Tag Archives: shale oil

Sun and wind are winning over fracked methane shale gas –Goldman Sachs

Solar PV, onshore wind, electric vehicles, and LED lighting will win for all of us and profit in the next five years, says Goldman Sachs, which just put $150 billion of its own money where its mouth is. How about you, world leaders gathered in Paris?

Chris Martin, BloombergBusiness, 30 November 2015, Wind, Solar Power to Supply More Energy Than Shale, Goldman Says,

New wind turbines and solar panels worldwide will provide more energy over the next five years than U.S. shale-oil production has over the past five, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Four Front Runners

The leading renewable-energy technologies will add the equivalent of 6.2 million barrels of oil a day to the global energy mix, exceeding the 5.7 million barrels a day pumped from U.S. shale oil wells since 2010, analysts including Brian Lee and Jaakko Kooroshy said in a research report Monday….

“Wind and solar are on track to exceed 100 gigawatts in new installations for the first time,” Continue reading

Another oil train crashes and burns: CSC CSX near Charleston WV

Yet another fireball, water supply turned off, state of emergency, from an oil train. When did you last hear of a solar farm explosion? Do we expect hastily-built and unnecessary fracked methane pipelines to be any safer than these shoddy exploding shale oil train tank cars? How long must fossil fuel fireballs rain down before we all get on with clean sun, wind, and water to power the world?

Fireball above Boomer, WV; Photo credit: Deslyne Copening

Marcus Constantino, Multimedia reporter and Matt Murphy, Charleston Daily Mail, 16 February 2015, Crude oil train derails in Fayette County, WV, Continue reading

Fracking north Georgia

Fracking, coming to north Georgia soon.

Dan Chapman wrote for the AJC Sunday, Gas drillers turn to Georgia

Conasauga Field DALTON, Ga. — Trillions of cubic feet of natural gas believed to lie below the hills of northwest Georgia have remained virtually untouched and unwanted — until now.

Shale gas drilling is slowing across the country, but a handful of companies are poking around this corner of the state looking for the next natural gas “play.” If they succeed, Georgia could join the ranks of states reaping jobs, revenue and fears of environmental damage from energy production, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned….

In Alabama, the Conasauga shale field contains 625 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to Bill Thomas, a geologist who taught at the University of Kentucky and Georgia State. A similar amount could be underground in Northwest Georgia, he added.

Wish I didn’t have to say I told you so: Fracking: coming soon to a state near you? 26 Dec 2012.

No fracking. No nuclear. No biomass. Let’s get on with solar and wind.

-jsq

 

Let the Sun Shine: Fact versus Fiction —Michael G. Noll

LTE in the VDT today. I’ve added a few links. -jsq

Fox News recently claimed that “solar won’t work in America because it’s not as sunny as Germany”. Such statements are common for a network that has long lost its credibility. Unfortunately too many take such gibberish at face value. Thus columns like “environmentalism or obstructionism?” are not surprising, but in the end it’s the facts that matter:

  • Global warming is real. For years we have been experiencing record heat waves, droughts, wild fires, etc., and while seawater levels are rising, storms like hurricane Sandy become major threats to low lying areas along coast lines.
  • The main culprit for global warming are greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil.
  • While China overall emits more than we do, the US leads in per capita emissions. The average US citizen produces three times more carbon dioxide than the average Chinese citizen.
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Fracking: coming soon to a state near you?

Lest you think fracking is something that happens only in faraway places like Alberta or Pennsylvania, look at this map of North American shale gas basins, extending right through the Appalachians from Pennsylvania through West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina into Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Source: Canada fracking creates ‘test tube‘ residents in B.C., Alberta,
by Lynn Herrmann for Digital Journal 5 January 2012.

How long before Georgia Power or Southern Company decide natural gas would be even cheaper if they fracked in Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi? How long until unavoidable human error starts fracking polluting our local groundwater and rivers? For that matter, isn’t it bad enough already that other people’s water is fracked for cheap gas in Georgia?

We could just get on with solar power, which doesn’t spill.

-jsq

Frack human error

What do you get in a solar spill? A sunny day. What do you get in a fracking spill? Polluted groundwater and drinking water. When do you get it? Whenever somebody makes a mistake, which turns out to be frequently.

Alberta Finds Mismanagement of Errors Causes Fracking Water Contamination,

“There is no amount of regulation that can overcome human error,” said Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) spokesman Darin Barter. ERCB released an investigation report that cites inadequate management of risks as one of the main causes of a September 2011 accident that contaminated groundwater with toxic hydraulic fracturing chemicals, including the cancer causing agent known as BTEX (benzene, toulene, ethylbenzene, and xylene).

At least the company involved in this particular incident did something about it:

Personnel from Crew Energy told the Calgary Herald the company is “embarrassed” about the accident. Rob Morgan, chief operating officer for Crew said, “there’s no question of our appreciation of the severity of this,” adding, “pretty much all of the personnel who were involved in this particular circumstance are no longer with the company.”

But the groundwater is still contaminated. And where will they find replacement personnel who will never make mistakes?

Meanwhile, a solar spill is called a nice day.

-jsq

 

Fake fracking reports: professor and institute head quit, other institute disbanded

From Austin to Buffalo, fake science for fracking is increasingly being exposed, Frack U with academic consequences: lead professor resigns, institute head quits, another institute disbanded. The image on the right (Frack U) is not a reputation any university wants to see. At least academia takes conflicts of interest seriously; now if government and the voters would do the same…. Or energy companies. Remember, shale gas (plus nuclear) is what Georgia Power and Southern Company are shifting to from coal, while shading us from the finances that would enable solar power for jobs and energy independence in south Georgia.

Terrence Henry wrote for NPR 6 December 2012, Review of UT Fracking Study Finds Failure to Disclose Conflict of Interest (Updated)

The original report by UT Austin’s Energy Institute, ‘Fact-Based Regulation for Environmental Protection in the Shale Gas Development,’ was released early this year, and claimed that there was no link between fracking and water contamination. But this summer, the Public Accountability Initiative, a watchdog group, reported that the head of the study, UT professor Chip Groat, had been sitting on the board of a drilling company the entire time. His compensation totaled over $1.5 million over the last five years. That prompted the University to announce an independent review of the study a month later, which was released today.

The review finds many problems with the original study, chief among them that Groat did not disclose what it calls a “clear conflict of interest,” which “severely diminished” the study. The study was originally commissioned as a way to correct what it called “controversies” over fracking because of media reports, but ironically ended up as a lightning rod itself for failing to disclose conflicts of interest and for lacking scientific rigor.

Unrepentant as recently as July, Professor Groat resigned in November. Plus this:

Raymond Orbach of UT’s Energy Institute has resigned after the group became engulfed in controversy over a study of fracking.

And elsewhere even more drastic results have ensued:

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