Category Archives: Energy

Wyoming delegation visits China province with much in common

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Wyoming delegation visits China province with much in common.

As a Wyoming delegation visits central China next week, it’ll spend time in Shaanxi province, a place with many similarities to Wyoming.

It’s not the food: Wyoming has top-notch steak, Shaanxi has gourmet noodles and dumplings.

Shaanxi is home to 37 million and is run by a centralized, socialist government. But, like Wyoming, Shaanxi is in its nation’s interior and is a major producer of fossil fuels — home to some of China’s biggest coal reserves and reservoirs of oil and natural gas.

Wyoming and Shaanxi find themselves working hard to find ways to limit or store greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal.

For Wyoming, such research is a chance to make sure the state’s coal will have buyers even amid stricter environmental regulations. For Shaanxi, similar research could open ways to limit the devastating levels of pollution in the province and in China from use of its natural resources.

Two very different places, but two coal-producing regions with some closely aligned goals.

“It’s so striking how similar they are with natural resources issues,” said Lynne Boomgaarden, a Cheyenne-based attorney on energy issues and a speaker at an international forum on coal.

Wyoming’s coal is pulled from the ground with few injuries and lives lost and shipped by rail. Shaanxi province isn’t so lucky. Coal is mined in sometimes deadly conditions by hand and trucked to China’s power-hungry industrial zones and growing urban areas. It’s an inefficient method that belches a lot of additional pollution into Shaanxi’s skies.

The province, which could produce 370 million tons of coal this year, is seeking a more environmentally friendly use of its coal resource, said a scientist from a university in Xi’an, Shaanxi’s capital, in a paper published this year in a Canadian scientific journal.

Shaanxi’s provincial government has said it’s seeking “wealthy people, graceful environment.” The Wyoming delegation will arrive in Xi’an for a coal forum aimed at the second half of that goal: cutting down pollution from coal and oil development, use and transportation in the province.

Shaanxi’s industrial users of coal must be asked to adopt “clean coal” technology to limit emissions, said Li Gou, of Xi’an University of Science and Technology’s Energy Economy and Management Research Center. Coal mines should adopt better production methods and the province should seek new uses for coal.

Only by doing all those things can Shaanxi “guarantee the sustainable development of economy,” Li wrote in the Jan. 1 edition of the Journal of Sustainable Development.

It’s a theme familiar in Wyoming, where state leaders and coal industry officials are also seeking new ways to cut emissions from burning coal and new ways to use Wyoming’s coal, boosting its value within the state.

The province government’s next five-year master plan, announced earlier this year, trumpeted the province’s success in cutting energy demand and called for more conservation of electricity, as well as cuts in pollutants including sulfur dioxide, holding the line in nitrogen oxide and strengthening monitoring of particulate matter.

The success of Shaanxi and Wyoming to limit pollution from the use of coal is something members of the Wyoming delegation recognize, even if they do it begrudgingly.

“At this point, they don’t probably care what anybody thinks,” said state Rep. Ed Buchanan, R-Torrington, speaker of the state House and a conference delegate. “But the more palatable you make burning coal to the international community, the more accepting they’ll be and the more you’ll be able to meet the demands of your population and industrial complex.”

Buchanan was referring to the Chinese, but it’s a thought many in Wyoming share.

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Chesapeake well leaks in Wyoming, residents evacuate | Reuters

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Chesapeake well leaks in Wyoming, residents evacuate | Reuters.

Dozens of residents were evacuated from their homes after a Chesapeake Energy-operated well leaked natural gas and drilling mud in Wyoming, the company said on Wednesday.

Chesapeake lost control of a shale well late on Tuesday while installing a casing, triggering the leak, the company said in a statement. It wasn’t clear how much gas or fluid escaped the well.

A “cloud” of gas could be seen a mile away from the blown-out well, said Russ Dalgarn, coordinator for the Converse County Emergency Management agency in Wyoming.

No injuries, explosion or fires have been reported, and air quality readings near the well were “normal” on Wednesday, with the leaked gas “dissipating into the atmosphere,” Chesapeake coordinator Kelsey Campbell said in a statement.

The company has plans to “bring the well under control” as soon as safety conditions permit.

The cause of the incident was under investigation.

