As oil and gas exports surge, West Texas becomes the world’s “extraction colony” | Hacker News Reader

As oil and gas exports surge, West Texas becomes the world’s “extraction colony”

texastribune.org

96 pointshoward941177 comments

Texan here. I’m anti fossil fuels, pro solar and wind. I’ve stopped trying to have any conversations with other Texans about this topic. Texans are very pro fossil fuels, on balance. I’m saying this as an Austinite.

It’s interesting to see this in the Texas Tribune.

From time to time I have reason to drive through or fly over (I know, hypocrite) West Texas, and passing through the oil fields one can literally watch the world burn. It’s unreal.

Edit: Just a note on the people in the energy industry. They’re good people on balance. I might have come across as incidentally disparaging people in the energy industry. I have many friends and family of friends that have spent their entire career in the industry. It’s like Silicon Valley and tech’s problems. NYC and the financial crisis. Economic and financial incentives supported by cultural norms. In Silicon Valley the confidence that technology will improve our future means sometimes it is developed without pause for impact. In Texas a strong Christian ethos encourages a certain view of “stewardship” of the earth that does not mesh well with the constantly evolving culture of environmentalism. But as people they’re good people.

I never really had a strong opinion on mining until I drove through Wyoming and northern Nevada. I knew it wasn't ecologically friendly, but it wasn't happening near me so I never saw much impact. But after driving through there and seeing entire mountains halfway destroyed as the mining crews work their way through it... in a few more years, that mountain won't even exist anymore.

Watching humans take an entire mountain down rock-by-rock is a humbling experience.

The worst part is humans only want a small fraction of the mountain, so the whole thing is chewed up and spat out into the land around the mountain. It would be a little better if we actually had a use for the whole mountain.

The tar sands come to mind. The entire forest above the sands is literally scraped off the face of the earth, the sands removed, the oil removed from the sands, and then everything aside from the oil is left behind in huge swaths of desolate waste.

Odd wording to describe a replanted forest as "desolate waste". If anything one may suspect you are not being fully honest to leave out the "then they spent millions to try and return to the forest to its original state."

When Alberta’s oil sands industry marked its 40th anniversary in 2007, one statistic stood out among the many that measure economic success and environmental impact: Not a single acre of mined land had been certified as being “reclaimed” to government standards.

Lee Foote, a University of Alberta wetlands ecologist who has worked with the tar sands industry and advised the Alberta government on wetland reclamation policies, agrees that reclamation has so far been done more for public show than to create viable ecosystems.

“The mindset is to throw big dollars at engineering designer wetlands that are green but not nearly as functional as what was there in the past,” says Foote. “The main aim is to get the social license that is needed for these companies to continue operating.”

-- https://e360.yale.edu/features/on_ravaged_tar_sands_lands_bi...

Same kabuki happens with developers & timber vs salmon fisheries.

One county in my state even bothers with monitoring, enforcement. Not a single issued citation (fine) was ever collected (during the study period).

Maddening.

The alternative is having less minerals available and thus higher prices, which hurts all social strata.

I think mining is a necessity to exploit all natural resource opportunities, very similar to how I would view solar and wind installations being built in "nice" areas like off the coast of Massachusetts.

I suspect some people consider ecological destruction as impacting all social strata as well.

I agree, mining is necessary. But it's a necessary evil. And like with all necessary evils, it'd be pretty nice if we could do our best to make sure we can stop committing the evil once it stops being necessary. It's hard to argue that coal mining is still necessary rather than merely convenient.

It is perhaps necessary as Germany now has to import coal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-30/germany-c...

I guess I should amend my statement: is coal use still necessary, or merely convenient? If we're using coal, it's necessary to mine it. The upstream question is, is it still necessary to use coal beyond the very boring argument of "it would cost money to replace coal"?

I'm not looking for an answer to this question, as I don't own any coal mines or coal power plants. Just expressing general dissatisfaction with humanity's destructive-but-convenient habits.

>is it still necessary to use coal beyond the very boring argument of "it would cost money to replace coal"?

Yes, but not for electricity. There isn't a way to make steel at any scale without using coking coal in the furnaces.

