Modeshift

Photo © Heather Rousseau / Circle of Blue

The only sound in the clearing is of songbirds hidden in the trees. The sole scent from the straight-as-a-gun-barrel well–drilled and tested last year–is the smell of money, and potentially of trouble.

At Circle of Blue, where I serve as senior editor and producer, we’ve gotten interested in the competition between water and energy. Will the transition to a low-carbon economy yield a penalty, or a dividend, for water consumption and use? With the exception of solar photovoltaics and wind, it appears that every other energy alternative, including natural gas, will lead to more water consumption unless new practices and technology are embraced. Michigan is now confronting that challenge with its latest hydrocarbon development era — drilling the Collingwood shale.

Earlier this year the Pioneer well’s Canadian owner, the Calgary-based Encana Corporation, announced that during its first 30 days the well produced an average of 2.5 million cubic feet of gas a day, making it for a time the most prolific single source of natural gas in Michigan. Production has since dropped back to 800,000 cubic feet per day, said state officials, though that is still a prodigious amount for a Michigan gas well.

“The industry’s response to the first well drilled to test this formation has been overwhelming,” said Tom Wellman, Manager of the Mineral and Land Management Section of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

A Gas Frenzy
How overwhelming? In early May the natural gas industry saluted the import of those numbers by spending $178 million at a lease sale of nearly 120,000 acres of state-owned minerals in 22 Michigan counties. That was more than seven times the previous record for a state lease sale, and nearly equal to the $190 million Michigan has earned, in total, since it began auctioning oil and gas leases in 1929. In October, Michigan is poised to auction mineral leases on 500,000 more acres, and the natural gas industry is poised, say executives, to spend a lot of money again.

Michigan’s leasing frenzy, touched off by the promising results from a single Missaukee County well, is part of a global rush to tap the Earth’s deep gas-bearing shales for a fuel that burns much cleaner than coal or oil. Spurred by advancing technology, developers penetrate geologic layers miles beneath the surface, and then pump water mixed with chemicals into the space at such high pressure that the rock fractures, releasing the gas.

Photo © Heather Rousseau / Circle of Blue

Natural gas production in the United States is climbing as producers develop the deep shales in the Northeast, Texas, the Rocky Mountain states and now in Michigan. A two-year study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimated that shale gas reserves in the United States can provide 92 years of energy based on current natural gas consumption rates in the country.

Water Needed Big Time
But production practices, particularly the use of millions of gallons of water, and thousands of pounds of chemicals used in the “hydrofracking” process, have stirred concerns about water contamination and supply.

Encana Corporation, which said in May that it had gained mineral leases to 250,000 acres in Michigan, was fined $370,000 in 2006 by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for flawed drilling practices that residents say caused methane and benzene contamination of Divide Creek in Colorado. Alan Boras, the company’s spokesman, said in an interview with Circle of Blue that the leak was “a rare circumstance” caused by flaws in the cement that holds the well casing in place.

“Within less than a week of being alerted, the problem was rectified,” Boras said.

Meanwhile New York has instituted a moratorium on shale gas development pending research by state authorities on the risk to water resources and public health. Communities in Wyoming and Pennsylvania have reported incidences of water contamination and methane mixed with drinking water in regions where shale gas development is occurring. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is completing a study of the risks of fracking.

Two years ago, in a study that has been criticized for political interference by the energy industry, the EPA conducted its first assessment of fracking, calling it safe and exempting drillers from water quality standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Authorities in Michigan said in interviews that they are aware of the reports of problems involved in hydrofracking the deep shales. They said that the state is well-prepared to deal with the Collingwood development and the potential consequences it will have on the land, public health and Michigan’s fresh water reserves. Hal Fitch, the director of the Geological Survey Office, a unit of the state Department of Natural Resources and Environment, explained in an interview that Michigan has some of the toughest regulations in the country for overseeing oil and gas development, and that his office is well-staffed to enforce them.

