The Buffalo News reported this week that Grisanti, a freshman from Erie County, was appointed by Dean Skelos, the new Senate majority leader, to chair the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee. The election flipped control of the Senate to the GOP.
The panel was previously chaired by Thompson, a veteran who also hails from Erie County and who authored the state's legislative ban on hydraulic fracturing.
]]> Thompson's bill banning Marcellus Shale drilling in the state for a year passed the Senate in August. The General Assembly passed the same bill in November, but in December Governor David Paterson vetoed it and imposed instead a six-month-long moratorium on all drilling.Grisanti said the position on the committee will put him squarely into the debate over fracking. "I'm open-minded with regard to that issue, but it has to be safe," Grisanti was quoted as saying.
He may have an opportunity to exercise his open-mindedness on that issue. State Senator Thomas Duane, a Democrat from New York City, has introduced two similar bills regarding Marcellus drilling that are pending before the environmental conservation committee, S6654-2009 and S6244.
The first bill would permanently ban any gas drilling within five miles of the New York City water supply infrastructure. The other bill, S6244, adds to that proposed ban any drilling in the state's Delaware River watershed.
]]>As president of the Open Space Institute, Martens said in a speech last year at Union College, New York, that hydraulic fracturing in the state's Marcellus Shale formation "may be the most difficult and daunting challenge" ever faced by the DEC, which is in charge of oil and gas drilling permits in the state.
"If nothing else, it seems to me, the department should go slow. The tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon operation in the Gulf clearly demonstrated that the unexpected can and will happen," he said. "It is also clear that the gas industry has not been as candid as it should have been with regards to the potential for problems. That suggests to me that our fate -- and the need to separate objective science and environmental assessment from industry rhetoric -- is in DEC's hands, and the stakes could not be higher."
]]>Given all the money the state has spent on protecting
Meanwhile, EPA "has initiated a $1.9 million, two-year study of the impact of hydrofracking on health and the environment," he noted. "What's the downside of waiting for the results?"
He said he thinks the country "should be doing everything possible to reduce energy consumption and do everything possible to increase the use of renewable resources before we make a major decision to exploit the Marcellus Shale and possibly damage, perhaps irreparably, the land, air and water resources that sustain life itself."
"As I've said before: I'm for everything American, and there was a lot of focus particularly on my interest in renewable energy -- wind and solar -- to generate electricity, and in natural gas to fuel trucks, buses and fleets," Pickens said in a blog written December 15.
]]> Of late, the blogosphere has been rank with inferences that Pickens was backing away from developing wind power and focusing all of his efforts on the natural gas part of his "Pickens Plan." MSNBC this week said that since Pickens' plan for a Texas wind farm "fell apart," he has focused "primarily on his other big business interest: natural gas."And? This is hardly news. In July 2009, Pickens announced he was pushing back his 1,000-MW North Texas wind farm project two years. If some new transmission lines are completed by 2013 as part of the Texas competitive renewable energy zone plan, "we will try to hit that with our power," Pickens said at the time.
In his latest blog entry, he said: "While my farm in Pampa (Texas) has had delays, I am engaged in wind development initiatives in the US and Canada, and many others have answered the call and started erecting their own turbines. Thanks to what we did as part of the Pickens Plan, there are wind farms already in development from Texas all the way up to North Dakota."
That said, he continues to urge Congress and the president "to enact policies to help get trucks, buses and fleets running on clean, abundant and domestic fuels, such as natural gas."
"We need to start using our abundant natural gas resources to reduce our ever-escalating dependence on OPEC oil and the threat it poses to our national security and economy," he said. "With oil again nearing $100 a barrel, the need has never been greater and the opportunity never larger."
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The DEP on Monday issued the Texas-based energy company an air quality permit for a compressor station.
While a fuss over a building permit may seem to many to be a minor issue, Cabot said it was prepared to pull up stakes in Pennsylvania if the DEP denied it.
]]> The permit is for the Lathrop Compressor Station, which will consist of three compressors that will add 105 to 120,000 Mcf/day of capacity when they become fully operational sometime in February. The compressors will located in Susquehanna County.Dan Dinges, chairman, president and CEO of Cabot, complained in a statement Monday that the company's drilling operations have been "capacity-constrained" because the state hadn't acted on its permit request. The company filed the request in January.
