Senate Dems fail to offer right #KeystoneXL amendment

Yes, one of the two failed amendments to Senate Republicans' pushing of a KeystoneXL pipeline bill were both nice — use of US components only, although I really can't conceive of that much heavy steel being imported from China. The one that got OKed, about boosting energy efficiency, is also nice, but seems fairly toothless. The one about restricting tar sands oil coming through the pipeline to US use only? Meh.

None of these hit the right angle, though.

I've said before that, if nothing else, Alberta tar sands oil is better by pipeline than by rail.

That said, a better amendment would have forced the Department of Transportation to make its push for railroad companies to do a voluntary upgrade of their tanker cars into a mandated replacement with new models.

But, even that's only the second-best option Senate Dems had.

The best?

Link KeystoneXL approval to a carbon tax at home along with a carbon tariff on imports.

First, the domestic tax needs to be linked with the tariff on imports anyway; just a domestic tax is not sensical either environmentally or economically.

Second, to the degree that that Alberta tar sands oil is "dirtier" than US conventional oils, it would have a heavier tariff vs the domestic tax.

Sure, this amendment likely would have had zero chance. It probably would only get 20 Democratic votes.

But, it surely could have gotten at least two.

Hello, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Boxer, Ed Markey and other real "green" types. That's more than two of you — enough for an amendment's motion and seconding.

My 2014 person of the year is ....

A guy who's influencing economies around the world right now, including internationally in Russia and domestically in Texas, and in other ways, around the world.

Who is the gentleman in that picture? Whom I have deliberately not captioned?

I'll explain that in a minute, and from there, you'll understand why he gets, and easily wins, the nomination for this important award.

So, with that said, that bit of suspense, let's move into the heart of things.

Drumroll?



Glad you asked for one?

It's Saudi Arabia's Minister of Petroleum Ali Al-Naimi.



Information/credit for photo above: Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi speaks to journalists ahead of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting on Nov. 27, 2014.

SAMUEL KUBANI / AFP/Getty Images

I deliberately looked for one with him in Western suit, to increase the suspense a bit, lest readers immediately guess, at a minimum, that "this guy has something to do with oil."

Well, Al-Naimi has plenty to do with oil, not just "something."

This is the man who is keeping Saudi Arabia in the oil driver's seat. Even if it means, per Business Insider, oil falling to $20/bbl. And, not cutting production even if surpluses grow. Period.

This is the man who could cause a recession in Texas. With more fighting over school funding and other things.

This is the man who could cause a Great Recession in Russia, and maybe already is, along with Western sanctions.

This is the man who could make it easier for Dear Leader to keep saying no to Keystone. (Unfortunately, it is the man who could also make climate change agreements, even relatively toothless ones, harder to achieve.)

This is the man who will help the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expand its influence throughout the Middle East, above all by weakening Iran, calling more shots in the Syrian civil war and leaning more on Israel to deal better with the Palestinian Authority in 2015.

Given that the global oil surplus was becoming evident by midyear of 2014, and that Al-Naami surely was already planning strategy, and talking strategy with King Abdullah himself by then, he's the winner.

Per the $20/bbl comment and the "we're not cutting" comment, he had to have Abdullah's stamp of approval. And, that means he's a powerful man with carte blanche.

Maybe I could almost be calling him, in advance, the frontrunner for 2015 person of the year. Let's actually hope not.

Meanwhile, even with the budgetary challenges, Saudi Arabia itself is likely among the net winners, primarily for all these geo-petro-political reasons. 

Your post- #election2014 week in #environmentalism, #fracking, #Keystone

A roundup of several posts of mine on trending environmental topics.

First, the city of Denton, Texas, north of Dallas, did pass a fracking ban. And faces multiple lawsuits. I look at that, and my estimate of Denton's chance of prevailing. I actually think it's not bad.

Second, the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline from Canada, which President Barack Obama has kicked down the road for months now, can't be kicked down the road any longer with a GOP Senate. I take a look at his options and his likely course of action, and whether it's necessarily the end of the environmentalism world.

