The Intersection Between Hydraulic Fracturing and Climate Change: 6 min video – YouTube
April 9, 2013
The Intersection Between Hydraulic Fracturing and Climate Change: 6 min video – YouTube.
A blog about energy and the environment.
Sarnia cracker could hinder Shell’s US development
May 5, 2012
Online news for Borealis – Powered by ICIS news.
PolyolefinsSarnia cracker could hinder Shell’s US developmentICIS News : 18-Apr-12 00:22
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (ICIS)–The lack of infrastructure for Shell’s potential northeast US cracker provides an opportunity for NOVA Chemicals to expand its Corunna ethylene facility and displace Shell’s ethane supply, a consultant said on Tuesday. “If I were NOVA’s CEO, I would not want Shell in my backyard,” said Peter Fasullo of consulting company En*Vantage, on the sidelines of the Gas Processors Association annual meeting in New Orleans. US-based Shell chose Monaca, Pennsylvania, as a site for its potential world-scale petrochemical complex, which would use ethane from the Marcellus shale in the US northeast. Currently, there are no ethane crackers or storage sites in the Marcellus region. Fasullo said NOVA would have a more reliable destination for ethane if it expanded its Corunna cracker capacities in Sarnia, Canada. The expansion would require less money and less time than Shell’s project, Fasullo said. He said a vast expansion at Corunna could be completed years before Shell completes construction of a world-scale facility. Sarnia has advantages that Shell would lack in Pennsylvania. Sarnia, located in Ontario, is an established petrochemical region, with more than 30% of the petrochemical capacity in Canada, second behind Alberta, according to Statistics Canada. The Sarnia and Windsor regions in Ontario have salt caverns to store hydrocarbons and liquefied petrochemicals such as ethane. There are 73 active caverns in Ontario with total capacity of 12.6m cubic feet, according to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. NOVA’s Corunna cracker in Sarnia will run on ethane from the Marcellus shale basin. An existing Sunoco pipeline from the Marcellus to Sarnia will transport 40,000 bbl/day of ethane to NOVA’s cracker, and an additional 10,000 bbl/day to the region for other plants. In addition, NOVA will upgrade the feedstock capability at the cracker by the end of 2013 to 100% of natural gas liquid (NGL) feeds, company CEO Randy Woelfel said during the company’s fourth–quarter conference call. http://www.icis.comNOVA said the ethane feedstock commitments would assure long-term competitiveness for the company. In addition to salt caverns, Imperial Oil has a refinery and petrochemical complex in Sarnia. The complex produces a wide range of products, including polyethylene, solvents, olefins and aromatics, the company said. If Shell’s world-scale plant shut down for maintenance or because of a power outage, the company would be forced to reject ethane because it could not sell to another chemical complex and has no ethane storage in the region, said Fasullo. Accordingly, producers are more cautious to make supply commitments to a possible ethylene plant in the Marcellus, said Fasullo. By Sheena Martin |
|
| ©2012 Reed Business Information |
U.S. Pushes to Cut Emissions That Speed Climate Change – NYTimes.com
February 18, 2012 1 Comment
U.S. Pushes to Cut Emissions That Speed Climate Change – NYTimes.com.
U.S. Pushes to Cut Emissions of Some Pollutants That Hasten Climate Change
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: February 15, 2012
WASHINGTON — Impatient with the slow pace of international climate change negotiations, a small group of countries led by the United States is starting a program to reduce emissions of common pollutants that contribute to rapid climate change and widespread health problems.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to announce the initiative at the State Department on Thursday accompanied by officials from Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico, Sweden and the United Nations Environment Program.
The plan will address short-lived pollutants like soot (also referred to as black carbon), methane and hydrofluorocarbons that have an outsize influence on global warming, accounting for 30 to 40 percent of global warming. Soot from diesel exhausts and the burning of wood, agricultural waste and dung for heating and cooking causes an estimated two million premature deaths a year, particularly in the poorest countries.