In October, Dinges said the DEP was sending mixed signals about the information it wanted for this project. He said if the agency objected to the presence of the compressors, "then you will see industry make a wholesale change and not spend as much capital up there, and we'd be one of them."
Relations between Cabot and Pennsylvania have been less than harmonious for months as a result of a dispute over who was responsible for the methane found in household water supplies in Dimock Township. The state has said it can prove Cabot is responsible, Cabot insists the methane comes from other sources.
In November, the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority gave Pennsylvania American Water a $172,682 loan and an $11.6 million grant to design and construct more than 12 miles of water transmission and distribution lines to serve residents in Dimock, whose water supply has been affected by methane gas.
DEP Secretary John Hanger has said the PIIA will bill Cabot for the project's costs, but Cabot, which has insisted the water line is not needed, said it won't pay that bill. That issue remains far from resolved.
]]>The card came out of the wallet of gasification entrepreneur Robert Walker, who said it came from a Chinese business contact.
]]> "Solid gold. Worth about $300," he said of the card during a recent chat in Houston.Walker took his own money out from under the mattress -- make that out from under the well-known Sleep Number adjustable mattress he invented and became wealthy from -- to set up Bixby Energy Systems in 2001. He decided to research a variety of clean energy technologies as his "post-retirement" project.
In September, the company shipped its first Bixby Process unit to China -- the first such unit set to begin producing commercially, in January. Chinese firms have ordered four other units, Walker said.
The process, he said, uses a different way of heating coal to produce lower emissions and a higher-quality synthetic natural gas than other gasification systems.
Typical gasification processes use air or steam to break down coal into mainly carbon monoxide and hydrogen that can be reformed into other hydrocarbon compounds -- synthetic natural gas, for example. Certain gases and carbon in the coal, which can have market value, are usually consumed in the process. And the flyash left behind must be dealt with.
The Bixby Process injects very finely pulverized coal into a chamber filled with methane, and heats it. The coal "evaporates" to produce mainly more methane (a high-quality syngas) and other long-chain hydrocarbons. It also leaves behind a semi-activated carbon that has market value. The company is also working on "liquefaction" technology to produce light sweet crude oil from coal, with plans for a testing unit to be ready by mid-2011.
Jim Childress of the Gasification Technologies Council, which represents some of the bigger gasification leaders such as Shell and GE, said that the "fundamentals are about the same" in most gasification technologies, even though there are a variety of processes.
"There are a lot of smaller start-ups" like Bixby, he added, as companies are jockeying for position in the adolescent industry.
What they do all have in common is their focus on Asia, and China in particular, Childress said. "China is exploding," as he put it.
China is expected to lead the world in gasification growth through 2015, with 81% of all growth to take place in Asia, the council estimates.
The US hasn't brought a large-scale gasification project online since 2002, because high construction costs and policy uncertainty are holding things up. Worldwide, the overall industry is expected to grow by up to 72%, to 51,288 MW worth of syngas output, by 2016, the US Department of Energy says.
Whether Walker's Bixby Process will hold a big place in that boom is yet to be seen. But then again, whoever thought the world needed a mattress with numbers?
]]>At a conference on one of his favorite subjects, demand response (which can't help also being about smart grid), Wellinghoff unselfconsciously displayed his home electricity usage -- in real time, as he spoke -- pointing out how different appliances in his home were kicking on without synchronization, creating a usage peak that could be shaped if only his house had better management technology or a home area network.
When the refrigerator condenser, furnace blower and sump pump were all on at the same time as he spoke, an animated Wellinghoff pointed out the jump in usage (with a peak of about 2 kW). There was no reason such devices could not be timed better to ramp on and off and reduce peak usage, he almost exclaimed.
Enhanced measuring and monitoring of power usage is common at large commercial and industrial customers, but "there is no reason it can't be done on a smaller scale," he said. The combined effect of shifting peak usage among millions of residents could lower the need for new generation and save billions of dollars, he elaborated, enthusiastic about yet another opportunity to promote one of his favorite subjects.
