Top News

TransCanada expected to reapply for Keystone pipeline permit as soon as Friday
The Washington Post
The Canadian firm behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline will reapply as early as Friday for a federal permit to ship carbon-intense crude oil from Alberta to the United States, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. In January, the Obama administration denied a permit for TransCanada, the firm hoping to build the project, on the grounds that a congressionally mandated deadline of Feb. 21 did not give officials enough time to evaluate the pipeline’s impact. Since then TransCanada has said it would proceed with plans to construct the segment running from Cushing, Okla., to Port Arthur, Tex., and unveiled a new route for the pipeline in Nebraska.

State News

(AL) Walter Energy creating 530 jobs in Alabama
Bloomberg
Alabama experienced back-to-back days of big economic announcements when Walter Energy Inc. unveiled plans Tuesday to invest $1.2 billion and create 530 jobs in the state. CEO Walt Scheller and Gov. Robert Bentley said that the Hoover, Ala,.-based company will develop an underground metallurgical coal mine in Tuscaloosa County, a coal terminal at the Port of Mobile, a barge load-out facility in Walker County and a rail spur in Fayette County. The announcement followed Hyundai's decision Monday to add a third shift at its auto assembly plant in Montgomery, creating nearly 900 jobs.

(GA) Can Canadian oil sand fuel Georgia’s future?
WSBTV
Channel 2 Action News consumer investigator Jim Strickland recently traveled to a sometimes brutal wilderness in Alberta, Canada, where vast oil reserves will help fuel Georgia's future. Strickland received rare access inside Canada's oil sands, including inside the gates of Suncor Energy. Twenty-five kilometers outside of the oil town of Fort McMurray, Strickland watched as a caravan of $6 million dump trucks hauled pay dirt from an oil sand mine. The trucks are the largest in the world. The tires alone cost $50,000 each. The sand contains a thick, nearly solid oil called bitumen. It floats to the top after being soaked in hot water in a giant processor called a separation cell. Canada has 170 billion barrels within reach, but the total reserve is estimated at 1.7 trillion barrels. Saudi Arabia's known reserve is 260 billion barrels. Oil sands producers put out 1.8 million barrels per day. More than half is exported to the United States. In 10 years, production is expected to double, but not without environmental challengers.

(LA) Cleanup continues after pipeline spill
The Advocate
ExxonMobil Pipeline Co. said Monday the cleanup work continues two days after an estimated 1,900 barrels of crude oil spewed from a pipeline near Torbert, about 27 miles west of Baton Rouge. ExxonMobil shut the pipeline down after a loss of pressure was noticed Saturday night. The company will update the spill amount estimate after the investigation is complete. The company said no one was injured in the spill. ExxonMobil is coordinating the cleanup with local authorities, including the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. The leak came from the company’s North Line, a 22-inch pipeline that starts in St. James and carries crude oil to north Louisiana.

(NC) N.C. regulators support fracking, but report calls for safeguards
The News and Observer
State regulators Tuesday issued a long-awaited analysis of fracking, reiterating that the mining method can be done safely in North Carolina, despite overwhelming public opposition to the natural gas extraction technique.  The 484-page report on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, tweaks an earlier agency recommendation issued in March that became the focus of heated debate during public hearings attended by hundreds of people. The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ final report incorporates the public comments and citizen suggestions but doesn’t change the agency’s overall conclusions. The final report contains a litany of safety recommendations, including a request for more state funds to conduct further studies, before fracking for natural gas should be allowed in this state.

(NC) Duke Energy CEO talks up smart grid
The Charlotte Observer
Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers opened a Charlotte conference Tuesday on so-called “smart grid” technology by saying the energy industry must continue to tout energy efficiency gains in the face of vocal opposition to the new technology. The technology, which involves digital meters and remote technology to read them from the street, promises to help reduce costs, increase energy efficiency, and alert utility companies immediately to outages, Rogers said. But opponents have said power companies will be able to use the meters to turn off electricity to some people during peak hours, the new meters can be inaccurate and their installation cost raises rates. Some of them also fear the meters, which rely on wireless technology, pose a health risk to users. Six states have either adopted or are considering rules to let customers opt out of smart grid technology, Rogers said.

(OK) OTC debate: Is risk on the rise in the offshore industry?
Fuelfix
Energy exploration is getting riskier as it delves in deeper waters, with poor communication and pressure to get jobs done quickly hindering safety on some projects, some observers said at an OTC session Monday. In an informal audience poll, about 80 percent of respondents said the industry is taking on more risk as it ventures into deep-water environments with higher pressures and temperatures. But some executives on a panel focused on risk management disagreed. “It’s clearly getting more costly and taking more time, but I don’t think it’s necessarily more risky,” said Steve Thurston, Chevron’s vice president of deepwater exploration and production, during the panel discussion. In the Gulf of Mexico and worldwide, offshore operators are plunging into greater water depth and drilling wells under higher pressures to access hard-to-reach reservoirs. John Shugrue, partner at law firm ReedSmith, said companies are taking on greater risk in the aftermath of the Macondo spill.

(VA) Report: Virginia Ideal for Clean Energy
Energy Boom
Researchers assessing the state's potential for renewable energy say Virginia could realistically meet half of its nearly 20,000-megawatt power demand by the year 2035 with clean, sustainable sources like solar, onshore and offshore wind, and biomass. The George Mason University study, prepared for the Virginia Conservation Network, a coalition of renewable energy advocates and environmental groups, compared a combination of coal-fired generation and natural gas usage with alternatives. Adopting more renewables, which the study points out, can become cost-competitive with conventional energy, would create tens of thousands of jobs, contribute millions of dollars to the gross state product and provide a "safe, reliable electricity system," they say. The study concedes that doing so would likely result in higher utility bills for Virginia residents because of capital costs associated with clean-energy projects.

