Welcome to Saudi Albany? - NYTimes.com

Welcome to Saudi Albany? - NYTimes.com: "If there is an uneasy equilibrium, right now, between environmentally concerned citizens and pro-fracking industrial groups, what will the political balance be like in a decade? What pressures will be on state legislatures and regulators if the projections are true and the millions of workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and maybe New York will owe their jobs to fracking. There will be trillions of dollars of new wealth. Will environmental and health concerns have any chance against that juggernaut?"

Some pretend that the producers should pay the full price of the fracking revolution  Consumers always pay the cost of goods and services. That's the way it should be in our economy. 

It's to everyone's benefit to keep these costs rational and consistent with environmental and health protection but not bloated by unnecessary constraints and huge new government bureaucracies.

Gas Glut Rejiggers Industry - WSJ.com

A cost curve such as shown below will disrupt the energy business as the WSJ story describes. Coal is being displaced by natural gas as a primary fuel for baseload electricity generation. With so much natural gas supply coming on line, electricity costs are coming down and greenhouse gas emissions should also be coming down because natural gas burns cleaner (less CO2) than coal. The laws of economics work!

Even here in Vermont where our natural gas comes form Canada via Vermont Gas, Tom Evslin and partners have created a new company to take advantage of these low prices. NG Advantage hopes to compress the gas at a central location and truck it to large fuel users in northern NH, VT and NY not reached by pipelines at a price lower than their present fuel.

U.S. Energy Policy Sen. Leahy Correspondence

March 11, 2011

Dear Sen. Leahy,

Thanks for keeping me informed about your Senate votes and views on energy policy.

I respectfully disagree with your anti-fossil fuel stance. It's abundantly clear that oil, gas and coal will remain the primary energy sources in this country in our children's and grandchildren's lifetimes.

Advocating for more costly renewables that, if implemented with today's expensive and relatively inefficient technologies, will raise the energy bill for Vermont and the nation is an unsound trade-off while we seek an economic recovery. In my view, the promise of 'green jobs' is more political rhetoric than reality.

We have abundant supplies of fossil fuels on this continent and to deny their use is not in the best interests of this nation. The real technological advances have been in the oil and gas industries which accounts for the recent dramatic increase in domestic oil and natural gas production.  In the US, the oil and gas extraction sector grew at a rate of 4.5 per cent in 2011 compared to an overall GDP growth rate of 1.7 per cent. With a multiplier effect of ~3:1, that means this sector created 150,000 jobs. The sector’s highly skilled workforce is also well-paid compared to other sectors. That's a good thing but your policies would slow down that growth.

If you advocate that renewables will positively affect climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, then please let us know what the average global temperature should be, how much it will cost the world to get there, and what is our 'fair share.' Otherwise, you're simply whistling in the wind apparently for political rather than practical reasons.

If you're truly concerned about reducing CO2 emissions, we should build more nuclear power plants and you should persuade Sen. Reid that Yucca Mountain is a necessary repository for wastes. But an even better solution is recycling used nuclear materials where France has shown the way.

So, to sum up. Your views diverge from mine on energy policy and it's time we stop throwing subsidy dollars around rather than encouraging investments in a sound energy infrastructure, including the Keystone pipeline project.

Where we do agree is that efficiency has the best near term pay-off to reduce the nation's energy bill.

Respectfully,

David Usher

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 17:08, Senator Leahy  wrote:

Dear Mr. Usher: Because of your interest in the debate on national energy policy and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to carry oil refined from dirty tar sands in Canada, I thought you would want to know of the latest developments on Capitol Hill.  Yesterday the Senate defeated two Keystone-related amendments to the bill to reauthorize federal highway system investments, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act of 2011.  These amendments – misleadingly described by their proponents as a remedy to the current run-up of fuel prices -- would have short-circuited the review and approval process to fast-track the Keystone XL pipeline.  Both would have halted any further environmental impact studies, despite the fact that the route around a critical aquifer in Nebraska has yet to be identified.  I voted against both of these amendments, and I am glad to be able to report that both of them failed.  Instead of focusing on the short-term jobs from the Keystone XL pipeline, we should be investing in sustainable energy sources that create long-term jobs in the emerging renewable energy economy in areas like manufacturing, transmission, research and development.  For our national security, the health of our environment, our family budgets and the strong economy we want and need, we must reduce our dependence not only on foreign oil, but on all fossil fuels.  For decades we have been putting too many eggs in the fossil fuels energy basket, to our detriment.  At a time when domestic oil production is at its highest in almost a decade and foreign oil imports are at their lowest in 16 years, it is clear that speculation and world markets are driving up the price of oil.  We must forge and implement energy solutions and policies that reduce our reliance on fossil fuels by increasing fuel efficiency, developing renewable energy sources and curbing abuses by speculators who are unnecessarily driving up oil prices for their own short-term profits.  The answer is not pipelines and more of the same flawed choices that sacrifice our health, our safety, our environment and our future economic vitality. Sincerely, PATRICK LEAHY United States Senator

