Fracking – Informed Comment https://www.juancole.com Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion Mon, 06 Mar 2023 05:31:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.11 How to beat the Fracking Frenzy–Lessons from the Campaign that ended it in Ireland https://www.juancole.com/2023/03/fracking-lessons-campaign.html Mon, 06 Mar 2023 05:06:54 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=210501 The successful Irish anti-fracking struggle offers key insights on community power building for anti-extraction movements all over the world.
 
( Waging Nonviolence ) – The reality of the climate crisis makes it clear that we must leave the “oil in the soil” and the “gas under the grass,” as the Oilwatch International slogan goes. The fossil fuel industry knew this before anyone else. Yet the industry continues to seek new extractive frontiers on all continents in what has been labeled a “fracking frenzy” by campaigners. 


Anti-fracking activists celebrate Ireland’s ban. (LL/Dervilla Keegan)

In Australia, unconventional fossil gas exploration has been on the rise over the last two decades. Coal seam gas wells have been in production since 2013, while community resistance has so far prevented the threat of shale gas fracking. The climate crisis and state commitments under the Paris Agreement means that the window for exploration is closing. But the Australian economy remains hooked on fossil fuels and the industry claims that fossil gas is essential for economic recovery from COVID, “green growth” and meeting net-zero targets.  

The Northern Territory, or NT, government is particularly eager to exploit its fossil fuel reserves and wants to open up extraction in the Beetaloo Basin as part of its gas strategy. The NT recently announced a $1.32 billion fossil fuel subsidy for gas infrastructure project Middle Arm and greenlighted the drilling of 12 wells by fracking company Tamboran Resources as a first step towards full production. 

Gas exploration is inherently speculative with high risks. The threat of reputational damage is high enough that large blue chip energy companies like Origin Energy — a major player in the Australian energy market — are turning away from shale. This leaves the field to smaller players who are willing to take a gamble in search of a quick buck. This is precisely how Tamboran came to prominence in Australia. After buying out Origin Energy in September 2022, Tamboran is now the biggest player in the Northern Territory’s drive to drill. 

NT anti-fracking campaigner Hannah Ekin described this point as “a really key moment in the campaign to stop fracking in the Beetaloo basin.” For over a decade, “Traditional Owners, pastoralists and the broader community have held the industry at bay, but we are now staring down the possibility of full production licenses being issued in the near future.”  

Despite this threat, Tamboran has been stopped before. In 2017, community activists in Ireland mobilized a grassroots movement that forced the state to revoke Tamboran’s license and ban fracking. Although the context may be different, this successful Irish campaign has many key insights to offer those on the frontlines of resistance in Australia — as well as the wider anti-extraction movements all over the world.

(Twitter/@Love_Leitrim)

Tamboran comes to Ireland

In February 2011, Tamboran was awarded an exploratory license in Ireland — without public knowledge or consent. They planned to exploit the shale gas of the northwest carboniferous basin and set their sights on county Leitrim. The county is a beautiful, mountainous place, with small communities nestled in valleys carved by glaciers in the last ice age. The landscape is watery: peat bogs, marshes and gushing rivers are replenished by near daily downpours as Atlantic coast weather fronts meet Ireland’s western seaboard. Farming families go back generations on land that can be difficult to cultivate. Out of this land spring vibrant and creative communities, despite — or perhaps because of — the challenges of being on the margins and politically peripheral.

The affected communities first realized Tamboran’s plans when the company began a PR exercise touting jobs and economic development. In seeking to understand what they faced, people turned to other communities experiencing similar issues. A mobile cinema toured the glens of Leitrim showing Josh Fox’s documentary “Gasland.” After the film there were Q&As with folks from another Irish community, those resisting a Shell pipeline and gas refinery project at Rossport. Out of these early exchanges, the grassroots community response Love Leitrim, or LL, formed in late 2011. 

Resisting fracking by celebrating the positives about Leitrim life was a conscious strategic decision and became the group’s hallmark. In LL’s constitution, campaigners asserted that Leitrim is “a vibrant, creative, inclusive and diverse community,” challenging the underlying assumptions of the fracking project that Leitrim was a marginal place worth sacrificing for gas. The group developed a twin strategy of local organizing — which rooted them in the community — and political campaigning, which enabled them to reach from the margins to the center of Irish politics. This combination of “rooting” and “reaching” was crucial to the campaign’s success. 

5 key rooting strategies

The first step towards defeating Tamboran in Ireland was building a movement rooted in the local community. Out of this experience, five key “rooting strategies” for local organizing emerged — showing how the resistance developed a strong social license and built community power.

1. Build from and on relationships. Good relationships were essential to building trust in LL’s campaign. Who was involved — and who was seen to be involved — were crucial for rooting the campaign in the community. Local people were far more likely to trust and accept information that was provided by those they knew, and getting the public support of local farmers, fishers and well-known people was crucial. Building on existing relationships and social bonds, LL became deeply rooted in local life in a way that provided a powerful social license and a strongly-rooted base to enable resistance to fracking.

2. Foster ‘two-way’ community engagement. LL engaged the community with its campaign and, at the same time, actively participated as volunteers in community events. This two-way community engagement built trust and networked the campaign in the community. LL actively participated in local events such as markets, fairs and the St. Patrick’s Day parade, which offered creative ways to boost their visibility. At the same time, LL also volunteered to support events run by other community groups, from fun-runs to bake sales. According to LL member Heather (who, along with others in this article, is quoted on the condition of anonymity), this strategy was essential to “building up trust … between the group, its name and what it wants, and the community.”

3. Celebrate community. In line with its vision, LL celebrated and fostered community in many ways. This was typified by its organizing of a street feast world café event during a 2017 community festival that saw people come together over a meal to discuss their visions of Leitrim now and for their children. LL members also supported local renewable energy and ecotourism projects that advanced alternative visions of development. Celebrating and strengthening the community in this way challenged the fundamental assumptions of the fracking project — a politics of disposability which assumed that Leitrim could be sacrificed to fuel the extractivist economy. 

4. Connect to culture. Campaigners saw culture as a medium for catalyzing conversations and connecting with popular folk wisdom. LL worked with musicians, artists and local celebrities in order to relate fracking to popular cultural and historical narratives that resonated with communities through folk music and cultural events. This was particularly important in 2016, the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, which ultimately led to Irish independence from the British Empire. Making those connections tapped into radical strands of the popular imagination. Drawing on critical counter-narratives in creative ways overcame the potential for falling into negative activist stereotypes. Through culture, campaigners could present new or alternative stories, experiences or ideas in a way that evocatively connected with people.

