Drilling More Until Its GONE!

Exxon Mobil says climate change unlikely to stop it selling fossil fuels
 
Oil giant issues report on risks that climate policies could pose to the value of its assets and future profitability

1 April 2014 (Associated Press) – On the same day the world's scientists issued their latest report on climate change and the risks it poses to society, America's biggest oil and gas company said the world's climate policies are "highly unlikely" to stop it from selling fossil fuels far into the future.
 

Exxon Mobil issued a report on Monday on the risks that climate change policies could pose to the value of its assets and future profitability, by coincidence on the same day as the latest paper by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a Nobel Prize-winning United Nations group assembled to assess the science and risks of climate change.
 

Both Exxon and its critics used IPCC research to bolster their cases.
 

Exxon's report was in response to the contentions of some shareholders and environmental activists that the assets underpinning the value of Exxon and other fossil fuel companies will be worth less as society restricts consumption of fossil fuels to fight climate change.
 

The report, the first detailed ...

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When its gone?

 

 

NOW End Game Stage of Fossil Energy

We Are Now in the Terminal Stage of Our Fossil-Fuel Addiction

 Senior politicians in both parties have become so intoxicated by the idea of an American surge in energy production that they have lost their senses.



By Michael T. Klare 

(The Nation) – Of all the preposterous, irresponsible headlines that have appeared on the front page of The New York Times in recent years, few have exceeded the inanity of this one from early March: “US Hopes Boom in Natural Gas Can Curb Putin.” The article by normally reliable reporters Coral Davenport and Steven Erlanger suggested that, by sending our surplus natural gas to Europe and Ukraine in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the United States could help reduce the region’s heavy reliance on Russian gas and thereby stiffen its resistance to Vladimir Putin’s aggressive behavior. 

Forget that the United States currently lacks the capacity to export LNG to Europe, and will not be able to do so on a significant scale until the 2020s. Forget that Ukraine lacks any LNG receiving facilities and is unlikely to acquire any, as its only coastline is on the Black Sea, in areas dominated by Russian speakers with loyalties to Moscow. Forget as well that any future US exports will be funneled into the international marketplace, and so will favor sales to Asia where gas prices are 50 percent higher than in Europe. Just focus on the article’s central reportorial flaw: it fails to identify a single reason why future American LNG exports (which could wind up anywhere) would have any influence whatsoever on the Russian president’s behavior. 



The only way to understand the strangeness of this is to assume that the editors of the Times, like senior politicians in both parties, have become so intoxicated by the idea of an American surge in oil and gas production that they have lost their senses.

As domestic output of oil and gas has increased in recent years—largely through the use of fracking to exploit hitherto impenetrable shale deposits—many policymakers have concluded that the United States is better positioned to throw its weight around in the world. “Increasing US energy supplies,” said then-presidential security adviser Tom Donilon in April 2013, “affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our international security goals.” Leaders in Congress on both sides of the aisle have voiced similar views. 

The impression one gets from all this balderdash is that increased oil and gas output—like an extra dose of testosterone—will somehow bolster the will and confidence of American officials when confronting their foreign counterparts. One former White House official cited by Davenport and Erlanger caught the mood of the moment perfectly: “We’re engaging from a different position [with respect to Russia] because we’re a much larger energy producer.”

It should be obvious to 
anyone who has followed recent events in the Crimea and Ukraine that increased US oil and gas output have provided White House officials with no particular advantage in their efforts to counter Putin’s aggressive moves—and that the prospect of future US gas exports to Europe is unlikely to alter his strategic calculations. It seems, however, that senior US officials beguiled by the mesmerizing image of a future “Saudi America” have simply lost touch with reality.

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Coal Demand on Upswing

Coal Burning Brightly as Demand Returns With Economic Upswing

By Scott Cohn and Brad Quick


(NBC News) – The first thing you notice at the Spring Creek mine in Decker, Montana, is the size. It's a sprawling, 9,000-acre site in Big Sky Country near the Wyoming line.

Giant coal hauling trucks the size of two-story buildings zip around the complex with surprising ease, considering the fact that they are carrying 255 tons of coal per trip. The coal is loaded onto mile-long trains—each car carrying more than 100 tons—that leave the mine 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

At the same time, massive 13,000-ton cranes known as draglines slowly peel back strips of earth and rock 200 feet deep to reveal the rich, black, 80-foot seam of coal below. As the coal is removed, giant machines are filling the strip back in, then moving over like a gigantic lawn mower and starting the process all over again.

Despite the dizzying amount of activity at Spring Creek, production is steadily returning to what it was after the recession forced many coal producers to cut output as demand and prices slumped. Also, many utilities switched from coal to natural gas to fire their power generators plants as gas prices fell.

But the Spring Creek mine's owner, Wyoming-based Cloud Peak Energy, believes coal is poised for a comeback. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, sees a long-term horizon for coal.

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Australia Takes FIRM Stand on CO2

Senate votes against abolition of carbon tax

20 March 2014 (AAP) – The Abbott government has failed in its first bid to scrap the carbon tax, with the Senate refusing to pass a package of bills to repeal the Gillard-era climate change policy. After three months of debate, the package of nine bills was finally put to a vote in the upper house today only to be swiftly rebuffed by Labor and the Australian Greens.

The result prompted cries of “shame’’ from the Liberal benches, but there was little real emotion on either side. Labor said it couldn’t support the repeal if it was to be replaced by the government’s direct action plan.

“Without a credible alternative, Labor cannot support the abolition of the existing clean energy policies,’’ shadow climate change spokesman Mark Butler said in a statement
.

The opposition is standing by its support of an emissions trading scheme, which under existing legislation isn’t due to begin until July 2015.Tony Abbott vowed to push on with the scrappingof the carbon tax and said Labor was breaking its commitment to remove the tax.

“The carbon tax is an act of economic vandalism,’’ the Prime Minister told question time.

“You can’t trust (Labor) anywhere near an economy.’’

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