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Thursday, August 15, 2013
Opinion: Obama’s challenge on climate change
President Barack Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, gestures as he gives his State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, Pool)President Barack Obama today announced a broad attack on climate change. His hope is to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and he aims at every target imaginable — every target within his authority, that is.
Included in his plan are solar and wind projects on U.S. public lands, new energy-efficiency standards and fuel-economy requirements, and greater limits on greenhouse-gas emissions of all kinds.
Unfortunately, he had to leave out any strong action Congress could take. That includes a meaningful tax on carbon, the kind of change that’s needed to bring greenhouse-gas levels 80 percent to 95 percent lower than they were in 1990 and thus keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. In 2009, Congress declined to take responsibility, and as there’s no reason to hope it would now, Obama is right to press ahead on his own.
Whether he’s successful will depend a lot on how his administration manages two of his biggest initiatives: placing carbon-emissions limits on existing U.S. power plants and helping the developing world switch to cleaner forms of energy.
Both of these efforts hinge on moving away from coal, which still provides 42 percent of electricity in the U.S. and almost 80 percent in China.
Reducing Pollution
Domestically, Obama wants to use the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act to reduce pollution from power plants, which produce 40 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions and a third of its greenhouse gases. But doing so without drastically pushing up the price of power will take more finesse than can be managed by simply hitting plants with a uniform limit.
So it is promising that administration officials say they will ask the states to offer up their own ideas. A flexible state-by-state strategy, along the lines of what was proposed in March by the Natural Resources Defense Council, could give the power industry a seat at the table and allow it to reasonably manage a transition from coal to natural gas and wind, solar and other renewables.
Under the NRDC plan, for example, the EPA would give each state a budget for its carbon emissions, taking into account the state’s existing power-generation mix. Those with more coal plants would initially be allowed a higher level of emissions, but they would be expected to bring the levels down as years pass. Each state could come up with its own plan for meeting its emissions budget, including putting efficiency measures in place and switching to cleaner fuels.
Internationally, Obama proposes various initiatives to lower greenhouse-gas emissions — including cooperating with other countries to develop carbon-capture technology, ending investment in new coal plants abroad and making deals to lower tariffs on clean-energy technologies.
He should also focus on getting countries such as China access to cheaper natural gas. With Asian prices almost four times those in the U.S., it’s little wonder that natural gas powers only 4 percent of China’s electricity. A new gas pipeline from Russia should increase the supply, and the Obama administration is right to encourage it. Exports of U.S. natural gas would help, too, not only in China but also in many other developing countries.
As we’ve argued, the new secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz, should move quickly to approve new export terminals for shipping liquefied natural gas abroad. The Department of Energy has so far approved two terminals, but 20 more applications are pending for licenses to sell to countries that don’t have free-trade agreements with the U.S. Some of those should also be cleared. And a free-trade agreement between the U.S. and the European Union, now under negotiation, would increase natural gas exports to Europe, which has recently been buying more American coal.
Increasing Resilience
Even if entirely successful, Obama’s push against emissions wouldn’t be enough to completely prevent climate change. That’s why we’re glad to see that he also proposes to help the U.S. live with the consequences. For example, he wants to establish a state and local task force on preparedness, assist local communities, and make federal and military buildings more resilient.
Protecting existing public and private property against floods, storms and heat waves isn’t free, however. A recent proposal from Mayor Michael Bloomberg (the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP) for New York City alone is priced at $20 billion.
And Obama’s plan is mostly silent on the need for new funds, to say nothing of where they would come from. Here is an area where Congress, along with state and local governments, ultimately will need to step in.
Meanwhile, the president is smart to do all he can on his own to turn down the engine that’s powering climate change.
Office Assistant (van nuys)
Posting ID: 3674234823Posted: 2013-03-11, 11:29AM PDTEdited: 2013-03-11, 11:29AM PDTemail to a friend
Europe firm after Shanghai pares losses
The Shanghai Composite index falls again as investors remain concerned about a cash crunch for the Chinese banks and Federal Reserve tapering
Read more from Financial Times
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Calgary’s flooding bruises oil patch economy
Parts of Calgary, with more corporate headquarters than every other Canadian city except Toronto, are still under water after the Bow and Elbow rivers swelled from record rainfall in the nearby Rocky Mountains, spilling into low-lying communities. Dave Buston/AFP via Getty ImagesRecord flooding near Calgary has left the downtown core of Canada’s oil capital empty while forcing the closing of three oil pipelines and causing as much as C$5 billion ($4.8 billion) in damage to homes and offices.
Companies including Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE) and Encana Corp. asked employees to work from home yesterday as power to the office towers in Canada’s fourth-largest city remained cut off for a fourth day. Most shops and restaurants that rely on office workers for business were closed.
“We have no power, no phone and I’m losing C$1,000 a day in business,” said a teary-eyed John Freriksen, the owner of La Fleur, a flower shop one block south of the Bow building, where Cenovus and Encana are based. “Insurance will cover some of the losses, but the damages are a lot more than people think.”
Freriksen lost C$4,000 worth of inventories as his cooling units shut down without electricity and said he expects it will take another week before he’s able to get his business operating again.
The flooding is the latest blow for the economy in Canada’s oil patch, which is facing approval delays for pipelines such as TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL to ship rising volume of crude from the oil sands. Pipeline bottlenecks have pushed prices for Canadian crude to about $17 below U.S. benchmarks.
Losses related to the flooding may be C$3 billion to C$5 billion, according to preliminary estimates from Tom MacKinnon, a BMO Capital Markets analyst. That’s at least 10 times more than losses tallied in 2005 when what was then the largest flood in a century damaged homes and businesses. The Alberta government pledged C$1 billion in relief funding for flooding victims.
Insurance Losses
Intact Financial Corp. (IFC), Canada’s second-largest personal and casualty insurer by market value, fell to a 17-month low yesterday. MacKinnon estimated the flooding may reduce per-share earnings at the Toronto-based company by about C$1 to C$1.50.
Last weekend’s floods forced the evacuation of as many as 75,000 people from their homes in Calgary, about 7 percent of the city’s population.
Parts of Calgary, with more corporate headquarters than every other Canadian city except Toronto, are still under water after the Bow and Elbow rivers swelled from record rainfall in the nearby Rocky Mountains, spilling into low-lying communities. The city is working to restore power as early as today and drain sewage from areas of the city closest to the rivers, including the Stampede grounds, where Calgary’s best-known cowboy festival is scheduled to begin in less than two weeks.
Energy Driven
Calgary’s C$75 billion economy, larger than Ecuador’s, is driven by the oil and gas industry, which helped the city post Canada’s second-fastest growth last year, according to a report by the Conference Board of Canada.
Insurance companies, transportation and logistics businesses and retailers will be most affected by the flooding, said Ben Brunnen, an economic consultant and former chief economist at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.
“The effects are going to be spread across a number of segments,” Brunnen said in an interview. “The impact will certainly be felt for the next few weeks or possibly months. There could be a substantial shift in consumer spending as people shift spending to make repairs on their property.”
Enbridge Inc. (ENB), the largest transporter of Canadian crude to the U.S., closed the 12-inch Line 37, which carries synthetic crude from Nexen Inc.’s Long Lake oil-sands complex to Cheecham, Alberta, after discovering a 750-barrel spill on June 22. The Athabasca and Waupisoo lines, which carry crude south from oil-sands projects in Alberta, were shut as a precaution.
Emergency Procedures
Suncor Energy Inc. reduced production from its Fort McMurray oil-sands operations because of the pipeline shutdown, Chief Executive Officer Steve Williams said yesterday in a statement.
“Our ability to move product out of the region has been restricted and we’ve temporarily slowed production,” Williams said.
Imperial Oil Ltd. (IMO), Canada’s second-largest oil company by market value, hasn’t been affected by the Enbridge closures, while competitors Cenovus and Arc Resources Ltd. have implemented backup emergency procedures to keep their operations functioning with headquarters closed.
“Nobody’s working from downtown,” said Rhona DelFrari, a spokeswoman for Cenovus. Essential teams, such as marketing and treasury, are working from the company’s office building in the south of the city, she said.
The Bow
No field operations are run directly from Calgary, so production hasn’t been affected, DelFrari said. Some of the company’s staff had their homes flooded, and Cenovus has told employees who aren’t needed at work to stay home and help their neighbors, she said.
The Bow building hasn’t had any water damage, said DelFrari, but there’s no sign of when they can move back downtown.
Arc Resources has shut in a “handful” of wells in the Medicine Hat area as a precaution, said David Carey, a company spokesman. The Medicine Hat area supplies 2,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day out of the company’s total 95,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day total output.
About half the normal number of oil traders logged into the Net Energy Inc. online oil exchange yesterday, Tim Gunn, the company’s chief executive officer, said in an e-mail. Most of the traders were logged in remotely, since their normal headquarters in downtown Calgary were still without power. There was only one trade in the Canadian spot market crudes as of 2:20 p.m. local time.
Calgary Stampede
“Tough to get an accurate picture of what’s going on with so many out,” Gunn said.
The Calgary Stampede will go ahead as scheduled, CEO Vern Kimball told reporters in Calgary. Event organizers may change the parade route as they repair damage to facilities that were among the hardest-hit areas. The Saddledome hockey arena near the fair grounds was among the buildings flooded.
Calgary’s Chinatown, bordering the south bank of the Bow River on the north end of downtown, was covered in mud and drying sewage. Water during the flood surged into basements and main floors of the area’s restaurants and shops. Police guided traffic past shops with “closed” signs on the doors.
Outside city hall yesterday, vacuum trucks were sucking water and sewage from drains on streets thick with mud and dust. Few people walked on Stephen Avenue mall, a usually bustling pedestrian zone that fills with some of the 350,000 office workers who travel downtown daily from the suburbs.
‘Extensive’ Flooding
Canadian Pacific Railways Ltd. (CP), Canada’s second-largest railway, re-opened its line west of Calgary in the towns of Canmore and Banff and planned to open segments of its main line through downtown Calgary. More than 40 locations along the company’s routes have been affected by high water, CP said in an e-mail.
“The force and extent of this flooding was extensive and evolved from hour-to-hour,” CEO Hunter Harrison said in the statement. The Calgary-based company reiterated its full-year profit guidance.
Damage to railway tracks may delay shipments of potash to Canada’s West Coast from Saskatchewan, Todd Coakwell, a spokesman for Calgary-based Agrium Inc., the country’s third-largest producer of the crop nutrient by volume, said in an e-mailed statement.
CF Industries Holdings Inc. (CF) said it shut a nitrogen facility in Medicine Hat in advance of flooding on the South Saskatchewan River.
Beef Plant
Alberta crop and livestock producers may suffer losses from the floods, although officials won’t know the extent of the damage until waters recede, Agriculture Minister Verlyn Olson said in a June 21 telephone interview from Edmonton.
Cargill Inc.’s beef-processing plant south of Calgary in the town of High River remained closed yesterday because of a temporary disruption to the fresh-water supply amid area flooding. Cattle slaughter was halted on June 21 and “we aren’t certain when we will be able to start processing again,” Brigitte Burgoyne, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
The plant isn’t directly affected by flooding and typically processes 4,500 head of cattle a day, Burgoyne said. The gross value of livestock from one day of production at the facility is valued at an estimated C$7 million, according to Joe Jackson, head of risk management for Jameson, Gilroy and B&L Livestock Ltd. in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
“We will assess the situation on a daily basis to determine how soon we can start processing again,” Burgoyne said in an e-mail.
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Posting ID: 3674243420Posted: 2013-03-11, 11:32AM PDTEdited: 2013-03-11, 11:34AM PDTemail to a friend
Well Services Floorhand June/July 2013 - Ensign Energy Services Inc. - Bakersfield, CA
Job Summary
Requirements and Competencies
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This position supports and assists other members of the Well Servicing crew during all rig operations
Specific Responsibilities
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Assists Operator, Derrickhand, while servicing wells.
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Carries out housekeeping tasks around rig and lease such as washing and painting, either on own initiative or as assigned.
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Catches samples, digs and cleans ditches, shovels shale.
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Assists in the training and instruction of more junior Floorhand.
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Reports and corrects any unsafe work practices and safety hazards.
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Assists and performs tasks as instructed by Operator and Derrickhand
Works as a team member with the rest of the rig crew, at a high level of efficiency during trips and other team efforts.
Requirements and Competencies
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Fully knowledgeable of new employee orientation program, rig, and Company policies including Company employee benefit plans.
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Understands and works according to knowledge with steam, BOP drills and kicks, workplace hazards, and safety.
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Responsible for developing an understanding of all major rig components and the necessary servicing required.