Scientists say that concerted action on these substances can reduce global temperatures by 0.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 and prevent millions of cases of lung and heart disease by 2030.
“This is very much in the win-win category — good on climate at the same time that it’s good on health, food production and energy,” said Todd D. Stern, the State Department’s special envoy for climate change.
“It’s not a negotiation over who takes what targets,” he said, “but a voluntary partnership aimed at producing tangible results in a relatively short period of time.”
The United States intends to contribute $12 million and Canada $3 million over two years to get the program off the ground and to help recruit other countries to participate. The United Nations Environment Program will run the project.
Officials hope that by tackling these fast-acting, climate-changing agents they can get results quicker than through the laborious and highly political negotiations conducted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or U.N.F.C.C.C. That process, involving more than 190 nations, grinds on year after year with incremental political progress but little real impact on the climate.
At the most recent United Nations climate summit meeting, in Durban, South Africa, negotiators agreed to try to produce a binding global climate change treaty by 2015, to take effect after 2020. Many scientists say that irreversible damage to the atmosphere will be done before then.
Soot, methane and hydrofluorocarbons, which are used in foam and refrigerants, have a short life span in the atmosphere, measured in weeks or years. By contrast, carbon dioxide, the primary cause of climate disruption, persists in the atmosphere for thousands of years — and its effects are much more difficult to mitigate.
Researchers have identified about a dozen ways to significantly control black carbon and methane emissions. Soot can be reduced by installing filters on diesel engines, replacing traditional cookstoves with more efficient models, modernizing brick kilns and banning the open burning of agricultural waste. Methane can be captured from oil and gas wells, leaky pipelines, coal mines, municipal landfills, wastewater treatment plants, manure piles and rice paddies.
The new initiative will provide money for developing countries to reduce short-acting pollutants and will try to raise additional public and private funds for new mitigation projects. Drew T. Shindell, a senior climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute on Space Studies, said that attacking short-lived climate agents could have immediate impacts.
“From a political point of view,” he said, “what’s really appealing about these measures is that a lot of the benefits are realized by those that take the action. If you reduce these emissions in the developing world, it’s the developing world that gets most of the benefits, by stabilizing rainfall and improving public health.”
Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, said that the initiative, if expanded and adequately financed, would have more impact on the climate than the United Nations climate change negotiations, at least in the near term.
“This is a formal declaration that we’re opening a second front in the climate war,” said Mr. Zaelke, who has been agitating for action on fast-acting climate change agents for years.
“We’d be fools to count on the U.N.F.C.C.C. for our salvation, though I wish it well,” he said. “This is a complement, not a substitute.”
The Radio Ecoshock Show: Fracking Gas = Climate Crash
November 24, 2011
The Radio Ecoshock Show: Fracking Gas = Climate Crash.
FM London. Published Wednesdays.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Fracking Gas = Climate Crash
For years, governments, industry, and TV ads told us natural gas is the safe bridge fuel while we move away from dirty coal and oil.
Cornell University scientist Robert Howarth wondered “Is that true?”. When Howarth found no science to back up big claims for the gas industry, he and a team from Cornell went to work.
The results are startling. In the short-term, escaped methane from gas fracking threaten to tip us into catastrophic climate change. The total impact of the shale gas industry may be worse than coal. In the United States, where thousands and thousands of new gas wells are drilled, almost half of all greenhouse gas emissions may come from methane. The “natural” gas industry is the largest single source of methane emissions.
The frackers vent loads of gases for the first two weeks after drilling, before connecting pipes. They could collect (and sell) this “waste” methane (read “climate killer”) but don’t bother. Natural gas storage facilities also vent methane as part of their designed operation. Old leaking gas delivery systems complete the job.
Methane is rising in the atmosphere. New science from Dr. Drew Shindell shows in the first 20 years, methane is 105 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2.
