drilling

Oil Drilling In Los Angeles | Earth Wise

February 24, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Movies were not the first industry to boom in Los Angeles. Oil was. There was a lot of it, and it flowed close to the surface triggering rampant drilling all over the area. By the 1920s, Los Angeles was one of the largest oil-exporting regions in the world.

A century later, there are over 20,000 active, idle, or abandoned wells spread across LA county, home to 10 million people. Some are hidden behind facades; others are plainly visible, pumping away day and night. About a third of Angelenos live less than a mile from an active well site. In the last 20 years, improved oil extraction technology has actually led to a resurgence of oil drilling in Los Angeles.

Studies of the health impact of LA’s oil wells found that asthma is significantly more common among people living near oil wells than elsewhere in the county. Surveys of residents’ lung functions revealed lower function on average when people live near wells. Measurements of toxins in the air – such as benzene, toluene, and n-hexane – showed that levels of these substances were significantly reduced when oil production at a site stopped.

This issue has finally come to the forefront after a nearly a decade of community organizing and studies of adverse health effects. In a unanimous vote on January 26, the Los Angeles City Council took the first step toward phasing out all oil and gas extraction in the city by declaring oil extraction a nonconforming land use. The LA County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to phase out oil extraction in unincorporated county areas. Los Angeles’ long, troubled history with urban oil drilling appears to be nearing an end.

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Los Angeles’ long, troubled history with urban oil drilling is nearing an end after years of health concerns

Photo, posted March 26, 2016, courtesy of Giuseppe Milo via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

California’s Silent Health Hazard | Earth Wise

April 23, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

For people in the Los Angeles area, it is a familiar sight to see oil wells pumping away on hillsides, in residential neighborhoods, and other places. In fancier parts of town, oil wells are hidden behind facades located next door to dry cleaners and lamp stores.

Every year, more than 140 million barrels of oil are extracted from the state of California, coming from a vast subterranean formation that spans nearly the entire state along the coast and spreading inland as well. About 30% of the state’s oil comes from the Los Angeles area.

The oilfields are mostly old, and their wells played out. As a result, high-tech drilling and a slew of toxic chemicals are needed to extract the last dregs of crude oil.

Unlike more rural oil-producing states, where oilfields might be uninhabited except for the people who work on them, drilling in California happens to a large degree in residential settings. Over the years, it has become increasingly clear that certain chemical byproducts of oil extraction, among them benzene and hydrogen sulfate, can cause a variety of health problems. For example, recent research has found connections between exposure to oil and gas well sites and spontaneous pre-term births, low-birthweight babies, and other adverse birth outcomes.

Statewide, little is being done to protect residents and schoolchildren from any of the suspected consequences of living near an oil or gas well. Regulations are weak and spottily enforced because the oil industry still wields a lot of political power in the state. Environmental groups and justice advocates are actively seeking to create new protections for California citizens, but it remains an uphill battle.

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The Oil Well Next Door: California’s Silent Health Hazard

Photo, posted July 11, 2017, courtesy of John Ciccarelli / Bureau of Land Management California via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Geothermal Power In The Energy Transition | Earth Wise

February 22, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The heat beneath the earth represents a vast repository of energy that in principle could provide for a significant part of our needs. In some places, geothermal energy is easy to get to and is already being exploited. California and Nevada operate dozens of geothermal electric generating plants. Boise Idaho heats 92 of its biggest buildings with the river of hot water that flows 3,000 feet below the city. In total, the U.S. produces enough geothermal electricity to power more than a million homes.

But all these examples make use of relatively rare local features that are not available to the great majority of locations. As a result, geothermal energy has generally not been viewed as being able to play a major role in the alternative energy transition.

A number of experts around the world disagree with this assessment. To a fair extent due to the deep-drilling techniques and knowledge about underground formations developed by the oil and gas industry during the fracking boom, there is growing interest in a type of geothermal energy called deep geothermal that accesses hot temperatures in the earth’s mantle as far down as two or three miles.

Deep geothermal can either access extremely hot water that exists down at those depths or water can be injected into hot rock down there, which is a technology known as enhanced geothermal systems.

There is enormous untapped potential for geothermal energy. A 2019 report by the U.S. Department of Energy says that by 2050, geothermal could provide 8.5% of the United States’ electricity as well as direct heat. Geothermal could be an important part of the so-called all-of-the-above future energy strategy.

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Can Geothermal Power Play a Key Role in the Energy Transition?

Photo, posted August 2, 2008, courtesy of ThinkGeoEnergy via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Restoring Environmental Rules Will Take Time | Earth Wise

February 17, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Over the previous four years, the Trump administration weakened or rolled back more than 100 rules and regulations on air, water, public lands, endangered species, and climate change. The Biden administration has vowed to review these changes and restore the environmental protections that were removed or weakened.