> There isn't a way to make steel at any scale without using coking coal in the furnaces.

At least for Germany (as mentioned by GP), that business will not be around for much longer. Steel from China and India simply is too cheap compared with domestic production. Probably once these two countries get too expensive production will shift over to Africa...

I googled around a bit and it appears that "There isn't a way to make steel at any scale without using coking coal in the furnaces." is a coal industry talking point.

Here's a 2013 article about making steel without coal: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-w...

And something from 2018: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611961/this-mit-spinout-c...

Not proven at scale yet, but it appears to be more promising than many other unsolved climate problems.

Also, natural gas is already being used at scale to make steel, not a complete replacement of coal, but a big reduction.

Evil? It seems really good based on how you described it. Useless rocks get transformed into infrastructure.

How about seeing mountains being destroyed by Nature alone over the course of hundreds of millions of years ? Nature is not so beautiful if you consider it destroyed, eradicated, 99.9% of life which ever existed (and will destroy mankind) over the course of History.

Of course nature is destructive. But there's nothing we can really do about that. There is something we can do about humans being destructive. The difference between humans and the rest of nature is that we have the ability to choose our actions, these choices are not made for us already.

I've never understood the argument that since [bad thing] happens, [more bad things] are justified. But judge, since nature kills humans all the time you can't possibly charge me with murder...

How about all the good, technology, societal advancement, reduction of poverty which required the destruction if those mountains to mine the mattress to feel it ?

Also, I'm sure you can make find some negatives in the lithium / PV / wind industries which are so vehemently pushed forward around here.

Again, you're arguing that since [bad thing] happens, [more bad things] are justified. Stopping coal mining today isn't going to undo all of that progress you talked about. It already happened. And the progress only required energy, not coal. Coal was just the energy source that was available at the time. We have other energy sources.

Changing the argument to the damage caused by lithium mines is just a distraction. My argument isn't against coal, it's against unnecessary evils. It would take a mighty strong mind to honestly argue that solar and wind power is more evil than coal.

I'm going to bow out of this argument now as I'm not actually looking to have my opinion changed to a more pro-coal stance in 2018.

> Of course nature is destructive. But there's nothing we can really do about that. There is something we can do about humans being destructive.

Aren’t humans a part of that nature? Isn’t that what makes us destructive?

I think you quoted too early and forgot to read the sentence that came directly after that.

I did read and I didn’t intend to misquote.

Maybe my point is not clear. I’m trying to say that even if we have a choice (or an illusion of it), our nature (and nature itself) has and will drive us to do destructive things.

I’m not suggesting we give up all hope, but it is important to recognize that the beauty of an everlasting mountain is definitely a concept invented by man.

there is plenty we can and do about it. thats the whole point of a moral cas for fossile fuels, it help us against the things mother nature throws against us.

had the same epiphany driving from CA to WA through OR. Oregon allows logging to clear-cut - meaning they don't pluck 1 tree among 5 to cut but instead just lop entire mountainsides down like someone getting a buzz cut.

California has many many clear-cuts. Just not directly on I-5.

Even worse than the act of disassembling a mountain is the processing of all of that rock - which concentrates huge amounts of harmful materials that would never appear in such great concentration and quantity naturally - and subsequently leaving it there permanently in massive tailing ponds that are one dam breach from wiping out millenia-old ecosystems downstream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Polley_mine_disaster

>and subsequently leaving it there permanently in massive tailing ponds

Not permanent. They can be reclaimed, but that usually doesn't happen for many years until after the end of life for the mine.

Reclamation does not un-concentrate the materials found in the impoundment. Typically a "Mine Plan of Operations" which includes the reclamation plan is a contouring of the topography and vegetation. Some mines require indefinite groundwater treatment due to leaching from tailings ponds or other mine activity. The cost responsibility for this _indefinite_ process is sometimes borne by the state following bankruptcy of a mine.

I just drove on the 10 through the area. They literally have these strange chimney columns with flames shooting out.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/fracking-boom-waste-...

The entire area smells like a diesel truck stop.