Even at 100 years, Shindell finds methane is combining with other air pollution to generate an impact 33 times more powerful than CO2. Not 21, as determined in the 1990’s by the IPCC. That old figure is still being used by industry and governments. Expect a change as Shindell becomes the new lead author of this section in the upcoming IPCC.
You must hear Dr. Robert Howarth explain the importance of new science on methane. he is the expert, I am not.
The industry insists we only calculate methane over a 100 year period. But the latest report from the International Energy Agency (generally a conservative source) says our climate future will be determined in the next 5 years. More new science suspects the burst of methane helped tip us into a mass extinction 250 million years ago.
The 20 year time frame for methane could be the jolt that tips other systems into positive feedback loops. Like igniting the peat in the Arctic. Or warming shallow seas enough to release frozen methane clathrates from the bottom (which started to happen last year). If either of those go, we are toast.
Robert Howarth has taken a lot of abuse for even daring to assemble a comprehensive look at the total greenhouse gas impact of the gas fracking industry, whether it is coal bed gas or shale gas. And we haven’t even discussed the fact fracking is now known to cause earthquakes, uses incredible amounts of fresh water, and risks polluting whole watersheds with a single leak of the mass toxic chemicals pumped underground.
The United Kingdom may be next. With gas production from the North Sea fields down by 25 percent, there is a public relations push to get lots of gas fracking in the UK. This may be the next big environmental battle there.
Fracking mania has hit Canada and Australia as well. Everyone needs to know what the latest science says.
Program includes 27 minute speech by Professor Robert Howarth of Cornell at ASPO USA 2011, November 2nd in Washington D.C. Recorded by Carl Etnier of Equal Time Radio, Vermont. My thanks to ASOP USA for this fine presentation.
Then a follow-up interview this week with Robert Howarth, to fill in his hurried climax of the speech – that methane emissions, when calculated over 20 years, using the new higher rate discovered by Drew Shindell – could add up to at least 44% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States! We discuss this, and the importance of a 2006 paper by Dr. James Hansen of NASA, on the importance of controlling methane emissions.
I covered that in 2006 here for blog entry, or download the audio here.
In 2006, I also put out a “Methane Primer” which is still helpful. Blog for that primer is here, and the audio for download here.
But now I’ll have to revisit that piece, since like the IPCC, I was told methane was only 21 times more powerful than CO2. The science moves so fast, it is already outdated just 5 years later.
Essentially, if we cannot control methane, we still lose the climate known over millenia, even if we could limit carbon dioxide emissions. Methane alone can tip us.
The natural gas industry, Howarth says, is the single largest source of methane in the U.S. Shale gas fracking makes that much, much worse.
RIPPING OFF THE CARBON MARKETS AND CONSUMERS
We add an interview promised last week, with Samuel Labudde, about the billion dollar scam ripping off carbon credits.
Companies in China are threatening to release powerful greenhouse gases, unless these fake credits are continued. Ratepayers in Europe are being blackmailed.
LaBudde, a noted wildlife biologist, is also covering the climate beat for the Environmental Investigation Agency for the American branch of the organization.
To honor the craziness of gas fracking in Australia, the theme music this week is “My Water’s on Fire Tonight” written and performed by David Holmes, Andrew Bean, Niel Bekker. Australian compilation album: “Whole Lotta Frackin’ Going On”
The lyrics in “My Water’s On Fire Tonight” is a product of Studio 20 NYU (bit.ly/hzGRYP) in collaboration with ProPublica.org (bit.ly/5tJN). The song is based on ProPublica’s investigation on hydraulic fractured gas drilling (read the full investigation here: bit.ly/15sib6).
Recording credit: Robert Howarth speech at ASPO recorded by Carl Etnier of Equal Time Radio, Vermont. Speech courtesy of ASPO USA.
Labels: ASPO, climate, climate change, emissions, energy, environment, gas, global warming, impact, methane, science, shale, speech
posted by Alex Smith at 10:35 PM 
GDACC 
