Results tagged “energy development”

Repeat after me: We don't have to settle for just one or the other. We can have a healthy environment and energy development.

Yet, some conservation groups have expressed dismay over last Thursday's decision by the federal government to create critical habitat for polar bears in Alaska. The proposed habitat area covers 200,541 sq. miles including portions of the northern and northwestern coasts, coastal barrier islands as well as coastal spits, sea ice in waters less than about 1,000 feet deep, and denning areas as far as 20 miles inland. Apparently that wasn't enough for some groups who immediately warned that planned oil and natural gas development in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas could be harmful to bears.

Yesterday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that a second round of oil shale research and development on leases with vastly diminished potential commercial acreage will resume.

Secretary Salazar's decision is a positive step in the process of developing the innovation and technology needed to bring production from the nation's vast oil shale resources to American consumers.

Today Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a decision to make eight of the 77 federal oil and natural gas parcels in Utah permanently ineligible for lease--and defer development on another 52 parcels.

This announcement is yet another in a series of actions this administration has taken to delay or thwart oil and natural gas exploration in areas where development has been designated, and where lease sales have been carefully planned.

Today is your last chance to write to the government to support the Five-Year offshore drilling plan. At the close of business today, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) will end the public comment period, tally the emails and letters, write a report on its findings, and help the Secretary of the Interior decide whether to implement the government's offshore drilling plan.

The Committee on Natural Resources in the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing today on a proposal called the Consolidated Land, Energy and Aquatic Resources Act of 2009. While it's often referred to as an energy bill, it's actually an Un-Energy bill.

If passed, this bill would consolidate the leasing functions of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) into a single office at the Interior Department. At present, the MMS manages the leasing of offshore land for energy development, and the BLM manages a similar process for onshore leasing.

Back in February, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that he was extending the public comment period for the Draft Proposed Program on Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) energy development. The comment period ends right around the corner--September 21, 2009--and at this time the Minerals Management Service (MMS) will analyze comments and make recommendations.

In the heat of the gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, the Commonwealth's Speaker of the House is pushing the federal government to open the coastline to oil and natural gas development. Speaker William Howell has sent a letter to the Obama administration urging the leasing of 2.9 million acres of the Outer Continental Shelf along Virginia's coast by 2011.

Some online discussion has emerged from bloggers who recently toured the ConocoPhillips and Syncrude oil sands operations in Alberta, Canada.

In one post, Brian Westenhaus of New Energy and Fuel says:

Yesterday, API hosted bloggers for a conference call featuring Robert Renner, Alberta Minister of the Environment. Minister Renner was available to take questions about Canada's oil sands from the bloggers who recently toured ConocoPhillips and Syncrude operations in Alberta.

During the past several days, I've written extensively about Canada's oil sands, how they are produced, and the environmental programs that convert the disturbed land into meadows, forests and lakes. Today, in my final post about last week's oil sands tour, I want to provide you with some basic facts that often don't appear in news articles about oil sands development.

So you mine the oil sands, extract the oil, reclaim the land--and then what do you do? At the Syncrude oil sands operation in Alberta, you start a bison ranch--wood bison, to be specific.

Approximately 300 of these big, shaggy mammals live on nearly 1,730 acres of reclaimed land that used to be an oil sands mine. Today the former mine comprises several pastures where the bison graze and rid themselves of insects by rolling in the dirt or rubbing against scratching posts. They live a good life with plenty of food and water, and with freedom from the diseases that are threatening the existence of the species.

Day Two of the oil sands tour, August 7 - About 60 kilometers southeast of Ft. McMurray, Alberta, ConocoPhillips is producing crude oil from oil sands using a process called in-situ development. In concept, in-situ development sounds fairly simple. The oil sands are heated underground with steam, gravity pulls the hot oil down toward a wellbore, and the oil is brought to the surface.

Simple, right? Not really. In actuality, the process requires high-tech engineering, precise execution and the ability to see underground using sophisticated seismic testing and monitoring equipment.

Day one of the oil sands tour, Aug. 6 - We're standing in a quarry where a steady stream of 380-ton to 400-ton, multi-story vehicles roll in and out, accepting loads of oil sands. As soon as one vehicle is loaded, another one takes its place next to the huge shovel that scrapes the oil sands from the black, sandy quarry wall.

These carefully coordinated activities are repeated hundreds of times a day by the workers who are mining and processing Canadian oil sands at this Syncrude facility. As soon as the trucks are loaded, they roll toward the processing facility where the oil sands are used to produce about 350,000 barrels of light, sweet crude oil every day.

6:35 a.m., Ft. McMurray, Alberta -- In just a few minutes, I'll leave this hotel room to join today's tour to ConocoPhillips' Surmont oil sands facility. But before I go, here are a few observations about the oil sands deposits here in Alberta.

In a move that relieves some of the legal worries about offshore oil and natural gas development, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that the 2007-2012 offshore leasing plan can move forward uninterrupted.

In a recent Houston Chronicle op-ed, Richard Burleson, managing partner of Houston-based and energy-focused law firm Burleson Cooke L.L.P., cautions the administration and Congress against over-regulating hydraulic fracturing. As we've explained in this blog, hydraulic fracturing is a process where fluid is pumped under pressure down through the wellbore to make tiny fissures in the rock, allowing natural gas and oil to flow more easily up through the well.

California wisely has decided to use a portion of its abundant natural resources to pay for services to its citizens. An estimated $1.8 billion in state royalty payments are expected over the life of developing these resources, and the funds will help defray the state's budget shortfall as well as increase our nation's energy security.

Individuals who oppose U.S. oil and natural gas development often cite the following sentence: "The United States represents 5 percent of the world's population but uses 25 percent of the world's energy."

Ouch. That sentence makes all of us appear to be wasteful, slothful, and uncaring about the environment. But like a lot of other statements created to appeal to our sensitivities, it exaggerates the truth and leaves out some very important facts.

In an op-ed from yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Robert W. Watson, emeritus associate professor at Penn State University, talks about the importance of increased energy development--specifically the shale gas that rests in the Marcellus Shale formation.

Yesterday, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) suspended the sale of all 31 oil and natural gas drilling tracts in Utah that had been purchased earlier in the day during a regularly scheduled lease sale, after the bureau accepted last-minute protests about the sale from two environmental groups. BLM has put all the leases on hold to conduct an environmental assessment.