5. Build networks of solidarity. Reaching out to other frontline communities was a powerful and evocative way to raise awareness of fracking and extractivism from people who had experienced them first-hand. As local campaigner Bernie explained, “When someone comes, it’s on a human level people can appreciate and understand. When they tell their personal story, that makes a difference.” 

Perhaps the most significant guest speaker was Canadian activist Jessica Ernst, whose February 2012 presentation to a packed meeting in the Rainbow ballroom was described by many campaigners as a key moment in the campaign. Ernst is a former gas industry engineer who found herself battling the fracking industry on her own land. She told her personal story, the power of which was heightened by her own industry insider credentials and social capital as a landowner. Reflecting on the event, LL member Triona remembered looking around the room and seeing “all the farmers, the landowners, who are the important people to have there — and people were really listening.”

(Twitter/@Love_Leitrim)

4 key reaching strategies 

With a strong social license and empowered network of activists, the next step for the anti-fracking movement was to identify how to make their voices heard and influence public policy. This required reaching beyond the local community scale to engage in national political decision making around fracking. Four key strategies enabled campaigners to successfully jump scales and secure a national fracking ban.

1. Find strategic framings. Tamboran sought to frame the public conversation on narrow technical issues surrounding single drilling sites, pipelines and infrastructure, obscuring the full impact of the thousands of planned wells. As LL campaigner Robert pointed out, this “project-splitting” approach “isn’t safe for communities, but it’s easier for the industry because they’re getting into a position where they’re unstoppable.” Addressing the impact of the entire project at a policy level became a key concern for campaigners. LL needed framings that would carry weight with decision makers, regulators and the media. Listening and dialogue in communities helped campaigners to understand and root the campaign in local concerns. From this, public health and democracy emerged as frames that resonated locally, while also carrying currency nationally.

The public health frame mobilized a wide base of opposition. Yet it was not a consideration in the initial Irish Environmental Protection Agency research to devise a regulatory framework for fracking. LL mobilized a campaign that established public health as a key test of the public’s trust in the study’s legitimacy. The EPA conceded and amended the study’s terms of reference to include public health. This enabled campaigners to draw on emerging health impact research from North American fracking sites, providing evidence that would have “cache with the politicians,” as LL member Alison put it. Working alongside campaigners from New York, LL established the advocacy group Concerned Health Professionals of Ireland, or CHPI, mirroring a similar, highly effective New York group. CHPI was crucial to highlighting the public health case for a ban on fracking and shaping the media and political debate.

2. Demonstrate resistance. Having rooted the campaign in local community life, LL catalyzed key groups like farmers and fishers to mobilize their bases. Farmers in LL worked within their social networks to organize a tractorcade. “It was all word of mouth … knocking on doors and phone calls,” said Fergus, the lead organizer for the event. Such demonstrations were “a show of solidarity with the farmers who are the landowners,” Triona recalled. They were also aimed at forcing the farmer’s union to take a public position on fracking. The event demonstrated to local farmers union leaders that their members were opposed to fracking, encouraging them to break their silence on the issue.

Collective action also enforced a bottom line of resistance to the industry. Tamboran made one attempt to drill a test well in 2014. Community mobilization prevented equipment getting to the site for a week while a legal battle over a lack of an environmental impact assessment was fought and won. Reflecting on this success, Robert suggested that communities can be nodes of resistance to “fundamental, large problems that aren’t that easy to solve” because “one of the things small communities can do is simply say no.” And when frontline communities are networked, then “every time a community resists, it empowers another community to resist.”

3. Engage politicians before regulators. In 2013, when Tamboran was renewing its license, campaigners found that there was no public consultation mechanism. Despite this, LL organized an “Application Not to Frack.” This was printed in a local newspaper, and the public was encouraged to cut it out and sign it. This grassroots counter-application carried no weight with regulators, but with an emphasis on rights and democracy, it sent a strong signal to politicians. 

Submitting their counter application, LL issued a press release: “Throughout this process people have been forgotten about. We want to put people back into the center of decision making … We are asking the Irish government: Are you with your people or not?” At a time when public sentiment was disillusioned with the political establishment in the aftermath of the 2011 financial crisis, LL tapped into this sentiment to discursively jump from the scale of a localized place-based struggle to one that was emblematic of wider democratic discontents and of national importance.

Frontline environmental justice campaigns often experience procedural injustices when navigating governance structures that privilege scientific/technical expertise. Rather than attempt an asymmetrical engagement with regulators, LL forced public debate in the political arena. In that space, they were electors holding politicians to account rather than lay-people with insufficient scientific knowledge to contribute to the policy making process. The group used a variety of creative tactics and strategic advocacy to engage local politicians. This approach — backed up by a strongly rooted base — led to unanimous support for a ban from politicians in the license area. In the 2016 election, the only pro-fracking candidate failed to win a seat. Local democratic will was clear. Campaigners set their sights on parliament and a national fracking ban.

4. Focus on the parliament. The lack of any public consultation before exploration commenced led campaigners to fear that decisions would continue to be made without public scrutiny. LL built strategic relationships with politicians across the political spectrum with the aim of forcing accountability in the regulatory system. A major obstacle to legislation was the ongoing EPA study, which was to inform government decisions on future licensing. But it emerged that CDM Smith, a vocally pro-fracking engineering firm, had been contracted for much of the work. The study was likely to set a roadmap to frack. 

Campaigners had two tasks: to politically discredit the EPA study and work towards a fracking ban. They identified the different roles politicians across the political spectrum — and between government and opposition — could strategically play in the parliamentary process. While continuing a public campaign, the group engaged in intensive advocacy efforts, working with supportive parliamentarians to host briefings where community members addressed lawmakers, submitted parliamentary questions to the minister, used their party’s speaking time to address the issue, raised issues at parliamentary committee hearings, and proposed motions and legislative bills. 

While the politicians were also not environmental experts, their position as elected representatives meant that regulators were accountable to them. Political pressure thus led to the shelving of the compromised EPA study and paved the way for a ban. Several bills had been tabled. By chance, the one that was first scheduled for debate was from a Leitrim politician whose bill was backed by campaigners as the most watertight. With one final push from campaigners, it secured support from lawmakers across parties and a government motion to block it was fought off. In November 2017, six years after Tamboran arrived in Leitrim, fracking was finally banned in Ireland. It was a win for people power and democracy.  