The process of restoring environmental protections generally fall into a few broad categories. Some changes can happen by executive order. The President can cancel individual fossil fuel infrastructure projects or reinstate federal protection of specific places. On his first day in office, President Biden rescinded the construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

The President is also expected to restore federal protection to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, which the Trump administration opened up to mining, logging, and drilling.

However, it could take two years or more to restore Obama-era climate change regulations including limits on emissions, rules on industrial emissions of toxic pollutants such as mercury, and protections on wetlands and waterways.

Reinstating comprehensive regulations on air, water, and climate pollution will take years because the Trump administration, rather than eliminating rules entirely, often replaced them with weaker regulations. Replacing the weak regulations cannot just happen by executive order. The process involves scientific and economic analysis, and that takes time.

After four years of shrinking budget and shrinking staff, the Environmental Protection Agency has a lot of catching up to do and will need to prioritize its actions in order to deal with the most damaging consequences of the previous administration.

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Restoring Environmental Rules Rolled Back by Trump Could Take Years

Photo, posted September 25, 2012, courtesy of Tar Sands Blockade via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Drilling Rights In The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge | Earth Wise

February 2, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The battle to prevent oil and gas drilling rights from being sold in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska has been going on for 40 years. The Trump administration spent nearly four years pushing to auction off those drilling rights and finally accomplished it in early January.

The ANWR was created in 1960 and is the largest intact wilderness in the U.S., covering nearly 30,000 square miles in Alaska. It is an important breeding habitat for polar bears as well as the home of more than 200 other species including caribou, arctic foxes, golden eagles, and snowy owls. Parts of it are also sacred ground for the indigenous Gwich’in people.

The auction carved out a 5% slice of the refuge for leases and proponents anticipated it would generate billions of dollars in revenues that would offset tax cuts in Alaska.

Of the 22 parcels of land offered, totaling 1.1 million acres, only 12 were bid on at all and the state of Alaska was the sole bidder on 9 of those. In total, the auction raised a paltry $14 million.

Whether the remarkable absence of interest was due to a lack of infrastructure or roads around the region, the decline of fossil fuel investments and use during the pandemic, or the anticipation that any leases would be the subject of endless legal battles by indigenous tribes and environmental activists, the net result was that the auction was basically a flop.

President Biden has stated that he is entirely against Arctic drilling, so the new administration is likely to try to repeal or interfere with any drilling leases or other industrial activity in the ANWR.

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Arctic Oil Drilling Plans Suffer ‘Stunning Setback’ as Almost ‘No One Shows Up’ For the Sale

Photo, posted July 3, 2019, courtesy of Alaska Region U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Flickr. Photo Credit: Danielle Brigida/ USFWS

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Finding Methane Leaks from Space | Earth Wise

December 23, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There is growing concern about the climate effects of methane leaking from oil and gas wells. The 20-year global warming potential of methane is 84, meaning that over a 20-year period, it traps 84 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide. Global methane concentrations have increased by nearly a factor of 3 since the industrial revolution.

More than a century of oil and gas drilling has left behind millions of abandoned wells, many of which are leaching pollutants into the air and water. In the U.S. alone, more than 3.2 million abandoned oil and gas wells emitted 280,000 tons of methane just in 2018. And the data is incomplete.

Part of the problem is finding out which wells are leaking. Ground-based sensors or airplanes and drones are effective ways to find leaks but considering how many wells there are to check, the costs are considerable, and the process is time consuming and complicated.

New technology is coming along that uses satellites to detect methane leaks. A Canadian company called GHGSat recently used satellites to detect what it has called the smallest methane leak ever seen from space and has begun selling data to emitters interested in pinpointing leaks.

Another company, New York-based Bluefield Technologies, plans a group of satellites for launch in 2023 that promises even finer resolution. The Environmental Defense Fund, with support from Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund, plans to launch MethaneSAT in the next couple of years, which is designed to find small sources of methane.

Research at Stanford University determined that just 5% of methane leaks produce around half the total leakage.

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New Technology Claims to Pinpoint Even Small Methane Leaks From Space

Photo, posted June 8, 2011, courtesy of Jeremy Buckingham via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Blue Acceleration | Earth Wise

February 24, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The oil and gas sector is the largest ocean industry. It’s responsible for about one third of the value of the ocean economy. Sand and gravel, destined for the construction industry, are the most mined minerals in the ocean. And during the past 50 years, approximately 16,000 desalination plants have popped up around the world to help supply people with an increasingly scarce commodity: freshwater.

As a result of these and other human pressures, the world’s oceans have suffered a lot over time. But according to a comprehensive new analysis on the state of the ocean, human pressure on the world’s oceans, driven by a combination of technological progress and declining land-based resources, sharply accelerated at the start of the 21st century. Scientists have dubbed this dramatic increase, which shows no signs of slowing down, the “Blue Acceleration.”

A research team from Stockholm University analyzed 50 years of data from aquaculture, bioprospecting, shipping, drilling, deep-sea mining, and more. Their findings were recently published in the journal One Earth.

