout the various watersheds."[20] The violations were incurred while building portions of the company's Southern Access pipeline, a project to transport crude from the oil sands region in Alberta to Chicago.
In January 2009 an Enbridge pipeline leaked about 4,000 barrels (640 m3) of oil southeast of Fort McMurray at the company's Cheecham Terminal tank farm. Most of the spilled oil was contained within berms but about 1% of the oil, about 40 barrels (6.4 m3), sprayed into the air and coated nearby snow and trees.[21]
On January 2, 2010, Enbridge's Line 2 ruptured near Neche, North Dakota, releasing about 3,784 barrels of crude oil, of which only 2,237 barrels of were recovered.[22][18]
April 2010 an Enbridge pipeline ruptured spilling more than 9.5 barrels (1.51 m3) of oil in Virden, Manitoba, which leaked into the Boghill Creek which eventually connects to the Assiniboine River.[23]
July 2010, a leaking pipeline spilled an estimated 843,444 US gallons (3,192.78 m3) of crude oil into Talmadge Creek leading to the Kalamazoo River in southwest Michigan on Monday, July 26 near Marshall, Michigan.[24][25] A United States Environmental Protection Agency update of the Kalamazoo River spill concluded the pipeline rupture "caused the largest inland oil spill in Midwest history" and reported the cost of the cleanup at $36.7 million (US) as of November 14, 2011.[24] The cleanup is unfinished as of July 2012.[26] PHMSA raised concerns in a Corrective Action Order (CAO) about numerous anomalies that had been detected on this pipeline by internal line inspection tools, yet Enbridge had failed to check a number of those anomalies in the field.[27] The Michigan spill affected more than 50 kilometres of waterways and wetlands and about 320 people reported symptoms from crude oil exposure.[28] The NTSB said at US$800 million it was the costliest onshore spill cleanup in U.S. history.[29] The NTSB found Enbridge knew of a defect in the pipeline five years before it burst.[30]On September 9, 2010, a rupture on Enbridge's Line 6A pipeline near Romeoville, Illinois released an estimate 7,500 barrels (1,190 m3) of oil into the surrounding area.[24][31]And have we forgotten the Deep Water Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico Disaster already? Caused by faulty equipment, human error and lax government oversite the scope of which we still do not and may never know. From Wikipedia:
In January 2011 the White House oil spill commission released its final report on the causes of the oil spill. They blamed BP and its partners for making a series of cost-cutting decisions and the lack of a system to ensure well safety. They also concluded that the spill was not an isolated incident caused by "rogue industry or government officials", but that "The root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur".[35] After its own internal probe, BP admitted that it made mistakes which led to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.[36] In June 2010 BP set up a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the oil spill. To July 2011, the fund has paid $4.7 billion to 198,475 claimants. In all, the fund has nearly 1 million claims and continues to receive thousands of claims each week.[37]
In September 2011, the U.S. government published its final investigative report on the accident.[38] In essence, that report states that the main cause was the defective cement job, and put most of the fault for the oil spill with BP, also faulting Deepwater Horizon operator Transocean and contractor Halliburton.[39][40] Investigations continue, with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stating on April 24, 2012, "The Deepwater Horizon Task Force is continuing its investigation into the explosion and will hold accountable those who violated the law in connection with the largest environmental disaster in US history". The first arrest related to the spill was in April 2012; an engineer was charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly deleting 300 text messages showing BP knew the flow rate was three times higher than initial claims by the company, and knew that Top Kill was unlikely to succeed, but claimed otherwise.[41][42][43]Now consider the cost of drilling new wells to get to this new abundance of Oil? Source: EIA
Now consider that well production is not what it once was. New fracked well start with a high volume output that often times rapidly declines until it is no longer profitable to pump. From oil price.com:
It took the production from 6,617 wells to produce North Dakota's 546,000 b/d in January. Divide the daily production by the number of wells and you get an astoundingly low 82 b/d from each well. I say "astounding" because a good new offshore well can do 50,000 b/d. BP's Macondo well which exploded in the Gulf a couple of years ago was pumping out an estimated 53,000 b/d before it was capped. Now a North Dakota shale oil well is not in the cost class of a deepwater offshore platform which can run into the billions, but they do cost about three times as much as a classic onshore oil well as they first must be drilled down 11,000 feet and then 10,000 horizontally through the oil bearing layer before the fracturing of the rock can take place. The "fracking" involves at least 15 massive pumps that inject water and other chemicals into the well. Take a Google Earth flight over northwestern North Dakota. The fracked wells are hard to miss as there are now about 9,000 of them and they are each the size of a football field. There is still more -- fracked wells don't keep producing very long. Although a few newly fracked wells may start out producing in the vicinity of 1,000 barrels a day, this rate usually falls by 65 percent the first year; 35 percent the second; and another 15 percent the third. Within a few years most wells are producing in the vicinity of 100 b/d or less which is why the state average for January is only 82 b/d despite the addition of 1300 new wells in 2011.Which of course means more wells will have to be "drilled Baby Drilled". But how? Despite the the high unemployment rate, oil companies can not find enough workers now!
and in Texas,
Richard Morton, the city manager in nearby Odessa, said city leaders there are pondering similar growth forecasts, while trying to cope with problems caused by the boom.
“We normally have budgeted 913 positions on the city payroll, but we have 104 vacancies we're having trouble filling. A lot of them are labor positions. We're competing against the oil fields,” he said.
“We're having a serious labor shortage and a serious housing shortage. All our motels during the week are 100 percent occupied. The developers are building houses and hotels as fast as they can, but it's hard to keep ahead of the curve,” he said.And what are we going to "drill baby drill" with when there are not enough oil rigs now?
In Niobrara, firms expect drilling rig shortage
Oil Rig Shortage - CNN News Highlights - YouTube |
And these rig shortages are world wide applying to offshore drilling too. So you have massive ship and rig building booms, overseas of course, to get to dwindling resources as fast as possible.
So our question to any Policial candidate that promises to open up vast new areas to drilling is, who is going to do it and what are they going to do it with?
And then if we do get the labor and equipment into the fields, what are we going to with it. U.S. infrastructure is poorly equipped to handle it. We do not yet have enough pipelines, trains, and refineries to get it to, and turn it into, a useable product. Oil is backing up everywhere and gas prices continue to rise. All during a recession when one must ask, who is using all this oil?
Now consider the sources of energy we are not using, or not using to their full potential, natural gas and coal. Natural gas is just to cheap to go after. Because congress and neither candidate for president will get behind behind and formulate a policy for increasing our natural gas use (see: Both parties lying about energy independence-video ), gas wells are being capped. Our most readily abundant, cheapest form of energy other than coal and we are keeping it in the ground or burn it off to get it out of the way. We can set a rover down on the surface of mars with pinpoint accuracy, yet we can not figure out how to economically burn coal cleanly? Yet these are the very sources that "could" make us energy independent. Oil will not do it! See here, here, here and here.
In other words, as long as we rely on an Oil based economy, we will never be energy independent! Are we discounting alternative fuels and energy sources such and solar and wind? No. Currently price and technology at this time do not make any of those sources feasible. Nuclear being the exception. But even that would take years to build out enough to push us towards independence and to date, our nuclear energy policy is fraught with danger and stupid as we illustrated at the beginning of this post.
But there is another bump in the road to energy Independence that none of the candidates are talking about.
We export over a billion barrels of oil a day to other countries???? We are the worlds 12th largest exporter of oil??? Sere here and here. Don't like the price of gas? We export "enormous amounts" to Mexico and other countries? The amount of natural gas we export to other countries is growing tremendously:
Exports and re-exports
Gross natural gas exports increased by 33 percent to 1,507 Bcf in 2011, a new high. The growth in exports was driven by increased pipeline exports to Canada and Mexico.
And more companies are planning on sending U.S. energy overseas for profit. See: Shale gas: Terminal decline no longer
It appears the only thing slowing down the exportation of U.S. energy is the lack of infrastructure. But here at home, the price of gas keeps rising.
The above when connected and taken as a whole reveals a couple interesting scenarios all of which, we believe, can be proven true:
1. The incestuous relationship between politicians, regulators and corporations has become so complex that any one man that says they can fix it leading to energy independence, presidential candidate or not, is lying.
2. If you are a candidate for president our hope would be you would be intelligent enough to know you are lying and we believe they are. We also believe they don't believe you are intelligent enough to call them on it.
3. The potential boom to the U.S. economy and it's citizens that could result from JUDICIOUS energy policies encompassing all our resources is mind boggling. The world would be begging us to be their friend. But that is not going to happen no matter who is elected congressman/woman or President.
4. The Complex global activities and money flows of U.S. Energy companies is such that they are no longer "American" Energy companies. They are Global Energy companies that will pillage and plunder wherever they can make a buck. And you are going to continue to pay more for gas. Until it runs out anyway. Because even the Department of Defense understands that if the politicians and the public do not.
5. As we stated above "free markets" are like all and any freedoms. They are not free! All freedoms come with responsibility and accountability.
So to our government who is complicit with the corporations that take from America to profit else where we say fine. Go for it. Just the next time you want to fight a war with one of these countries you are doing business with use your own damn body's for canon fodder! Remember many of these corporations are drilling on federal lands. That is our, yours and mine, property!
As a side note to any young folk needing a job, Texas north to Nebraska is hiring!Add to Technorati Favoritesbr />
It appears the only thing slowing down the exportation of U.S. energy is the lack of infrastructure. But here at home, the price of gas keeps rising.
The above when connected and taken as a whole reveals a couple interesting scenarios all of which, we believe, can be proven true:
1. The incestuous relationship between politicians, regulators and corporations has become so complex that any one man that says they can fix it leading to energy independence, presidential candidate or not, is lying.
2. If you are a candidate for president our hope would be you would be intelligent enough to know you are lying and we believe they are. We also believe they don't believe you are intelligent enough to call them on it.
3. The potential boom to the U.S. economy and it's citizens that could result from JUDICIOUS energy policies encompassing all our resources is mind boggling. The world would be begging us to be their friend. But that is not going to happen no matter who is elected congressman/woman or President.
4. The Complex global activities and money flows of U.S. Energy companies is such that they are no longer "American" Energy companies. They are Global Energy companies that will pillage and plunder wherever they can make a buck. And you are going to continue to pay more for gas. Until it runs out anyway. Because even the Department of Defense understands that if the politicians and the public do not.
5. As we stated above "free markets" are like all and any freedoms. They are not free! All freedoms come with responsibility and accountability.
So to our government who is complicit with the corporations that take from America to profit else where we say fine. Go for it. Just the next time you want to fight a war with one of these countries you are doing business with use your own damn body's for canon fodder! Remember many of these corporations are drilling on federal lands. That is our, yours and mine, property!
As a side note to any young folk needing a job, Texas north to Nebraska is hiring!Add to Technorati Favoritesbr />
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