Category:

EPA seeks to cut power plant carbon by 30 percent

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday will roll out a plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 percent by 2030, setting the first national limits on the chief gas linked to global warming. The rule, which is expected to be final next year, is a centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s plans to reduce the pollution linked to global warming, a step that the administration hopes will get other countries to act when negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year. Despite concluding in 2009 that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, a finding that triggered their regulation under the 1970 Clean Air Act, it has taken years for the administration to take on the nation’s fleet of power plants. In December 2010, the Obama administration announced a "modest pace" for setting greenhouse gas standards for power plants, setting a May […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

EPA to Seek 30% Cut in Emissions at Power Plants

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy will announce the proposal on Monday. Getty Images WASHINGTON—The Environmental Protection Agency will propose mandating power plants cut U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions 30% by 2030 from levels of 25 years earlier, according to people briefed on the rule, an ambitious target that marks the first-ever attempt at limiting such pollution. The rule-making proposal, to be unveiled Monday, sets in motion the main piece of President Barack Obama ‘s climate-change agenda and is designed to give states and power companies flexibility in reaching the target. But it also will face political resistance and become fodder in midterm congressional races, particularly in energy-producing states, and is destined to trigger lawsuits from states and industry that oppose it. The rule would affect hundreds of fossil-fuel power plants—hitting the nation’s roughly 600 coal-fired plants the hardest. The carbon framework seeks to strike a balance between what environmentalists want—an ambitious overall […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Trying to Reclaim Leadership on Climate Change

At the end of his first year in office, President Obama flew to Copenhagen and made a big promise: that the United States would cut its greenhouse gas emissions substantially by 2020 — a bold and risky pledge that hinged on a balky Congress to make it possible. His efforts became bogged down within months, and Mr. Obama’s pledge to the rest of the world soon looked like a pipe dream. On Monday, Mr. Obama is planning to bypass Congress and take one of the biggest steps any American president has ever taken on climate change, proposing new rules to cut emissions at power plants. Yet, by itself, the president’s plan will barely nudge the global emissions that scientists say are threatening the welfare of future generations. “Is it enough to stop climate change? No,” said Ted Nordhaus, chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank in Oakland, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Gazprom postpones Ukraine gas ultimatum

Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned natural gas producer, has pushed back its ultimatum to Ukraine on imposing pre-payment for natural gas deliveries after the country paid $786m in arrears, according to the company’s chief executive Alexei Miller. The company had said previously that it would from Tuesday deliver only gas that had already been paid for, raising the prospect of supplies to Ukraine being cut off immediately and disruptions in onward gas flows to Europe. "Ukraine has paid the first instalment for gas supplies. Today $786m entered Gazprom’s account," Miller was quoted as saying in a company statement on Monday. "We welcome Ukraine starting to pay back its debt and postpone the pre-payment regime until June 9. "The introduction of the pre-payment regime will depend on the full repayment of the debt for gas supplied up to April 1 in the amount of $2.237bn, part of which was paid today, and on the progress in payments […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Pipeline Talks Pause Until Russia Respects International Law, EU Says — Report

Talks between Russia and the European Union about the South Stream gas pipeline are on hold because of the Ukraine crisis, European Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said, according to a newspaper report on Sunday. "We will continue the talks when the Russian partners stick to international law again," the energy commissioner told Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Talks about the pipeline, which is supposed to bring Russian natural gas to the EU once it has been constructed, are faltering because the Ukraine crisis eclipses everything, Mr. Oettinger said, according to the newspaper. He added that Russia would also have to be willing to cooperate on the basis of EU energy law as an additional precondition for continuing talks about the pipeline, according to FAS. Write to Friedrich Geiger at [email protected]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Russia to Postpone Prepayment System For Ukraine Gas Supplies

Russia will postpone switching to a system of prepayment for natural gas supplies to Ukraine after receiving a partial repayment from Kiev, Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller said Monday. The decision comes after talks on Friday between the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers who indicated that a compromise could be reached in the near term. Earlier this year Russia had said it would demand prepayment from Ukraine for future gas supplies starting from June unless Kiev begins to pay off a portion of its debt. Mr. Miller said Monday that the company received $786 million, the amount Ukraine owed for gas supplies in February and March this year and the company will now postpone the deadline for switching to the prepayment scheme for one week until June 9. Ukraine has to redeem its […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Marathon Oil Sells Norwegian Operations for $2.1 Billion

Marathon Oil Corp . is selling its Norwegian business for more than $2 billion in cash to Det Norske Oljeselskap AS A as part of a drive by the Houston-based energy company to sell its North Sea oil-and-gas operations to focus on the U.S. "The sale of our Norway assets advances one of our key 2014 priorities and further demonstrates our commitment to rigorous portfolio management to simplify and concentrate our business," Marathon Chief Executive Lee M. Tillman said Monday. In December the company said it would increase in capital spending to boost output while also lifting shareholder returns with a $2.5 billion buyback program. Marathon said the Norwegian deal was worth $2.7 billion but that after adjustments for debt, net working capital and interest the net proceeds would be $2.1 billion. Since 2011 Marathon Oil has sold $6.2 billion worth of assets in a bid to improve growth […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

What climate activists should learn from the Monterey Shale downgrade

There is an important hidden lesson for climate activists in the vast downgrade of recoverable oil resources now thought to be available from California’s Monterey Shale. Almost all climate activists have rejected any talk that the world’s oil, natural gas and even coal supplies are nearing plateaus and possibly peaks in their production. That’s because they fear that such talk will make the public and policymakers believe that climate change will be less of a problem as a result or no problem at all. Any yet, for obvious reasons climate activists rejoiced when the Monterey downgrade was announced. But this only served to highlight the fact that climate activists have lost control of the public narrative on energy and can only steal it back by including constraints on fossil fuel supply as part of their story. In fact, climate activists have been content to accept fossil fuel industry claims–the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Has Technological Progress Made Peak Oil Theory Irrelevant?

In 1956, Marion King Hubbert, a prominent geologist for what is now Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-A  ) , made a bold prediction. Based on an extensive analysis of reserves and production data, he concluded that U.S. crude oil production would peak at some point in the late 1960s or early 1970s, after which it would begin an inexorable decline. For decades, his dire prediction looked startlingly accurate. In 1970, U.S. oil production reached 9.6 million barrels a day — a level that hasn’t been equaled since — and then began to decline. It fell steadily from 1970 to 1976, and then rose modestly until 1985, after which it once again slipped into a steady decline that lasted for more than two decades. Hubbert’s prediction laid the path for what has since become known as peak oil theory, a highly influential theory that argues that global oil production is […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Peak Oil: Is This Approach The Only Option?

The roster of Fellows at the Post Carbon Institute hardly strikes any reasonable person as a collection of bug-eyed extremists out to strike fear into the hearts of mere mortals everywhere. Disagree if one must with the conclusions they draw, but this think tank has shared with the public a variety of thoroughly-research, fact-based reports on energy, fossil fuel supplies, climate, and related issues. “Extremists” is not the first thought that comes to mind when reading the great body of work the Institute has created over the years. Unless of course you are one of the advocates of fact-free nonsense as policy still out there in full force peddling their views by stirring up their readership with less than admirable efforts to steer policy debates away from reality and into the rabbit hole of denial. Anything or anyone contradicting their narrow and self-serving interests is met with whatever arsenal […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple