Editorial: The Big Spill, Two Years Later

April 17, 2012

Friday is the second anniversary of the explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and spilled upwards of five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Thanks partly to nature’s resilience, some progress has been made. The gulf is open to fishing, beaches are mostly clean and President Obama has resurrected an ambitious oil exploration plan that he shelved immediately after the spill.

But the healing from this extraordinary act of corporate carelessness is far from complete, and there is important work to be done to minimize the chances that such a disaster will happen again. Here are central issues that remain unresolved:

To read the entire article go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/opinion/the-big-spill-two-years-later.html?_r=1

First Fracking Rules Unveiled

By TENNILLE TRACY Updated April 18, 2012, 10:06 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—Federal regulators put in place the first significant curbs on the fast-spreading drilling technique called fracking since widespread concerns about its environmental impact surfaced. But in a sign of the political sensitivities surrounding the issue, they gave companies more than two years to comply.

The Environmental Protection Agency rules, released Wednesday, are designed to limit the release of smog-forming chemicals and other toxic substances that may escape into the air during drilling for oil and natural gas.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which drillers use a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals to break apart energy-rich rocks, is behind the recent boom in U.S. oil and gas production. How to regulate it is emerging as one of the most important policy questions in Washington, with environmentalists urging strict controls and energy firms warning excessive red tape could stop the boom just as it is beginning to transform the U.S. energy business.

To read the entire article go to: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303513404577351842495583760.html?mod=WSJ_Energy_leftHeadlines

U.S. Caps Emissions in Drilling for Fuel

By JOHN M. BRODER April 18, 2012

WASHINGTON — Oil and gas companies will have to capture toxic and climate-altering gases from wells, storage sites and pipelines under new air quality standards issued on Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The rule is the first federal effort to address serious air pollution associated with the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which releases toxic and cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and hexane, as well as methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

The standards were proposed last summer in response to complaints from citizens and environmental groups that gases escaping from the 13,000 wells drilled each year by fracking were causing health problems and widespread air pollution.

Industry groups said meeting the proposed standards would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and slow the boom in domestic natural gas production. The original proposal was significantly revised, giving industry more than two years to comply and lowering the cost.

To read the entire article go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/science/earth/epa-caps-emissions-at-gas-and-oil-wells.html?ref=energy-environment

California fracking bill would protect industry ‘trade secrets’

April 18, 2012 |  3:29 pm

A California lawmaker working to pass the Golden State's first hydraulic fracturing rules has watered down his landmark legislation, hoping to overcome industry opposition to a measure that would force energy companies to disclose the mysterious mix of chemicals they inject into the ground to tap oil deposits.

The legislation stalled last year after objections by industry that full disclosure of "fracking" chemicals would reveal proprietary "recipes." After months of meetings with oil companies and environmentalists, Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) is now touting a compromise measure that goes to lengths to protect those trade secrets while increasing public disclosure.

His office said the changes mirror Colorado regulations that were widely praised by environmentalists when they were adopted last year. Regulators have yet to develop rules or reporting requirements for fracking in California, the fourth largest oil-producing state in the nation.

To read the entire article go to: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2012/04/california-fracking-bill-would-protect-industry-trade-secrets.html

Chemical Makers Ride Gas Boom

By DANIEL GILBERT Updated April 18, 2012, 11:51 p.m. ET

FREEPORT, Texas—Dow Chemical Co. will build a multibillion-dollar plant to convert natural gas into the building blocks of plastic in this coastal city, becoming the latest chemical maker to capitalize on the abundant gas supplies that are helping spur a renaissance in U.S. manufacturing.

Over the last decade, chemical companies in search of cheap raw materials have made some of their biggest investments outside the U.S., which is the world's largest consumer of plastics.

But Dow and its peers are seeing new opportunity in huge domestic deposits of gas. Drilling innovations can now unlock the fuel from shale formations, pushing U.S. natural-gas prices to among the lowest in the world. Even as natural-gas producers cut back drilling in response to the low prices, chemical firms are increasing their manufacturing investments.

To read the entire article go to: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304331204577352161288275978.html?mod=WSJ_Energy_leftHeadlines

Where Clean Energy Abounds, a Push to Ship Coal

By WILLIAM YARDLEY April 18, 2012

BOARDMAN, Ore. — A new link in the world’s future energy supply could soon be built here on the Columbia River, and it would have nothing to do with the vast acres of wind turbines or the mammoth hydroelectric dams that give this region’s power sources one of the cleanest carbon footprints in the nation.

Instead, Boardman is pursuing one of the oldest and dirtiest of fossil fuels: coal. The question is not whether to use it to produce new energy but whether to make what some say would be tainted new profits.

Even as coal-fired power plants are being phased out in Oregon and Washington, Boardman, an agribusiness outpost across the river from vineyards owned by the Columbia Crest winery and where the Department of Energy recently awarded $25 million to an innovative biofuel producer, is among at least half a dozen ports in the region weighing whether to ship millions of tons of coal to Asia from the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana.

If all of the projects were built, as much as 150 million tons of coal per year could be exported from the Northwest, nearly 50 percent more than the nation’s entire coal export output last year.

To read the entire article go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/us/boardman-ore-considers-a-future-in-coal.html

States Mine Federal Funds Long After Need Is Gone

By DAMIAN PALETTA Updated April 18, 2012, 10:07 p.m. ET

LARAMIE, Wyo.—When the University of Wyoming needed an extra $10 million for renovations to its basketball arena last month, state legislators turned to an unlikely source: a federal fund for cleaning up abandoned coal mines.

The fund was set up to pay for things like sealing up old mine shafts and dealing with collapsed tunnels and abandoned surface mines. But, as allowed under law, the university plans to use the money to fix up its Arena-Auditorium, where its Cowboys play, providing an exterior face lift and rotating the court 90 degrees.

The U.S. Interior Department is likely to fork over the money for the arena despite years of bipartisan efforts in Washington to close the spigot of federal dollars to states that no longer need so much money for abandoned mines.

To read the entire article go to: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304023504577319864015209678.html?mod=WSJ_Energy_leftHeadlines