"Most consumers aren't as geeky as I am," Wellinghoff conceded, suggesting they will not want to bother with such details, but because utilities are not very good about providing such options or services to customers, maybe demand response providers or other companies can do a better job and make a more compelling case with customers. (The software he was using was something he had bought himself for $200; a company attached sensors to his appliances so he could monitor them.)
Thursday's speech was more high-tech than others Wellinghoff has given on energy efficiency and demand response, but he is not above going low-tech to make the same point.
At a meeting of state regulators at a large hotel in
The former president of Shell flogged the notion Wednesday at Platts' 4th Annual Global Energy Outlook Forum.
Hofmeister comes to the arena with strong credentials. And the concept of a truly independent body to make long-term energy policy is massively attractive. "Nobody lobbies the Fed. You can't lobby the Fed. Nobody sues the Fed," he said, explaining how his proposed regulatory body would stay above politics.
There is a host of pesky particulars that could get in the way. The Federal Power Act, for instance, creates an often-complained-of but seemingly unassailable and deeply embedded state-federal mixed bag of jurisdiction over the power industry, resource choices, etc. Changing that in even small ways is all about politics. Most interestingly, though, Hofmeister is promoting his idea at a time when the political mood may be growing more and more strongly anti-Federal Reserve.
The latest Hollywood iteration of Wall Street evil, the movie "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," did a pretty good job of showing us a closed club of banker good-old-boys making billions of dollars' worth of decisions at the New York Fed's paneled meeting room. Ron Paul and many elements of the tea party, among others, are all about abolishing the Fed, or at least cutting its power. Can we imagine the new Congress contemplating establishment of a powerful new body modeled on it? ... And all the members give up the right to vote for their home districts' fuels of choice? Their perceived fair share of power transmission costs?
But we can watch Hofmeister's organization, Citizens for Affordable Energy, for its proposals on energy supply, efficiency technologies, environmental protection and more. Maybe there is a comprehensive solution after all.
Which is exactly the case with a recent Marcellus Shale Coalition press release.
The coalition said in a headline that the Marcellus Shale is "Saving Pennsylvanians Millions in Home Heating Costs." The coalition included in its release a Philadelphia Inquirer news story about municipal utility Philadelphia Gas Works, which said it cut its gas rates in part because of the "abundant supplies from new resources such as shale gas."
]]> But the author of the story, Andrew Maykuth, told Platts that PGW actually obtains most of its gas supply from the Gulf of Mexico and that his article was merely taking note of the impact shale gas operations everywhere in the US are helping lower gas prices for utility customers.In fact, a spokesman for PGW emphasized that the muni doesn't get "a single molecule of gas" from the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania.
Where the utility gets its gas is a very sensitive issue in Philadelphia. In March, a unanimous Philadelphia City Council -- which funds PGW's operations -- called for a ban on hydraulic fracturing within the Delaware River's watershed, the primary source of the city's drinking water. That is in direct contradiction to the MSC, which insists that fracking is safe and necessary to develop the region's huge gas reserves.
Meanwhile, the same MSC release included excerpts from a news story about UGI Utilities. UGI, which serves to 82,000 customers in the greater Reading area, told a local newspaper it was cutting its price of the gas by 8.1%. Company spokesman Joseph Swope confirmed he told the newspaper, "We're only starting to see the impact of the Marcellus shale gas supply. The impact it is having now may only be psychological."
]]>The closing act was a special session this week called by Governor David Paterson, who leaves office January 1 and wanted the legislature to close a $315 million mid-year budget deficit.
Turns out the Assembly failed to deal with the budget hole, but late Monday passed Democratic State Senator Antoine Thompson's anti-fracking bill, which had been passed by the state Senate in June. It effectively bans oil and gas fracking across the state until next May.
]]> Assemblyman Bill Parment, a Democrat from Chautauqua County, said he thought he had "bottled-up" Thompson's proposal in committee. But he said House Speaker Sheldon Silver thought otherwise and Monday brought the matter to the floor for consideration.In his final address to the Assembly, Parment told his colleagues: "What we're saying by this bill is that we would rather send our young men and women to places like Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to die in the desert so that we can have the energy from those countries, rather than to drill gas wells right here in New York State."
As the battle rages on early next year with a new governor and a host of new legislators, however, neither Parment nor Thompson will be around for Act Two.