Michigan Prepares
Fitch said the state is close to issuing new permit conditions that space the Collingwood wells at least a mile apart, which will reduce the number of well pads cut into the forest. But he acknowledged that each of the well pads will encompass five acres or more–five times larger than the typical natural gas and oil well pad.

He also acknowledged that because completing each of the Collingwood wells involves using millions of gallons of water to fracture the shale and open spaces for the gas to flow, the state may need to better understand the risks.

Photo © Heather Rousseau / Circle of Blue

The Pioneer well in Missaukee County reaches down 9,685 feet to tap what may be a motherlode of natural gas.

“There is a concern about the volume of water used,” said Fitch. ”While drilling and use of water is a one time deal for each site, it requires a lot of water. DNRE looks at the effect of water withdrawal on immediate surroundings, if it’s near a wetland or lake or adjacent public water supplies. ” They make sure the activity is not depleting the aquifer at that site. But they do not look at cumulative effects of water withdrawals, the watershed-scale effects of withdrawals.

Big Play State
Northern Michigan is no stranger to big plays in oil and gas development. In the 1970s energy producers drilled thousands of wells into the Niagaran formation 5,000 feet below the surface along a narrow band that extended from Manistee County along the coast of Lake Michigan inland through Montmorency County. It was the largest oil and gas drilling zone on the continent until development opened on Alaska’s North Slope. In the 1990s, developers drilled thousands more wells in the Antrim Shale formation that were about 1,000 to 1,200 feet deep. The companies built an infrastructure of 9,700 well pads, thousands of miles of pipeline and roads, hundreds of compressing stations, and a number of big processing plants that produced considerable damage to streams and forests, but also yielded billions of dollars worth of natural gas.

Pioneer, the township where the well is located, is part of a rural farmland landscape known for its corn, dairy livestock, and Christmas tree farms, as well as a recreational inland lake popular with fishers and boaters in Lake City. The massive hydraulic fracturing of the Pioneer well required 5.5 million gallons of water. Some of the water was supplied by a freshwater aquifer at the site, while another portion was hauled to the site by trucks, said Joel Fox, a representative for Petoskey Exploration, Inc., the company that organized the drilling of the well for Encana, which they evenutally contracted out to Superior Gas.

The Collingwood Shale could be the source of Michigan’s third major hydrocarbon development era of the last 40 years, according to Encana. The company, Canada’s largest natural gas producer, spent an estimated $7 million to $9 million to drill and hydrofrack the well, making it among the most expensive wells ever developed in the state. It bored a hole nearly 10,000 feet deep into the Earth: one of the deepest ever drilled in Michigan.

“It’s too early to know the economic potential of this new Collingwood Shale play, but we plan to drill additional exploration wells this year that will help determine the play’s ultimate potential,” said Randy Eresman, Encana’s president and chief executive in a statement.

Molly Ramsey, a reporter with Circle of Blue, where this article originally appeared, contributed research and reporting. Read more about hydrofracking on Circle of Blue.

Until December 2009, the idea of acting to cool the Earth was on a roll. High points included 2007 Nobel Prizes for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s breakthrough science and for Al Gore’s astonishing work to elevate global warming to an international priority, They also included Barack Obama’s winning 2008 presidential election, and the formation of global online grassroots activism led by  350.org and TckTckTck, a project of the Global Campaign For Climate Action.

But that month more than 100 heads of state gathered at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen and failed to reach agreement on binding international measures to limit carbon emissions and secure the planet’s safety. Nowhere has the fallout from Copenhagen’s grim result been more visible than in the U.S. Senate.

Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (in pix above with Sen. Kerry on left, and Carol Browner) emerged from a meeting with Democratic colleagues and announced that the new comprehensive climate and energy bill he promised last week would not include specific measures to limit emissions that are warming the Earth.

A much less ambitious bill will be introduced next week, said Sen. Reid, that focuses on a response to the BP Gulf disaster, improvements to energy efficiency, converting vehicle fleets to natural gas, and other narrower energy measures.

