Wednesday 8 April 2015

Drought, Greenhouse gases, dead oceans

Drought-stricken California’s fracking operations used 70 mn gallons of water last year

RT,
7 April, 2015

Energy companies in California used 70 million gallons of water for the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process to unearth oil and gas reserves, according to officials. The figure comes during the state’s increasingly urgent push to conserve water.

That amount is of water used is less than previously projected by industry -- which estimated fracking used about 100 million gallons of water per year. Nevertheless, water in California is at premium. The state is entering its fourth year of record drought, and a mandatory water reduction plan was announced last week by Governor Jerry Brown. California may only have 12 months’ worth of water left, as snowpack measurements for the year are set to hit record lows. Yet fracking operations are not included in the conservation efforts.

To unleash oil or natural gas from shale or other areas, the fracking process requires blasting large volumes of highly pressurized water, sand, and other chemicals into layers of rock. Once used, toxic fracking wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells, disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste fields, or used over again.

As the california drought continues it's rampage, Fracking Companies go undisturbed.
"Hydraulic fracturing uses a relatively small amount of water – the equivalent of 514 households annually,” Steven Bohlen, the state oil and gas supervisor, told Reuters, which first reported the water usage figure.

Bohlen added that fracking uses more than fresh water, including “produced” water that surfaces during the fracking process that cannot be used for drinking or agricultural purposes.

Patrick Sullivan, a spokesperson for the Center for Biological Diversity and Californians Against Fracking, said while the state’s fracking water use may only equal 514 households, much of that contaminated water can’t be used again, unlike most common household water usage.

It is water that most likely cannot be put back into the water cycle,” Sullivan told ThinkProgress. “It’s water that is by and large gone for good.”

Reuters also reported last week that environmentalist groups have estimated that oil and gas developers in the state go through 2 million gallons of fresh water per day for oil production.




Fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination, heightened earthquake activity, exacerbation of drought conditions, and a variety of health concerns for humans and the local environment.

Oil and gas companies are under increasingly intense pressure nationwide to respond over increased transparency of chemicals used in the fracking process. As RT has reported, industry has avoided divulging -- often under the cover of official regulatory agencies -- just what chemicals are involved in their toxic injection fluids. Yet drillers insist the chemicals do not endanger human health, contradicting findings by scientists and environmentalists.

"What [oil and gas producers] have been doing, especially in the [California’s agriculturally fertile] Central Valley, is injecting this very contaminated, very salty -- often containing benzene -- water into shallow aquifers and shallow water supplies,” Helen Slottje, of the Community Environmental Defense Council, told RT.

"Water is not replaceable, we don't have any alternative sources for water. But we do have alternative sources for natural gas and oil.”

In March, disclosures in California revealed that a bevy of toxic, cancer-linked chemicals in fracking wastewater are routinely injected back into the ground.

In February, it was reported that California officials permitted oil and gas companies to dispose of waste and other fluids into aquifers containing drinking and irrigation water more than 2,500 times. Significantly, 46 percent of these permits were authorized within the last four years – the same timeframe during which the EPA warned California that regulators were not sufficiently protecting underground water reserves in the drought-stricken state.

In October 2014, the state found that the oil and gas industry had illegally injected about three billion gallons of fracking wastewater into central California drinking water and farm irrigation aquifers.


The executive order signed by Gov. Brown mandates cities and towns to reduce water usage by 25 percent over the next nine months to save approximately 1.5 million acre-feet of water “or nearly as much as is currently in Lake Oroville,” the statement said.

The order also allows California to replace 50 million square feet of lawns throughout the state with drought tolerant landscaping in partnership with local governments; direct the creation of a temporary, statewide consumer rebate program to replace old appliances with more water and energy efficient models; require campuses, golf courses, cemeteries and other large landscapes to make significant cuts in water use; and prohibit new homes and developments from irrigating with potable water unless water-efficient drip irrigation systems are used, and ban watering of ornamental grass on public street medians.


Alas, fracking operations are exempt from the reduction plan.

"Governor Brown is forcing ordinary Californians to shoulder the burden of the drought by cutting their personal water use while giving the oil industry a continuing license to break the law and poison our water,” Zack Malitz, of the environmental activism group Credo, told Reuters last week.

"Fracking and toxic injection wells may not be the largest uses of water in California, but they are undoubtedly some of the stupidest,” he added.

Australia: Emissions soar as brown coal booms after carbon tax repeal



7 April, 2015

Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s repeal of the carbon price continues to deliver for the Australian coal industry, with the share of brown coal generation surging to its highest level in three years, taking a substantial increase in electricity emissions with it.

