Category:

China's massive water diversion project starts delivering water

A portion of China’s massive South-to-North Water Diversion Project has started to supply water. Shandong province will get about 1,200 million cubic feet of water in the first use of the project’s east route, officials said, China Daily reported Tuesday. The three-route project, expected to cost $81 billion, is considered the biggest engineering endeavor in Chinese history, and involves a mix of canals, tunnels and aqueducts spanning thousands of miles. It is designed to rely entirely on gravity to transfer 1,582 billion cubic feet of water annually from the country’s water-rich south to the arid north, including Beijing. The east route’s more than $8.2 billion first phase was completed in March, China Daily reported. Water diversion for that phase started last month, bringing water from the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province to Shandong along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. It is expected to supply as […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

China’s massive water diversion project starts delivering water

A portion of China’s massive South-to-North Water Diversion Project has started to supply water. Shandong province will get about 1,200 million cubic feet of water in the first use of the project’s east route, officials said, China Daily reported Tuesday. The three-route project, expected to cost $81 billion, is considered the biggest engineering endeavor in Chinese history, and involves a mix of canals, tunnels and aqueducts spanning thousands of miles. It is designed to rely entirely on gravity to transfer 1,582 billion cubic feet of water annually from the country’s water-rich south to the arid north, including Beijing. The east route’s more than $8.2 billion first phase was completed in March, China Daily reported. Water diversion for that phase started last month, bringing water from the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province to Shandong along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. It is expected to supply as […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

China’s Rust Belt Cities Hit With New Air Pollution Fines

A province in the heart of China’s rust belt has levied air pollution fines on city governments for the first time, in a sign that pressure to improve air quality in the world’s second-largest economy is trickling down to the local level. An electronic screen shines amid heavy smog in Shenyang on October 28. Reuters Liaoning, one of the nation’s largest industrial hubs, has so far collected a total of 54.2 million yuan ($8.9 million) from eight of its cities after it passed tougher air-pollution regulations last year, the official Xinhua news agency reported Monday. The fines are the first of their kind for the province and also come after China’s central government released a nationwide reform blueprint last month that vowed to impose more fees and taxes on polluters . Although China is test piloting anti-pollution measures such as carbon trading, it has been hesitant to announce nationwide […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

China Releases Blueprint for Adapting to Climate Change

China issued its first nation-wide blueprint for adapting to climate change, as governments around the world shift their efforts from focusing solely on curbing global warming to minimizing its impact on people and the environment. “Addressing climate change isn’t only about reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, it’s also about taking initiative on adaptation,” the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, said in a report posted to its website. The agency calculated that climate change has cost China more than 200 billion yuan ($32.9 billion) since 1990. In the same period, more than 2,000 people have died here because of extreme weather-related disasters such as floods, droughts, typhoons and storms, it said. “China isn’t only the world’s largest carbon-dioxide emitter but also a vulnerable country that suffers a lot […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Breathe in that dirty doublethink

Shanghai’s solution to the ‘airpocalypse’: ‘adjust’ the pollution standard, says Patti Waldmeir ©Reuters Clogged: a rush-hour traffic jam on a Shanghai highway Last year, Shanghai’s favourite winter sport was checking the air pollution readings in Beijing and gloating over how high they were. That’s not so much fun this year. In the past week Shanghai has wracked up its worst pollution since records began, with the concentration of deadly PM2.5 fine particles topping 600 micrograms per cubic metre on Friday afternoon, at a time when Beijing’s level was half that. (The World Health Organisation’s safe level is 25 µg/m 3 as a daily mean.) The Shanghai government has the perfect solution to the current “airpocalypse”: it “adjusted” the city’s pollution standard so that it would trigger fewer hazard warnings. What a relief, it was so annoying constantly being warned about the deadly assault on my lungs. Now my lungs […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

India Considers Importing More Iranian Crude

India is exploring the possibility of increasing crude-oil imports from Iran, following a recent deal between Tehran and world powers that is expected to ease sanctions on Iranian crude, an Indian official said. While sanctions on Iran’s sales of crude oil are yet to be eased, observers say the deal is likely to lead to a gradual loosening of existing restrictions on dollar-based payments that would enable importers such as India to buy more crude from Iran. India and Iran presently have a barter trade system in place to bypass payment problems caused by the Western sanctions. Under an agreement last year, India pays for about half its crude-oil imports from Iran in Indian rupees instead of U.S. dollars. Indian and Iranian officials had detailed discussions on the possibility of increasing crude-oil imports from Iran, India’s Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram told reporters after a meeting with an […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Crude Inventories in U.S. Fell a Second Week, Survey Says

U.S. crude supplies probably dropped for a second week as refineries increased operating rates to the highest level since July 2012, a Bloomberg survey showed. Inventories decreased by 3 million barrels, or 0.8 percent, to 382.8 million in the week ended Dec. 6, based on the median of nine analyst estimates before a report tomorrow from the Energy Information Administration. Eight of the respondents forecast a decline and one said there was a gain. The refinery utilization rate rose to 92.9 percent from 92.4 percent the prior week, the survey showed. That would leave operating rates at the highest level since July 20, 2012, according to the EIA, the Energy Department’s statistical arm. Refineries have increased processing in three of the last four weekly reports. “There’s a strong feeling that there will be another sizable draw in crude supplies,” said John Kilduff , a partner at Again Capital LLC, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

U.S. Natural-Gas Production at Multiyear High in November

U.S. natural-gas production hit its highest level since at least 2009 in November, according to a government report released Tuesday, and domestic production is expected to grow in 2014. The rise in output is expected to be met by a decline in imports, leading to a leveling out of U.S. natural-gas supplies next year, the Energy Information Administration said in its short-term energy outlook. Total marketed production in the U.S. hit 72 billion cubic feet per day in November, up from 71.2 bcf/d in October and 70.3 bcf/d in November 2012. U.S. natural-gas production has soared as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques have enabled energy producers to tap into supplies trapped in shale-gas fields. The EIA also expects a decline in imports, from an average of 8.6 bcf/d in 2012 to 7.84 bcf/d this year and 7.77 bcf/d in 2014. Total primary supply of natural gas in the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Ex-BP Supervisors Win Dismissal of Some Manslaughter Charges

Two former BP Plc supervisors won the dismissal on Tuesday of some of the manslaughter charges facing them over the Gulf of Mexico drilling rig explosion that killed 11 people in 2010. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval in New Orleans dismissed 11 counts of seaman’s manslaughter facing Deepwater Horizon rig well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine. But the judge refused to dismiss 11 other counts of involuntary manslaughter, leaving those and a Clean Water Act violation charge to be heard at a trial starting in June. David Gerger, a lawyer for Kaluza, said he was reviewing the decision. A lawyer for Vidrine and representatives for the U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Kaluza and Vidrine were the two highest-ranking supervisors on board the Deepwater Horizon when disaster struck on April […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Natural Gas: Not All It’s Fracked Up to Be?

Natural gas is being touted as a “game changer” and a “bridge to a low carbon economy.” It is an abundant, made-in-America energy source.  It is about half as carbon intensive as coal when burned. The figure below suggests that a natural gas fueled transition to a less carbon intensive economy has already begun. Domestic, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have declined 12 percent since the peak in 2007. An important driver of this trend is the substitution of natural gas for coal in electricity generation. Of course, this picture gets much more complicated when you look upstream and broaden your perspective to consider not just carbon dioxide -the most prevalent anthropogenic greenhouse gas- but also “fugitive” methane emissions. Methane, the primary constituent of natural gas, can escape during extraction, processing, and distribution. These emissions have the potential to eliminate the carbon advantage of gas over coal and oil. There […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple