Energy & Mining

Environmentalists have a hope.

If they can block the Keystone XL pipeline, they can keep Canada from developing more of its dirty tar sands oil. It takes a lot of energy to get it out of the ground and turn it into gasoline, so it has a bigger greenhouse gas footprint than conventional oil.

But the State Department report, which was released Friday, says Keystone won’t have much of an impact on the development of that oil from Alberta.

Industry analyst Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners says the report’s finding will make it easier for the Obama administration to say the project wouldn’t affect climate change.

“The State Department said, ‘We agree with industry.’ They’re saying this oil would have gone to market anyway,” Book says. “The facts are the oil in the ground in Canada isn’t going to stay there if there’s a buyer. And there is a buyer. The buyer’s here in the U.S., right now, and the oil is coming here by train, by truck and in some cases by barge.”

It’s also already flowing to the U.S. through existing pipelines.

Industry experts do say in the short-term, Keystone could get oil flowing faster.

Canadian investment researcher Chris Damas says the industry wants to increase production dramatically. And it’s hard to see how trains could keep up, especially since there’s already a big backlog for new tanker cars.

“Unless you can find a pipeline that can cross the border without presidential approval, I think that the Canadians … and I’m a proud Canadian, we have a problem,” Damas says. “We have landlocked oil, so there’s no easy fix to this problem.”

Already, transportation constraints have driven down the price of Canadian oil.

Damas says, if that continues, producing this oil just won’t be profitable any more.

“If the price goes too low, these projects will slow down,” he says.

Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, says he fears the State Department’s analysis will push the Obama administration to approve the project.

“This makes the president’s job to follow through on his commitment to be tough on climate change, it makes that job much more difficult,” Brune says.

Of course, the impact on climate isn’t the only thing the Obama administration will consider. While the pipeline is being built, it will support 42,000 jobs bringing $2 billion in wages.

But Brune says it’s not over yet.

“We are going to fight,” he says. “We will use all of the resources that the Sierra Club has to offer. Our law department, our organizers, our lobbyists, the 2.1 million members and supporters across the country, 170 groups who joined together at the climate rally in Washington, D.C., to make sure that the pipeline is rejected and that we go all-in on clean energy instead.”

Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at the University of California, Davis, says the only way to keep the oil from Canada under the ground is to change the way we live.

“Really, truly, it’s a lifestyle issue. We use 18 to 19 million barrels a day of oil in this country,” Jaffe says.

That’s more than 20 percent of oil consumed in the whole world.

“We’re only 5 percent of the population,” Jaffe says. “And we need to look in the mirror.”

Jaffe says once we reduce our consumption, we can have the luxury of rejecting Canada’s oil.

 

See Original Story

After Keystone Review, Environmentalists Vow To Continue Fight

It was almost exactly a hundred years ago when Alaska first began to exercise a form of self-government. The Second Organic Act of 1912 allowed the creation of the Territorial Legislature.

Eight senators and sixteen representatives from around the state met on March 3rd, 1913 in the Elks Hall in downtown Juneau, the first Alaska legislative hall, for the first Alaska legislative session that lasted sixty days.

The Territorial Legislature almost immediately gave women the right to vote, and eventually passed the Bone Dry law, a precursor to national prohibition, and the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 which preceded the national civil rights movement by almost twenty years.

But the Organic Act hamstrung the Territorial Legislature. The federal government still retained control over Alaska’s resources and the right to legislate on some issues like divorce or the sale of liquor, and still had overall authority on the Territory’s fiscal issues.

Senator Gary Stevens from Kodiak is chair of the Alaska Legislative Centennial Commission which has put together a series of events starting this weekend marking the very first session.

Stevens credits staffer Tim Lamkin for organizing much of that program that runs March 3rd through the 5th.

Sunday, March 3rd

At 10:00 a.m. downstairs at Rockwell in the Elks Hall, a breakfast program called ‘Waffles with Wickersham: Delegate James Wickersham’s campaign for the 1912 Second Organic Act’ will feature John H. Venables.

