tagged w/ Natural Gas
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Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for Energy chronicles the recent, momentous discovery of the largest natural gas field in the United States (and maybe the world) in rural Louisiana. The film examines the historic find (a formation called the “Haynesville Shale”) from both personal and political perspectives.
As the Haynesville boom erupts, a single mom takes up the defense of her community’s environmental protections, an African-American preacher attempts to use newfound resources to build a Christian school, and a self-described “country boy” finds himself conflicted as he weighs losing his land to an oil company’s extremely lucrative offer.
At the same time, the film explores the impact of this massive find (170 trillion cubic feet or the equivalent of 28 billion barrels of oil) on America's energy future.Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for Energy chronicles the recent, momentous... more
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Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for Energy chronicles the recent, momentous discovery of the largest natural gas field in the United States (and maybe the world) in rural Louisiana. The film examines the historic find (a formation called the “Haynesville Shale”) from both personal and political perspectives.
As the Haynesville boom erupts, a single mom takes up the defense of her community’s environmental protections, an African-American preacher attempts to use newfound resources to build a Christian school, and a self-described “country boy” finds himself conflicted as he weighs losing his land to an oil company’s extremely lucrative offer.
At the same time, the film explores the impact of this massive find (170 trillion cubic feet or the equivalent of 28 billion barrels of oil) on America's energy future.Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for Energy chronicles the recent, momentous... more
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DCBUreau.org - At the same time liberal Upstate New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey, 71, championed strict control over gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, his wife lobbied for a Texas-based landmen association whose members represent gas drillers securing leases from New York property owners. Hinchey claimed that he was unaware of his wife’s lobbying on behalf of the landmen.
For at least two years of their marriage, Hinchey’s wife, Allison Lee, 47, who was previously his district office representative and administrative aide, represented members of the Forth Worth-based American Association of Professional Landmen (AAPL). AAPL members came to New York to work for energy companies acquiring gas leases from property owners.
Hinchey, considered a pro-environment liberal, was one of two congressmen who cautioned against rushing natural gas drilling in New York – the other was Congressman Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) who resigned over allegations about his behavior toward male office staff.
Allison Lee ran Hinchey’s district office before the pair become romantically involved and married in 2006. The former radio reporter turned lobbyist joined Patricia Lynch Associates Inc., one of the state’s top lobbying firms in Albany. The marriage was Hinchey’s third and her second.
During a video interview last month in his Washington office about Marcellus Shale issues and his wife representing the AAPL, Hinchey said he was unaware that Lee lobbied on behalf of landmen. “I don’t know if you did know about your wife’s involvement with landmen,” said a DCBureau reporter.
“No,” Hinchey responded tersely.
His press secretary, Mike Morosi, later said the question about her involvement with landmen was “offensive,” and the next day, he and two other senior staff members complained that the question was unfair since their boss had an outstanding environmental record. “I didn’t necessarily think it was a fair question to begin with,” Morosi said.
Despite repeated attempts to talk to her, Lee has not responded to interview requests.
Larry Haskell, head of the Joint Landowners Coalition – which consists of 24 neighborhood coalitions from nine south-central counties in New York and represents over 15,000 households – said landmen have used “coercion, threats and forceful behavior” to obtain gas leases.
He said: “One of the big things with them is that they would come in and say, ‘Look at it,’ and then they’d have a map, and they’d all be colored in but your property. ‘You’re holding up this whole process because your property isn’t signed up yet.’ Well, guess what? They’d go to the next door neighbor. That map had your property colored in, but the next door neighbor’s wasn’t – and he was the one that was holding up the process.”
According to Ashur Terwilliger, head of the Chemung County Natural Gas Coalition and president of the Chemung County Farm Bureau, the AAPL – an international organization of approximately 12,000 landmen – wanted to meet with him because property owners reported so many “misgivings” involving its members to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office. He said the AAPL wanted property owners to submit a complaint form to the organization, rather than the attorney general, so it could discipline members. Terwilliger reported complaints to the AAPL, but members got shipped to a different area, he said.
According to Terwilliger, in February 2008, he met with about 10 representatives from the AAPL, their lobbyist Lee, New York Farm Bureau area field advisor Lindsay Wickham, and New York Farm Bureau deputy director and manager of governmental relations, Jeff Williams. He said they sat around a large, rectangular table in the Chemung County Soil and Water Conservation District building in Horseheads, N.Y., and for the first 20 minutes, AAPL representatives spoke with Wickham and Williams about creating a system for reporting complaints about landmen.