Love Leitrim supporters showing solidarity with Standing Rock water protectors. (LL/Rob Doyle)

Building a bridge to the Beetaloo and beyond

Pacifist-anarchist folk singer Utah Phillips described folk songs as “bridges” between past struggles and the listener’s present. Bridges enable the sharing of knowledge and critical understanding across time and distances. Similarly, stories of struggle act as a bridge, between the world of the reader and the world of the story, sharing wisdom, and practical and ethical knowledge. The story of successful Irish resistance to Tamboran is grounded in a particular political moment and a particular cultural context. The political and cultural context faced by Australian campaigners is very different. Yet there are certainly insights that can bridge the gap between Ireland and Australia. 

The Irish campaign shows us how crucial relationships and strongly rooted community networks can be when people mobilize. In the NT, campaigners have similarly sought to build alliances across the territory and between traditional Indigenous owners and pastoralists. This is crucial, suggests NT anti-fracking campaigner Hannah Ekin, because “the population affected by fracking in the NT is very diverse, and different communities often have conflicting interests, values and lifestyles.” 

LL’s campaign demonstrates the importance of campaign framings reflective of local contexts and concerns. While public health was a unifying frame in Ireland, Ekin notes that the protection of water has become “a real motivator” and a rallying cry that “unites people across the region” because “if we over-extract or contaminate the groundwater we rely on, we are jeopardizing our capacity to continue living here.”  

The Beetaloo is a sacred site for First Nations communities, with sacred song lines connected to the waterways. “We have to maintain the health of the waterways,” stressed Mudburra elder Raymond Dimikarri Dixon. “That water is alive through the song line. If that water isn’t there the songlines will die too.” 

In scaling up from local organizing to national campaigning, the Irish campaign demonstrated the importance of challenging project splitting and engaging the political system to avoid being silenced by the technicalities of the regulatory process. In the NT, the government is advancing the infrastructure to drill, transport and process fracked gas. This onslaught puts enormous pressure on campaigners. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Ekin noted. “We are constantly on the back foot trying to stop each individual application for a few wells here, a few wells there, as the industry entrenches itself as inevitable.” 

In December 2022, Environment Minister Lauren Moss approved a plan by Tamboran Resources to frack 12 wells in the Beetaloo as they move towards full production. But campaigners are determined to stop them: the Central Australian Frack Free Alliance, or CAFFA, is taking the minister to court for failing to address the cumulative impacts of the project as a whole. By launching this case CAFFA wants to shift the conversation to the bigger issue of challenging a full scale fracking industry in the NT. As Ekin explained, “We want to make the government listen to the community, who for over a decade now have been saying that fracking is not safe, not trusted, not wanted in the territory.”

Hannah Ekin of the Central Australian Frack Free Alliance and Love Leitrim contributed to this article.

Correction 3/3/2023: An earlier version of this story misspelled Hannah Ekin’s last name as Mekin.

Jamie Gorman is a community organizer passionate about living together well on the earth with humans and other kin. He holds a PhD from Maynooth University, Ireland and is currently based in Mparntwe, Arrernte Country, Austraila.

Via Waging Nonviolence

]]> Tax Cuts for the Rich, Fracking and Harsh Discipline undid UK’s Liz Truss, in Warning to Conservative Parties Everywhere https://www.juancole.com/2022/10/discipline-conservative-everywhere.html Fri, 21 Oct 2022 04:08:11 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=207698 Oxford (Special to Informed Comment) – The British Prime Minister Liz Truss was forced to step down on Thursday 20th October only after 44 days in office, making her tenure the shortest in British history. It is important to point out that she was elected by only 81,326 Tory members and not by nearly 50 million British voters.

The next British Prime Minister will be the third prime minister in three months, his or her Home Secretary and Chancellor of Exchequer will also be the fourth ministers in as many months, something that is totally unprecedented in British history. James Graham, a British playwright and screenwriter, tweeted this morning: “A Prime Minister may fall today. Soak up the history, guys. Days like today only come around every couple of months.”

In yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Question Time in Parliament, the leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer opened his question with a retort about an upcoming book about Liz Truss’s time in office. “Apparently it’s going to be out by Christmas. Is that the release date or the title?” he joked. Truss came out fighting, insisting that she would continue to remain prime minister because “I am a fighter, not a quitter”.

Her “Prime Minister’s Question Hour” in Parliament went fairly well, and many of her supporters thought that she would be safe for the time being, but early in the afternoon, her right-wing Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned and, in a blistering attack on her, accused her of having ditched her election promises. This bombshell was followed by chaotic scenes in Parliament over a vote on fracking. The government imposed a “three-line whip” making it mandatory for Tory MPs to vote for it or lose the whip (being expelled from the Party).

Fracking is very unpopular with the majority of the British people, including many members of the Conservative Party. There were unprecedented scenes of some MPs being press-ganged and forced to vote for the bill, which showed the disarray in the party. However, according to the internal rules of the Conservative Party, the MPs could not force a vote of no-confidence on the prime minister for at least a year after her election.

Yet, early on Thursday morning, Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the powerful “1922 Committee” that represents the views of backbench MPs, went to see Truss at 10 Downing Street and informed her that she had lost the trust of the majority of Tory MPs and that it would be more dignified for her to resign, rather than to be forced out. Therefore, she found that she had no option but to resign.

In her short resignation statement, she said: “I came into office at a time of great economic and international instability… And we set out a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit. I recognise, though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative party. I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative party.”

Thus ended Truss’s tumultuous premiership. Her departure after only six weeks in office was a rapid and humiliating fall from power that throws her Conservative Party into further disarray. She said she would remain party leader and prime minister until a successor is chosen within a week. This would make the choice of her replacement even less democratic than the way she was elected (selected) following the messy departure of Boris Johnson over the summer. This time, instead of going to the party members in the country, only Tory MPs will choose her successor.

If all goes well (and judging by the events of the past few weeks that is going to be a tall order), one of the prominent Conservative MPs, presumably one of those who took part in the last election campaign, will be chosen to succeed her. The problem is that there are few MPs who are prepared to welcome this poisoned chalice, knowing that their tenure will also be a short one. Among the leading candidates, the former Chancellor of Exchequer who received the highest number of votes by Tory MPs has remained silent and some of his friends have said that he is no longer interested in the job. The current Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is popular with most MPs, but he too has ruled himself out.


British Parliament Building via Pixabay.

The situation has become so bizarre that some MPs have suggested that they should ask the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who was forced out of office following a number of scandals to return to his former job. In his resignation speech, Johnson who is a lover of the classics intriguingly made a reference to the Roman statesman Cincinnatus, who left power only to be called back to office when his people were in trouble. He had also compared himself to Winston Churchill who was invited to serve as prime minister when the country was facing a major crisis. However, many opposition figures have said that he should be barred from returning to office given his past record.