(WV) Drilling chemicals could move quickly to aquifers, study says
The Gazette
Chemicals injected into the ground by natural gas drillers could migrate toward drinking water supplies much more quickly than previously thought, according to a new study that raises questions about West Virginia's ongoing Marcellus Shale boom.  Some scientists and industry officials have argued that thick layers of impermeable rock would keep "fracking fluids" used by modern natural gas operations tucked safety away underground, far below aquifers used for residential drinking water. But using computer modeling, hydrogeologist Tom Myers found in the new study that hydraulic fracturing used by the natural gas industry could exacerbate existing cracks and faults in underground rock formations. This could allow toxic chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids to migrate upward toward water wells in perhaps only "a few years," according to Myers.

U.S. & World News

Top EPA official resigns over 'crucify' comment
The Houston Chronicle
The Obama administration's top environmental official in the oil-rich South Central region has resigned after Republicans targeted him over remarks made two years ago when he used the word "crucify" to describe how he would go after companies violating environmental laws. In a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson sent Sunday, Al Armendariz says he regrets his words and stresses that they do not reflect his work as administrator of the five-state region including Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Oil prices drive Delta Air Lines to buy its own refinery. Will that work?
The Christian Science Monitor
In an age of volatile and sky-high oil prices, Delta Air Lines is trying to cut its costs in a novel way – by purchasing its own refinery. A Delta subsidiary this week announced plans to buy the Trainer refinery complex near Philadelphia, saying it could reduce the airline's annual fuel bill by $300 million. That's a sizable chunk of change. Of course, owning the refinery doesn't insulate the airline from the impact of changes in the price of crude oil, which has risen over the past year due to factors ranging from the geopolitics of Iran to signs of reviving demand. But Delta chief executive Richard Anderson says the move will help the firm control fluctuations that can occur in the so-called "crack spread" – the gap between the price of crude oil and the cost of refined products such as jet fuel.

How wind farms could cause local (but not global) warming
The Christian Science Monitor
The world's wind farms last year had the capacity to produce 238 gigawatt of electricity at any one time. That was a 21 percent rise on 2010 and capacity is expected to reach nearly 500 gigawatt by the end of 2016 as more, and bigger, farms spring up, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany analyzed the satellite data of areas around large wind farms in Texas, where four of the world's largest farms are located, over the period 2003 to 2011. The results, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, showed a warming trend of up to 0.72 degrees Celsius per decade in areas over the farms, compared with nearby regions without the farms.

Clouds’ Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters
The New York Times
For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong. Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk. Yet in recent years, the climate change skeptics have seized on one last argument that cannot be so readily dismissed. Their theory is that clouds will save us.

Columbia's Sweet Renewable Energy Push
Energy Boom
Riopaila Castilla, Columbia's largest sugar producer by market share (20%), recently announced that its board of directors approved a proposal that would allow the company to build a 35-megawatt biomass cogeneration plant at a cost of around $48 million. The facility, to be powered by a fibrous sugar cane processing byproduct called bagasse, will be built in Zarzal, a town of about 50,000 in the western part of the country known for its sugar operations and access to expansive cane fields. It is expected to be operational sometime in 2014. News of the project comes at a time when Columbia is pushing to develop renewables like biomass and biofuels.

Why I bought a Nissan Leaf
The Christian Science Monitor
I've had a Nissan Leaf for two months now – and things have started to change. I pass gas stations without thinking about them anymore. I've got new "attitude," scowling at Toyota Priuses for their lack of gas-saving zeal. On Saturdays, when we do most of our driving, my wife and I sometimes calculate whether we can do all our errands on the  Leaf's 100-mile battery without finding a public charging station. I never thought we would own an all-electric car. But the idea began to dawn over a kitchen table discussion last fall about a replacement for our 14-year-old Honda Accord.

Outside the Region

(PA) Reporting of fracking and drilling violations weak
CNN
For Pennsylvanians with natural gas wells on their land, chances are they won't know if a safety violation occurs on their property. That's because the state agency charged with regulating the wells -- the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) -- does not have to notify landowners if a violation is discovered. Even if landowners inquire about safety violations, DEP records are often too technical for the average person and incomplete. While some landowners would like more transparency around safety issues, as a group they are not pushing for stronger regulations. Landowners, who are paid royalties by the companies that drill on their property, generally want the drilling to proceed.

More News

(AL) Walter Energy to develop new coal mine in Tuscaloosa County
(GA) Georgia Power starts up second natural gas unit at McDonough
(LA) Vitter assails Obama, left on energy
(NC) Mission Health in Asheville, N.C. Wins 2012 National Environmental Leadership Award
(NC) Fracking leases could imperil N.C. mortgages
(SC) Lawmakers: State shouldn’t require bars to recycle
(TX) EPA reconsiders: Matagorda not on list of smog violators
(US) Delta's risky oil refinery bet
(US) Exxon's Big Bet on Shale Gas Won't Pay Off if Clean Energy Scales (opinion)
(WV) Coal industry wants activists muted in courts over mine permits
(WV) State opens up doe, antlerless deer hunting
(WV) W.Va. gas prices drop about a nickel in a week