One of the West’s most car-happy places sprawls across some of its oldest and most productive oilfields. About 28 million barrels are pumped annually from 5,000 wells in the Los Angeles Basin and just offshore, according to the Center for Land Use Interpretation. These photos were drawn from the organization’s recent L.A. exhibit, “Urban Crude.” […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inJanuary 11, 2010: Breakdown
Blinded by the wind
I find Jonathan Thompson’s love affair with wind turbines hard to comprehend (HCN, 12/21/09 & 1/4/10). Perhaps he has been mesmerized by the slowly rotating turbines. Or is his dislike of the oil and gas industry such that he is willing to see the great vistas of the West destroyed in the name of renewable […]
Posted inGoat
Unobtainium
In Avatar, there’s an economic reason, of course, that humans have traveled to Pandora. Early on in the movie, we’re shown the temptation: a sample of the element levitates in midair, silver, alluring—and apparently worth $20 million a kilogram. Considering the production expenses for Avatar were an estimated $230 million, it would take only 12 […]
Posted inGoat
Safe(r) CX
They were, to say the least, a bit promiscuous. Between 2006 and 2008, the Bureau of Land Management — the primary agency responsible for overseeing drilling on federal lands — permitted more than 6,100 oil and gas projects without detailed environmental review using special “categorical exclusions,” according to a Government Accountability Office analysis. The waivers […]
Posted inRange
Welcoming Energy Production Home
In 2007, the Oxford American Dictionary named “locavore” the word of the year. As most High Country News readers know, locavores are people who choose to consume food that is locally grown, harvested, or produced, usually within 100 miles of the purchase point. The locavore movement came into being after a small group of people […]
Posted inGoat
Walking with Sawdust
For a few months a couple of years ago, my daily dog walk usually involved joining two old-timers — Lloyd “Sawdust” Wilkins. then 82, and his blue-heeler Cindy, who was about 70 in dog years. Sawdust walked his daily mile — it was on doctor’s orders — slowly with a cane, but he […]
Posted inGoat
Just in Time for Christmas: Itsy-Bitsy Solar PV
One of the big obstacles to industrial-strength solar power is space: photovoltaic technology used in solar panels, which transforms sunlight into an electrical current, takes up valuable real estate. And one of the biggest obstacles to portable solar power is also size: Who wants to haul around a 2-pound PV panel just to charge a […]
Posted inDecember 21, 2009: Wind Resistance
The federal energy two-step
Oil and gas companies are furious with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, but enviros wonder if he’ll go far enough
Posted inGoat
The picture of forest health
Rich Wininger, a Weyerhaeuser manager in the Northwest, recently wrote us in response to our Nov. 9 feature story “Roadless-less“, which included a photo of clearcutting on Weyerhaeuser forest lands (unfortunately we don’t have permission to reproduce that photo on our Web site).
Posted inDecember 21, 2009: Wind Resistance
Wind Resistance
Will the petrocracy — and greens — keep Wyoming from realizing its windy potential?
Posted inDecember 21, 2009: Wind Resistance
Battle for the core of Wyoming
Sage grouse concerns have pitted fossil fuels against wind
Posted inGoat
Desert Rock on hold
The proposed Desert Rock power plant on the Navajo Nation near Farmington, N.M., will need to find a new source of cash after the U.S. Department of Energy denied a $450 million stimulus funding bid for carbon-capture controls last week. The funding would have covered about 43 percent of the cost of those controls. The […]
Posted inGoat
The fight over cap and trade
The carbon emissions trading scheme known as cap-and-trade is on the global table as the United Nations Climate Change conference gets underway this week in Copenhagen. Cap-and-trade is also a feature of the Waxman-Markey bill currently being reshaped by the U.S. Senate after passage in the House in June. Hailed by supporters as “an important […]
Posted inGoat
A new line of defense
The attorneys for Tim DeChristopher, the University of Utah student who made bogus bids at a BLM drilling-rights auction last year, have come up with a new line of defense: selective prosecution. DeChristopher is charged with such federal felonies as interfering with a government auction and making a false representation. If convicted, he […]
Posted inRange
What the Nuclear Boosters Don’t Tell You
On its surface, Grants doesn’t look like the Gateway to the Nuclear West. Its shuttered buildings, dilapidated store fronts, and overgrown vacant lots are what’s left of the promised prosperity from the last uranium boom. To really understand Grants’ and the region’s past and potential future, you’ve got to go below the surface. From the […]
Posted inGoat
Down on copper mine
Plans to move forward with what would be the third- or fourth-largest copper mine in the country have been shelved for another year. The U.S. Forest Service has postponed an environmental impact study for a proposed copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, 30 miles southeast of Tucson, Ariz., until April 2010 (see our 1997 […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Hot potato hunt
The hunt is on for a new “spud stud” to replace the old reliable Russet Burbank variety long used in McDonald’s French fries. In 2005, reports The Associated Press, a Potato Variety Management Institute was established by Idaho, Oregon and Washington, and though it’s been trying to develop the next hot new potato, no miracle […]
Posted inGoat
Keeping uranium out of the Grand Canyon
Are 21- year-old documents adequate to approve reopening a uranium mine about 15 miles north of the Grand Canyon? The Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Grand Canyon Trust say no, and they’re suing the Bureau of Land Management for giving the go-ahead, claiming the agency is violating multiple federal laws by […]
Posted inGoat
The law of necessity
Tim DeChristopher won’t be allowed to put global warming on trial when he’s on trial. DeChristopher majors in economics at the University of Utah. Last fall, he went into a BLM auction and successfully bid on 13 drilling leases, also driving up prices for other successful bidders. But he didn’t have the $1.7 […]