Terwilliger said he sat quietly as the conversation transitioned into technical aspects of drilling but spoke when an AAPL representative talked about the organization’s integrity: “I said ‘You know, if I run a national organization, I wouldn’t let my men go out and tell the stories they tell and have the fake maps they have…lying to the landowners, coercing them…’”
According to Terwilliger, the meeting ended in heated exchanges about natural gas reserves in New York between him and the AAPL representative – the AAPL representative said they were difficult to locate, but Terwilliger said he found information on reserves from U.S. Geological Survey and Cornell University.
He said: “Anyway, we went out the door. The governmental relations man was laughing. I said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ He said, ‘Well, he shouldn’t have jumped you, but you sure gave it back to him.’ He said, ‘By the way, do you know who the woman was?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘That’s their lobbyist.’ ‘Well yeah, who is it?’ ‘That’s Maurice Hinchey’s wife.’ How would you like to be up against that?”
Lee represented the AAPL while she worked for Patricia Lynch Associates Inc., and by the end of 2008, the organization spent approximately $130,000 on services provided by the lobbying firm.
According to lobbying records, representation ended April 1, 2008. Robin Forte, executive vice president for the AAPL, verified the 2008 date. He said the organization stayed with Patricia Lynch Inc. but switched its representation to Michelle Cummings.
Forte said: “…When we became aware of that (that their lobbyist was married to a New York congressman) is when we changed our representation at the firm… We were concerned for all the obvious reasons: one, that she would have a conflict at home if she was representing the oil business with her husband’s positions and two, the possible and propriety appearance that if she could influence him in our favor that wouldn’t look good for anybody.”
When asked when Lee stopped representing the AAPL, Morosi said, “She hasn’t represented them for three years.”
According to Morosi’s three-year marker, the relationship ended in 2007, but New York State lobbying records indicate the relationship ended in April 2008. Because Morosi’s timeline conflicted with New York State lobbying records, DCBureau asked him to clarify.
Morosi then said: “I can’t comment on a specific date. The information that I have is that she said that she did not take the client with her to her new firm, and that when she left her old firm, she had no longer been working for that client for a couple of years.”
Lee left Patricia Lynch Associates Inc. in the fall of 2009 to join DKC Government Affairs, which has ties to Attorney General Cuomo.
Darren Dopp, former communications director for Gov. Eliot Spitizer and now a partner and head of the media relations unit at Patricia Lynch Associates Inc., said, “I think she still represents them – I don’t believe that we do anymore, but I can double check on that.”
But Morosi said Lee doesn’t represent the AAPL at her new firm. Both Dopp and Patricia Lynch failed to return repeated phone calls. According to lobbying records and Forte, Patricia Lynch Associates Inc. represents the organization.
Hinchey co-sponsored the FRAC Act in the House last summer. The FRAC Act would require oil and gas companies to disclose materials in hydraulic fracturing fluids in compliance with Safe Drinking Water Act.
Allison Sickle reportingDCBUreau.org - At the same time liberal Upstate New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey, 71,... more
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The highly productive method of natural gas extraction known as “hydro fracturing” has spread rapidly across the United States in recent years, opening up vast new reserves in Texas, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and other states.
Last fall, however, the process — also known as “fracking” — ran headlong into opposition from New York City. And for now at least, stiff resistance from the city, which fears the contamination of its pristine water supply in upstate New York, seems to have slowed the momentum behind this highly touted — and highly controversial — drilling technique.
The city’s 90-page inventory of the possibly dire impacts of hydraulic fracturing has now become primary source material for a growing environmental backlash to the gas industry’s rapid assault on the huge gas-rich geological formation known as the Marcellus Shale, which underlies large portions of rural Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York State.
Acting in part on concerns raised by the New York City report, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week that it would conduct a nationwide study to assess the environmental damage caused by hydro fracturing. The EPA’s larger conclusion — that the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on human health, the environment, water supply, water quality, wastewater treatment, air quality, and management of radioactive materials, “warrant further scientific and regulatory analysis” — was not one the industry wanted to hear.
