10 May 2016, The Hill, Oil companies abandon Arctic drilling rights. Major oil companies have abandoned hundreds of leases for offshore drilling rights in the United States’s portion of the Arctic Ocean. Federal government documents obtained by environmental group Oceana show that ConocoPhillips Co., Italy’s Eni and Iona Energy, Inc., abandoned all their leases in the Chukchi Sea, to the north and west of Alaska. Royal Dutch Shell has abandoned numerous leases and said it plans to relinquish all but one. Oil companies have, in total, abandoned 2.2 million acres of Arctic drilling rights, Oceana said, and 80 percent of all area in the American Arctic leased in a 2008 sale has been or will be abandoned. For Shell and ConocoPhillips, the decisions came just before a May 1 deadline to pay millions of dollars to keep its leases active. Shell spokesman Curtis Smith confirmed Oceana’s account, saying the decision came “after extensive consideration and evaluation.” Shell spent about $2.5 billion over seven years in preparation to drill a single exploratory well last summer in the Chukchi following a disastrous attempt in 2012. It concluded after drilling that the exploration was not worth the costs of drilling in the remote area, so it decided to abandon Arctic drilling for the foreseeable future. Read More here
Category Archives: Fossil Fuel Reduction
2 May 2016, Renew Economy, Australia heads back to bottom of barrel on climate, clean energy. Last Friday, ACT Environment Minister Simon Corbell stood up at the Local Energy and Micro-Grids conference in Sydney to announce that the ACT was going to accelerate its push to renewable energy, and would supply 100 per cent of its electricity needs from renewable energy by 2020, almost all of it from wind and solar. The new target will be achieved at no added cost to the previous target of 90 per cent, and the ACT will still retain its ranking as the city with the cheapest electricity in Australia. In fact, if Canberra households embrace the energy efficiency measures on offer from the government, they will hardly see a rise in their bill at all. Corbell told the conference, co-hosted by RenewEconomy, that not only are such targets achievable and affordable, they have to happen. “The science tells us that and the decisions at the COP (conference of the parties, or Paris climate conference) tell us that. We have to keep global temperature rises well below 2°C.” So Corbell and his government have decided to do something about it. And that makes Corbell and his government unique in Australia. No other Australia political leader, in a position of actual power, has implemented energy and industry policies that actually fit with the science. Yes, others, including the Greens, have equally ambitious policies. But Corbell is the only one who has dared take on the incumbents and walked the walk, as well as talking the talk. In doing so, he has single-handedly kept the large-scale renewable energy industry alive as federal policy fights brought the sector to a standstill.Read More here
28 April 2016, Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming World of “Peak Oil Demand,” Not “Peak Oil”. In a Greater Middle East in which one country after another has been plunged into chaos and possible failed statehood, two rival nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been bedrock exceptions to the rule. Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the Saudi royals, increasingly unnerved, have been steering their country erratically into the region’s chaos. The kingdom is now led by a decrepit 80-year-old monarch who, in commonplace meetings, has to be fed his lines by teleprompter. Meanwhile, his 30-year-old son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has gained significant control over both the kingdom’s economic and military decision-making, launched a rash anti-Iranian war in Yemen, heavily dependent onair power. It is not only Washington-backed but distinctly in the American mode of these last years: brutal yet ineffective, never-ending, a boon to the spread of terror groups, and seeded with potential blowback. Meanwhile, in a cheap-oil, belt-tightening moment, in an increasingly edgy country, the royals are reining in budgets and undermining the good life they were previously financing for many of their citizens. The one thing they continue to do is pump oil — their only form of wealth — as if there were no tomorrow, while threatening further price-depressing rises in oil production in the near future. And that’s hardly been the end of their threats. Read More here
26 April 2016, RenewEconomy, Turnbull’s evolving climate strategy: When less is more. The Coalition government under Malcolm Turnbull has a rapidly evolving strategy on climate change and clean energy – announce new jobs and investments, but only after cutting even more jobs and investments. Those were the allegations levelled at the Turnbull government on Tuesday after the CSIRO announced a new climate change research centre in what appears to be a patch-up job by innovation minister Christopher Pyne and environment minister Greg Hunt, and Hunt’s announcement of an “extra” $50 million for the Great Barrier Reef. The CSIRO cuts are particularly galling for the science community. A new division to be based in Hobart, combining with elements of the Bureau of Meteorology, will employ 40 climate scientists. But CSIRO chief Larry Marshall, intent on converting the CSIRO from focusing on the public good to revenue opportunities with business, says 75 jobs will still be lost from the climate division, albeit down from 110. CSIRO climate scientists dismiss this as a “con” job. Professor Dave Griggs, a former director of Monash Sustainability Institute at Monash University said it was like “trying to put a sticking plaster over a gaping wound.” Similarly, Hunt on Tuesday announced $50 million of “new” funding for the Great Barrier Reef, which the government has finally realised is under grave threat following the worst bleaching event on record, which has touched more than 90 per cent of the reef. The Greens said: Not so fast, arguing that the funds simply replace monies cut in the past two years – $40 million from the Reef Water Quality Program in 2014, and $10 million from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Read More here