Parment, a 28-year-veteran, did not run for re-election in November. And Thompson on Tuesday conceded defeat to Republican newcomer Mark Grisanti following the latest recount of the votes cast in their race for the Seate seat representing Niagara and Erie counties.
]]>And some might wish that demand response and/or energy efficiency were included, what with all the talk about them as the "fifth fuel."
There's no obvious bias, either, in an accompanying rough set of factoids that shows it would take a single nuclear plant to power a city of a million, and it would take 1.6 million PV rooftop arrays to do the same. It does make you think.
]]>Though market-optimist types think Congress sooner or later will enact a carbon trading program, they called it wrong in the case of the Congress just ending and have only the Golden State to bank on right now.
]]> What Barclays and NRG did was write a forward trade contract for a CO2 allowance, and make the first transaction on it, deliverable in December 2012, the first compliance year for California's program. If other companies have contracts or have done deals, they haven't said so.The companies wouldn't talk price or volume, but one broker, Eric Klein at TFS Energy, said Wednesday's bid-ask spread (in a barely existent market) for December 2012 delivery of California carbon allowances was $11-$11.50. The state's allowance auction reserve price is going to be $10, the California Air Resources Board has said. If the Barclays-NRG deal was around the bid-ask spread, it would be proportionally similar to deals in the Northeast's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative: not much excitement there.
RGGI's auction reserve prices is $1.86, and the bilateral market in RGGI allowances is at somewhere around $1.90. That is, not much of anything. In RGGI, it's largely because the baseline for calculating emissions was far too big, so there's little need for emission allowances, and the recession only depressed the need further. The low California bid-ask right now may be just because the program is barely created.
Chicago Climate Futures Exchange, Nymex Green Exchange, NYSE Blue, banks, brokerages and others -- companies frustrated by federal inaction will have nowhere else to turn for a while, and will be jostling for places in the Golden State market, which may or may not expand to include other Western states. At the very least, it will be a learning forum.
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The Harrisburg Patriot News reports that hunters heading north for bear season Saturday and deer season Nov. 29 "might have some surprises waiting for them if they haven't yet made their lodging arrangements."
Turns out the workers and regulators involved with the Marcellus Shale gas boom swarming the northern part of the state have booked many of the rooms in hotels, motels and lodges throughout the traditional deer-hunting counties such as Clinton, Lycoming and Potter.
]]> "I haven't heard of us being sold out entirely," said Peter Lopes, director of tourism with the Clinton County Economic Partnership. He did acknowledge that many rooms have been booked long-term in connection with Marcellus Shale.The newspaper suggested hunters who find their normal spots booked might want to check out nearby state parks that remain open for camping through the deer season.
And that isn't where the intersection of gas drilling and deer hunting ends.
The Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association have launched a joint effort to emphasize hunting safety in areas where oil and gas exploration is taking place. Both groups urged hunters and drillers to wear blaze orange outfits.
Louis D'Amico, PIOGA president and executive director, said that "most important, we encourage hunters to stay clear of drilling locations and the production equipment that remains after the drilling process is completed. It goes without saying that storage tanks should not be used as tree stands."
]]>Yessir, in those days, the late 1980s and early '90s, EDF people were major, major players in developing the first cap-and-trade program, the Acid Rain Program that Congress created in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and the Environmental Protection Agency then made reality in big meetings with environmental and industry experts. EDF experts then went on to start talking with utilities, that long ago, about market programs for carbon emissions. And it has often been on a different page from other environmental groups, taking a work-with-industry approach instead of confronting.
Now EDF may be ready to shift gears.
]]> In a post at EDF's Climate 411 blog, chief Fred Krupp declares himself tired of some of industry's attitude.EPA is tightening emission rules, he notes, "But our opponents are at it again. The Business Roundtable ... is trying to delay EPA's greenhouse gas regulations, saying Congress should pass a climate law instead. But when Congress considered a climate bill, the Business Roundtable opposed it. I find its position disingenuous." Some people might use stronger language.
In another, much longer, piece, this one at the Huffington Post, Krupp does not ultimately back off EDF's basic approach of working with industry. He says environmentalists have to make new allies and be open to listening to, not belittling, those they disagree with. He precedes all those remarks, though, with the surprising ones.