During a lunch program at noon, former lawmakers Willie Hensley, Georgianna Lincoln, and Emil Notti will talk about ‘Equal Rights, One Man One Vote, and Alaska Native Leaders in our Legislative History.’

Then at 4:00 p.m. in the upstairs of Rockwell, Governor Sean Parnell and former lawmakers Clem Tillion and Terry Gardiner are expected to participate in the opening reception that will also feature unveiling of the 100-Years website.

Monday, March 4th

At 8:00 a.m., also downstairs at Rockwell in the Elks Hall, a ‘History of the Capitol Building’ that will feature a presentation by architect Wayne Jensen.

A noon lunch discussion on ‘Leading Women in Alaska’s Political History’ will feature Arliss Sturgulewski, Drue Pearce, Katy Hurley, Bettye Davis, and Gail Phillips.

A reception starting upstairs at 5:00 p.m. will include a presentation by Dr. Beverly Beeton on ‘Members and accomplishments of the first Alaska Territorial Legislature, including Women’s Suffrage – 1913.’

A dinner program upstairs at 7:00 p.m. will include a reenactment of the convening of the First Alaska Territorial Legislature and Passage of Women’s Suffrage that will feature Juneau actors and legislative staff.

Tuesday, March 5th

A breakfast program at 8:00 a.m. will feature Clark Gruening and Mike Miller on ‘A History of Politics and Changes’ at Rockwell in the Elks Hall downstairs.

The noon lunch program on ‘Perspectives on Accomplishments and Failures in Alaska’s Legislative History’ will feature Sam Cotten and Randy Phillips as moderators.

Happy Hour begins at 4:30 p.m. with a reception program on ‘Prohibition in Territorial Alaska’ with Dr. Terrence Cole and Rick Halford.

For more information, you can go to 100years.akleg.gov

Gavel Alaska and 360North television and AlaskaLegisture.tv will provide coverage of most Centennial events either live or on a tape-delayed basis.

Gov. Sean Parnell’s oil tax proposal is steadily making its way through the Senate.

His bill advanced out of the Senate resources committee on Wednesday, with a few changes. Instead of setting the base tax rate at 25 percent, it bumps it to 35 percent. It offset that by increasing a tax break for oil produced from new areas, and giving oil companies a $5 per barrel credit. Like the governor’s bill, it gets rid of a mechanism that would raise taxes on oil companies when profits are high. Parnell described the changes as a positive step forward at a press conference on Thursday.

The new version of the oil tax bill’s impact on the state’s revenue is close to Parnell’s original version. According to the bill’s fiscal note, the bill would cut taxes on oil companies by up to $900 million over the next year. Parnell’s would cut taxes by roughly the same amount.

The new version of the bill got support from all members of the resources committee, save one. Sen. Hollis French, an Anchorage Democrat, still had questions about the effect the bill would have both on oil production and revenue, and he had concerns about the pace of the review process.

“The amendments we’ve adopted make some significant changes. The CS [committee substitute] we put in front of us last Friday basically revamps the governor’s bill and adopts some significant new measures. I don’t feel like we’ve fully vetted that. The fiscal notes, which we’ve all received this afternoon, have not been discussed by the committee,” said French. “And so, I believe that the totality of the circumstances are that this is rushing through this committee to the next one, and I don’t feel confident of the work.”

Sen. Peter Micchiche, a Republican from Soldotna, countered that a previous committee had already spent time with the bill, and that more hearings are still to come.

“Some of us have spent hundreds of hours processing this bill in two different committees,” said Micciche.

The bill is now being heard in finance, the last Senate committee that will review the plan.

After a troubled 2012 Arctic drilling season, Shell Oil has announced it won’t be drilling this summer.