The EPA study may well lead to tighter controls over this loosely regulated practice, and could impede the spread of hydro fracturing. The drilling method involves forcing a mixture of water, chemicals, and sand at high pressure down a well bore and into the dense surrounding rock. There, it creates small fractures that release the previously trapped reserves. The problem is, however, that the technique also uses large quantities of water — anywhere from 3 million to 8 million gallons per well — some third to half of which emerges from the fracking process tainted by numerous contaminants and chemicals. If that water isn’t properly stored and treated, it poses a risk to surface water, wells, and underground aquifers.
more at link..The highly productive method of natural gas extraction known as “hydro... more
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DCBureau.org - The resignation of Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) two weeks ago was a loss to New York industries dependent on a precious resource: clean water. With energy companies aggressively pursuing gas leases in the state, Massa brought the drilling debate to the federal level. He supported well permitting delays in the Marcellus Shale – a formation many geologic experts are calling the world’s largest natural gas field – to ensure state drilling regulations protect the environment.
“If we lose access to freshwater, if we have well heads every 10 acres, if we have night flares, if we have the smell coming from sulfuric and sulfur laden chemicals, we are going to drive tourists out of the very area that we’ve spent a generation cultivating tourists to come to,” he said.
Skeptics of drilling fear hydraulic fracturing, a widely used technique to extract natural gas, will ruin New York’s pristine water – which includes hundreds of miles of coastline, 7,500 lakes and ponds, and 50,000 miles of rivers and streams – killing its multibillion dollar tourism industry. Hydraulic fracturing is when well operators inject a mixture of water and chemicals – about two to nine million gallons of water with chemicals making up about one to five percent of the total volume – into wells at extremely high pressure to crack and prop open the shale.
Joyce Hunt, owner of Hunt Country Vineyards in Branchport, N.Y., said she got involved in the gas drilling debate when Chesapeake Energy Inc. decided in the fall of 2009 that it wanted to dispose of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing about three miles from her vineyard in Pulteney, N.Y. The proposed waste disposal site was an abandoned gas well on the west side of Keuka Lake in the center of the wine trail.
“They were going to be bringing up truck after truck, a lot of it from Pennsylvania, to dump the hydro-fracing – the spent hydro-fracing fluid, which is water laced with chemicals, some of them toxic – in a well about eight-tenths of a mile above Keuka Lake,” said Hunt.
Massa discussed plans for the disposal well last February at a public meeting in Pulteney, N.Y. He and other panelists – including Joyce Hunt’s husband and co-owner of Hunt Country Vineyards, Art Hunt; Cornell University engineering professor Tony Ingraffea; and Sierra Club executive committee member and staff attorney, Rachel Treichler, to name a few – opposed the plan, which would pump about 18,000 gallons of wastewater into the well daily over 10 years.
Hunt said opponents of hydraulic fracturing need “all the voices” they can get. Massa was one the “best spokespeople” for New Yorkers, she said.
Massa wasn’t the only hydraulic fracturing skeptic in Congress. Last summer, Representatives Dianna DeGette (D-Colo.), Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Senators Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) – introduced identical bills that would require oil and gas companies to disclose materials in hydraulic fracturing fluids in compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. And last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it will spend $1.9 million to study how hydraulic fracturing impacts drinking water.
Derek Wilber, president and wine maker of White Springs Winery located on the northern end of Seneca Lake outside Geneva, N.Y., agreed drilling should be delayed because people “who are busy running a business” need a “better idea” of what decisions are being made.
“I think the bigger battle that’s being waged is on the state level, not the federal level,” says Wilber.
New York Department of Environmental Conservation conducted an environmental impact statement on the use of horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing last year and released its findings for public comment.
Concerned that large corporations sway federal policy, opponents believe they have a better chance of influencing drilling through state officials. But Hunt said she has little faith they can overpower the industry interests. “Just given the way everything has been going lately with corporations being given the same rights as people, I think as individuals we have less and less of a voice in how things go,” said Joyce Hunt. “I think given the number, the power of the oil and gas industry and the money they spend in Washington with lobbyists, it’s tough.”
Allison Sickle reporting.DCBureau.org - The resignation of Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) two weeks ago was a loss to... more
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Austin, TX (PRWEB) March 12, 2010 -- The news came to the “Haynesville” production office in a deceptively simple and somewhat cryptic E-mail from Janet Pierson, SXSW’s film festival producer: “Congrats! You’re in! Call me.”
Splash Screen
It was the deciphering of the message that was important. The documentary film “Haynesville: The Relentless Hunt for Energy Future” had been chosen to screen at the world-renowned SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Added to that, the film had earned a coveted “Spotlight Premiere” slot and would be shown at the historic Paramount Theater.
“I couldn’t believe it when Janet told me the news,” said Gregory Kallenberg, director of the film. “Showing at SXSW was our highest goal. After getting off of the phone, I actually had to sit down and process what had just happened.”