Whatever happens, it is clear that British politics is passing through a period of the worst crisis since the Second World War. The current problems started with a foolish referendum called for by the former Prime Minister David Cameron on whether to stay or leave the European Union. As a parliamentary democracy, British policies are not decided by referenda, especially on such a complex issue as the EU membership. The vote in favour of Brexit was won by a small majority of voters. It was pushed by a small number of fanatical MPs and political activists who allegedly wanted to make Britain independent and to usher in a brilliant era of economic progress. Brexit was opposed by the majority of Labour and Liberal Democrat voters. It was also opposed by a decisive majority of voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and even by a number of senior Tory MPs.

Brexit has strengthened independence campaigns in Scotland and Northern Ireland and its disastrous consequences have also turned many of its initial supporters against it. Not only has Brexit not led to economic progress, it has acted as a deadly poison in the British body politics, cutting Britain off from the largest single market in the world. Polls show that if a referendum was held today, a big majority of people would vote against it.

The situation has been aggravated by the aftermath of Covid that has brought the National Health Service to its knees, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the highest rate of inflation for 40 years, unprecedented high energy costs, a looming recession, increased interest rates, making life very difficult for old-age pensioners, those with mortgages, and those on low income.

In the midst of all this, Truss and her short-lived Chancellor of Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng introduced a new budget dropping the top rate of tax which would only benefit the super-rich, lifted the limit on bankers’ bonuses and raised the tax for most of the people. These Neo-Conservative policies that were based on extreme economic ideologies and free market fundamentalism that were hostile to workers’ rights and the environment, crashed the pound, raised mortgage repayments and dramatically hyped the cost of borrowing. Kwarteng was forced to resign only three weeks after being appointed to his job.

This shambolic change of government has not only undermined Britain’s standing in the world, it has also weakened the Western alliance at a critical time in the history of the world. The rise of right-wing politicians in Italy, Hungary, Turkey and now Britain has delivered a major blow to Western democracy. If the Republicans manage to gain control of the House and Senate in next month’s mid-term election, the West will be in a much weaker ideological position in its confrontation with China, Russia and other autocracies. These events must be a wakeup call for the West to rethink its policies and put its house in order.

]]> It is now Cheaper to Switch from Coal directly to Wind and Solar than to Natural Gas https://www.juancole.com/2022/06/cheaper-directly-natural.html Mon, 06 Jun 2022 05:39:55 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=205059 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Matthew Gray at Transition Zero writes that it is now cheaper in North America and Europe to switch from coal plants directly to wind, solar, battery renewable energy sources than it is to switch to methane (“natural”) gas.

TZ figures transition costs in expenditure of carbon dioxide, and finds that going from coal to gas in 2022 costs $235 per ton of carbon dioxide. You would save so much switching instead to wind or solar that the cost would be in negative territory, -$62 per ton of carbon dioxide. The cost of switching to wind, solar, battery has plummeted 90% since 2010.

Gabrielle See at CNBC underlines that TZ is saying that there are not only cost savings and more prudent financing to be had in the green energy sector, but investing heavily in it is also a hedge against climate-caused damage.

A lot of municipalities in wind-corridor states such as Texas are choosing wind or solar over methane gas because they need to make 20-year budgets. Fossil fuel prices are erratic and volatile, as can be seen this year when they have spiked in part because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So you can’t predict the price twenty years out. But since wind and sunshine are free, you know exactly what the fuel for solar and wind farms will cost in twenty years. It will still be zero. You can’t as easily predict replacement costs for wind turbines or solar panels, but they actually will likely fall even further in price, so wind, water and battery are good bets.

TZ says that upward pressure on fossil fuel prices is being exerted by the unwillingness of many banks to finance exploration for new oil and gas fields. Typically the fields themselves are offered as collateral. But there is a real chance that the value of an oil field in twenty years will be zero because a series of climate-driven disasters convinced the public to outlaw them, or because wind, solar, battery plummeted further in cost, making fossil fuels too expensive for daily use. There is also a danger of the coal or gas plant contributing to the climate crisis and facing blowback from extreme weather damage. If banks won’t offer financing for exploration and development of fields, then the world supply will be stagnant even as demand rises, pricing fossil fuels out of the energy market compared to renewables.

Already in 2018 economists found it was cheaper to build and operate a new wind or solar farm than just to go on operating a coal power plant. This is true for 80% of the 240 coal power plants in the US, according to Silvio Marcacci at Forbes. Although coal experienced a slight revival in 2021, it is now rapidly declining again. Some 12.6 gigawatts of coal power capacity will be shuttered in 2022, according to the Energy Information Agency, which is 80% of all retiring power plants. Even Duke Energy and Georgia Power will get out of the coal business between now and 2035, replacing the lost generating capacity with wind, solar, battery. Coal has fallen from a majority of US electricity generation to only 20% in the past decade.

Because coal plants are so expensive to go on operating compared to new wind and solar farms, it is estimated that the US could save $5.6 billion a year just by turning all the coal plants into solar farms, right now.

The US has 3,400 fossil fuel-fired power plants, 240 of the coal-fired, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Not only are they wrecking the planet but they spew out particulate matter pollution harmful to the health of local residents. As a result, they have been mostly sited in low-income and minority neighborhoods, who bear the brunt of the ill health effects of dirty fuels.

Methane gas interests promoted their product by arguing that since wind and solar energy are intermittent (wind does not blow all the time and the sun does not shine at night), the slack could be taken up by gas as a “bridge” fuel. Transition Zero is saying that that way of thinking is now antiquated. You don’t need a bridge. Solar, wind, battery are so cheap that you can and should go straight to them. Batteries have improved in their power and efficiency and are increasingly stabilizing grids like that of California, which has about 3 gigawatts of battery capacity now. Batteries can store solar power during the day and release it at night, or store wind power when it is windy and release it when the winds calm.

Another problem with “natural” gas as a bridge is that much gas production in the US is now via hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” which releases large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Methane does not stay in the atmosphere as long as CO2, but it is 25 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas. Our current methane crisis appears to derived from fracked wells that have been left uncapped.