That is probably “burn off”. Flying over the fields at night one can get a really good idea of the industrial structure and scale involved. A horizontal scaffolding punctuated by these towers lit up at night by the burnoff creates a grid across the landscape that is beautiful and impressive but scary in its implications.

WSJ wrote an article about flaring this week: https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-booming-oilfield-natural-gas...

Natural gas is so plentiful that spot prices at the West Texas hub turned negative last month. In general they're trading at about half the Louisiana hub.

>One option for Permian operators with too much gas is to light it on fire, a practice known as flaring. Flaring levels reached record highs in the Permian last quarter, when companies burned an average of 407 million cubic feet a day, according to analysis of public data compiled by Rystad Energy, an energy consulting firm.

>The resulting greenhouse-gas emissions are equivalent to the daily exhaust emitted by about 2.7 million cars, according to estimates from the World Bank and Environmental Protection Agency.

>Texas has thus far allowed companies to flare freely. As of the end of November, state regulators hadn't denied a single permit request in more than five years, records show. But flaring isn’t always an option. Companies might not have the needed equipment set up in areas affected by pipeline outages. They also might have to pay landowners royalty payments for the gas they burn. And flaring gas on the spot means drillers miss out on more valuable products that come out of the ground with it, such as ethane, propane and butane, which are often processed out later.

>The resulting greenhouse-gas emissions are equivalent to the daily exhaust emitted by about 2.7 million cars

You know, it sounds scary, but there are more than 1 billion cars in the world[1], so it's a bit of a drop in the bucket. Still a shame to be so wasteful though.

1. https://www.wardsauto.com/news-analysis/world-vehicle-popula...

Flaring needs to be banned globally. It's absolutely horrendous that when we have a finite amount of carbon that can safely be put into the atmosphere, we're wasting both an energy source and a carbon allowance like that.

Unfortunately, you can't just do that.

What is worse than burning off fuel / wasting the energy and releasing the carbon? Releasing the methane directly which has a GHG effect 15-35 times worse than C02.

Oh, so you are going to legislate that all of the gas is captured, transported and moved to market and then used in all instances? Now your legislation just got SUPER expensive and SUPER complicated. And/or a bunch of rigs would just not be built, given that in so many instances gases are co-existing with the liquid which is the target resource.

Realistically, legislating a carbon tax and a removal of direct and indirect subsidies would not just be significantly cheaper, but also much more simple and way more politically palatable. (but as we can see, still very difficult and non-trivial).

> a bunch of rigs would just not be built, given that in so many instances gases are co-existing with the liquid which is the target resource.

Yeah, that's a feature not a bug. Carbon-taxing the methane flaring would be a decent compromise to start with though, but I'm not sure whether it would be pricey enough to make a difference and (as you point out) it's quite easy to evade when flaring gas at the point of production.

It's also a strangely non-joined-up market when one set of people are performing fracking specifically to get at the gas and another set of people are flaring it as a worthless byproduct. Perhaps there should be a moratorium on gas exploration until it's not worthless?

(A key point to remember in exploration: just because it's there doesn't mean it has to be extracted now. Obviously the individual firm is going to want to do it immediately, but for the planet as a whole or even the individual extracting country the priority is not the same)

I'm pro-renewables too. But, like you, I'm also a hypocrite because I drive and fly and use plastics.

I'm ok with American extraction because I think it's preferable to the two other options I see: 1. keep giving mountains of money to horrific regimes like Saudi Arabia and Russia or 2. halt the global economy until renewables are to scale.

Unfortunately the Texas crude is being exported because the Texas refineries can't refine it. So imports of "blood oil" will continue.

What is stopping us from upgrading those refineries so that we can refine it? Is it simply not worth the investment?

We already have been. The OP is simply wrong.

I just fact checked, and indeed Texas does refine a whole lot:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_refining_in_the_Un...

This is completely incorrect. Many Texas and Louisiana refineries can process West Texas crude. And billions are being invested in expanding that capacity even further. Texas refineries, aside from light crude are primarily equipped to process Canadian and Gulf Coast petroleum, which is the majority of their production, far from “blood oil.”

Here’s some background: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Ref...

Ubtil 2016, it was illegal to export American crude. So the idea that West Texas Intermediate Crude is being exported because refineries can’t handle it is false, unless we are talking about the past two years: in 2014, where did all of that crude go? It was being refined.

As the US is a net petroleum exporter, the idea that “blood oil” is a significant part of the American fuel supply is false. Canada exports dramatically more oil to the US than Saudi Arabia. The main reason that West Texas Intermediate trades at a discount wasn’t because of refining capacity, but because of the lack of pipelines to move the stuff.

Yes, I am actually quite glad that the US now controls the price of oil causing disruption for middle eastern regimes and Russia. Saudi oil money buys wars in Yemen and Syria and Russian oil money buys hypersonic nukes and SSBNs.

> In Texas a strong Christian ethos encourages a certain view of “stewardship” of the earth that does not mesh well with the constantly evolving culture of environmentalism.

this is the hypocrisy that gets me. christian stewardship should be at the forefront of environmentalism, culture wars be damned, not being dragged along gnawing and gnashing.

edit: hypocisy infects all of us, but christian hypocrisy really burns. rather than stiving for betterment while tolerating imperfection, as jesus taught, the general pretense is to cast a blind eye to all kinds of moral failings while acting as if everything is rosy. it's like sitting on a high horse covered in poop.

The modern evangelical philosophy that seizes the most attention today is often focused on prosperity of the individual.

There’s no room for stewardship in any real sense. It’s cash in before it gets shut down.

If you really want to convince someone of a new position, you should really refrain from attacking their identity and show that you really understand why they make the decisions they do before offering a better alternative.

> ...stiving for betterment while tolerating imperfection, as jesus taught...

And on a particular point, Jesus never taught that in those words. It might be a fair inference and application, but "how would Jesus vote" is a tricky argument to make. Especially considering that the U.S. has a representative democracy and not a direct democracy. Would Jesus vote for candidate A who favors a carbon tax and opposes ICE? Or candidate B who opposes late term abortion and wants better support for adoptive parents?

> Would Jesus vote for candidate A who favors a carbon tax and opposes ICE? Or candidate B who opposes late term abortion and wants better support for adoptive parents?

Well, that might be the options in the Democrat primary, but what about the Republican positions?

Sounds like it would do you some good to spend more time around Republicans. They aren't really that different from Democrats.

Oh, I'm just kibitzing from across the Atlantic. But it doesn't really matter what people are like socially - I'm sure there are nice Republicans and there is a subset of Democrat machine politics people I would no doubt regard as awful if I met them - it matters what the actual policy enacted and its effects are.

On the policy front they don't end up that different either. They just use smoke and mirrors to make it look that way. Keeps people aggravated.

not every comment is meant to persuade or attack. sometimes it's just discussion. mine was a lament and a commiseration.

i grew up in both the evangelical and catholic traditions. there were some great people, but the hypocrisy of the many was unbearable.

Us left wing Christians are tree huggers. Though we are more numerous, we're just not politically potent, and never will be (it's against our nature).

The world's burning here too. Thanks to widespread and unusual drought, there are huge wildfires burning all summer long, all over the West. They start well before the usual beginning of "fire season" and continue well past the end of it, into the late autumn. Fire season is now 3/4 of the year. Pretty soon I suppose it'll be all year long. There's a hot wind and choking smoke everywhere. The sun is blacked-out if you're in the immediate vicinity, or else there's a thick smoke haze for miles. It feels like the goddamned apocalypse. It feels like you're in hell. Or rather, hell feels like this. Because those who came up with the concept of hell, based it on this. It was one of their worst experiences of divine retribution. Along with floods and storms etc., and those are coming fast & furious now too.

On TV here comes another car commercial. The disconnect is amazing. This shit needs to stop TODAY, if there's to be any hope of stopping or even slowing the catastrophe already in motion. But "good people" are not getting it. Certain other people work overtime to make sure they don't get it. And of course cutting them in on the spoils (a.k.a. "issuing them a paycheck") raises their mental barriers against getting it. Insert Upton Sinclair quote here.... "It is difficult to get a man to understand bla bla bla."