SXSW Film is globally known for being a top-tiered film festival and, along with Sundance, the best festival in the country for documentaries. This year, with less than 50 open slots, SXSW broke a record by receiving over 750 documentary films. Only 20 of the 50 films that were selected from all entries are Spotlight Premieres.
“It’s an amazing honor, and just the way we wanted to premiere the film,” says Kallenberg. “We feel like ‘Haynesville’ is an important film that needs to seen by the entire country, and we’re hoping that this prestigious showing helps position the film so that it can be seen by a wider audience.”
“Haynesville” plays on Tuesday, March 16 at 11am at the Paramount Theater. Tickets will be available at the box office prior to the screening for $10. SXSW badge holders can attend the screening as part of the conference. The film’s DVD will be released simultaneously with the premiere and be available through the film's website here.Austin, TX (PRWEB) March 12, 2010 -- The news came to the “Haynesville”... more
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Across 500 acres north of West Palm Beach, the FPL Group utility is grafting what will be the world’s second-largest solar plant onto the back of the largest fossil-fuel power plant in the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/business/05solar.html?emAcross 500 acres north of West Palm Beach, the FPL Group utility is grafting what will... more
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user net_efekt, under Creative Common LicenseEd. note: This week’s Mulch is pint-sized and will run on Monday rather than Friday. We’ll be back to our regular schedule next week.
Some people live off the grid, eat local food, and have an energy footprint so minuscule that even the canniest hunter couldn’t track them down. But the rest of us buy from supermarkets, get our energy from at least in part from traditional sources like coal, and occasionally forget to turn off the lights when we leave the house. For those of us who are still living with one foot in the old energy world, here are a few helpful hints about what you should buy and what the consequences of shifting to “clean energy” sources like natural gas and nuclear energy are.
Green consumption
Mother Jones’ Julia Whitty points out a useful tool for correcting any misconceptions about how green a company actually is. It’s an assessment that graphs public perception of a company’s environmentalism against its practices. Besides making sure you’ve got the right idea about Starbucks or Nike, Whitty writes, “You can also get a pretty good sense of how sectors perform in relation to other sectors: food and beverage, bad overall; technology, better overall.”
One of the biggest energy expenditures that many of us indulge in is airplane travel. Just one flight can enlarge your carbon footprint dramatically. Although flying may never be truly green, Beth Buczynski reports at Care2 that one airline is moving in the right direction. British Airways is planning the first “sustainable jet fuel” plant.
The plant will make a biofuel, which generally has plenty of drawbacks, but this one sounds pretty good. The company says it will source its raw materials from local waste management facilities and produce relatively harmless waste products.
Hot air from natural gas companies
But the hazards of many “clean energy” sources make going off the grid sound better and better. More and more information is coming out about the environmental hazards that accompany the mining of natural gas, one of Washington’s new energy fascinations. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on natural gas late last week, and Kate Sheppard reports at Mother Jones that Halliburton, a major player in this industry, admitted to using 807,000 gallons of diesel-based chemicals in the extraction process, which involves pumping large amounts of water deep into the ground.
“Even though the natural gas industry is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, it’s still required to limit the amount of diesel used in fracturing, under a December 2003 agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency,” Sheppard writes. “Halliburton and BJ Services appear to have violated the agreement, according to yesterday’s disclosure.”
That doesn’t inspire confidence in these companies’ assurances that their techniques will not contaminate water sources.
Another meltdown
Nuclear power sounds better than ever to the government, investors, and even some environmentalists. If you need a rundown of the issues involved in nuclear energy production, Grist’s Umbra Fisk has answers to questions like “is nuclear really better than coal?”
One of the strongest objections to nuclear power, however, is the financial risk of investing in nuclear infrastructure. “Nuclear power offers all the fiscal risks of a “too big to fail” bank, with the added risk of being too dangerous to fail as well,” writes Sam McPheeters for The American Prospect.
“And although current nuclear defenders love to crow about the free market…the industry operates with an exponential financial handicap over all other energy technologies, gas and coal included,” McPheeters explains. “Factor in overruns, plant cancellations, and chronic mismanagement, and the only genuine advantage nuclear holds over renewable energy sources is that its infrastructure currently exists.”
Maybe it’s time to invest in solar panels after all.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user net_efekt,... more
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Silicon Valley doesn’t just produce innovative web companies — it’s also a mecca for the green tech boom. Bloom Energy, which launches officially on Wednesday, has built a refrigerator-sized box that can power your whole house.