Gas Extraction Method Could Greatly Increase Global Supplies - NYTimes.com

Gas Extraction Method Could Greatly Increase Global Supplies - NYTimes.com

This technological breakthrough is a really big deal because of its potential to extend the world's natural gas supplies by 100s of years.

Will it put a huge dent in the construction of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tankers and port facilities or increase the demand for transporting all this new found gas to places in the world without a pipeline infrastructure?

A big question is whether this plentiful gas will begin to replace coal as a source of electricity in the next couple of decades. The story is a bit unclear whether environmentalists favor or oppose this inevitable natural gas expansion. However I have read elsewhere that the new shale fracturing technique requires enormous amounts of water, often in short supply in many places. This factor may slow down the NG permitting, drilling and extraction.

On a personal level I have decided to convert from fuel oil to a high efficiency system using natural gas for home heating. The Federal tax credits are substantial for the conversion and Vermont Gas also provides a significant financial incentive for switching,

While I dislike abandoning my loyal and faithful local fuel oil dealer, I believe the economics and less volatile price swings will work in my favor and also increase the value of my house. The new boiler will be installed next week.

Folly of Waxman-Markey H.R. 2454

I subscribe to a monthly printed newsletter called The Energy Advocate. In the July 2009 issue publisher Howard Hayden quotes from the Waxman-Markey (H.R. 2454) "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009." This is part of his story about the tremendous strides that have been made in the last 20-30 years in reducing health-affecting air pollutants in the United States.

Because of EPA's attempt to classify CO2 as a pollutant and to regulate its emission, Hayden implies that Congress is on a fool's errand with H.R. 2454 because CO2 is a naturally occurring component of our atmosphere (0.04% by volume), essential for all plant life. He points out that the legislation may have an escape clause (see below).

The respected Christian Science Monitor also has a very recent editorial faulting other elements of the Markey-Waxman bill. My hope is the Senate will drastically modify it or let it lie. I have long maintained that cap-and-trade schemes on this scale are fraught with risk of manipulation, doomed for failure, and will dramatically increase the costs of energy and further repress our economy. If Congress thinks it must control carbon dioxide, a direct carbon tax on the end users is far more rational so that people will see it clearly, not camouflaged in high prices.

The act specifies that the Administrator of the EPA

"shall annually prepare and certify a report to the Congress regarding whether China and India have adopted greenhouse gas emissions standards at least as strict as those standards required under this Act. If the Administrator determines that China and India have not adopted greenhouse gas emissions at least as stringent as those set forth in this Act, the administrator shall notify each Member of Congress of his determination, and shall release his determination to the media."

He also makes the case that CO2 is not a pollutant (as proposed by the EPA).

"With the recent politically directed EPA finding that CO2is a pollutant, there seems to be a feeling among our lawmakers that a reduction in CO2 emissions can be accomplished by laws, regulations, and cap-and-trade schemes. Engineers will use some magic equations and magic substances like Unobtanium to accomplish the will of Waxman, Markey, Pelosi, and other starry-eyed true believers.

The chemical facts are these. Natural gas is primarily methane, CH4, which has four atoms of hydrogen for every carbon atom. Petroleum contains a great many compounds but all-in-all, the lot of them can be roughly represented by CH2; there are two atoms of hydrogen per atom of carbon. Coal is roughly CH, with one atom of hydrogen for each carbon atom. (We ignore contaminants here.)

When we burn any of these fuels, part of the energy comes from burning the carbon and part from burning the hydrogen. Necessarily we get H2O and CO2 as products of the combustion. It's not as if the carbon is some sort of contaminant in the fuel; it is part of the fuel. There is no such thing as low carbon natural gas, low carbon oil, or low carbon coal. Another way of saying it is that without carbon, coal, oil and natural gas would not exist. If I dwell on the obvious, it is precisely because Washington's climate controllers are unable to understand such subtleties."