Job Well Servicing
Primary Location United States-California-Bakersfield
Organization Ensign USD (CA) Well Servicing
Schedule Full-time
Job Posting Jun 24, 2013, 4:00:00 PM
Unposting Date Jul 31, 2013, 4:00:00 PM
Recruiter Heidi Moore
Personal Injury Medical Lien Reduction Assistant (Mid Wilshire)
Please submit resume as a Microsoft Word Attachment with salary history. Posting ID: 3674243743
Posted: 2013-03-11, 11:33AM PDTEdited: 2013-03-11, 11:33AM PDTemail to a friendFrack music attracts Halliburton to submarine spy tool
An unidentified worker steps through the maze of hoses being used at a remote fracking site being run by Halliburton for natural-gas producer Williams in Rulison, Colo. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday Dec. 8, 2011 in Wyoming, for the first time that fracking - a controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells - may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)A gossamer-thin glass line threaded two miles underground is allowing oilfield engineers to listen to a new kind of music: the sounds of fracking.
Halliburton Co. (HAL) and competing providers of drilling gear are adapting acoustic spy technology used by U.S. submarines to record sounds made deep in the earth that can guide engineers in finishing a well and predicting how much oil will flow.
The ability to hear inside a well enables producers to fine-tune hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the process that blasts underground rock with water, sand and chemicals to free trapped oil and natural gas. The technology is targeted at an estimated $31 billion that will be spent this year on fracking stages that yield less-than-optimal results, a majority of the work at 26,100 U.S. wells set to be pressure-pumped in 2013, according to PacWest Consulting Partners LLC.
“We’re creating a new science,” said Magnus McEwen-King, managing director for OptaSense, a Qinetiq Group Plc (QQ/) unit that’s one of the fiber-optics pioneers for the energy industry. “From an acoustic perspective, this is very much the start of what I think is going to be a revolutionary technology.”
Fracking has helped U.S. oil production reach a 21-year high. Environmental groups have criticized the practice because of concerns it may affect drinking water supplies.
Energy companies are fueling the booming business of so-called distributed fiber-optic lines, where the cord itself is a sensor for sound and temperature throughout its entire length.
Market Doubles
The U.S. market for such lines, used across industries from energy to military, will almost double to $1.1 billion by 2016 from an estimated $586 million this year, according to a study published by Information Gatekeepers and revised this month by Light Wave Venture LLC, which helps develop new companies using fiber-optic technology.
The prospect of fine-tuning energy discovery has the world’s largest oilfield service providers joining companies with ties to the defense industry including OptaSense and U.S. Seismic Systems Inc., a unit of Acorn Energy Inc. (ACFN), to develop ways to eavesdrop on wells. Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA), Chevron Corp. (CVX) and Statoil ASA (STL) are among customers testing the technology.
“This market is evolving very, very aggressively,” said Dave Krohn, a Connecticut-based materials engineer who wrote the market study. “Clearly the driver is oil and gas.”
Cataloging Sounds
Halliburton, the world’s largest provider of fracking services, is working on cataloging the combination of sounds that signal the perfect frack: an explosion, cracking rock, and eventually the gurgle of hydrocarbons seeping into the well bore, said Glenn McColpin, director of reservoir monitoring at Halliburton’s Houston-based Pinnacle unit. A bad frack means the rock didn’t crack as much as it could have.
When perfected, a computer will convert the sounds to a graph that will show how deeply and thoroughly cracks penetrate the rock surrounding the well, indicating the success of each frack stage. The longer and more numerous the cracks, the more oil and gas will flow.
One fracking stage can cost about $100,000 and a typical well now will have about 15 stages, said Alex Robart, principal at PacWest. The effectiveness of each stage varies wildly. The industry generally subscribes to the 80-20 rule, meaning 80 percent of North American production comes from about 20 percent of the fracking stages, he said.
‘Perfect Frack’
Finding out immediately which fracks were successful allows a company to repeat the process to improve flow.
“Our whole goal is to make the perfect frack every time,” McColpin said. “You’re spending millions of dollars pumping millions of gallons of fluid, and if you’re only getting a third of the rock, you’re getting a third of the production.”
A fiber optic line consists of a stainless steel cable encasing one long, thin string of glass that vibrates when struck by sound waves. The sound waves are converted to light pulses reflected through the line, then converted by computer software back into sound that McColpin can monitor from his laptop.
“Bink, bank, boink” is what McColpin hears as a small metal ball rolls down the well bore and lands in a “ball seat” that triggers the rock’s first fracture. The fiber line captures the noise of the ball and the reverberating blast of the perforation gun firing into the rock. Computer software converts those sounds into a colored graph on his laptop screen, etching a bright red fever line across a green background.
‘Transparent’ Earth
“Our whole goal is to make the earth transparent,” McColpin said. “Now we’ve got a window into the well to see exactly what’s happening.”