While claiming ocean resources and space is not new, lead author Jean-Baptiste Jouffray from the Stockholm Resilience Centre says “the extent, intensity, and diversity of today’s aspirations are unprecedented.”

The researchers also highlight how not all human impacts on the ocean are negative. For example, offshore wind farm technology has reached commercial viability allowing the world to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

But how can the Blue Acceleration be slowed? Since only a handful of multinational companies dominate sectors like the seafood industry, oil and gas exploitation, and bioprospecting, one idea is to have banks and other investors adopt more stringent sustainability criteria for making ocean investments.

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Human pressure on world’s ocean shows no sign of slowing

Photo, posted October 29, 2008, courtesy of Silke Baron via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Smarter Prospecting

November 18, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The global demand for copper and gold continues to grow. Copper is widely used in building materials, plumbing, and electronics. Gold is still highly valued for jewelry and coinage, but nearly a third of the world’s gold is now used in electronics.

Both of these metals are getting increasingly difficult to find as many of the known sources have been exhausted. Companies spend millions of dollars drilling deeper and deeper in search of new deposits.

It costs about $400 to drill one meter into rock and it is not uncommon to drill to depths of one to two kilometers. So, it can cost nearly a million dollars to drill a hole that has no guarantee of success. Given that ore deposits are tiny compared with the totality of the search space, prospecting for these metals is very much like looking for a needle in a haystack.

A researcher at the University of South Australia has developed a suite of geochemical tools to more accurately target valuable mineral deposits and thereby save drilling companies millions of dollars. The goal is to have drilling for valuable minerals be faster, cheaper and more environmentally friendly.

By mapping out where key chemical elements are found in greater concentrations, the new suite of tools greatly increases the chances of finding an ore deposit at a target site and thereby greatly improve the return on investment for exploration companies. The tools have been successfully tested at an iron oxide-copper-gold deposit in the north of South Australia, leading to a four-fold increase in the known footprint of their ore body. Finding economically viable enriched ore sites can generate both revenues and jobs.

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Prospecting for gold just got a lot easier (and cheaper)

Photo, posted April 21, 2005, courtesy of Adam via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Fresh Water Under The Sea

July 18, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new survey of the sub-seafloor off the U.S. Northeast coast has revealed the existence of a gigantic aquifer of relatively fresh water trapped in porous sediments lying beneath the salty ocean. This appears to be the largest such formation ever found.

The newly-discovered aquifer stretches from the shore at least from Massachusetts to New Jersey and extends more-or-less continuously out about 50 miles to the edge of the continental shelf. The deposits begin at around 600 feet below the ocean floor and bottom out at about 1,200 feet. If all that water was found on the surface, it could create a lake some 15,000 miles in area. The researchers estimate that the region holds at least 670 cubic miles of fresh water.

Researchers made use of innovative measurements of electromagnetic waves to map the water, which had not been detected by other technologies. It was already known that fresh water existed in places under the sea bottom as a result of oil drilling as far back as the 1970s. But there was previously no hint of the extent of the undersea aquifer.

The water probably was trapped by sediments deposited during the last ice age when sea levels were much lower. But modern subterranean runoff from land sources might also be a contributor.

If water from the aquifer was to be withdrawn, it would still have to be desalinated for most uses, but the cost would be much less than processing ordinary seawater. There is probably no need to do this in the Northeastern US, but the discovery suggests that such aquifers probably lie off many other coasts worldwide and could provide desperately needed water in places like southern California, Australia, the Mideast or Saharan Africa.

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Scientists Map Huge Undersea Fresh-Water Aquifer Off U.S. Northeast

Photo, courtesy of August 1, 2015, courtesy of Michael Vadon via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Drilling In California

May 16, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

More than one million acres of public and private land in California may soon be opened up to oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing, according to a plan recently released by the Trump Administration. The proposal raises environmental concerns, and comes at a time when opposition to oil and gas drilling in the state is growing.

The plan, put forth by the Bureau of Land Management, would end a five-year moratorium in the state on leasing federal public land to oil and gas developers. In 2013, a federal judge put the moratorium in place until the environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, could be better evaluated.

Fracking is the process of injecting liquid at high pressure underground in order to crack open rocks and extract oil or gas. Well-documented risks associated with fracking include air and water pollution, as well as increased risks of oil spills and earthquakes.

Nevertheless, the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, released its 174-page environmental impact statement with the proposal to open up 1,011,470 acres of land to fossil fuel extraction, impacting the California counties of Fresno, Kern, Kings, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare, and Ventura.

Unsurprisingly, the draft plan has been praised by industry groups who say concerns are misguided, and slammed by environmentalists who say the move poses a serious public health risk and could lead to a “fracking frenzy.”

The proposal is now subject to a 45-day period for public comment, after which the Interior Department will determine how to proceed. A link to weigh in on the proposal can be found here .

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