]]> Industrialized Nations must stop Producing Fossil Fuels by 2034 to keep Climate from Going Tropical and Chaotic https://www.juancole.com/2022/03/industrialized-producing-tropical.html Wed, 23 Mar 2022 05:52:43 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=203638 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Scientists Dan Calverley and Kevin Anderson at Manchester University have brought out a new report looking hard at what would have to be done for us to have a 50/50 chance of keeping the increase in the average temperature of the earth’s surface to 2.7 degrees F. (1.5C) over preindustrial averages. Scientists have increasingly worried that if we boil the earth more than that, the climate will go crazy on us in ways that might be challenging for maintaining ordinary human civilization.

It is bad news. To have an even chance of keeping something like a normal climate, we have to stop producing coal completely by 2030 in the industrialized world. Too bad for humanity that coal baron Joe Manchin stands in the way of our reaching that goal in the US.

America’s coal production has fallen over the past decade, but in 2020 we still produced 535 million short tons of the planet-wrecking poison. China, India and Indonesia all produce more than that. Australia produces almost as much. Russia does about 2/3s what the US does. I don’t believe either the US or Russia will completely phase out coal by 2030, and China is going to go on building new coal plants until then.

As for petroleum and methane gas (it isn’t “natural”), the authors say that the wealthier producer nations must stop bringing 74% them out of the ground by 2030 and completely cease their production by 2034.

The US produced 11.18 million barrels a day of petroleum in 2021 and it will increase this year. The likelihood it will be zero in 2034 strikes me as between slim and none unless we could electrify transportation in a decade. Again, the whole Republican Party along with Joe Manchin is dedicated to making sure that does not happen.

Russia also produces about 11.3 million barrels a day of petroleum and the Russian government is all about ensuring it continues to do so. Massive boycotts of Russian oil may reduce production by about 3 million barrels a day in the coming couple of years. But zero? No.

So why do Calverly and Anderson think we need to take these drastic, radical steps?

Back in the 18th century before the invention of the steam engine, the average temperature of the earth’s surface was cooler than today, because the concentration of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere was about 278 parts per million. For 10,000 years, during the Holocene, it had been in the range of 260 ppm to 280 ppm.

But then humanity went wild with engines of various sorts, at first driven by steam, which meant you had to boil water. And they boiled the water by burning wood, then coal, then methane gas. We put cosmic amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Volcanoes and rotting vegetation had increased CO2 substantially in past epochs. But significant build-ups had taken millions of years. We have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by two thirds in only 272 years, to a likely average in 2022 of 417 ppm.

The last time carbon dioxide was so concentrated in the atmosphere was 3.6 million years ago, the middle Pliocene, when giant beavers roamed the earth and the Sahara was a mix of savannah and forest. We are hurtling toward that world. The whole world was tropical, and I mean sweltering hot. The Arctic had an average temperature of 60 degrees F., had a lot of rain, and was heavily forested. It almost certainly did not have year-round ice.

A tropical-everywhere earth had completely different weather patterns and sea currents circulated differently, spreading the warmth around. At some points sea level was 60 to 90 feet higher than it is now, given the lack of land ice. That would submerge a lot of coastal cities. A lot of them will have trouble dealing with the expected 1.5 foot rise over the next three decades, let alone 60 feet.

Making a second Pliocene warm period is a dangerous experiment with our only planetary home. James Hansen and colleagues are worried that if we heat up the earth to 3.6 degrees F (2C) above 1750 levels, we won’t just get a serial set of changes (1, 2, 3, 4) but that some changes will be exponential (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64). They worry about drastic changes in ocean circulation with disastrous effects on climate. They worry about superstorms. They worry about rapid sea level rise. Most of all, they worry that an increase of 3.6 degrees F. in the average surface temperature of the planet could make the climate unstable and take us on a wild roller coaster ride of the dark horror variety.

]]> Harvard study links fracking to early death risk for seniors https://www.juancole.com/2022/03/harvard-fracking-seniors.html Mon, 07 Mar 2022 05:04:30 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=203338 By Laureen Fagan:

( Sustainability Times) – Most people know it as fracking, a process of drilling for gas and oil using methods like hydraulic fracturing to inject water or chemicals into rock layers so that the fossil fuels can be extracted.

It’s long been opposed by climate activists, but now a new study suggests that it raises the risk of early death in the elderly. That’s according to scientists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who published their work in the journal Nature Energy.

The research team sifted through data on more than 2.5 million oil and gas wells in the United States. Among them were at least 100,000 wells that relied on “unconventional oil and gas development” methods, or UOGD. They included both hydraulic fracturing and directional, nonvertical drilling practices.

“Although UOGD is a major industrial activity in the U.S., very little is known about its public health impacts,” said senior study author Petros Koutrakis, a professor of environmental sciences. “Our study is the first to link mortality to UOGD-related air pollutant exposures.”

To do this, the Harvard University scientists also studied the records of more than 15 million people aged 65 or older who are enrolled in the U.S. Medicare plan for senior health benefits. These people all lived in major U.S. fracking zones from 2001 to 2015.

The researchers used two different statistical methods to assess the impacts of either living too close to a fracking operation or downwind from it. After adjusting for socioeconomic and other factors, including other environmental exposures, the study results showed that the closer to a UOGD well that people lived, the greater their risk of premature death.

The seniors who lived closest to the wells had a 2.5% higher mortality risk when compared with those who didn’t. When the people lived both close to and downwind from the wells, they were at a higher risk than those who lived close to but upwind from the wells. Both groups were compared with people who had no exposure.

The results, the authors said, point to air pollution linked to fracking as the cause of the public health threat to seniors.

They note that some 17.6 million people in the U.S. currently live within one kilometer of an active fracking well. Previous studies have found links between fracking and harmful pollution, with specific connections to heart and lung health, cancer outcomes, and prenatal impacts. But little has been known about impacts to the elderly, or exactly how fracking may contribute to a mortality risk.

“Our findings suggest the importance of considering the potential health dangers of situating UOGD near or upwind of people’s homes,” said postdoctoral fellow Longxiang Li, the lead author of the study.

Laureen Fagan is a freelance journalist covering international affairs, politics and technology. She is trained in conflict resolution and diversity, and has special interests in science and medical reporting, and culture and religion issues.

Via Sustainability Times

Licensed under Creative Commons – Attribution/Share alike license.

]]> Conflict with Russia is Raising your Gasoline Bill; an Electric Car is the Answer https://www.juancole.com/2022/02/conflict-gasoline-electric.html Thu, 17 Feb 2022 06:30:58 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=203021 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Reporters pressed White House spokesperson Jen Psaki on Wednesday about the likelihood that any Russian military engagement in Ukraine will raise petroleum prices further. Ensuing US sanctions on Russia would keep some of its petroleum off the market, as has already happened to Iran, at a time when demand is high and supplies are tight.