Third, many environmentalists, greeting a China-US greenhouse gas emissions accord with huzzahs and handsprings, probably think this indicates Obama will take a hard line on Keystone. Given that my skeptical eye calls the climate deal "toothless," with analysis of why I think that's the case that neither the mainstream media nor Obamiac environmentalist swooners provide, I think it's news for Keystone, but not necessarily as good as others think.

That said, unlike Alberta's tar sands, "tight" oil from shale formations, produced by fracking, seems to have a short, bubbly lifespan. I look at the latest news on that, and budgetary and other implications for the state of Texas.

#KeystoneXL, Obama and the GOP

Faux News, in a half-correct piece (any talk that Mitch the Turtle has made about repealing Obamacare isn't real) says that the KeystoneXL pipeline will be front and center among talking points between President Obama and House and Senate GOP leaders tomorrow.

A final White House decision on Keystone was punted past Election Day, of course. Regular readers of this corner of the Interwebz know that that was no surprise to me either, of course.

So, what will Obama do?
1. I say there's a 40 percent chance he approves it straight up before the end of the year.
2. Or there's a 40 percent change he OKs it with some face-saving "concessions" from the GOP.
3. There's a 20 percent chance he kills it. And, that may be a high guess.

Your thoughts? Hit the poll on the right.

(Nov. 19: That "concessions" could include a straight-up OK of Keystone but with bargains on other legislation. That said, if I'm Dear Leader, I get some advance guarantee on those concessions.)

And, what will he do on other items?

Related to Keystone, he'll "double down" on his "all of the above" energy strategy, insisting on some crumbs still going to green energy. When red-state senators are reminded that many of them are in sunny areas, those who are OK with pork will agree.  And, per the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo buying up green power as soon as it becomes available, there are things to show any GOP Congresscritter who's not totally in the nutbar tank.

After all, Google, Microsoft, Walmart and Mars (the candy folks, headquartered here) have bought green power in Texas. Google's bought green power in Jim Imhofe's Oklahoma.

Is that what he should do?

I'm actually of somewhat mixed minds.

First, tar sands oil will continue to be mined, and continue to be exported, anyway. Jobs on pipeline building aside, a fair amount of it will be exported to U.S. oil refineries.

That said, because Obama didn't do the Senate heavy lifting in 2009 on a carbon cap-and-trade program, which of course isn't enough by itself to control what's staring us in the face, it's doubtful he'll take a strong stand against Keystone.

Second, with all the worries about pipelines, if that oil is coming here, it's safer coming via pipeline, even with the risk of leaks, than via rail. Related to that? Building the pipeline would reduce some horrific freight rail congestion that affects not only Amtrak, but grain from farmers and other things.

Third? Stephen Harper's Conservatives don't look like they're leaving office any time soon. Either in Ottawa at the federal level, or at the provincial level in Alberta. Right now, they hold 161 of 305 seats federally. It's doubtful that the next Canadian federal election will cut the majority to a plurality; the Conservatives have lost five seats in by-elections since 2011. And, if it does, rather than letting Harper run a minority government, I have little doubt that Justin Trudeau would put his liberals into a coalition to get a few crumbs of power.

Short of a change in Canadian government plus a carbon tax and tariff in the U.S., the on-the-ground dynamics of Alberta tar sands aren't changing.

As this piece spells out, those dynamics are huge. They include the federal and provincial governments treating Canada's First Nations as badly, if not more so, than the U.S. has treated our Native Americans in the past. Tribal divisions result from that. And, the relentless tar sands mining continues.

And, unless somebody can point out to me a 2016 U.S. presidential contender within the Democratic party who will come within 100 miles of a carbon tax, that's not changing.

So, approve the pipeline with concessions is the best realistic choice.

Immigration?

Any executive actions he take will be weak tea.

And, environmental organizations asking me to sign petitions to ask Congress to block Keystone? IT won't work,  of course, and this is really just baseball for environmentalist group fundraiisng.

Railroads take a #security page from government playbooks on #Bakken oil

Ironically, it's to working around the federal government.

