Energy News from The Wilderness Society

“Drilling for Highways” is a Wrong Turn for Highways and Public Lands

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:52:17 +0000

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America needs its roads and bridges – without them, we couldn’t get to work, ship goods, and get to the wild places where we love to go hiking, biking, and camping. But we also need to get away from climate-change causing fossil fuels – not make ourselves more dependent on them.

This is the lesson that the House Republicans don’t seem to learn. They’re now trying to make a mess of a bill meant to rebuild our bridges and roads by forcing the addition of several drilling bills into the final legislation.

Opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Opening up America’s oceans to offshore drilling. Opening up millions of acres in the west to mine for oil shale – an unconventional fossil fuel that has never, ever been commercially viable. The handouts to the already gift-laden oil and gas industry just keep coming.

What’s even more disturbing is that the money raised from these drilling proposals are a drop in the bucket – less than one percent – of the funds needed to pay for new highways and bridges over the next five years. The Highway bill being debated in Congress will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $260 billion dollars over the next five years. Meanwhile the money generated from giving away some of our most precious natural treasures would be a scant $2.4 billion according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

While it would only provide 1% of the money, it would represent a 100 percent threat to Alaska’s Arctic wilderness and our protected coastal areas. A spider-webbing network of roads, drills, pipelines and even airfields would criss-cross the Arctic Refuge, fragmenting the biological heart of the Refuge and the breeding ground of hundreds of thousands of Porcupine caribou.

Rushing to drill offshore would open thousands of miles of coastlines and hundreds of communities to the devastation the Gulf Coast experienced after BP’s Deepwater Horizon well blow out. Oiled beaches, lost jobs, shuttered businesses – this time spread all across the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

And the promised revenue from oil shale? Well, that’s been promised for over a century, but has yet to be commercially viable, much less environmentally safe.

Our nation needs a progressive, innovative energy policy and a balanced transportation plan. Five years ago, when the Congress last authorized the Transportation bill, it endured some ridicule for including a “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska. Now it is being criticized for relying on revenue sources, such as drilling, that are insufficient to repair our bridges. Do we really need to turn our wildlife refuges into oil fields to meet our transportation needs? Of course not.

The Numbers Don’t Lie – BLM lease sales undercut industry claims

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:17:41 +0000

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To hear the oil and gas industry tell it, we just aren’t drilling enough.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be opened for drilling. Drill rigs should be set up off the coast in the Arctic Ocean, the North Atlantic and in the Gulf of Mexico, without improving the lax industry regulations that led to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Pipelines, like the Keystone XL, should crisscross the nation, less than a year after a pipeline leaked into the Yellowstone River.

They even started a $100 million ad campaign, trying influence the 2012 political candidates (an ad campaign that is brilliantly spoofed here).

But what happens when reality crashes in on their parade? The latest figures from the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that oversees most drilling on federal lands, tell a different story.

Record Natural Gas production: 2011 was a banner year for natural gas production on federal lands. In fact, it was the banner year – with the highest royalty revenue from gas production ever recorded (which accounts for 2011 gas production and some production from previous years). The BLM also calculated returns on more than 5.3 million MCF (or million cubic feet, the unit of measurement for natural gas) produced from federal lands in 2011.

Increasing Lease Sales: Lease sales also increased in 2011– the oil and gas industry leased an additional 2 million acres of land (up from 1.4 million last year) and bought 2,188 new leases (up from about 1,300).

(Side note – the oil and gas industry spent $256 million on those leases, or about 2.5 times what they will pay for their advertising campaign…think about that the next time gasoline prices are over $4/gallon)

Unused permits still unused: In the drilling world, a drilling permit is the last step before making a hole in the ground. With a drilling permit in hand, no lawsuit, complaint, or federal agency rule or regulation can stop a company from drilling for gas and oil, which makes this next statistic a little surprising. In 2011, the BLM issued over 4,200 drilling permits – but only 3,260 wells were actually drilled. This continues a trend of oil and gas companies sitting on thousands of permits and not using them. For an industry that continues to make claims that we aren’t drilling enough, it sure seems like they would use every permit. Certainly there are some extenuating circumstances – but thousands of permits are sitting on the shelf!

The numbers show that the oil and gas industry is doing well without opening up sensitive wild lands to drilling. They are posting record profits without fragmenting some of the little remaining unspoiled habitat. They still receive billions of dollars in tax breaks.