ABC News reports that President Biden is signalling to the American public that there could be higher prices ahead. ABC News Chief Business Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis talked to oil analysts who said that gasoline prices could rise 50 cents if Russia goes into Ukraine. The average price of gasoline per gallon across the US at the moment is $3.50.

Psaki said, “We have been in touch with allies and partners, suppliers out there on the global stage for weeks now in preparation for a range of impacts of — you know, in anticipation of an invasion or, actually, an impact of an invasion, both for natural gas and oil prices on the market.”

Russia is a major producer both of methane gas and of petroleum, and both sources of energy would be affected by US and European sanctions on Moscow.

Psaki thus attempted to give journalists the impression on Wednesday that Mr. Biden has options, such as approaching allies abroad or releasing more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Alas, this is not true. Saudi Arabia for its poor human rights record. Riyadh says it will abide by an OPEC agreement on production quotas. President Biden also pressed the major methane gas producer, Qatar, to ship more Liquefied Natural Gas to Europe, but while the small Gulf principality would love to be of help to Washington, it is hamstrung by long-term contracts with Asian customers. Doha is increasing its gas production capacity, but that will take time.

ABC quotes a Republican congressman as, predictably, saying that the answer is to allow the US to produce more petroleum and methane gas, but there isn’t any significant federal cap on such production. Restraints on oil drilling on nature reserves keep a handful of people from getting richer, but would not change the price of petroleum.

Moreover, producing more oil and gas in the US mostly means hydraulic fracturing, which is ruinous to the environment and will wreck the earth with methane and carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, fracked fields are shallow and oil production at some previously rich fields is declining.

There is only one reasonable solution to high gasoline prices. It is to abandon the gasoline automobile for either public transport (in cities) or where necessary electric vehicles. EVs don’t use gasoline and buying one is a declaration of independence from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

As for methane gas, it can be quickly and inexpensively replaced by wind, solar and batteries. The more of our electricity that comes from renewables, moreover, the greener our electric vehicles will be.

Already, most new electricity generating capacity this year is expected to come from renewables, and within eight years renewables will surpass gas as sources of electricity, according to the EIA. I’d bet it will be sooner.

Getting away from gasoline by buying an EV may only be plausible for middle class families right now. But note that the average passenger vehicle in the US sells for $47,000 in early 2022, and with federal tax breaks may EVs are cheaper than that.

Only 535,000 electric vehicles were sold in the US in 2021, versus 3.2 million in mainland China and 2.3 million in Europe. It is time for us to stop being so backward, and paying for it through the nose. There are many new models of EVs on the market this year, so the selection has grown enormously.

Biden’s infrastructure law is allowing him to provide states with federal money to put in a fast charging network for EVs, and there will very shortly be more electric charging stations than gas stations. But this range anxiety business is anyway overdone. I leased an EV and I never got anywhere near running down the battery. Most EVs have a range of 200-300 miles per charge nowadays, and the average daily trip is in the US is 5 miles. So you’re not actually going to run out of juice. If you want to take a long road trip before Biden’s chargers are installed, so rent a car. That makes more sense than paying for gasoline every day of the year.

]]> Methane Menace and Global Heating: Why President Biden is wrong and Fracking must be Banned https://www.juancole.com/2021/04/methane-president-fracking.html Mon, 26 Apr 2021 05:30:51 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=197454 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – When running for office, Joe Biden pledged that the federal government would not ban hydraulic fracturing or fracking. This environmentally disastrous method of extracting petroleum and natural gas from shale rock beneath the earth involves pumping water down there under enormous pressure to break up the rocks and release the fossil fuels. The water is then left in pools on the surface, full of pollutants. New York and some other states have banned the technique, and California will ban new fracking from 2024. Pennsylvania depends on it, which is why Biden dissociated himself from calls for a prohibition.

Here’s the problem. Methane gas in the atmosphere fell in the last decades of the 20th century. Then since about 2008, methane gas emissions have increased rapidly. This is alarming. This is also a mystery. Why?

Scientists have shown that fracking natural gas is the culprit.

The Other Greenhouse Gas, methane, does not get as much press as carbon dioxide. The two gases are dictating our fates, sort of like ancient Greek gods, and they are very different. Methane is quick like Hermes or Mercury, the messenger of the Olympians, who speeds on winged sandals. Carbon dioxide is ponderous like Hephaistos or Vulcan, the god of the forge. Methane causes nearly 100 times as much heat from the sun to be retained on earth as does carbon dioxide. But it only hangs around for about ten years. Carbon dioxide is much longer-lasting.

If we want to keep the increase in average global heating under 1.5 degrees C. (2.7 degrees F.) by 2050, we need to radically pull back methane emissions. This is the message of a forthcoming United Nations report covered yesterday by the New York Times .

A couple of years ago, a Cornell University team was able to demonstrate that the mysterious rise in methane emissions was not the result of natural factors but came from fracking shale gas:

R. W. Howarth “Ideas and perspectives: is shale gas a major driver of recent increase in global atmospheric methane?, Biogeosciences, 16, 3033–3046, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-3033-2019, 2019.

Howarth writes,

    “Since 2008 . . . methane concentrations have again been rising rapidly. This increase, if it continues in coming decades, will significantly increase global warming and undercut efforts to reach the COP21 targe. The total atmospheric flux of methane for the period 2008–2014 was ∼24.7 Tg [million tons] per year greater than for the 2000–2007 period, an increase of 7 % in global human-caused methane emissions.”

He goes on to explain the answer to the mystery:

    “Methane has been rising rapidly in the atmosphere over the past decade, contributing to global climate change. Unlike the late 20th century when the rise in atmospheric methane was accompanied by an enrichment in the heavier carbon stable isotope (13C) of methane, methane in recent years has become more depleted in 13C. This depletion has been widely interpreted as indicating a primarily biogenic source for the increased methane. Here we show that part of the change may instead be associated with emissions from shale-gas and shale-oil development. Previous studies have not explicitly considered shale gas, even though most of the increase in natural gas production globally over the past decade is from shale gas. The methane in shale gas is somewhat depleted in 13C relative to conventional natural gas. Correcting earlier analyses for this difference, we conclude that shale-gas production in North America over the past decade may have contributed more than half of all of the increased emissions from fossil fuels globally and approximately one-third of the total increased emissions from all sources globally over the past decade.”

A more recent study found that over 50% of all the increased methane emissions comes from just 5% of the fracking sites. I.e. there are super-emitters. Their leaks obviously need urgently to be plugged. But even better is not allowing any further super-emitters to emit.