The company made the announcement in a statement Wednesday morning. Shell President Marvin Odum says the “decision to pause in 2013 will give us time to ensure the readiness of all our equipment and people.”

Both of Shell’s Arctic drill rigs are currently headed for dry dock in Asia. The Kulluk was damaged after running aground near Kodiak on New Year’s Eve, and the Noble Discoverer’s engines need an overhaul.

Shell drilled the beginnings of two exploratory wells last summer in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, and the statement indicates they plan to finish those wells.

But environmental groups are praising the decision to suspend drilling operations as an opportunity for the government to reevaluate whether the company should be in the Arctic at all.

The widow of the late Gov. Jay Hammond wants a television advertisement that compares her husband to Sean Parnell taken off the air.

Bella Hammond and her daughter Heidi Hammond say they were never consulted about the TV ad that urges the Alaska Legislature to pass Gov. Parnell’s oil tax bill.

The commercial by an Anchorage group “Resource Full Alaska” is narrated by Glenn Hackney, a former state senator from Fairbanks, who served during the Hammond administration.

In a news release put out by Backbone, the Hammonds say the ad “misappropriates former Governor Hammond’s legacy and his good name.”

Backbone is non-partisan public-interest group that started in 1999 to fight the proposed merger of ARCO and BP.  It re-emerged last year to take on Parnell’s proposed oil tax cuts. Malcolm Roberts, long-time aide to the late Governor Wally Hickel, is the group’s spokesman.

 

 

Alaska Electric Light and Power has filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to investigate the feasibility of a Sheep Creek hydroelectric project.

A public comment period is underway.

If the agency grants the permit, the Juneau company would be allowed to study the impact of what’s described as a diversion dam on Sheep Creek.

FERC spokesman Adam Beeco calls it a no ground disturbance permit.

“It’s essentially just reserving the site for the applicant to that land for a specific period of time. So essentially they’d have access to that site for studies, but not move any ground,” Beeco says.

The Treadwell Mine operated a small dam on Sheep Creek south of Juneau from 1910 to 1943. Most of the area already belongs to AJT Mining Properties, a sister company of AEL&P.

The project is described in the Federal Register as a 10-foot high, 75-foot long diversion dam at about 620 feet above sea level.

AEL&P generation vice president Scott Willis says the dam would create a small pond, deep enough to get the water into a pipe, called the penstock.

“We want to get the water that’s in the creek into the pipeline, so like on Gold Creek we’ve got a wooden diversion dam that keeps the creek high enough to flow into the flume. At Sheep Creek we would envision a concrete structure that would make enough of a pond to get the water to flow into a steel pipeline,” Willis says.

Willis says the pipeline would run along the surface, mounted on blocks, to a power plant below, probably located near the old plant on Thane Road.

“And then the water from the penstock flows through the unit in the power plant and then discharges in the tailrace and that will just go right back in that lower end of Sheep Creek,” Willis says.

Willis says the run-of- river hydro project would add about 3 percent to Juneau’s current hydroelectric sources.

When AEL&P brought the Lake Dorothy project online in 2009, it added 20 percent to Juneau’s hydro supply. A planned second phase would add another 20 percent, but the capital city would have to grow a lot to justify building out the project, Willis says.

Hydroelectric projects take years to plan, permit and construct.

“So we think this small, little chunk of energy could fit in nicely 6 or 8 years from now, just give us a little more energy. We’ll need a little bit more by then and that helps us postpone a much larger investment in Lake Dorothy phase two,” Willis says.

If FERC grants the permit, it would be for a period of three years and require environmental and engineering studies, including the impact on wildlife, fish and cultural resources of the Sheep Creek valley. Willis says he wouldn’t be surprised if it would take longer than three years to complete the feasibility study.

AEL&P submitted its FERC application in January. The 60-day public comment ends March 25th.

Brief comments can be submitted online, using the agency’s eComment system.

 

View Sheep Creek hydroelectric project in a larger map