The numbers don’t lie – but when the oil industry and their Congressional allies claim that there needs to be more drilling in America, something doesn’t add up.

Offshore drilling in the Arctic: The deadline to oppose new leases is tonight!

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:31:19 +0000

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Despite a glaring lack of scientific information about the Arctic Ocean, or effective technology to address a major oil spill, the Obama administration is following the previous administration’s lead and positioning itself to expand offshore oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas over the next five years in its 2012-2017 drilling plan.

Please take action now to help stop this disastrous plan. The deadline to comment is midnight, Jan. 9.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has already decided not pursue drilling in the Atlantic Ocean because of a “lack of infrastructure.” If the port cities of Boston, Portland, Gloucester, and the other cities and towns in New England cannot respond to an oil spill, how does the BOEM expect the small, isolated villages of Kaktovik and Barrow – which have no deepwater ports – to be able to clean up an oil spill?

We are not ready to drill in the Arctic Ocean, period. But oil companies want to drill now, and they and their Congressional allies are pressuring the Obama administration to surrender this remote treasure. It’s up to you to help pressure the administration to say no.

The Arctic Ocean is full of unknowns. We don’t know how to effectively clean up a spill in the icy Arctic waters. We don’t know how an oil spill would affect the polar bears, whales, and seals that live in the Arctic Ocean. And we simply do not what a spill would do the people that depend on the Arctic Ocean for their food and their livelihood. We simply do not have enough data. BOEM’s draft Environmental Impact Statement on the draft 2012-2017 drilling plan falls far short of ensuring that drilling on the Arctic’s Outer Continental Shelf can be done safely. We’re simply not ready. What we do know is that drilling in the Arctic now threatens the people and wildlife that live there.

Tell BOEM to stop this disaster in the making, and ask the Department of the Interior provide an options that don’t include drilling in their final Environmental Impact Statement. The number of people who comment is important. Please click to send this letter, or revise it with your own personal comments. Let’s tell BOEM and Big Oil that we’re not ready to sacrifice America’s Arctic.

Interior Department releases plan for prioritizing applications pending final solar energy plan

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Early last week, the Bureau of Land Management released a list of 17 wind, solar, and geothermal project applications that the agency will prioritize in2012, representing about 7,000 MW of renewable energy. According to the BLM, the projects were selected based on a variety of considerations, including progress of the necessary public participation and environmental analysis under federal and applicable state environmental laws. That means that these projects will benefit from focused effort across the agency while a long-term solar energy plan is finalized.

The BLM is working hard to increase transparency and create certainty in the permitting process. With limited resources, focusing on a manageable number of applications is necessary—and better still, focusing on project proposals most likely to be built can build momentum for a growing renewable energy industry. While the priority list does include problematic applications, the agency has made progress toward developing a smarter permitting process for clean energy development on our public lands.

In the past, wind and solar planning have languished while the BLM engaged in a single-minded pursuit of oil and gas. But positive changes are underfoot. Market conditions have improved for renewable energy as prices have dropped and technology has continued to improve. The Department of the Interior under Secretary Ken Salazar has also shown leadership on making environmentally responsible development of renewable energy on public lands a top priority. The first Secretarial Order under Salazar, signed on March 11, 2009, formally established responsible development of renewable energy as a primary focus for the agency. The Order calls for prioritizing specific locations for development of wind, solar, and geothermal resources, and in particular calls for new or revised policies needed to increase development and transmission of renewable energy resources from public lands.

For the long-term success of renewable energy and to protect public lands, DOI must maintain its focus on moving away from a project-by-project approach to a comprehensive program that guides projects to low-conflict areas—such as the plan contemplated for solar development in the programmatic EIS currently under development for six western states. Until a program framework is put into place, the Department will continue to face the difficulties associated with project-by-project permitting for solar facilities. Experience to date has shown that better planning and upfront analysis can reduce uncertainty for developers and financiers, and delays to projects.

Despite what some media outlets have reported, renewable energy is working in America. Developing a robust domestic renewable energy industry will be essential for our national and economic security. Across the country, from rooftops to former industrial sites, renewable energy facilities are under construction and in operation today. The BLM’s effort at screening for projects with minimal environmental impacts is an important recognition that renewable energy development and land conservation can go hand in hand. But we will only realize that goal with a predictable approach that starts with identifying the right places to develop – that is being truly smart from the start.