North America has a small percentage of the world’s population, about 4%, but fracking shale gas in the past decade accounts for more than 50% of all increased emissions from fossil fuels in the world. That is astonishing.

It is also very, very dangerous. And fracking shale gas must obviously be banned if we are going to stop the rapid cooking of our earth.

—-

Bonus video:

KION: “NEWSOM FRACKING BAN”

]]> Kamala Harris’s best Zingers and Pence’s worst Lies https://www.juancole.com/2020/10/kamala-harriss-zingers.html Thu, 08 Oct 2020 05:47:46 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=193732 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) –

The Pence-Harris debate was what disagreements among normal people might look like, as opposed to the weird behavior of Trump in the first presidential debate. While pundits are saying that it lacked fireworks, that is not true if you define fireworks as policy disagreement as opposed to mud wrestling.

The election at this point seems to be Biden-Harris’s to lose. Harris may not have had a “moment.” But she did what she needed to do. She demonstrated forcefulness and that she is on top of the issues. She showed that an African-American woman and an Asian-American woman can stand her ground against a privileged white male. She was likeable and sharp. She seems a credible president, which is one of the jobs of a vice presidential candidate.

Here are some moments where I thought Kamala Harris drove point crucial points, along with a tally of Pence’s worst lies.

1. The most impressive moment in Kamala Harris owning Mike Pence was her opener, in which she laid out the case against this administration on its handling of the coronavirus. Polls show that this is an issue at the top of voter concerns. She needed to make this case, and she did:

    “the American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country. And here are the facts. 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months. Over 7 million people who have contracted this disease. One in five businesses closed. We’re looking at frontline workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers. We are looking at over 30 million people, who in the last several months, had to file for unemployment. And here’s the thing, on January 28th, the vice president and the president were informed about the nature of this pandemic. They were informed that it’s lethal in consequence, that it is airborne, that it will affect young people, and that it would be contracted because it is airborne. And they knew what was happening, and they didn’t tell you.

    Can you imagine if you knew on January 28th, as opposed to March 13th, what they knew, what you might’ve done to prepare? They knew, and they covered it up. The president said it was a hoax. They minimized the seriousness of it. The president said, “You’re on one side of his ledger if you wear a mask. You’re on the other side of his ledger if you don’t.” And in spite of all of that, today, they still don’t have a plan. They still don’t have a plan. Well, Joe Biden does. And our plan is about what we need to do around a national strategy for contact tracing, for testing, for administration of the vaccine, and making sure that it will be free for all. That is the plan that Joe Biden has and that I have, knowing that we have to get a hold of what has been going on, and we need to save our country. And Joe Biden is the best leader to do that.”

2. Another moment where Harris clearly had the best of the argument was her comments on Trump-Pence packing the courts mostly with white male arch-conservatives, many of them unqualified.

    “Do you know that of the 50 people who President Trump appointed to the court of appeals for lifetime appointments, not one is Black?”

Politifact notes that according to Bloomberg, Trump has actually confirmed 53 life appointments to the court of appeals. And, as she said, none were African-American. Some 7 were Asian-American and just one was Latino.

Politifact also mirrored this graphic from The New York Times showing the Trump appointees to the court of appeals, just to reinforce Harris’s point.

African-Americans are 13.4 percent of Americans, and another 2 percent of Americans have African heritage along with some other (Native American and/or White).

You know what 15.4 percent of 53 is? Eight. If Trump’s judicial appointments had not actively discriminated against persons of African descent, there should have been 8 Black judges on the court of appeals.

3. Harris was also strong on the environment and the climate emergency. Climate is another issue voters increasingly feel strongly about, and on which a majority of Americans in polls are willing to base their choice of candidates.

    “Joe Biden’s economic plan… Moody’s, which is a reputable Wall Street firm, has said will create seven million more jobs than Donald Trump’s.

    And part of those jobs that will be created by Joe Biden are going to be about clean energy and renewable energy. Because, you see, Joe understands that the West Coast of our country is burning, including my home state of California. Joe sees what is happening on the Gulf states, which are being battered by storms. Joe has seen and talked with the farmers in Iowa whose entire crops have been destroyed because of floods.

    And so Joe believes, again, in science. I’ll tell you something, Susan, I served when I first got to the Senate on the committee that’s responsible for the environment. Do you know, this administration took the word science off the website, and then took the phrase climate change off the website? We have seen a pattern with this administration, which is they don’t believe in science. And Joe’s plan is about saying we’re going to deal with it, but we’re also going to create jobs. Donald Trump, when asked about the wildfires in California, and the question was, the science is telling us this… You know what Donald Trump said? Science doesn’t know.

    So let’s talk about who is prepared to lead our country over the course of the next four years on what is an existential threat to us as human beings. Joe is about saying we’re going to invest that in renewable energy, which is going to be about the creation of millions of jobs. We will achieve net zero emissions by 2050, carbon neutral by 2035. Joe has a plan. This has been a lot of talk from the Trump administration, and really it has been to go backward instead of forward. We will also reenter the Climate Agreement with pride.”

As for Pence, I can’t think of any moment where he really shone, but maybe you have to be a conservative. He was workmanlike and the best thing you can say about him is that he was good at making Trumpism sound less like the apocalypse than it actually does.

These are the most horrible lies he told:

1. “President Trump and I have a plan to improve healthcare and protect pre-existing conditions for every American.”

As the BBC points out, there is no sign that he and Trump actually have any health care plan at all. Trump’s executive order saying the US government supports mandatory coverage of pre-existing conditions is without legal effect and is dishonest for that reason. Trump and Pence are right now in court trying to abolish Obamacare, which extended coverage to 20 million more Americans, and which kept 55 million Americans with pre-existing conditions from having to pay top-off fees to the big insurers.

2. Pence said “Our air and land are cleaner than at any time ever recorded, our water is among cleanest in the world.”

Our air is cleaner, but it is no thanks to Pence and Trump. It is a long term trend, often from local regulation. They have tried to remove mileage requirements from automobiles, guaranteeing they use more gasoline and so produce more pollution. They have promoted coal plants, the dirtiest fossil fuel. They have turned the EPA into an anti-EPA, allowing polluters to run riot.

Worse, Pence’s definition of “clean” is so 1972. Air is not clean if it is being pumped full of 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually in the US. That is a heat-trapping gas and the opposite of clean and healthy.

As for water, as the BBC says US water is alarmingly dirty from corporate polluters using it as a sewer. The US is ranked 26th in water quality in the world.