The minute good people realize they're screwing over other good people, they might actually find it unpalatable to do the work (or buy the product). Either that or they're not such good people. But they don't always have a choice, right? At least that's what good people say who want to absolve good people. Gotta pay the rent, right? Well that's what my landlord says anyway. Gotta keep driving to work to pay the rent, right? Well that's what 80% of Houstonians and 85% of Detroiters say... but 70% of Portlanders agree too. (Everybody's a liberal as long as it doesn't mean getting off your ass.) Maybe people just naturally exploit and screw each other to profit themselves, and all morality is just an idealistic and optimistic overlay. Maybe people in general just aren't that "good." Maybe it'll be better after a bunch of us die the hell off. I need a drink.

Fuck, I'm buying.

The assumption that people are good in general is a fallacy. When put to test, ex. in Soviet Gulags, vast majority of people would condemn other prisoners to death for a mere chance (not even guaranteed) of slight decrease of their own misery. When the stakes are real, even as small as the convenience of driving, most people put themselves first.

Interesting to see you say that about Texans, as my experience is nearly the complete opposite. Texas is the country's leading wind power state, and is pretty big on solar as well. Among most of the people I interact with daily (friends as well as colleagues), are not people I would consider "pro fossil fuel" at all. And this is coming from people mostly in Dallas/Houston, where oil & gas is much bigger than in Austin. I can even think of a couple friends of mine that actually work for the major oil companies, and even they I would not describe as "pro fossil fuel". One of them drives a Prius. When I was at school at UT, even amongst the buildings and lecture halls that are sponsored and paid for by Chevron/Exxon, I never encountered an anti-renewable sentiment. Hell, McCombs has a masters degree program specifically geared towards exploring renewable energy businesses (as well as several undergrad classes, one of which I took), and I know the engineering school has an entire department for researching renewables.

Most of my friends are in their late 20s/early 30s though, so maybe that makes a difference. I could see older folks who grew up when oil was king maybe being opposed to solar/wind. But even then, now that I think about it, one of my friend's grandparents (who are from West Texas) were very thankful for the wind industry and the money it brought to their town (it got brought up because we made a remark about how there seemed to be endless wind turbines in every direction on the drive through W Texas to visit them).

I just browsed through a few polls and based on them, it seems you must be really unlucky to encounter so many people unwilling to discuss renewables. According to these polls [1][2][3][4], 80%+ of Texans support renewable/clean energy.

I'd be interested to hear more about what types of conversations you try to have and who (age range, industry) you interact with when you find these people. It surprises me that this has been your experience, especially in Austin of all places.

1: https://www.citizen.org/may-11-texas-poll-shows-citizens-wan...

2: https://www.wsj.com/articles/which-state-is-a-big-renewable-...

3: https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/04/survey-texans-suppor...

4: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/climate/renewable-energy-...

The other thing I saw in Boerne TX was a giant, like 3-semi-truck-long windmill blade on a truck, at a truck stop. The people that transport those must be a freaking miracle workers.

Grew up in the Permian basin (Odessa, UT grad as well), there really is a disconnect between larger cities and smaller towns in the state on ethos of renewables. DFW will likely be one of the first major metroplexes in the US to be powered 100% by renewables, but it won't be because the state is particularly environmentally friendly (even if DFW/Houston/Austin are). It will be because there is a vast expanse in the west side of the state to plop wind turbines and it’s cheaper than digging it out of the ground.

Not sure what point I’m trying to make here, just adding more context. Reality is that while many Texans may answer a survey asking if we should move away from fossil fuel dependence in a positive way, for most conservatives in the state I’d be surprised if it was anywhere near their chief concern when voting and would likely actively vote against it if the platform they are voting for meets their primary concerns. Thankfully, their chief concern is usually money/economy and Texas is a state that can be that can be very effective at migrating to energy alternatives in an economically beneficial way thanks to 300+ days of sunlight a year in most regions and large flat windy expanse from central Texas to Big Bend and up the padhandle.