Bloom Energy has actually been operating for 8 years, raising $400 million in funding from VCs including Kleiner Perkins (investors in Netscape, Amazon, Google and others). Its “Bloom Box” houses fuel cells that run on oxygen plus natural gas, landfill gas, bio-gas or even solar.Silicon Valley doesn’t just produce innovative web companies — it’s... more
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Two of the largest companies involved in natural gas drilling have acknowledged pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel-based fluids into the ground in the process of hydraulic fracturing, raising further concerns that existing state and federal regulations don't adequately protect drinking water from drilling.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., who released the information in a statement [2] Thursday, announced that the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which he chairs, is launching an investigation into potential environmental impacts from hydraulic fracturing.
http://www.propublica.org/feature/congress-launches-investigation-into-gas-drilling-practices-219Two of the largest companies involved in natural gas drilling have acknowledged... more
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You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing... more
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US Energy Secretary Steven Chu speaks at the 2010 Washington DC Auto Show about the administration's commitment to advancing fuel efficient vehicles while helping to create clean energy jobs. Nissan Leaf program funding is discussed, along with a range of alternative fuel technologies, in addition to electrification.US Energy Secretary Steven Chu speaks at the 2010 Washington DC Auto Show about the... more
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
In his first State of the Union address, President Barack Obama touched on climate issues only briefly. He called on the Senate to pass a climate bill, but did not give Congress a deadline or promise to veto weak legislation. Nor did he mention the Copenhagen climate conference, where international negotiators struggled to produce an agreement on limiting global carbon emissions.
The Obama administration’s attitude towards climate change still represents a remarkable shift from the Bush years, when global warming was treated as little more than a fairy tale. But in the past year, Congressional squabbling has stalled climate legislation, and international negotiators nearly gridlocked in talks over carbon admissions at the multinational Copenhagen conference. Without strong leadership from the president, work to prevent this looming environmental crisis will stall.
Obama did address global warming skeptics, saying that they should support investment in clean energy, “because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.”
“And America must be that nation,” Obama said.
No push for climate bill
Despite his combative language, the president did not challenge Congress to push for real solutions to ballooning carbon emissions and energy consumption. As Forrest Wilder of The Texas Observer notes, Obama “uttered the phrase ‘climate change’ precisely once.”
The Senate has already wait-listed the climate bill: Health care came first. With health care reform now in line behind work on jobs and bank regulation, climate legislation has little chance of passing the Senate in the coming months, let alone making it to the president’s desk.
If Congress lets this work wait until after the midterm elections, the United States will show up at international negotiations in December 2010 as a leader in carbon emissions yet again, but with little in hand to show a way forward.
Clean energy, not renewable energy
When the president did bring up climate issues, he focused on their connection between climate reform and potential job creation. Obama highlighted areas for growth, not in renewable energy fields like wind or solar power, but in nuclear power, natural gas, and clean coal.
Yes, these fuel sources could decrease the country’s carbon emissions. But they are not solutions that will revolutionize energy production. Grist’s David Roberts was floored that the speech omitted renewable energy entirely and kowtowed to a more conservative litany of energy projects. “I suppose it was done to flatter conservative Senators that will have to vote for the bill Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham are working on,” he writes. (The three Senators are working on a version of the climate bill designed to appeal to Republicans.)
“But the SOTU is not a policy negotiation,” Roberts says. “It’s a bully pulpit, a chance to shape rather than respond to existing narratives.”
Roberts argues that progressive supporters would benefit from a stronger message. If activists knew that the White House stands behind a real shift in America’s energy policy, they could use that prompt to drive action on climate change.
What was missing
While touting the virtues of off-shore drilling, Obama overlooked other policies that could broker real change. Although he admonished Congress to pass a climate bill, he did not pressure the legislature on what he’d like that bill to include. He did not mention cap-and-trade, the mechanism the House bill relies on to tamp down emissions and dirty energy use.
President Obama did touch on transportation reforms that could decrease the country’s use of fossil fuels.
“There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains,” Obama said. He cited a high-speed rail project that broke ground on Tuesday in Tampa, FL, as evidence that America could best the rest of the world in creating new energy-efficient technology.
But one or two high-profilBy Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
In his first State of the Union address,... more
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A landfill is not the place you would expect to find a source of clean energy. But landfill gas is a reliable, renewable energy source that improves the environment. The Puente Hills Landfill receives an average of 12,000 tons of non-hazardous solid waste per day and produces over 30,000 cfm of landfill gas. The majority of the gas is collected and used as a fuel to produce approximately 50 megawatts of power at the Puente Hills Gas-to-Energy Facility.