The introduction of such a bill would appear to have the effect of squandering the work of the House, which passed a cap-and-trade bill in June 2009 that set a national cap on carbon emissions and required companies to have permits for such emissions. It also would appear, if political polls are accurately forecasting severe Democratic losses in the fall, to kill any chance of capping carbon emissions in this Congress, the next, or even over the next decade.

For the foreseeable future climate action in the U.S. will be ad-hoc, piecemeal, uncoordinated, and not nearly as effective as it could be with a comprehensive legislative approach. If warming temperatures, failing industries, economic malaise, and energy insecurity is your idea of a good time, then this era of American inaction is just what the doctor ordered.

Weeks Of Work By Climate Activists
It’s not that people aren’t trying. The Senate decision to focus the new bill solely on energy came after weeks of intensive work by climate advocates to build a case for emissions limits in and outside Washington, organizing demonstrations at the grassroots, meeting with Senate staff, and raising the issue in the media. Since May, following the explosion and oil blowout in the Gulf, President Barack Obama also had campaigned for climate action in meetings with Senators of both parties, in public appearances outside Washington, and in a televised Oval Office address in June during which he called for a new “national mission” to achieve energy independence and safeguard the environment.

The effort, though, was impeded by opposition messages that asserted, with scant basis in fact, that limiting carbon emissions would severely raise energy prices and living costs, and by the prevailing politics of stasis on climate issues that define the era. Lawmakers in Australia, Japan, and Canada are having similar difficulties getting strong climate bills approved. The Copenhagen summit was a study in how pride and posturing trumped economic and ecological urgency.

“Many of us want to do a thorough comprehensive bill that creates jobs, breaks our addiction to foreign oil, and curbs pollution,” said Sen. Reid at a hastily called news conference today.  “Unfortunately at this time we don’t have a single Republican to work with in achieving this goal. For me it’s terribly disappointing and it’s also very dangerous.”

In The Face Of Record Heat, No Action
Indeed, Sen. Reid’s announcement came the same week that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2010 is the hottest year on record, and on the same day that China said it would enact domestic carbon trading programs starting next year to help meet its target of reducing the nation’s carbon pollution.

“It should be a wake-up call that the same day Republican opposition kills a carbon price in the Senate, China announces it will put a price on carbon in 2011,” Joshua Freed, the director of clean energy program at the Third Way, a centrist think tank, told the Washington Post.

Appearing at the news conference with Sen. Reid was Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is widely regarded as the Senate’s most important advocate for reducing carbon emissions. Sen. Kerry promised to keep trying to find an opening to introduce and pass climate legislation in the Senate. “It’s not dying. It’s not going away,” he said. “We’re going to try our best to find a way to do it in the next few weeks. If we can’t do it in the next weeks, we’ll do something that begins to do something responsibly in the short term. But this will stay out there, and we’ll be working on it. We’ll be asking you to talk to your senators and move them to understand why we have to get this done.”

President Obama dispatched Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change, to join Senators Reid and Kerry in making the announcement. Her assessment of a large portion of the problem was characteristically direct and unvarnished: “”As we stand here today we don’t have one Republican vote,” she said.

Democrats Not United in Support, Republicans United Against
Still, neither Reid nor Kerry were able to marshal consistent support from Democrats either. New West Virginia Democratic Senator Carte Goodwin, who this month replaced the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, announced even before he arrived in Washington that he would not support measures to limit carbon emissions. Other Democrats, most notably Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, also periodically expressed opposition.

Advocates of climate action expressed equal measures of frustration and resolve to keep trying today. “It’s deeply disappointing that Big Oil, Dirty Coal and their allies in Congress continue to stand in the way of creating a clean energy economy that creates jobs, makes America more energy independent and protects the planet,” said Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters. “The twin challenges of building a clean energy economy and addressing global warming are too important to fail.  The fight to create new clean energy jobs and solve the climate crisis will continue — in this Congress, in the states and at the EPA.”