Per this story out of Washington state, BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad, the nation's two biggies, of course, are asking to be allowed not to comply with a federal Department of Transportation emergency order. This order:

(R)equir(es) railroads by Friday to notify state officials about the volume, frequency and county-by-county routes of trains carrying large Bakken crude oil shipments.

As noted, DOT came up with the idea after a railroad tank car fire here in the US earlier this year, and the horrific collision and fire with dozens of deaths in Lac-Megantic, Quebec last year.

The railroads' response? This:

BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad last Friday asked the state to limit the “security sensitive” information to emergency planning and response groups.

You know, because knowing exactly, to the nanosecond, when a train will be in a certain county and exactly whether it has 31, rather than 36, oil cars is going to incredibly increase the odds of a terrorist attack when 31 oil cars will burn and explode just about as much as 36 and railroad timetables can be figured out closely enough just by making a few days of observations.

First, the state of Washington is right. This is public information and I hope it stands its ground.

Second, states that have caved in should be ashamed.

Third, DOT, and its regulatory cousin, the National Transportation Safety Board, should be ashamed. It still refuses to require, rather than request, railroads to upgrade from the DOT-111 tank cars known to be unsafe.

Fourth, railroad companies should be ashamed for refusing to do the voluntary upgrade.

Fifth, railroads ought to be ashamed for their deliberate mislabeling of the type of oil in said tank cars, which added to the intensity of some of those fires:

(Canadian) investigators found that the oil (at Lac-Megantic) had been mislabeled by the railroad as regular crude. It was far too dangerous to be transported in the puncture-prone DOT-111 cars used. (bangordailynews.com) Now Albany has become the new oil train hub and the derailment here involved the same type of tanker cars.

Even with safer tankers, emergency workers AND the general public have the right to know that a particular type of oil is coming through their town.

See, with the expected growth in Bakken transport by rail through Washington state — and, who knows, maybe some Alberta tar sands stuff, too, eh? —BNSF and Union Pacific are actually afraid of tar sands protesters above all else, I suspect.

Yes, Big Oil has no hair

Actually, it's Medium Oil, in the persona of Enbridge Oil.

Enbridge, which had a leak from a Michigan pipeline a few months back, wants to build a bigger one through British Columbia. Given how it handled the Michigan leak, it raised concerns.

So cybertricksters Yes Lab got a new campaign cooking. And, it worked:

“This was a funny way to dramatize the fact that neither Enbridge nor any other oil company can prevent spills, and that they basically have no cleanup plan,” said Shannon McPhail, a former Canadian oil worker and Canadian spokesperson for People Enbridge Ruined in Michigan (PERM), the group responsible for MyHairCares. “What's happening in Michigan proves that.”

Enbridge, though, was not amused. Not even close.

Yes Lab has more details on the pipeline:

Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline would cut across the Rocky Mountains, the pristine Great Bear rain forest, and over 1,000 streams and rivers. The pipeline would carry 700,000 barrels a day of petroleum products across 1,170 kilometres between Alberta’s Tar Sands and the Pacific Coast, where supertankers would carry the crude though the treacherous Douglas Channel.

It's enough to be concerned, to be sure.

And, why is nobody in the U.S. so good at cybertricksterism as Yes Lab?

Obama’s full plate of oily issues

First, Canada wants a waiver on carbon dioxide emissions from its oil sands mining, if that’s the best word. (It ain’t being drilled, unlike conventional oil.)

The sands are in a huge slump with oil prices in general right now. But, those prices are already creeping up, and, IMO, could be back at $60/bbl by summer’s end. So, more oil from sands will be produced.

I don’t think Obama has either guts or inclination to deny the request. It would force him to be a real environmentalist, would put pressure on Congress to resist Big Oil and Big Coal and pass a real climate change bill, and would force him to take more leadership on the issue.

So, Ottawa, one free waiver is in the mail.

Second, Obama plans to accelerate the timeframe for automakers to get their CAFEs up to 35 mpg. Other than that, there’s not much new about the bill, except…

It would appear to deny two-track CAFE regulation by the back door, by incorporating California’s tougher-than-national carbon-dioxide emissions standards, rejected by the BushCo EPA, until the big picture, and by EPA greenhouse-gas emission regulation powers into the mix.

