oil

Injecting CO2 into oil wells is not real carbon sequestration

Capturing CO2 and injecting it into a well to squeeze more oil out of the ground is not real carbon sequestration. Why? When the recovered oil is burned, it releases at least as much CO2 as was stored (and possibly much more). Therefore, CO2 used for such enhanced oil recovery (EOR) does not reduce net carbon emissions and should not be sold to the public as a carbon offset.

Yet a company, Blue Source, LLC, proposes to do just that: to capture the CO2 from a fertilizer plant, pipe it to an oil field, and inject it into wells for EOR :

The company hopes to profit from the project by earning credits for the carbon reductions in voluntary carbon markets and by selling carbon dioxide to energy companies.

The deal will cut CO2 from the plant by about 650,000 tonnes per year by permanently storing the emissions in the oil fields, he said. The U.S. Department of Energy says that capturing CO2 from power plants for enhanced oil recovery could greatly boost U.S. oil reserves while permanently keeping CO2 from reaching the atmosphere.

Uh, no. To repeat, if the captured CO2 is used to extract oil that releases CO2 when it is burned, then how is that offsetting anything?

BP promises to stop dumping waste into the Great Lakes

On July 15, the Chicago Tribune reported that BP wanted to significantly increase the discharge of ammonia and toxic wastes into the Great Lakes. The outcry was enormous -- even Republican congressmen from the area joined in the criticism, and several powerful congressional members, including Rahm Emanuel in the House and Barack Obama in the Senate, threatened hearings. The city of Chicago was considering legal action, and a large petition drive began.

Apparently the political efforts have paid off, because BP announced it will reverse its decision and not add more pollutants. The catch: it's not legally binding, because the conservative administration in Indiana has not revoked the pollution permits.

And the ‘Climate Balls of Steel’ award goes to …

A new report penned by the environmental movement's genius uber-strategist Daniel J. Weiss of The Center for American Progress and his alliterative sidekick Anne Wingate examines exactly how big Big Oil's influence on individual members of Congress is. Working with OpenSecrets.org, Weiss and Wingate found that the 189 members who opposed a Democratic measure to redirect $16 billion in oil and gas subsidies to clean energy like wind and solar received on average $109,277 in contributions from Big Oil between 1989 and 2006. The 221 representatives that voted successfully to shift the subsidies to clean energy had only received an average of $26,277 over the same period.

While I'm sure some of those representatives who voted against the measure may sincerely believe that Exxon Mobil needs an extra few billion so that its shareholders don't go hungry, I suspect that most were just doing it to keep the petrodollars flowing right into their campaign account, and were willing to ignore the climate crisis to do it. It's amazing how cheaply those representatives are willing to sell their votes: $109,277 over 17 years isn't that much money -- generally less than 5 percent of what those candidates spent on their campaigns during that time.

It shows how contributing to political candidates remains one of the most effective ways to spend money: had Big Oil won this round, they would have spent one dollar for every $774 dollars they got back in subsidies (and that's just this one vote; actually their $20-million-plus in contributions have got them more than $35 billion annually in subsidies and tax credits). Industry has long known this, but environmentalists can get the same bang for the buck by directing more of their resources towards campaign contributions.

I'd like to highlight a few of the biggest recipients of Big Oil's big money:

New Mexico's Heather Wilson (R): $492,120
New York's Thomas Reynolds (R): $155,661
Virginia's Tom Davis (R): $134,360

But I've got to give today's Climate Balls of Steel award to New Jersey's Mike Ferguson (R), who sucked in $95,500 in oil money, but voted against Big Oil anyway. There aren't many people who can suck on Big Oil's teat and then spit crude oil in the harlot's face, but apparently Ferguson (at least in this instance) is one.

From the Boston Globe, the dirty truth about ‘alternative energy’

Referring to high oil prices, the billionaire airline magnate Richard Branson recently declared, "Thank God it’s happened … A high oil price is what we needed to actually wake up the world" to the reality of climate change. (This from a man who openly pines for a techno fix that will allow us to burn […]

Would the biosphere care?

Recently we've had a couple of discussions here at Gristmill concerning various aspects of peak oil; that is, the assertion that very soon (if it hasn't happened already) the global supply of oil will peak, and even though demand is going up, supply will start to come down, so prices will skyrocket.

It seems to me that some of the contention in these discussions boils down to the question: would it really be so bad if the oil started running out? After all, we would stop mucking up the planet with the pollution, carbon emissions, and infrastructural damage we have been inflicting for these hundred-years-plus of the petroleum age.

Wouldn't it force humanity to live within our means if gasoline was $10 or even $20 dollars per gallon, as it will eventually be?

As it so happens, I've recently been investigating the question of what kind of civilization we would need to have if we wanted to live without fossil fuels, and I wanted to know how we are currently using oil in order to understand how to live without it.

Using government data detailing the use of oil, in dollars, the conclusion I came to was this: over 90 percent of petroleum in the U.S. is burned by internal combustion engines. So the question needs to be reframed: would it really matter if we couldn't use internal combustion engines?

The answer, in the long run, is that it would be much better if we didn't use internal combustion engines. But that leads to another question: How do we get from here to there, and how will that transition affect the planet?

Sustainability doesn’t just happen

Tom Friedman is fond of the theory that high oil prices will drive investment in renewables and spur reform in corrupt governments. He’s not alone — some peak oil types believe that oil price spikes will force us to do the very things that will save us from global warming. This has always struck me […]

Saving and restoring forests better for climate than switching to biofuels

A new study in the journal Science ($ub req'd) validates what many have been saying here in Gristmill: Biofuels, especially those from the tropics, are far worse for the planet than regular old crude oil.

The study finds that we could reduce global warming pollution two to nine times more by conserving or restoring forests and grasslands than by razing them and turning them into biofuels plantations -- even if we continue to use fossil fuels as our main source of energy. That's because those forests and grasslands act as the lungs of the planet. Their dense vegetation sucks up far more carbon dioxide and breathes out far more oxygen than any biofuel crop ever could.

When you destroy that wilderness, much of the carbon stored in its living matter is either burned or otherwise oxidized -- which is why the destruction of tropical forests accounts for more than 20 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions (more than China produces). Meanwhile, we'd be saving all the creatures that rely on those wildlands for habitat. The scale is huge: replacing even 10 percent of our gas with biofuels would require 43 percent of U.S. arable land.

Are you listening George Soros? What about you, Center for American Progress? And you, Barack Obama?

If you don't have access to Science, here's the free write-up from The New Scientist (and you can take action on this issue here).

Substitution isn’t the solution to peak oil

The growing recognition that the world is at or nearly at the all-time peak of conventional oil production (meaning from that point on, oil flows will inexorably decline at some unknown rate) has prompted a furious search for replacements, all intended to keep the high-carbon, high-flying, automobile lifestyle going.

Like crack addicts warned of a future shortage, we are literally searching the corners of the Earth to figure out how we're going to get our fix when times is tight.

But given our climate crisis, peak oil could be appreciated as a push in the direction we already have to go (a decarbonized society). If we adopt the oil depletion protocol suggested by Colin Campbell, and made more widely known by Richard Heinberg, we can improve our resiliency, our health, and our social well-being -- and avoid the chaos that comes when a junkie loses his supplier while still stuck in full-blown addiction.

New Scientist offers yet another argument for this approach:

Except not really

I don’t do much writing about peak oil here. It’s horrifically depressing, for one thing, and for another I doubt I could add to the comprehensive work being done at the Oil Drum and elsewhere. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. If you’re like me and you only tune in to the issue […]