“Due to Republican leaders inaction,” said Daniel J. Weiss, the director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, “China will continue to expand its clean energy industry and jobs. We will spend $1 billion each day on foreign oil. And power plants will spew billions of tons of pollution.”

– Keith Schneider

President Obama will be in Michigan on Thursday for the groundbreaking ceremony of a new LG Chem-Compact battery plant, which will make the power sources for the Chevy Volt, expected to be introduced later this year. The plant is one of 17 new manufacturing facilities in Michigan connected to battery production for electric vehicles. On May 26 ModeShift published a full account of the federal and state-financing that leveraged the more than $6 billion total investment that state and federal authorities say will produce 19,000 manufacturing jobs. It’s the clearest example of the potential for new clean energy jobs that’s yet emerged from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Read the Modeshift report here:

Michigan: Where New U.S. Efficiency and Emissions Rules Really Count

– Keith Schneider

As cities on the East Coast sweltered in the sort of dispiriting record-breaking heat that climate scientists accurately predicted, the Obama administration’s lawyers were in a federal appellate court in New Orleans today to reinstate the moratorium on deep sea oil and gas exploration the Interior Department issued in May. Last month a federal district judge with investment interests in the energy industry struck down the temporary ban on new drilling.

It’s been that kind of week. On the one hand, the Earth is exhibiting so many of the dreadful symptoms of an atmosphere unnaturally warmed by man. The National Snow and Ice Data Center said on July 6 that the expanse of Arctic sea ice had shrunk in June to the lowest level ever recorded. Asian climatologists reported that glacial melt in the Himalayas was accelerating. Record rains in Oklahoma and Arkansas in the last three weeks produced flooding that has killed more than 20 people.

Criminalizing Scientists
On the other, those who defend the fossil fuel industry and deny that the Earth has entered the era of manmade climate change press ahead with their dangerous work. Virginia Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is prosecuting a much-disputed fraud investigation of climatologist Michael E. Mann, who served on the University of Virginia faculty for six years. The idea to prosecute climate scientists was first introduced by Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe, who in February issued a report that identified several respected climate scientists as potential criminals.

One of the accused was Dr. Mann, who now conducts his research at Pennsylvania State University. Cuccinelli based his investigation on a number of email messages, authored by Mann, and stolen in November from a data bank at the Climate Research Unit of England’s East Anglia University. A spokesman for the attorney general says Cuccinelli is scheduled to make his next court filing on July 13 in a case that the university, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences say is tantamount to a scientific witch hunt.

Science Cleared
That charge gained substantial credence over the last seven days. On July 1, for the second time since February, a Penn State investigative panel that also looked at the stolen emails confirmed the quality of the climate science that Mann conducted. And on Wednesday, an independent investigative panel commissioned by East Anglia University was the third and latest independent British review committee to clear Mann and other scientists who wrote the email messages of any dishonesty, ethical lapses, or unsound scientific practices. “We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” said Sir Muir Russell, the panel’s leader.

President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are pushing the Senate to introduce, debate, and approve comprehensive energy legislation this year, and preferably before the August recess. The BP Gulf calamity, record East Coast heat, and dangerous heartland rain are unmistakable signs of the rising costs of a fossil-fueled economy and inaction on climate change. The exoneration of climate scientists and their important research ends legitimate questions about the causes of the warming planet or its fate if nations do not respond. The urgency to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill in the United States increases by the week. Very plainly, the moment is here for the Senate to act.

– Keith Schneider

The 20-year global campaign to cool the planet, one of the most influential civic movements in human history, was built on two points of reference.

The first is visible evidence on every continent of escalating temperatures, melting ice, more ferocious storms, fiercer droughts, and deadlier floods. The second is the wealth of scientific data that proves Mother Nature’s erratic behavior is no accident. It’s the result of the combustion of fossil fuels that is steadily increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Last November, over 1,000 email messages from top climate scientists were stolen from the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University in England, and posted online. The carefully planned theft and the acts of deceit that followed were clearly intended to dissolve the essential narrative foundation of the climate movement, break the global consensus about the causes and consequences of the warming planet, and halt momentum for government action.