Would just add that there is another level of complexity here. While fracking and the shale revolution do present a huge environmental problem, it’s advancement in the last 5-10 years does provide the US an extremely valuable foreign policy tool in removing the necessity of energy reliance on the Middle East whenever we want. I hope the state continues to move forward with renewables but fossil fuels, specifically in the Permian basin, is here to stay for a long time even if the state goes 100% renewable. It’s now a national security and economic priority in an age when American/Middle East relations are waning and American retrenchment from traditional allies is increasing.

Yeah, what point are you trying to make? Texas being the biggest wind energy producer doesn't count because the citizens aren't ideologically pure enough?

As mentioned in my comment, I realized mid-writing I didn't necessarily have point of contest to the thread OP. In retrospect, there was probably a more coherent place elsewhere in this thread to put my comment. Just providing context to what I've seen in the state and that from my subjective experience, Texan polling affinity for renewables was less related to environmental concerns and more towards economics. I'd consider this a much better vehicle for renewable adoption than ideological alignment anyway since it's significantly harder to convince people of environmental priority than it is to put more money in their pockets.

Houstonite here that works in the energy industry. Im not sure you are talking to the right people. Im not anti fossil fuels, but Im not really "pro" fossil fuels either. If you look at the oil and gas business, there really just isn't any viable alternatives available on a large scale at this moment. I would echo some other comments in that Texas has a lot of solar and wind farms. My father in law has a ranch out in west Texas and every surrounding property has wind or solar generation on it. I am encouraged by this, and while I don't really like looking out at the landscape to see a bunch of windmills, I think it is important to try and reduce our fossil fuel use. The fact of the matter though is that until we give up plastic, and figure out how to store electricity, we need nat gas or nuclear for electricity. Ive read conflicting data about the worlds lithium supply, but it may or may not be able to replace crude for transportation. Electric planes still seem a decade off or more. If crude went away tomorrow, I would still work in the energy industry so I don't care if that were to happen. I can say that I have been encouraged by some of the internal projects some "big oil" companies are taking on. I wish it could be a case of just stop using oil. Life as we know it would cease if we did that.

To be fair a lot of West Texas if you're not looking at a bunch of windmills you're looking at about as many derricks - neither are very pleasing to the eye.

I find turbines quite beautiful. A small glimpse of that 1950s future that never came to be. We don't have jet packs, or flying cars, but we have immense white towers, slowly, steadily generating clean electricity. Just as steam engines sum up the industrial revolution, wind turbines sum up the green revolution, that is/I hope will be.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though. I remember people complaining about 2 massive cooling towers in the centre of Sheffield being torn down.

I'd be interested in what wind turbines say to you that lead you to call them ugly.

>I'd be interested in what wind turbines say to you that lead you to call them ugly.

It depends on the density. Once they clutter everything visible below 100 ft, it's pretty hard to see beauty: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/2128...

I would say its the black ones that make it look ugly? And the lack of uniformity?

I did a google image search for that location and the other images didn't seem so bad (to me).

Is the uglyness an inherent feature of the scale. Or a feature of poor design?

The black ones are actually under a cloud. In Iowa, we have quite a few wind farms. I think for most people they are a source of pride. Maybe I just haven't met the grumps.

Might be shadow rather than cloud?

Some appear to have white nacelles and black towers.

That's an extreme telephoto shot, I don't think it's representative of what you'd see when you look at the landscape as a human. Unless it's from a very specific spot.

That picture doesn't do it justice. Driving through Palm Springs is pretty cool. There are a LOT of windmills.

Actually the 1950s view of the future was nuclear based. Nuclear flying cars etc. Wind turbines and towers in general are quite ugly and kill birds, especially when concentrated like in the fields near Vienna. Offshore wind is fine. Trees are beautiful.

FWIW, I've read speculation that painting them white attracts insects which attract birds.

I volunteered at Audubon for years. Love both birds and windmills.

I don't think anyone is seriously proposing to stop all use of petroleum products overnight. The most commonly proposed policy, which is actively being implemented elsewhere in the world, is to tax fossil fuels - which currently carry major unpriced externalities - to incentivize the use of lower-carbon alternatives.

