EXTRACTED: Daily News Clips 10/24/22
PIPELINE NEWS
Virginia Mercury: Mountain Valley Pipeline halts eminent domain actions for Southgate extension
Reuters: Opponents of U.S. carbon pipeline draw lessons from prior pipeline fights
New American: Iowa Farmers Demand Safety Reports for Carbon Pipelines
Reuters: Enbridge's Westcoast pipeline operating at maximum pressure -Canada regulator
WASHINGTON UPDATES
The Hill: Biden fends off challenge to climate accounting metric
STATE UPDATES
Bloomberg: Alaska Auctions Taiwan-Sized Area of Arctic for Oil Drilling
Politico: Large oil project asks to inject wastewater into Wyo. aquifer
San Francisco Chronicle: ‘It’s so blatant’: Oil companies are pumping money into state races following Newsom’s push to tax profits
EXTRACTION
Environmental Health News: For the first time, natural gas production linked to lower birth weights in a national study
Reuters: Alberta's Danielle Smith off to Rocky Start as Canadian Oil Province Premier
Canadian Press: How Alberta’s economy has changed, in spite of sky-high oil prices
OPINION
Bismarck Tribune: Letter: Summit pipeline support misleading
Sioux City Journal: MINI: Pipeline companies shouldn't use eminent domain
PIPELINE NEWS
Virginia Mercury: Mountain Valley Pipeline halts eminent domain actions for Southgate extension
CHARLIE PAULLIN, 10/21/22
“Mountain Valley Pipeline has decided to withdraw eminent domain actions against land in North Carolina the company sought for its Southgate extension, a 75-mile offshoot of the main pipeline that would carry gas from Pittsylvania south to Rockingham and Alamance counties,” the Virginia Mercury reports. “As the timing, design, and scope of this project continue to be evaluated, MVP has elected to dismiss this action, believing that to be the appropriate course of action for the time being and a demonstration of its desire to work cooperatively and in good faith with landowners and communities along the pipeline’s route,” said the motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. But the company asked for the dismissal without prejudice, which would allow it to pursue eminent domain actions against the properties again. Mountain Valley “has not abandoned this project,” the pipeline wrote. Shawn Day, a spokesperson for the MVP Southgate project, reiterated the motion’s language, adding, “Mountain Valley remains committed to the MVP Southgate project, which is needed to help North Carolina achieve its lower-carbon energy goals and meet current and future residential and commercial demand for natural gas in the region.” “Proceedings currently remain under way with respect to a small number of tracts” along the proposed Southgate route in Virginia, Day told the Mercury… “Environmental activists on Friday celebrated Mountain Valley’s voluntary dismissal of its eminent domain actions. “Today we can exhale. We still have a long way to go, but the road gets shorter,” Crystal Cavalier Keck, co-founder of 7 Directions of Service, an indigenous people’s activist group, told the Mercury. “This decision is more proof that the MVP is destined for defeat.”
Reuters: Opponents of U.S. carbon pipeline draw lessons from prior pipeline fights
Leah Douglas, 10/24/22
“Landowners hoping to block proposed carbon pipeline projects in the U.S. Midwest are getting help from some of America's most prominent anti-pipeline campaigners, including groups that fought the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines,” Reuters reports. “Environmental non-profit Sierra Club and progressive group Bold Alliance are working alongside local organizations to aid property owners across five Midwest states, and are applying lessons learned in their past campaigns, they told Reuters. Their involvement suggests a big battle lies ahead for the Summit Carbon Solutions' Midwest Carbon Express pipeline and two other proposed projects intended to carry carbon dioxide thousands of miles from ethanol plants to underground storage sites, as those companies attempt to convince landowners to voluntarily give them easements for their routes. While the new projects will not carry oil, the anti-pipeline groups argue that they pose environmental risks because captured carbon can be used to extend the life of oil fields, and long-term underground storage of carbon is unproven. Many of the landowners, meanwhile, oppose the projects for reasons ranging from concerns about damage to their farmland during construction to the potential for pipe leaks that could pose a health threat… “Groups like Dakota Resource Council in North Dakota, Dakota Rural Action in South Dakota, and Bold Nebraska – part of the Bold Alliance - are preparing to help landowners fight eminent domain claims by organizing them for collective legal representation. That strategy was used in Nebraska during the fight against Keystone XL, Jane Kleeb, executive director of Bold Nebraska and a founder of the Bold Alliance, told Reuters… “Nebraska attorney Brian Jorde of Domina Law Group, who also represented landowners opposed to Keystone XL, said hundreds of people who live along the Summit route, as well as the routes proposed by Navigator CO2 Ventures and Wolf Carbon Solutions, have signed up with his firm. The issue has united unlikely allies: environmentalists who oppose carbon capture and conservative rural landowners angry that private companies could seize their land… “Not all anti-pipeline landowners are swayed by the environmental argument, but got involved when their property rights were implicated, Chase Jensen, an organizer with Dakota Rural Action, told Reuters. "Groups that fought (Keystone XL) are considered these radical environmental groups," he told Reuters. "But once (landowners) get hit by their own pipeline, they understand." “...Dan Wahl, an Iowa farmer who lives along the Summit route and opposes the pipeline, for example, told Reuters he was motivated to run for local office to represent his many neighbors who are angry with the project. "The absolute goal is to stop the pipeline," he told Reuters.”