The oil industry started experimenting with fiber optic lines’ temperature-sensing abilities about a decade ago, and five years later started testing it with sounds.
In August 2009 OptaSense traveled to Alberta, Canada, to show off its acoustic fiber-optic line to Shell. Executives from both companies piled into an observation truck parked near the well site to oversee a fracking job while OptaSense’s McEwen-King sat in his office back in England monitoring the real-time results on his computer.
As the perforation gun exploded, sound waves traveling along the fiber optic line were transformed into data that lit up his screen with a brightly colored graph illustrating the results.
‘Wide Enthusiasm’
“You guys just turned the lights on down there!” McEwen-King told his colleagues back in Canada. “The whole well-bore imaged instantaneously,” he recalled in an interview earlier this month. Three years later, OptaSense announced an agreement with Shell to provide global frack-monitoring services using the acoustic lines.
Some of the world’s largest oil producers are interested in the still-evolving technology, Joseph Elkhoury, general manager of microseismic services at Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB)
“There’s always this wide enthusiasm around a new technology,” he said. Inevitably, that’s followed months or years later by a drop in the adoption curve as customers realize the technology isn’t everything they hoped it would be. Once the service companies fix some of the challenges, adoption picks up again, he said.
“We are in the wide-enthusiasm phase of acoustic sensing,” Elkhoury said.
Onshore Uses
One of the biggest challenges for acoustic fiber in the oilfield is making the business case to use it onshore, Robart said. Installing the technology can cost as much as several hundred thousand dollars a well, meaning it doesn’t pay off as easily on a $6 million land well as it would on a $50 million offshore well, he said.
To confirm how large a fracture was and where it went, companies still need to use a network of specific sensors called geophones to listen from a nearby monitoring well, measuring subtle earth movements from the rock cracking. Some service companies want to one day ditch these microseismic tools and get the same listening sensitivity from their one fiber optic line, helping bring costs down and becoming more efficient.
U.S. Seismic is using three acoustic fiber-optic lines to listen for sounds in place of traditional geophones. The technology provides a more accurate sense of how far the cracks penetrated the rock and in which direction, said Jim Andersen, chief executive officer of U.S. Seismic.
Direction of Cracks
Contractors ranging from Halliburton to Exiius LLC have begun permanently installing fiber optic lines in U.S. wells. During completion of a just-drilled well, the fiber can listen for subtle noises that suggest sealing the well with cement didn’t work properly.
Then the fiber can listen for good and bad fracking stages, and finally it’ll be able to confirm if oil and gas is flowing. Eventually they’ll be able to actually measure production flow based on sounds, McColpin said. He compares it to a flute: as different holes in the well’s casing are open or clogged, the sound pitch of fluids flowing through the well are affected.
Programmers also are working on algorithms to detect the difference in sound for water versus oil flowing into the well from surrounding rock. Then valves for different areas in the well bore could be opened or closed as needed to minimize water incursion, which is a waste.
Submarine Expertise
Scientists also want to beef up the listening capability of the fiber optic line during seismic shoots of the underground rock to capture better reservoir images for future exploration.
Submarines were among the first adopters of acoustic fiber-optic technology in the late 1990s. Some of OptaSense’s technology expertise originates from its parent company, Qinetiq (QQ/), a U.K. defense contractor providing military services ranging from drones to cyber security.
Before moving to U.S. Seismic, Andersen previously ran the group at Litton Industries Inc. that sold about $450 million worth of fiber-optic sensor technology to the U.S. Navy. Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC), a maker of surveillance drones, bought Litton in 2001 for about $5 billion.
Foul Play
Outside of oil and gas production, fiber optic lines are being used on pipelines to detect leaks or foul play, for monitoring perimeter security along a property fence line and to measure the stress on infrastructure such as roads and bridges. The rebuilt Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis is now packed with 300 fiber-optic sensors after it collapsed in 2007, Krohn said.
One of the biggest challenges for the new technology is figuring out what to do with the mountains of data they’re collecting. Halliburton has assembled engineers, scientists and former U.S. space program technicians in a Houston lab to comb through data that pores in fast enough to fill up a DVD every 28 seconds.
So far, companies are afraid to throw anything out, not knowing what might prove to be the crucial puzzle piece later, McColpin said.
“It’s untenable,” he said. “You can’t collect 15 terrabytes a week continuously for 20 years on a well.”
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