For instance, only 4% of global oil output is used in plastics. The vast majority is used in transportation and heating. Plastics, unlike transportation fuels, can also be recycled.

It's not oil or no oil. It's putting in place the systems and policies to responsibly end our reliance on oil and coal before we cause even more damage to our climate.

Well, a bunch of countries have more or less agreed on aiming for no more than 1.5 degrees warmer.

IPCC made a report on what that would entail stating basically that even with an overnight abolishment it cannot be reached. But that if we assume it feasible to use afforestation and other techniques to extract CO2 from the atmosphere in the future we might have chance to reach that target for 2100 given we stop using fossil fuels by 2030.

Given the scale of the transition necessary, overnight or 11-years is more or less the same time frame

Edit: Great TED-talk on the scale of what’s needed https://youtu.be/E0W1ZZYIV8o

Your right the current battery technology is 29 times less efficient when it comes to storage compacity as fossil fuels. An electric plan has no hopes at flying so until solid state batteries are made this is all we have.

Former Houston old-energy chemical engineer here (also grew up in west Texas). I switched careers to cleantech, and I see now something I didn't see back when I was in old-energy: being neutral about fossil fuels is just as bad as being pro fossil fuels.

First, that attitude makes you, your family, and your friends more susceptible to propaganda from pro-fossil fuel interests. You're more apt to believe crazy stuff like we'd have to stop using plastic or that nuclear would have to also go away. You're more apt to doubt the science behind climate change. You're more apt to be mislead on the economics or feasibility of renewables.

Second, that attitude makes you think we're not in a rush, so we can afford to wait until things are figured out more. It makes you think that we have to figure out storage for wind and solar and airplanes, even though we don't have to worry about that until we reach much higher levels of penetration than we currently have (and we're already making good progress nonetheless). It makes you think that we'd fall into chaos if we use less natural gas and oil, even though it's going to be a gradual transition and will be replaced with equal or better alternatives.

Unfortunately, because of previous neutral attitudes like yours, we're now in a goddamn race for our lives as the nightmares of climate change are starting to happen (how many Americans died in Puerto Rico? California's wildfires? etc.). Nature doesn't give a fuck. It's too late to be neutral anymore.

So from one Texas energy worker to another, I beg you to stop being neutral. Unlike most other people, you actually have domain expertise to have a substantial impact fighting climate change. Remaining neutral when you work in energy is just making everyone else's lives worse.

> "I switched careers to cleantech"

can pretty much expect something completely biased coming, but will wait and see.

> "being neutral about fossil fuels is just as bad as being pro fossil fuels"

Yup, here is you sure are about to spout off nothing but propaganda now.

> "nuclear would have to also go away"

liberals hate nuclear. In fact one of the primary purposes of the Simpsons was to raise awareness (propaganda) about how bad nuclear is.

> "we're now in a goddamn race for our lives as the nightmares of climate "

no we are not. 8.2 feet by the end of 2100 is it? the end of the ice age saw sea levels rise almost a thousand feet. Australia use to be connected to Papua New Guinea. its not ideal, but its not a race for our lives nightmare. I have pretty bad nightmares. The vast majority of all human beings will have died of old age by then. Open google maps, look outside your city limits. Earth is alive. This is not ideal, but saying things like race for our lives nightmare only makes it hard to take you seriously.

> "how many Americans died in Puerto Rico? California's wildfires?"

California has ALWAYS HAD WILDFIRES. Red Wood trees have EVOLVED to only be able to reproduce with them - so they kinda probably happened. a lot. In fact, the west is so dry, its the only place on the planet cactus evolved. its that dry. it always has been that dry.

> "It's too late to be neutral anymore."

Again alarmest attitude. but not surprised coming from someone who's job depends upon it.

> "Unlike most other people, you actually have domain expertise"

Then maybe you should respect that they have opinions founded in fact, instead of assuming they must be crazy-brainwashed for not believing what you believe.

> being neutral about fossil fuels is just as bad as being pro fossil fuels.