New American: Iowa Farmers Demand Safety Reports for Carbon Pipelines
Rebecca Terrell, 10/19/22
“Farmers in Iowa are demanding safety data from a company planning to install a carbon-capture pipeline on their property,” New American reports. “The Moser family — Mary, Jamie, and Carmen of Palo Alto County — filed a brief Tuesday with the Iowa Utilities Board in regard to Summit Carbon Solutions, LLC… “The brief acknowledges that the Mosers, like many Iowa farmers, are concerned about damage to farm land should the pipeline be installed. But they also raise grave concerns about safety issues, saying the project is “hazardous” and poses “undue risk.” “They take notice of the February 2020 pipeline leak in Satartia, Mississippi, where flooding caused the ground to shift and break a weld in the pipeline, releasing an explosion of ice and carbon dioxide,” reads the statement… “The Mosers are especially concerned about their land because it floods, just like the area near Satartia, Mississippi… “The Mosers, all landowners in the vicinity of the proposed Hazardous Liquid Pipeline, and the public in general should know all possible hazards,” notes the brief. The family is demanding a “risk assessment and consequence analysis,” along with a “discharge plume model with risk assessment” to determine whether Summit “should even proceed” with its plans. “The question at hand is whether a Hazardous Liquid Pipeline should be allowed, let alone where it should be located,” argue the farmers. The company has already refused a July request from the Iowa Department of Justice Office of Consumer Advocate (OCA) for a risk assessment and consequence analysis and an emergency response plan. Their argument, according to the Moser brief, is that these documents “would be a guidebook for how to cause harm or damage” to the pipeline. “The location of the Hazardous Liquid Pipeline will be well known,” counter the Mosers. Summit’s refusal “only heightens people’s concern about the safety” of the proposed project. Nevertheless, Summit claims “that whether and/or where to locate” the pipeline is a matter preempted by federal law dealing with pipeline operation and emergency planning. The brief quotes the cited law, 49 U.S.C. § 60104(e), which states, “This chapter does not authorize the Secretary of Transportation to prescribe the location or routing of a pipeline facility.”
Reuters: Enbridge's Westcoast pipeline operating at maximum pressure -Canada regulator
10/21/22
“Canada Energy Regulator (CER) on Friday said Enbridge Inc's (ENB.TO) Westcoast natural gas pipeline in British Columbia returned to service at licensed maximum operating pressure (MOP) on Oct. 17,” Reuters reports. “The pipeline was safely returned to service in stages, CER said, after Enbridge shut part of the pipeline as a precautionary measure due to heavy flooding in the province in November.”
WASHINGTON UPDATES
The Hill: Biden fends off challenge to climate accounting metric
RACHEL FRAZIN, 10/21/22
“The Biden administration has fended off another challenge to its effort to assign significant weight to climate impacts in the federal decision making process,” The Hill reports. “The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an attempt from red states to block the Biden administration’s use of an assessment of how much climate change costs society. The Biden administration is giving significantly more weight to the potential damage caused by climate change than the Trump administration did. Republican-led states, led by Missouri, have challenged the Biden administration’s use of certain uniform values across agencies to estimate the cost of climate damage. But the three-judge panel upheld a lower court ruling against these states… “The Biden administration temporarily returned to the Obama values and is expected to develop its own metric. The new values were expected to be issued earlier in the year, but have yet to materialize. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals had similarly, earlier this year, overturned a ruling in a separate case that had halted the Biden administration’s use of its interim social cost values. The Supreme Court has declined to review the 5th Circuit’s ruling.”