Attack Not Successful
Nearly eight months later, as East Coast cities swelter in record heat that climate science predicted, it’s clear that the attack did not achieve its goals. As leaders of the U.S. Senate edge closer to introducing and debating a comprehensive proposal to secure America’s energy independence and limit carbon emissions, there’s been no talk of flawed climate science. Why? Because the science of climate change is accurate, according to a host of independent reviews and investigations in recent months by scientific panels in Europe and the United States.

On Wednesday, an independent investigative panel commissioned by East Anglia University was the latest to clear the scientists who wrote the email messages of any dishonesty, ethical lapses, or unsound scientific practices. “We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” said Sir Muir Russell, the panel’s leader.

The Muir investigation is the third independent evaluation in Great Britain to confirm the credibility of the scientists and accuracy of the science discussed in the stolen emails and posted online on November 20.

The conclusions of the Muir panel, moreover, come less than a week after an investigative panel at Pennsylvania State University confirmed the quality of the climate science prepared by Michael E. Mann, a climatologist at Penn State University, and the author of a number of the email messages hacked from East Anglia University’s data bank.  In February, a separate Penn State panel concluded there was “no substance” to allegations of impropriety made by opponents of climate action, and that Dr. Mann’s scientific practices, ethics, research, and conduct were not in dispute.

“We can now put this bogus, manufactured scandal behind us, and move on to a more constructive conversation about climate change,” said Dr. Mann (in pix above) in a statement.  ”We’re currently witnessing the warmest temperatures ever globally, and are in the midst of a record-setting heat wave in the U.S. associated with the warmest early summer temperatures ever for large parts of the U.S. Meanwhile, record-breaking ocean surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic are predicted to give us a hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season this summer. Human-caused climate change is a reality, and it’s about time we get on to a meaningful discussion about what to do about it.”

“Bogus, Manufactured Scandal”
The five separate investigations of leading climatologists and the validity of climate science marked a dismal period of inaction in the United States and globally on climate change. But the consistent conclusions in support of scientists and the science, along with a monstrous oil spill in the Gulf and political missteps by prominent climate action opponents, appears to be fortifying the fresh legislative vigor to consider and pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill.

Since May, President Obama has pressed the Senate to introduce and debate a new legislative proposal, prompted in large part by the nation’s revulsion to the BP Gulf catastrophe, now in its 80^th day. In mid-June, in a nationally telecast speech from the Oval Office, the president called for a new “national mission” to build a low-carbon economy that solves climate change and achieves energy independence.  Last week in a meeting with leaders of both parties, the president called for action this summer, a summons that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Democrats were eager to meet.

In the meantime elected opponents of climate science and action overreached, revealing the ideological foundations of their work. In February Senator James Inhofe, a Republican of Oklahoma and the most prominent Capitol Hill climate change skeptic, released a report on the hacked emails that identified several respected climate scientists as potential criminals.

Scientists Viewed As Criminals
The effort to criminalize climate scientists was embraced by Virginia’s Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who filed an unusual “civil investigative demand” under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act requiring the University of Virginia to turn over six years of documents related to Dr. Mann’s research while he was a UVA faculty member.

Cuccinelli’s prosecution, which appears to be weakened considerably by the results of the British and Penn State investigative panels, prompted a fierce counter-attack by the university, its faculty, many of the nation’s leading scientists and science organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The basic charge: Virginia’s archconservative attorney general was abusing the power and prestige of his office to conduct a scientific witch hunt.

Science Fights Back
Cuccinelli is expected to respond to that charge and others in a court filing on July 13, said a spokesman. Scientists, though, aren’t sitting still. Stanford University published a paper this month in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found 97 percent to 98 percent of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenet that combustion of fossil fuels is the source of global climate change, the basic finding of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that was awarded the Nobel Prize. Just 2 percent of the scientists who are skeptical of that conclusion are actively publishing in the field, said the Stanford study.