Der Ahhnold is already on board with the first half.

But, can he unilaterally agree to that deal, without his state’s air quality board, or the Assembly, or somebody, signing off with him?

So what if California can theoretically follow a separate regulatory track again after 2016. What if federal permission for that is not granted?

Third, this in turn means that renewed calls for EPA to actually regulate CO2 itself, as far as determining emissions standards, rather than punting to Congressional bill writers, is dead as a doorknob.

So, a mix of indirect sellouts, and refusals to take proactive stances. Surprised?

That’s why I don’t get Paul Krugman’s naivete on this issue.

Harper proposes North America climate deal

With Barack Obama’s election, newly re-elected Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is suggesting a continential climate deal.

I won’t be cynical, nor even so harshly skeptical to say I smell a rat.

I will predict, without Harper yet revealing any details, that a sine qua non for him is some sort of “amnesty,” or “bracketing” or something else to take the carbon dioxide from Alberta’s oil sands “off budget.” And, he’s going to argue that this is only fair, since Canada experts so much of that oil to the U.S.

What that argument would actually do is highlight the glaring environmental weakness of NAFTA, as well as raise the issue of whether one country can impose a carbon tax on another country’s exports.

Until and unless Harper would agree to talk about that issue seriously, not just at the NAFTA level, but supporting such a dialogue a the WTO level, I’d advise Obama to say “no deal.”

Canadian govt conservatives also anti-enviro and anti-laws

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, reading from the Bush-Cheney environmentalism playbook, has decided to simply ignore a Canadian court ruling that declares Exxon Canada’s work in Alberta’s oil sands is an environmental hazard in the waiting.

And, Canadian newspapers get dinged, too, for putting the story inside their business sections.

Nice to know that the U.S. ain’t the only place with an “MSM” problem at times, either.

Duck a la crude kills 500 in Alberta

Some 500 ducks died after touching down on toxic refuge ponds in Alberta’s oil sands.

The ducks were exposed to residual oil on the surface of a partially-frozen basin at Syncrude Canada Ltd.’s Aurora North Site mine. Syncrude is the largest producer of oil from oil sands. The company says it did not use noisemakers designed to scare birds from the contaminated ponds,

Why? Because “extreme winter weather conditions” delayed the deployment of the noise makers.

Ironic, or hypocritical, or both, since oil production from the Alberta oil sands is the No. 1 reason Canada will fall far short of its 2012 Kyoto targets. And, probably is currently increasing more intense storms in northern Alberta, where spring is just now starting.

Company officials also did not immediately report the ducks’ dire situation, as required by law. That will get them a cool $1 million Canadian fine. Of course, the way our dollar is tanking, that could be worth $2 million U.S. in a couple of years.

I’m sure Syncrude won’t be such cheap bastards next spring.

Oil briefs – BP now means ‘Back to Petroleum’ and EIA means ‘clueless’

In 2000, BP said its initials now stood for “Beyond Petroleum.” Not any more. Canadian partner Husky is heavily involved in Albertan oil sands, BP wants to refine sour crude in the U.S., and it’s rumored the company is going to ax a lot of green initiatives.

Meanwhile, the government’s Energy Information Administration expects this summer’s gas prices will peak at $3.60/gal.

I highly doubt we’ll be that lucky. The main cluelessness is that EIA apparently still has an allergy to the phrase “Peak Oil.”

Canadian oil sands project on enviro hold

The Federal Court of Canada, a special trial court, taking a greenhouse gases look at a 120,000 acre Alberta oil sands project proposed by Imperial Oil.

Justice Danièle Tremblay-Lamer found that the review panel did not justify its finding that the measures proposed by Imperial Oil, which is controlled by the ExxonMobil Corporation, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the project to “insignificant levels.” The ruling indicated that the project would produce emissions similar to 800,000 automobiles.

The review is due to a suit by Canadian environmental groups.