STATE UPDATES
Bloomberg: Alaska Auctions Taiwan-Sized Area of Arctic for Oil Drilling
10/20/22
“A roughly Taiwan-sized area of Alaska’s Arctic will be auctioned for oil and gas development on Thursday through Nov. 3 in one of the country’s largest oil and gas lease sales,” Bloomberg reports. “The sale could lead to a massive expansion of the fossil fuel industry’s footprint in an environmentally sensitive region that is warming up to four times faster than the rest of North America amid a changing climate. Alaska is offering all unleased state-owned land on the Arctic North Slope to oil drillers this week, Marta Mueller, leasing lead for the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, told Bloomberg. The leasing will occur on nearly 8 million acres of Alaska state land and waters between the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska north of America’s largest complex of national parks and wilderness areas. Of those, about 900,000 acres will be in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea… “The Arctic refuge and the petroleum reserve are among the most contested federal lands in the US, where large proposed oil developments such as ConocoPhillips’ Willow project are being stalled by the Biden administration as it considers drilling’s environmental impacts… “Alaska’s unfettered leasing on state land “underscores why it’s critical for the federal government to lead the effort to reduce emissions from federal land such as the Arctic refuge and the NPR-A, and better protect the fragile Arctic ecosystem in doing so,” Patrick Lavin, Alaska policy adviser for Defenders of Wildlife, told Bloomberg. But Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) told Bloomberg that state officials are frustrated the federal government is limiting oil drilling on federal lands, so the state is committed to making land it controls available to oil companies.”
Politico: Large oil project asks to inject wastewater into Wyo. aquifer
Heather Richards, 10/21/22
“A Dallas-based oil and gas company is asking EPA to allow it to inject millions of barrels of briny wastewater from thousands of planned wells on Wyoming public lands into a deep water aquifer,” Politico reports. “The proposal from Aethon Energy has been complicated for years over the question of what to do with the wastewater, with environmental groups saying the oilfield waste could contaminate future drinking water sources. Bone-dry Wyoming is no stranger to water wars from fossil fuel development, such as accusations in the early 2000s that water from coal bed methane polluted surface waters. The state has said the produced water from the coal bed methane boom had little impact on water quality. Disputes can even bubble up to the national level, as when the Obama administration’s EPA found a possible correlation between hydraulic fracturing and polluted drinking water outside the small town of Pavillion. That finding continues to be disputed, with the state repeatedly concluding that fracking was not to blame.”
San Francisco Chronicle: ‘It’s so blatant’: Oil companies are pumping money into state races following Newsom’s push to tax profits
Sophia Bollag, 10/24/22
“After Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to tax their windfall profits, oil companies have spent millions to convince voters to elect their chosen candidates to the Legislature, hoping to stack the deck in their favor,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports. “Since Oct. 7, when Newsom announced plans to call a special session for lawmakers to consider his tax proposal, oil companies have spent more than $5.8 million to influence eight key races that will determine the composition of the Legislature. The candidates they support come from both parties, and in some cases are Democrats running against other Democrats. Newsom called the special session to combat what he sees as “price gouging” at the gas pump. Tension between the governor and the industry has been building for months, as Californians face skyrocketing fuel prices… “Environmentalists tell the Chronicle the industry’s flood of spending in legislative races is retaliation, and an attempt to buy support from lawmakers who will decide the fate of Newsom’s proposal… “Blakespear told the Chronicle she suspects she’s a target for the oil companies because she’s been a vocal critic of their contributions to climate change and the 2021 Orange County oil spill. She has called for the attorney general to investigate the companies for manipulating the market to drive gas prices up… “Environmental advocates worry that the donations could have a chilling effect on incoming legislators, who might be on the fence about a potential windfall tax. “They are spending, in part, to try to send a message,” Mike Young, political and organizing director for California Environmental Voters, told the Chronicle. “They are shamelessly just trying to buy elections up and down the state.” But some advocates warn Big Oil’s strategy could have the opposite effect and actually turn voters off to their preferred candidates. Television ads and mailers funded by the industry contain disclaimers noting they are paid for by major refineries, such as Chevron and Phillips 66. “They will be known as the oil candidates,” Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, told the Chronicle. “The money could backfire because it’s so blatant and it’s clear where it’s coming from.”
EXTRACTION
Environmental Health News: For the first time, natural gas production linked to lower birth weights in a national study
Kristina Marusic, 10/21/22
“Across the U.S., birth weights have declined as rates of natural gas production have increased, according to a new, first-of-its-kind national study,” Environmental Health News reports. “While previous studies linked increases in fracking and natural gas production to lower birth weights in high-producing states like Texas and Pennsylvania, this is the first to examine associations across states where extraction occurs. “Those single-state studies are important, but you have to consider whether that information is generalizable to other parts of the country,” Summer Sherburne Hawkins, an associate professor at the Boston College School of Social Work and senior author of the study, told EHN. “With our study, we’re able to say that this is not unique to a specific state, but is true across the country.” The study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports, found that every 10% increase in natural gas development in U.S. counties is associated with a corresponding decrease in average birth weight of 1.48 grams, or 0.003 pounds. Among women of color, the impact was more significant: With every 10% increase in natural gas production, Asian babies’ average birth weight decreased by 2.76 grams, or 0.006 pounds; and Black babies’ average birth weight decreased by 10.19 grams, or 0.02 pounds. “That might not seem like a lot, but in some parts of the U.S. rates of natural gas production are increasing by thousands of percentage points over a very short period of time,” Hawkins told EHN. “Lots of states are considering increasing production and this research allows us to predict the potential implications for public health.”