Sixty-seven residents within a 2.5 mile radius of the stricken well were asked to evacuate, Chesapeake said. The evacuation was voluntary, and several residents chose to remain in their homes.

“A blowout in a well builds uncertainty and distrust. We need more careful monitoring and regulation of drilling activities in the state,” said Bruce Pendery, program director at Wyoming Outdoor Council, an environmental group that has pressed for heightened scrutiny of drilling in the state.

The boom in on-shore production in shale oil and gas — often near homes and populated areas — has heightened concern about these accidents. The Rockies and Northern Plains region has stepped up drilling of promising oil and gas reserves in the Niobrara Shale, which straddles Colorado and Wyoming.

The regional office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is sending an inspector to the site of the accident. EPA received reports of an oil sheen on an irrigation channel and a pond near the well, said agency spokesman Martin McComb. Neither is a source of drinking water for nearby communities, he said.

Chesapeake may have encountered a pocket of high-pressure natural gas while drilling the well, McComb said.

Chesapeake said the oil-laden drilling mud that leaked from the well is mostly being contained on site.

Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake is the No. 2 U.S. natural gas driller. Last year, it signed a joint-venture agreement with Chinese national oil firm CNOOC for a third of its Niobrara interests.

Around a year ago, Chesapeake had a blowout on a well in the natural gas-rich Marcellus shale of Pennsylvania. It took six days to bring under control and prompted a fierce backlash among area residents opposed to the drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, in which water, sand and chemicals are pumped deep underground to fracture hydrocarbons-bearing shale rock.

In Wyoming, Governor Matt Mead said the state will investigate this week’s incident, to get a “better sense of what can or should be done in the future.”

Chesapeake shares rose 2 percent to $18.13 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday

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Wyoming governor decries planned federal fracking rules

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Wyoming governor decries planned federal fracking rules – Natural Gas | Platts News Article & Story.

An Interior Department spokesman said Monday that the department would review a letter from Wyoming Governor Matt Mead critical of the federal government’s plans to formulate rules to regulate hydraulic fracturing operations on federal lands.

“We will review the letter and respond directly to the governor,” Interior Department Press Secretary Adam Fetcher said.

On Thursday, Mead wrote to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, calling for the Bureau of Land Management, the Interior agency that is expected to formulate the federal rules, to refrain from creating regulations for fracking operations on federal lands that would duplicate or supplant the state’s existing fracking rules.

Mead requested that the BLM “defer to states, like Wyoming, that adequately and effectively manage hydraulic fracturing.”

BLM and Interior officials began talking last fall about plans to create new rules to regulate fracking operations on federal lands, chiefly in the Rocky Mountain West. Salazar testified about these efforts before the US House Natural Resources Committee on November 16.

A draft copy of the proposed rules, which Platts obtained in February, would require operators to disclose the chemical contents used in fracking fluids, while providing protection for trade secret data.

The Interior Department has not announced when it would officially release the draft rules for public comment, Fetcher said.

“We hope that industry, the public and other stakeholders will take the time to provide their input once a draft is actually on the table for public comment,” he added.

In his letter, Mead said such federal regulations would replicate rules that Wyoming has had on the books since 2010, when it became the first state to enact rules specifically aimed at regulating hydraulic fracturing.

“Wyoming’s rules address well-bore integrity and flowback water, require the disclosure of hydraulic fracturing constituents and apply on federal, private and state lands,” Mead wrote. “These rules were developed based on sound science and a thorough public process. They are intended to protect public health, safety and the environment while allowing economic growth.”

Mead wrote that he found it “troubling” that the BLM had drafted similar rules pertaining to fracking on federal land, “including land where the mineral interests are federal,” as well as on acreage where the federal government controlled the surface lands.

“Such layering of federal rules on top of existing state rules is unnecessary, burdensome and unreasonable,” Mead said.

The proposed new regulations are part of the Obama administration’s “all-of-the-above” energy strategy to promote the use of all forms of energy. That strategy “starts with an all-out effort to boost American production of oil and gas,” Fetcher said.

“As we continue to expand domestic natural gas production, in large part made possible because of new technologies like hydraulic fracturing, it is critical that the public have full confidence that the right safety and environmental protections are in place,” he said.