Music composed by my friend Herman Steyn.A landfill is not the place you would expect to find a source of clean energy. But... more
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Gregory Kallenberg was sitting in a Shreveport diner early last year the first time he heard about the massive Haynesville natural gas find from a fellow patron.
“It was like the crazy miner who comes in from the hills saying he has found gold,” said Kallenberg, a former newspaper reporter and cable television writer turned documentary filmmaker. But what he thought would be a film about the people in the middle of a mad rush for drilling rights ended up being something bigger, a story about the nation's energy future.
Kallenberg took a few minutes from preparing for a screening of the movie at the Copenhagen climate change conference this week to speak with Chronicle reporter Tom Fowler by phone about his film Haynesville.
Clink on link to read the full story.Gregory Kallenberg was sitting in a Shreveport diner early last year the first time he... more
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Under some of the most beautiful parts of rural New York State in the pre-Jurassic era formation called the Marcellus Shale is an unimaginable fortune in natural gas. Getting that gas to market has become an obsession of Wall Street and the biggest gas drilling companies in the world. In this gas rush, New York is fast becoming a geological science experiment that many experts fear will have profound, dire environmental and health consequences. The drilling companies use a witch’s brew of water, pressure and chemicals to force the gas from the shale. It is the secrecy of what is in that brew that has New Yorkers worried and many suspicious. Even the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has not yet identified all of the compounds in products proposed for use in fracturing shale.Under some of the most beautiful parts of rural New York State in the pre-Jurassic era... more
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Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for Energy takes place in the Louisiana backwoods, and follows the momentous discovery of the largest natural gas field in the United States (and maybe the world). The film examines the historic find (a formation called the “Haynesville Shale”) from the personal level as well as from the higher perspective of the current energy picture and pending energy future.
As the Haynesville boom erupts, the film focuses on three lives caught in the middle of the find: A single mom takes up the defense of her community’s environmental protections, an African American preacher attempts to use the riches to build a Christian school and a salt-of-the-earth, self-described “country boy” finds himself conflicted as he weighs losing his land to an oil company’s offer to make him a millionaire.
From a broader perspective, Haynesville explores the current energy situation and what something the scale of the Haynesville (170 trillion cubic feet or the equivalent of 28 billion barrels of oil) could mean to the United States’ energy picture. In a never-seen-before on-screen discussion, environmentalists, academics and oil and gas industry folks hash out the idea of trying to find cleaner energy sources and how this natural gas could possibly help provide an energy answer.
Website: http://www.haynesvillemovie.com/Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for Energy takes place in the Louisiana backwoods,... more
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Members and Supporters of The Kill The Drill Campaign held a rally prior to delivering statement in opposition to the hydraulic fracturing in NY which would not only affect the drinking water of community members in Manhattan but, all Citizens in New York City.
Below are excerpt's from his website, link below;
http://www.mbpo.org/release_details.asp?id=1386&page=
Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, joined by a coalition of elected officials and hundreds of environmental advocates and concerned citizens, held a rally to Kill the Drill ahead of a State Department of Environmental Conservation hearing on November 10, 2009. This hearing at Stuyvesant High School was the only one of its kind to be held in New York City on the topic of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation stretching across the Southern Tier of New York State.
We are in the midst of a public comment period ending December 31 on the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), which will govern the use of hydraulic fracturing in the Catskill/Delaware watershed, which supplies 90 percent of the City's drinking water.Members and Supporters of The Kill The Drill Campaign held a rally prior to delivering... more
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How do you make a Toyota Camry Hybrid even more green? Rip out the conventional gasoline tank and replace it with ultra clean burning compressed natural gas (CNG). The Surfrider Foundation's CNG Camry Hybrid shows a clear path to the future, where we rely solely on domestically produced fuel. CA-based Metal Crafters did the CNG conversion work, while Street Image handled the cosmetics.How do you make a Toyota Camry Hybrid even more green? Rip out the conventional... more
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Vast new natural gas fields have opened up thanks to an advanced drilling technique. While natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than coal or petroleum, extracting it is still hard, dirty work. Some people who live near the massive Barnett Shale gas deposit in north Texas, have compliants. Health and environmental concerns are prompting state regulators to take a closer look.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120043996Vast new natural gas fields have opened up thanks to an advanced drilling technique.... more
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