Reuters: Alberta's Danielle Smith off to Rocky Start as Canadian Oil Province Premier
10/20/22
“Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s tenure is off to a turbulent start in Canada’s main oil-producing province after she was forced to apologize for controversial comments in her first two weeks, and polls show her United Conservative Party (UCP) sliding against the opposition ahead of 2023 elections,” Reuters reports. “Smith was sworn in as premier on Oct. 11 after party infighting forced her predecessor to resign. Within days, she was engulfed in controversy over April social media comments calling for Ukrainian neutrality and saying unvaccinated were people “the most discriminated-against group that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime” during her first media appearance as premier. A Navigator Ltd poll published on Wednesday showed only 38% of decided voters intend to vote for the UCP in the provincial election next May, versus 53% for the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP). A Leger poll last week had put the UCP and NDP at roughly equal support among decided voters, with 42% and 44% respectively. “This is really not a good start. We don’t even have a cabinet in place yet, and we have a premier who has twice had to stop and issue some sort of clarification or apology,” Tom McIntosh, a professor of politics at the University of Regina, told Reuters… “On Tuesday, she apologized after April social media comments emerged in which she suggested Ukraine being neutral was the “only answer” to its invasion by Russia. Nearly 8% of Albertans have Ukrainian heritage, according to the provincial government.”
Canadian Press: How Alberta’s economy has changed, in spite of sky-high oil prices
AMANDA STEPHENSON, 10/23/22
“To take the temperature of the local economy, Lloydminster Mayor Gerald Aalbers only needs to look out the window,” the Canadian Press reports. “... But in spite of 2022’s sharp uptick in crude prices (hitting as high as US$120 a barrel earlier this year before declining to the mid-US$80 range this fall), and even as Canadian oil companies boast record revenues and all-time high production levels, the volume of traffic along the highway has only moderately increased, Mr. Aalbers told CP. “...So I think we’re hitting some speed, but we’re not accelerating yet by any means.” “Not accelerating yet” may be the perfect way to describe the odd economic reality in which Canada’s oil country finds itself in 2022. While the industry itself is faring better than it has in almost a decade, with energy prices higher than they’ve been in many years, experts tell CP any kind of resulting economic explosion for the surrounding region has been conspicuously absent… “But after almost a decade of depressed oil prices, producers have been under pressure in 2022 to use their extraordinary profits to pay down debt and focus on returns to shareholders rather than investing in their operations. In 2022, oil producers reinvested only about 7 per cent of revenues into their operations, compared to 25 per cent in 2014, Mr. St-Arnaud told CP. The nature of those investments has also changed, as companies forgo capital-intensive projects aimed at boosting production in favour of smaller projects intended to improve efficiencies or lower greenhouse gas emissions. The result is fewer workers and fewer economic spinoff effects. Similarly, wages in the oil patch no longer outpace other sectors the way they once did, Mr. St-Arnaud told CP.”
OPINION
Bismarck Tribune: Letter: Summit pipeline support misleading
10/21/22
“Summit Carbon Solutions, the company behind the CO2 pipeline, recently released easement numbers by counties here in North Dakota. These numbers are misleading -- in several counties where they claim high percentages of voluntary easements there are hardly any miles of pipeline,” Ann and Kevin Bernhardt write for the Bismarck Tribune. “Take Logan County for example: the company claims 100% voluntary easements, but when you look at the map of the project, there are hardly any miles of pipeline in their county. MANY landowners across the proposed route are opposed to this -- as are numerous concerned citizens who own land or live nearby… “Suing dozens of landowners to gain access to private property is not what North Dakotans are about -- but this is exactly what this company is actively doing in our state. For generations our family has been picking rocks, breaking land, caring for the soil, making land payments, and paying property taxes; we didn’t do this for Summit Carbon Solutions! You can help us say no to 99 year easements and protect our property rights by contacting your local legislators and the Public Service Commission as they will be the ones making the final decision. We are stronger when we are united. That’s why we’ve formed the “ND Easement Team” legal co-op to give us more leverage during the PSC process. If you’re a landowner or affected community member you can learn more at: northdakotaeasement.org or call 701-997-5181.”
Sioux City Journal: MINI: Pipeline companies shouldn't use eminent domain
10/23/22
“I have contacted Mr. Grassley several times and asked him for his definition of eminent domain. He dodges the question by going on about other things. Eminent domain should be used by the government, not private pipeline companies,” Jule Karrer, Lawton, Iowa, writes for the Sioux City Journal.