One Canadian company’s plan to extract oil from Utah’s tar sands just took a big step forward. In 2005, U.S. Oil Sands, a small Canadian company already active in Alberta, proposed a project to squeeze oil out of tar sands on Utah’s Tavaputs Plateau On Wednesday, the Utah Water Quality Board voted 9-2 to uphold […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inGoat
Drilling into the data
I’ve written here before about how the natural gas glut has led to low prices which has led to a drilling drought in many Western regions. But even I was surprised when I received the latest numbers from the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission and saw that drilling in my state had slowed to […]
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TransCanada expects your stall tactic
The environmentalist style of warfare is to stall the enemy into submission. Climb up in a tree, stand in front of feller bunchers, block traffic, throw stink bombs on whaling ships, etc. It’s worked, and it hasn’t. Last January, environmentalists claimed a victory when the State Department denied construction of the Keystone XL pipeline pending […]
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Another win in the Wyoming Range
I’m not usually sold on catchy one-liners, but today, I have a favorite conservation slogan. Care to guess? I bet you won’t get it. Nope, it’s not “What Would Hayduke Do?” (Though I saw that one in Bluff, Utah, this weekend and had a chuckle.) And no, it’s not “Go Green: Eat People.” (Though that […]
Posted inWotr
Keystone XL is still a questionable pipeline
Besides repealing “Obamacare,” Mitt Romney has said he would issue a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline on his very first day as president. That’s an interesting statement from a candidate who, when it comes to other issues, portrays himself as a standard-bearer for states’ rights. In this case, he seems to be saying that […]
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OPEC invades Hollywood!
The Heritage Foundation’s crack team of investigative journalists has done it again. After deep digging (looking at the film’s credits?) they determined that Gus Van Sant’s new film with Matt Damon, “Promised Land,” about oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing, was at least partially funded by a firm based in the United Arab Emirates. […]
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Yes Virginia, there is poop in your well
There’s an industry that’s been contaminating rural water wells for years, but it hasn’t had to endure the same public vitriol that “frackers” have. Last Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report placing probable blame on dairies in the Lower Yakima Valley for spoiling drinking wells in the area with nitrates and antibiotics. Local […]
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The underwater gold rush
The right to dredge part of Idaho’s Salmon River for garnets and gold now belongs exclusively to one man. That was the decision of the Idaho Land Board last week when it granted Mike Conklin a mineral lease for a half-a-mile stretch of the river below Riggins, a small town near the western border of […]
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The “truth” about organic food
The way headlines broke after a recent Stanford study comparing organic food to food grown on conventional farms, you’d think organic had been shot and left for dead. The New York Times, for example, announced that “Stanford scientists cast doubt on advantages of organic meat and produce.” Maybe the doubt was inferred from the study’s […]
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You get what you pay for
At first glance, the LA Times’ most recent solar power expose looks like perfect fodder for the drumbeat argument from many GOP lawmakers to end federal subsidies for renewable energy projects. Big corporations building utility-scale solar in California, it points out, have been receiving huge direct and indirect payouts from the federal government, from loans […]
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Where’s the beef?
Ah, the future. It’s so fun to imagine. In 10 years, we could all be driving electric cars. We won’t download or search anymore; we’ll just tell our “wired” house what we want, and those things will appear on various devices, or on our doorsteps. And, if PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has his way, we […]
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Harness the wind, create a job
In mid-August, Vestas, the world’s largest manufacturer of wind power turbines, announced it would cut 20 percent of the workforce at its Pueblo, Colo., plant. Less than a week later, the company said it would lay off an additional 1,400 workers worldwide. “It is always unfortunate to have to say goodbye to good colleagues in […]
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It’s a hardrock life
South of Ouray, Colorado, dozens of abandoned gold and silver mines litter the valley below Red Mountain’s pyrite-stained slopes. Tourists clog the pullouts of US 550, the highway running through the mineral-rich San Juan Mountains, to gawk at the weathered wooden head frame of the Yankee Girl mine and the eggshell tailing piles beneath it, […]
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Home rule
School kids in Colorado have to walk at least 1,000 feet from the playground to reach the nearest medical marijuana dispensary. But if they want to clamber around on the closest oil and gas well instead of trying to scrounge crumbs of THC-laced brownies spilled on the sidewalk, they have to stroll only about a […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
Cracking the ozone code in Utah’s gas fields
Updated 9/4/2012 On a bright February morning, a curiously adorned cargo van crept down a dirt road in northeastern Utah’s Uintah Basin. A steel pole with a jumble of funnels strapped to its tip rose from the roof’s rear, and the vehicle moved so slowly that its speed didn’t even register — a good thing, […]
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Promise of the Sea
In the not-too-distant future, when some Oregon residents plug their laptops into an electrical outlet they could be using juice generated by the fierce waves that roll shoreward along the Pacific Northwest coast. An early step toward this possibility is scheduled to happen next month when a barge will carry a 260-ton buoy to a […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
The Bay Area Chevron explosion shows gaps in refinery safety
When a crude-processing unit at Chevron’s Richmond, Calif., refinery burst into flame in early August, sirens wailed through local neighborhoods as pillars of smoke blackened the sky over the city and surrounding hillsides. The plant’s emergency management system issued 18,000 calls to nearby residents, urging them to “shelter in place” — closing windows, sealing cracks […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
Beyond ozone
Wintertime ozone is just one surprising air-quality problem that has appeared as gas fields balloon in size and creep closer to communities. “It’s possible that emissions have been there all along,” since the industry isn’t new, says Ramón Alvarez, an Environmental Defense Fund air-quality expert. But with drilling under increasing scrutiny, he says, “People are […]
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Romney energy plan more of the same
By now you probably have heard that Mitt Romney unveiled his energy plan this week. He calls it: “The Romney Plan For A Stronger Middle Class: ENERGY INDEPENDENCE.” So creative! He’s only the gazillionth politician since Nixon to tout energy independence. And he’s also the gazillionth to get it all wrong. If there were any […]
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Hawk watching on the Mokelumne River
On a Friday evening in the middle of August there isn’t much traffic along Franklin Boulevard, an old agricultural road that now cuts through 20 miles of Sacramento, Calif., suburbs. We’re looking for birders along its half-mile length but don’t see anybody or even a parked car. When a farmer drives his pickup out of […]