Oil & Gas Industry Exempt from New Clean Water Rules

I'm counting the days... 2009 can't come soon enough.

 

Subsidies? To the oil & gas industry? Noooo, never.

 

So what else is new?

 

Looks like they're exempt from the Endangered Species Act too.

"Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations this week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years."

 

You guys just don't keep up with the times. It's now the Environment Pillaging Agency.

 

Consider that drilling ops will generate an enormous amount of contaminated drill mud. The mud is petroleum impacted, with trace amounts of heavy metals

Shale is the worst, despite all the rah-rah shale proponents making it sound as if the best thing since sliced bread. Shale must be heated and "washed" to get the heavy metals - primarily arsenic and cadmium - out. Otherwise, the catalysts used in the refinery will quickly be ruined

A standard oil refinery will have about 1:1 process water to crude consumption. Most of the water used in a refinery is petroleum impacted, with current membrane technology the resulting sludge can be burned in boilers

Oil sand recovery has much more process water consumption. Typical end ratios are 5:1 water to syncrude. The resulting contaminated water is currently kept in giant retention ponds, actually man-made lakes. This is the current "best practise" solution

So that is why the petrochemical industry is getting a break

 

I'm gonna raise the BS flag on you right now.

When the pipeline in Alaska was built animal populations rose big time and continue to rise. Every severe cold weather season up there I see tons of more polar bears and other species. I guess next winter I'll bring my camera is I'm working the Ice roads and take pictures.

The weather has not changed a bit ever since I was born. This past winter the ice and cold weather was very severe up there. Many people that live there said it was the worst in 20 years.

Watch Ice Road Truckers. I'm on the Show.

 

I think a Canadian company mining the tar sands just got fined big time by the Canadian government when 500 migratory birds landed in one of their "lakes" and all died.

 

Jimmie

As usual, you didn't answer the question but chose to deflect it. The issue is primarily about drilling ops and processing, not pipelines. I believe I have presented sufficient evidence of drilling and refinery operations creating massive amounts of contaminated water. Very well

FinebergResearch.com -The Oil Patch

The Alaska pipeline is experiencing problems. This has nothing to do with animals currently migrating along the pipeline. Some will maintain the spill incidence is low and safe. Spills have the potential to increase due to massive corrosion found in the pipeline system. Apparently the corrosion was unexpected

Alaskan pipeline shutdown pumps up oil prices

As a consultant to the petrochemicial industry, I'm the one calling BS. FIrst of all, given the length of the Alaska oil pipeline, and its location, corrosion is not only expected but almost certain to cause complete erosion of the pipe wall. Due to the interaction of the pipeline with the electro aurojet, the resulting Birkeland Currents will result in Telluric Induced Corrosion

Space Weather - Geomagnetic Effects on Pipelines

Geomagnetically Induced Currents

GIC Now! :: Ongelmat

Pipeline operators in Scandinavian countries- such as the Gasum Oy system - are well aware of the interaction with long steel pipelines that cross the electrojet field, especially over surfaces that offer poor net grounding effect. Currents of up to 100 amps have been measured

When the Alaska pipeline was designed and constructed, this was a period of relatively "quiet" solar weather. We had a peak in 1989 when the Hydro Quebec tranmission line had massive GIC and failed.

It's postulated that a repeat of the massive 1859 Carrington's Flare could cripple our infrastructure, including destroy most of our pipelines. The 1859 flare caused telegraph lines to glow red hot, and rail lines to become too hot to touch

Carrington's Flare

http://thayer.dartmouth.edu/~Simon_G_Shepherd/research/Shielding/docs/Townsend_03.pdf

I find it very curious that there has been no mention of GIC corrosion of the Alaska pipeline, when one would expect a large amount of GIC within that pipeline.

jay

 

G

I'd be very surprised if the fine went ahead. Consider that Syncrude has been a taxpayer funded boondoggle for most of its existence, more negative publicity would raise questions about how the Canadian Government administers and oversees Crown Corporations

As I have stated in other posts, the current "best practise" to deal with the contaminated shale "wash" water is to store the muck in giant man-made lakes. Nobody really knows how to deal with the arsenic and cadmium, mingled in with PAH's

I am disappointed that a lot of well-meaning but uneducated folks out there believe that shale is the best thing since sliced bread. They even ignore the enormous cost of developing shale, somehow believing gasoline will drop to $1 a gallon thanks to shale.

j