Global warming opening up Russia's Arctic

Space Daily via UPI: Russian state-owned energy firms are preparing to move into the country's offshore polar regions. On Jan. 15 Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich's told journalists that the state-controlled Rosneft and Gazprom energy companies are to receive licenses to develop the 12 and 17 arctic continental shelf sectors. The decision is raising concerns among the country's private energy companies that they will be locked out of developing the country's potentially vast arctic hydrocarbon reserves.

Russia's natural resources ministry proposed on Jan. 15 that offshore oil and gas fields on the country's Arctic shelf that isn't wanted by state-controlled firms should be explored and developed by non-state companies.

Private companies have so far failed to break the monopoly of Gazprom and Rosneft on hydrocarbons exploration on Russia's offshore continental maritime shelf, as currently only Russian state-controlled companies, including Rosneft and Gazprom, are allowed to hold offshore licenses in Russian territorial waters, Russkoe Informatsionnoe Agenstvo news agency reported on Tuesday.

Currently energy companies that want to acquire licenses to work on the Russian continental offshore shelf have to have a minimum of 50 percent state ownership and foreign and Russian private companies have to sign contracts with either Gazprom or Rosneft.

In further bad news for Russian private energy firms, Gazprom is not interested in relinquishing to state control the licenses for those offshore fields it is not interested in, according to Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller, speaking to reporters in Novy Urengoi, above the Arctic Circle....

Three icebreakers, some of them Russian, shot by US Department of "Homeland Security," public domain

Global warming opening up Russia's Arctic

Space Daily via UPI: Russian state-owned energy firms are preparing to move into the country's offshore polar regions. On Jan. 15 Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich's told journalists that the state-controlled Rosneft and Gazprom energy companies are to receive licenses to develop the 12 and 17 arctic continental shelf sectors. The decision is raising concerns among the country's private energy companies that they will be locked out of developing the country's potentially vast arctic hydrocarbon reserves.

Russia's natural resources ministry proposed on Jan. 15 that offshore oil and gas fields on the country's Arctic shelf that isn't wanted by state-controlled firms should be explored and developed by non-state companies.

Private companies have so far failed to break the monopoly of Gazprom and Rosneft on hydrocarbons exploration on Russia's offshore continental maritime shelf, as currently only Russian state-controlled companies, including Rosneft and Gazprom, are allowed to hold offshore licenses in Russian territorial waters, Russkoe Informatsionnoe Agenstvo news agency reported on Tuesday.

Currently energy companies that want to acquire licenses to work on the Russian continental offshore shelf have to have a minimum of 50 percent state ownership and foreign and Russian private companies have to sign contracts with either Gazprom or Rosneft.

In further bad news for Russian private energy firms, Gazprom is not interested in relinquishing to state control the licenses for those offshore fields it is not interested in, according to Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller, speaking to reporters in Novy Urengoi, above the Arctic Circle....

Shell Arctic rig runs aground off Alaska

Tom Fowler in the Wall Street Journal:  Royal Dutch Shell PLC suffered another potential setback in its attempt to drill for oil in U.S. Arctic waters when an offshore rig ran aground after breaking free from tow ships in high seas.

The Kulluk, a drilling rig owned by Shell and operated by Noble Corp., NE +2.58% struck Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited area about 300 miles southwest of Anchorage late Monday, according to a joint statement by Shell, Switzerland-based Noble and the U.S. Coast Guard, which were coordinating their response to the accident.

A Coast Guard helicopter on Saturday lifts crew members from Shell's Kulluk drilling unit. The rig later broke free from tow ships and ran aground. The rig has about 139,000 gallons of diesel on board, along with about 12,000 gallons of combined lubrication oil and hydraulic fluid. Coast Guard aircraft that flew over the rig Tuesday didn't spot any signs of leaking fuel. Plans were under way to get salvage crews to the rig.

Shell used the Kulluk and another rig to drill exploratory wells in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska's northern coast last year, the first such operations in U.S. Arctic waters in more than two decades.