In May, members of the National Academy of Sciences published a letter in the journal Science that was signed by 255 of the nation’s leading scientists. It called for “an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecutions against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.”

The vigorous defense of climate scientists, and the consistent conclusions of the British and American investigative panels also has put the accuracy of mainstream media coverage under new scrutiny. For instance, The Sunday Times of London, which reported that the hacked emails threw into question the accuracy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, retracted one of its central claims about climate affects in the Amazon and acknowledged that it had misquoted a key climate scientist.

Today Media Matters, a non-profit online news site that “monitors and corrects conservative misinformation,” joined 12 environmental and climate action groups in calling for “news outlets that reported on the original “Climategate” controversy over stolen emails and the reliability of climate science to set the record straight. These outlets are urged to highlight recent developments that completely disprove much of the evidence that supported the alleged “Climategate” scandal.”

“Every newspaper, magazine, and television show that reported on these bogus scandals owes it to its audience to set the record straight with the same forcefulness and frequency that it reported the original, disproven charges,” said a letter signed by the groups and sent to newspaper editorial boards.”Failure to publicly correct the record undermines the very heart of journalism — to report the truth.”

– Keith Schneider

Following a 90-minute White House meeting Tuesday on climate and energy legislation with a bipartisan group of senators and President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid emerged to issue this assessment: “The President led a spirited, productive discussion this morning about how to move forward on clean energy legislation. Our caucus is energized on this issue and our resolve to act on energy legislation this summer remains strong.”

In holding the meeting, the president and his advisors were seeking two outcomes. The first was to build momentum, especially in the news media, to establish a sense of political inevitability about passing what the White House called a “comprehensive” bill. The second was for President Obama to personally address Republican opponents and determine where the G.O.P. might compromise.

“The President told the senators that he still believes the best way for us to transition to a clean energy economy is with a bill that makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses by putting a price on pollution,” the White House said in a statement. “Because when companies pollute, they should be responsible for the costs to the environment and their contribution to climate change.”

Big Change in Positioning
A year ago, when the House passed comprehensive climate and energy legislation that included a cap on carbon emissions, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Henry Waxman did not need nearly as much assistance from President Obama as Senator Reid does now. The president, though, has taken care since his May 25 meeting with Senate Republicans to alert the nation to a new “national mission,” and his resolve to “get something done this year.”

Republicans, meanwhile,  resist pricing or capping carbon, calling it a “new energy tax” that they assert will hamper the economy. That’s an inane argument. The real and much higher tax on the economy and citizens is doing nothing about energy and climate. The costs of stasis couldn’t be more damaging or visible. Millions of Americans are jobless. Housing values and vehicle sales have tumbled 40 percent from their 2005 peak. Life savings have been cut a third or more.

Doing nothing also means Americans are more vulnerable than ever to energy supply disruptions and price shocks that will really cripple the economy.  Just like the BP Gulf disaster, now in its 73^rd day, there is a palpable sense of national unease and frustration about the country’s pathetic capacity to fix itself.

Just In Time for July 4, A Big Political Fight
So as the nation celebrates its 234^th birthday, both sides in the climate and energy debate have done what Washington loves best. They’ve drawn clear battle lines. The president, motivated by a monstrous spill and the political opportunity presented by a senior Republican lawmaker’s gaffe-for-the-ages formal apology to BP,  believes he can achieve a substantive new policy for accelerating the transition to a low carbon economy. The mainstream and online media, once plainly doubtful, now sense that a big change is possible.

Even Senator Reid, who’d all but discarded the idea of considering a comprehensive bill this year, called out the Republicans after Tuesday’s meeting to join Democrats in responding to a national crisis. He urged his colleagues from across the aisle to “step up and demonstrate the same commitment and leadership on this issue that Democrats have.”

“Our resolve to act on energy legislation this summer remains strong,” said Senator Reid.   ”We understand that the cost of inaction is high – the continuing disaster on the Gulf Coast is the latest glaring evidence that our current energy strategy is unsustainable.”

– Keith Schneider