"It is time to sharpen the nation's focus on the businesses that obstruct vital progress," Krupp says. "For EDF, that means our historic interest in cooperation over confrontation will be recalibrated."
Not thrown out the window. Recalibrated.
"... [T]here are companies that continue to choose short-term profits over public health, and who feel they are better off opposing progress. These companies have friends in the Congress, and they believe they will have more political leverage against the Environmental Protection Agency as the balance of power shifts in Washington next year. ... We will look for ways to hold them accountable through every reasonable lever at our disposal. We will learn to be as tough with them as they have been with us."
EDF is looking at acting through shareholders meetings and boards of directors and through state utility commission activism, "where the rubber meets the road on the scope of pollutioin -- or pollution reductions -- associated with major capital investments."
It's not immediately clear whether Krupp has specific companies in mind. He might. If EDF adds its energy to anti-coal activism that the Sierra Club and others have pursued, the power industry, for one, may have more to handle than it may expect.
]]>As the dust settles in the wake of the ground-shifting mid-term congressional and state elections, it seems that the joy expressed by many in the oil and gas business is neither unanimous nor complete.
Amid the general exuberance in the sectors over the dramatic gains turned in by Republicans was a somewhat cautious, be-careful-what-you-wish-for feeling among gas pipeliners.
At the annual gathering of the INGAA Foundation in Las Vegas, held just days after the November 2 election, industry officials and representatives applauded certain results, especially those sure to affect the ongoing and critical debate over pipeline safety standards and regulation.
For instance, pipeliners will shed no tears over the demise of Representative James Oberstar of
Oberstar "has been challenging for the industry to deal with" and "never accepted the view that technology and risk standards ought to govern" pipeline safety regulation, said the reliably perceptive Don Santa, president of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. He called Oberstar's election defeat "significant," and meant it in a good way for pipelines.
With the industry facing the unenviable task of convincing legislators and regulators -- not to mention the general public -- that industry-driven standards are the way to go, Oberstar was seen as roadblock. That journey figures to be plenty tough already, given that the same roll-your-own regulatory approach has been roundly blamed for the financial market meltdown/recession and the Macondo oil-spill disaster in the
With Oberstar out of the way and a Republican in his seat, it figures to be at least a bit easier for pipelines to negotiate the next set of rules in the wake of the high-profile San Bruno and Enbridge pipeline accidents.
On the sidelines at the
So-called "Blue Dog" Democrats were hammered on November 2, primarily because they were moderates in an election that successfully painted them as out of touch, weak and thus responsible for nearly everything that's gone wrong over the past two years.
But hold on there, said Santa and others. Those very same moderates "understood our industry" and historically have been very helpful in "providing a bridge" to the more-liberal Democrats in the House and Senate, he noted.
As examples, Santa pointed to Senators Blanche Lincoln of
"Overall, they were probably more sympathetic to business interests than a lot of the Democratic caucus," he said, noting that "most of the stuff we want to work on over there, we want to do on a bipartisan basis. It helps to have folks who understand the industry."
With the election, "half of the Blue Dogs have been wiped out," he noted, adding that it will be that much tougher to present pipeline issues.
]]>A few different things came together, probably, to make that happen. The Las Vegas paper's editor, Thomas Mitchell, blogged about the WSJ's editorial (he may have said some pretty strong things in favor of it, but we don't know for sure because his original post isn't there any more.) Wellinghoff is from
On the phone today before flying back to
Unlike what the WSJ said, FERC's proposed rule would not require the costs of big new transmission lines to be "socialized" across huge areas; instead, it would have regions figure out how they want to allocate the costs and report back to FERC. Benefits would not have to be calculated to the penny, or the dollar, or the thousand-dollar, but benefits would have to be identified, and this "reasonable benefit" sort of test is just what an appeals court said would be fine.
The newspaper's editorial also quoted Wellinghoff making a statement about utilities building transmission lines; but the statement had nothing to do with cost allocation. It was about an even more controversial issue, FERC's proposal to take away the right of first refusal for incumbent transmission owners to build new lines.
In fact, Wellinghoff said, that proposal is about opening up competition for construction of transmission lines. (Maybe a free-market kind of proposition?)
Interestingly, Senator Bob Corker of