On the climate emergency, Pence said,

    “Now with regard to climate change, the climate is changing, but the issue is what’s the cause and what do we do about it? President Trump has made it clear that we’re going to continue to listen to the science. Now Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would put us back in the Paris Climate Accord. They’d impose the Green New Deal, which would crush American energy, would increase the energy costs of American families in their homes, and literally would crush American jobs.

    And President Trump and I believe that the progress that we have made in a cleaner environment has been happening precisely because we have a strong, free market economy. What’s remarkable is the United States has reduced CO2 more than the countries that are still in the Paris Climate Accord, but we’ve done it through innovation. And we’ve done it through natural gas and fracking, which Senator, the American people can go look at the record. I know Joe Biden says otherwise now, as you do, but the both of you repeatedly committed to abolishing fossil fuel and banning of fracking.”

We know the cause of global heating, and it is that human beings are burning gasoline, natural gas and coal, which put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and trap the sun’s heat on earth. Pence’s smarmy question about what causes it ignores the science. This is a man who still denies that smoking cigarettes causes cancer. He says whatever his corporate backers tell him to.

Since climate change is caused by burning hydrocarbons, you cannot in fact stop it by fracking (which releases extra methane, a very potent heat-trapping gas) or by burning natural gas. Natgas is half as polluting as coal, but it is still very carbon intensive compared to wind and solar.

The US has not reduced its greenhouse gas emissions and cannot do so by fracking and burning natural gas! Pence is just talking nonsense. He even referred to Trump’s ridiculous idea that California’s wildfires problem could be solved by forest management as opposed to ceasing the discharge of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

It was a glib, deeply dishonest, and above all destructive performance by Pence.

—–

Bonus video:

CNBC: “Pence and Harris spar on economy and healthcare”

]]> “A Seller’s Market for Bankruptcy Talent:” The Beginning of the End of Methane-Producing Fracking? https://www.juancole.com/2020/03/bankruptcy-beginning-producing.html Tue, 17 Mar 2020 05:18:58 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=189726 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Monday, the price of West Texas Intermediate petroleum fell below $30 a barrel for the first time in four years. Elliot Smith at CNBC reports that BP CFO Brian Gilvary is braced for petroleum demand actually to contract in 2020.

This prediction is very bad news for US fracking firms, most of which need a price point of from $40 to $60 a barrel to make their hydraulic fracturing method of oil production profitable.

In the Democratic primary debate on Sunday, Bernie Sanders pledged to ban fracking entirely, and even Joe Biden said no new fracking would be allowed. Fracking may be moribund anyway by November, and if a Democrat wins the presidency, the industry may never recover.

Not only is petroleum likely headed way below that profitability floor, but many energy firms involved with fracking are deeply in debt, and had taken out the debts with their petroleum fields as collateral. Since their collateral is worth only half what it used to be, the banks will call in their loans. Other energy firms involved in fracking have held significant assets in their own stocks, the price of which just zoomed to earth like a crashing meteor.

Reuters observed,

    “Energy investor EnCap Investments pulled off a rarity in the U.S. shale business earlier this month, the $2.5 billion sale of oil producer Felix Energy to rival WPX Energy Inc, striking a deal at a time when energy mergers have all but dried up. EnCap’s big payday, 153 million WPX shares valued at $1.6 billion plus $900 million in cash, proved short-lived as convulsing oil and stock markets knocked nearly two-thirds off the value of WPX shares within days of the closing.”

Fracking has been banned by countries such as France, and by states such as New York because it is highly polluting, leaving behind ponds of toxic water. Moreover, research has demonstrated that the process of fracking, which involves pumping water under high pressure underground to break up rocks and release oil or natural gas, causes gargantuan methane emissions that had earlier been underestimated as much as 45%. The methane in the atmosphere is burgeoning, and scientists had puzzled over why. But scientists have fingered the culprit: fracking. Methane is 80 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as carbon dioxide over two decades, and carbon dioxide is no slouch. A quarter of the global heating effect of greenhouse gas emissions put out by humans burning fossil fuels is owing to methane emissions. Rapid heating is melting the North and South Poles, causing sea level rise that will soon be calamitous.

Given that the world population is increasing and that developing countries such as China and India and Indonesia are seeing more and more people abandoning their bicycles or bus rides for mopeds or automobile ownership, for the world to want less petroleum this year than it did last is extremely unusual.

We are getting a preview courtesy COVID-19 of what will happen through the next decade and a half as electric vehicles take off, significantly reducing demand.

The world produces about $100 million barrels of petroleum a day, and given the Saudi determination to expand production starting on April 1, it could be producing 102 million barrels a day later this spring. The world may only want 90 mn. barrels a day this spring. What with the novel coronavirus pandemic, fewer trucks and cars will be on the road. Petroleum is largely used for transportation fuel.

Do you know what happens if demand falls and production increases? The price falls. In fact, it doesn’t just fall. It collapses. It takes a deep dive. It falls off a cliff. It craters deep beneath the earth’s crust.

How steep the fall is depends in part on whether Saudi Arabia and Russia keep playing chicken. Saudi Arabia wants to discipline Moscow, which rejected OPEC + production quotas aimed at reducing supply and supporting a $60 per barrel price. So Riyadh is opening the spigots, upping its production by two million barrels a day. Saudi Aramco says it is comfortable with a price point of $30 a barrel. But unfortunately for Aramco, the price may not have stopped falling.

Andreas de Vries at Oilspot.com believes the price could fall to as little as $10 a barrel later this spring. In 2019 the price tended to be around $60 a barrel.

The fossil fuel companies that lack deep pockets could well just fail this year. Brenda Sapino Jeffreys quotes Jason Cohen, an attorney at Bracewell in Houston, as saying of the oil industry, “There is, I’d say, a sellers market for bankruptcy talent.” His observation gave me my title.

This steep decline in stock prices and oil prices comes on top of a 5-year run in which the market has destroyed 90% of the value of US investor stocks in oil services:

That is, we could this year be entering an oil market crisis as severe as the Asian banking crash of 1997-1998.

The difference is that by the time fossil fuels come out of their economic doldrums, renewables will have stolen a further march on them. From here on in, hydrocarbons are beginning their death spiral. Friends don’t let friends invest in petroleum companies, and nobody should have those stocks in their retirement accounts– if they want ever to retire.

———–

Bonus Video:

Bloomberg Markets and Finance: “Oil Industry Simply Does Not Work at These Price Levels, Bobby Tudor Says”

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