According to the latest survey by Pitt & Sherry in its Cedex series, Australian electricity emissions have jumped 2.8 per cent since last June, when the carbon price was repealed, and the emissions intensity of the national grid has jumped by 4 per cent over the same period.

cedex emissions march

Brown coal generators have profited mostly from the carbon tax repeal. Pitt & Sherry’s Hugh Saddler said the five Victorian brown coal generators supplied 31.9 per cent of total coal generation in March, making a total coal share of 75 per cent over the previous 12 months, up from 72.9 per cent in the year to June 2014.

The revival of high polluting brown coal generators has more than offset any gains from wind energy, which made its largest contribution in a 12-month period (9,000GWh or 5.16 per cent), and the growing impact of rooftop solar and energy efficiency.

cedex source march
Abbott’s Direct Action plan will now invite bids in the emissions reduction fund, where coal-fired generators will seek to receive taxpayer funds to reduce their emissions. And under the guidelines released last week, there will be no penalty if they continue to raise them.

For the first time, average demand is also showing a rebound, with two exceptions: Victoria and South Australia. Saddler suggests in the case of Victoria it could be due to the closure of the Point Henry aluminium smelter, while in South Australia it is likely to be the impact of the highest penetration of rooftop solar in the country.

A couple of other notable developments were the share of gas-fired generation. This rose in Queensland because of cheap “ramp gas” which is being produced ahead of the start of LNG exports from that state.

Gas generation was steady in NSW and Victoria, but in South Australia its share decreased because of the growth in wind generation, flowing from the completion during 2014 of most of the wind farm projects in the construction pipeline. Saddler says this has displaced higher cost gas.

And there was the introduction of large-scale solar on to the national grid. The first 25MW to be completed at the Nyngan power plant came on line in late March, and contributed 0.13 per cent of electricity supplied to the NEM in NSW, or 0.04 per cent supplied to the whole NEM, over the same period.

This of course is much smaller than the energy supplied by small-scale rooftop PV, estimated by AEMO to currently be around 2.5 per cent, but it is a start,” Saddler notes.

Nyngan will be built out to 102MW, making it much bigger than Australia’s other operating solar farm, at Royalla near Canberra, which has a capacity of 20MW. This has been generating since last August, but is embedded within the local ActewAGL distribution network, and thus not part of the NEM dispatch and trading system.

Hydro generation continues to fall. Saddler says Snowy hydro storage levels are now at average long-term levels, but Hydro Tasmania’s storages are down to levels almost as low as those at the height of the drought, in early 2009. Since Tasmania normally provides at least 60 per cent of Australia’s total hydro generation, it may be some time, depending on rainfall in Tasmania over coming months, before hydro generation in the NEM gets back to its long-term average levels.

And peak demand levels are also down – continuing the trend which makes a nonsense of the justification to expand the grids and build more gas and coal plants over the last 10 years.

Saddler says the fall in peak demand in NSW and Queensland, which had the most extreme fears of peak demand (their networks were owned by the state governments), is particularly notable. Part of it is reduced manufacturing demand, part of it an absence of heat waves. “But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that increased household energy efficiency and modified energy-consuming behaviour have also played a part in moderating demand peaks,” Saddler says.




Oregon Governor Kate Brown declared a drought emergency on Monday in three southern and central Oregon counties, expanding upon earlier drought declarations the Democrat made in March, as the state faces record low snowpack levels.

Continuing drought has caused "natural and economic disaster conditions" in Oregon's Crook, Harney and Klamath counties, heightening wildfire risk, and threatening agriculture, Brown said in her declaration.



Falling ocean oxygen levels due to rising temperatures and influence from human activities such as agrochemical use is an increasingly widespread problem. Considering that the sea floors have taken more than 1,000 years to recover from past eras of low oxygen, according to a recent University of California study, this is a serious problem.

Ocean regions with low oxygen levels have a huge impact on aquatic organisms and can even destroy entire ecosystems. Areas of extremely low oxygen, known as oxygen minimum zones or “dead zones”, are estimated to constitute 10% and rising of the world’s ocean.



The Grand Canyon stretch of the Colorado tops American Rivers' 32nd annual list of endangered rivers because of cumulative threats to scenery and spring water from commercial and residential development plans, and from a push to restart major uranium mining.

The designation marks the third year in a row that all or part of the drought-sapped river has been at or near the top of the advocacy group's annual watch list of rivers it feels face potentially harmful actions or decisions in the coming year.



While California suffers through a historic 4-year drought, the corporate giant has made billions on bottled water



One-fifth of the bridges in South Dakota are falling apart and in need of repair, according to a study released last week.

A database from the Transportation Department reviewed by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) found that 1,174 bridges in the state carrying 351,403 vehicles daily are considered structurally deficient. While the bridges may not be considered unsafe, some part of the structure is considered to be in poor or worse condition. South Dakota has 5,872 bridges throughout the state.



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