But the ambitious drilling venture—monitored by rival companies, the U.S. government and environmental groups—has encountered problems from the outset. The drilling season started later than planned because of lingering sea ice. The other drilling rig, the Noble Discoverer, almost ran aground when its anchor slipped in Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

Also, an important piece of spill-response equipment was damaged during testing, leading Shell to scale back plans to drill six wells to just two wells. A Coast Guard inspection of the Noble Discoverer, conducted after the drilling season, discovered problems with the ship's propulsion and safety systems....

The Arctic Challenger with the newly redesigned and repaired Containment Dome move away from the Port of Bellingham, WA where it had been moored since returning in September 2012 after a catastrophic failure of the first iteration of their containment process. This is not the vessel mentioned in the story, apparently. Shot by TJ Guiton, Wikimedia Commons, nder the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Project to leave oil in ground under Yasuní park reaches $300 million

John Vidal in the Guardian (UK): More than $300m (£188m) has been promised to stop the exploitation of 846m barrels of oil below the Yasuní national park in Ecuador, one of the world's most biologically rich areas of rainforest, new figures show. Ecuador's idea to leave the oil in the soil under the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) area of the park and ask the world to compensate it with half its monetary value was hailed as a revolutionary, if idealistic, new conservation idea when it was first proposed in 2007.

But critics doubted whether raising the $3.6bn needed in 13 years would be possible, and accused Ecuador of holding the world, literally, over a barrel.

However, figures released by the UN Development Programme-run Yasuní-ITT initiative shows that while most wealthy governments have declined to contribute, foundations, individuals and cash-strapped regional authorities in austerity-hit Europe have pledged or given over $300m since 2011, when the fundraising drive began in earnest.

Germany has offered $50m over three years, and Chile, Colombia, Georgia and Turkey have given token amounts. In addition, 10 regions of Europe have contributed $150-250,000 each, along with corporations including Coca Cola, airlines, banks and Brazilian, US and Russian foundations. A Puerto Rican musician gave $50,000.

But while only $64m has been formally deposited, the papers show $187m has been promised by countries including Belgium, Brazil, France, Lebanon, Indonesia, Turkey, Spain and Qatar. Some is likely to come via debt swaps and "technical agreements" as well as contracts and agreements with companies....

A view in the Yasuni natinonal park, shot by Geoff Gallice, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

US energy infrastructure is vulnerable

Andrew Holland in the Christian Science Monitor: When people think about climate change and energy, they naturally are drawn to thinking about clean technology, carbon capture, or emissions. We're thinking about mitigation, in other words. However, as Sandy showed, our energy infrastructure is at high risk to the effects of climate change as well. There is a need to adapt to the effects of a changed climate.

A Climate Central report from earlier this year highlighted the amount of energy infrastructure around the country that is close to sea level. Louisiana, of course, comes across as the clearest example of energy infrastructure at risk to rising seas, with 163 major energy facilities at five feet above sea level or less. Surprisingly, New Jersey and New York are ranked 5th and 6th in the country, respectively, for the amount of infrastructure that is within 5 feet of sea level. This proved to be a severe vulnerability when Sandy's storm surge - at 13 feet in New York Harbor - pushed in. The results were predictable, and disastrous.

In Manhattan, a ConEd substation exploded, leaving lower Manhattan without power. About 70% of the region's refineries are shuttered. About 20 nuclear reactors were in the path of Sandy. Two shut down because of high water. Importantly, however - America's nuclear power plants are designed to withstand hurricanes and they performed as expected, with no danger. Other energy assets, like power plants (coal, natural gas, hydro) as well as transmission lines - were at risk as well.

Here in the DC area, Sandy's effects on our energy infrastructure (measured mostly in power outages) are far more muted than in the New York and New Jersey area. Undoubtedly, that is because the storm's effects were far worse up there than here. Another factor, however, was the derecho storm of July 1 of this year. That storm acted as a wakeup call to local utilities to trim trees and make their systems more resilient. It also had the ironic effect of culling the most at-risk trees. Those that survived that storm were likely strong enough to withstand Sandy's 80 mile per hour winds....

Damage from Hurricane Sandy in Summit, New Jersey, shot by Tomwsulcer, Wikimedia Commons, nder the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.