Do you refuse to fly if you are "against fossil fuels"? What makes you against fossil fuels vs being neutral if you have a stance where you believe externalities should be taxed but that outright bans are too destructive?

I consider pro carbon-tax to be a neutral position. I consider "anti fossil fuels" a position of wanting to ban it regardless of externalities being priced in.

>First, that attitude makes you, your family, and your friends more susceptible to propaganda from pro-fossil fuel interests.

No, being incapable of critical thought makes you susceptible to propaganda.

Okay, let's break your points down.

> Do you refuse to fly if you are "against fossil fuels"?

This is a false equivalence. Being an fossil consumer is very very different from directly working in the fossil industry. Consumers will use whatever is most convenient or available. It's up to the industry to come up with feasible alternatives, and air travel will be some of the last fossil usage to transition. You picked the hardest end of the scale to setup a straw man. Why not ask "Do you ask your utility if there's a 100% clean energy option?" That's on the lower end of the energy transition difficulty curve for consumers, but it's still not relevant to the argument I was making (working in the old energy industry).

> What makes you against fossil fuels vs being neutral if you have a stance where you believe externalities should be taxed but that outright bans are too destructive? I consider pro carbon-tax to be a neutral position. I consider "anti fossil fuels" a position of wanting to ban it regardless of externalities being priced in.

It seems you and I have wildly different opinions about what constitutes neutral vs anti, and I worry that your definition is mostly informed by pro-fossil interests. Anti-fossil people aren't zealots or a cult. I'm only anti-fossil because of the reason you stated for being neutral: externalities are not being priced in. If they were, I wouldn't be anti-fossil.

Millions of other workers in clean energy and climate science have the same attitude as me. We're only in this fight because fossil fuels are killing people, so we're stepping up to help stop that. If fossil fuels weren't so destructive (e.g. carbon taxes offset the damages), we could all go do something else.

> No, being incapable of critical thought makes you susceptible to propaganda.

I seems like this is another argument assuming anti-fossil people are zealots incapable of critical thought. Having a position on a topic does not mean you have stopped thinking critically. Often, it means you have already thought critically and have decided on your opinion, and that you simply haven't come across a convincing enough argument to move you away from your current position.

I'm anti-fossil because I've reached the conclusion that fossil fuels are becoming more and more destructive for society, so we should make strides to curtail their usage. There's totally a chance that something could come along to alter my conclusion, but it hasn't happened yet.

"We're only in this fight because fossil fuels are killing people, so we're stepping up to help stop that."

This resonates with me. I was an activist for ~10 years (for a different issue). Me and every activist I met stepped up because of the need (vs innate interest). Personally, I would have rather been doing pretty much anything else.

Thank you for stepping up.

> What makes you against fossil fuels vs being neutral if you have a stance where you believe externalities should be taxed but that outright bans are too destructive?

Because the status quo is that fossil fuels are allowed without the externalities being taxed. A position that moves towards less fossil fuel use is anti-fossil fuel, although less so than one that desires an outright ban.

>>(how many Americans died in Puerto Rico? California's wildfires? etc.)

Anecdotal weather-related disasters aren't an argument for climate change, let alone hydrocarbon-based energy generation having a negative net effect on humanity.

Your entire reply is extreme in the sense it is all absolutes. Please provide sources that we are in a 'race for your lives'. And please don't make assumptions about other people or their lives without more information. It gives you the appearance of a paranoid alarmist.

> Your entire reply is extreme in the sense it is all absolutes. Please provide sources that we are in a 'race for your lives'.

Graph: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/10/SPM3...

Report: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

News: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-repo...

This is the carbon emission reduction curve we have to hit if we want to hit our Paris Agreement targets. That's a pretty steep drop off if you ask me, and certainly falls into the category of a "race for your lives".

Do you disagree? Please provide sources that we aren't in such a rush to curtail fossil emissions (because there's mountains of science saying we are).

> It gives you the appearance of a paranoid alarmist.

How can I be paranoid if the science backs me up? However, I do think being an alarmist is appropriate for the situation. If that graph isn't a mash-the-big-red-button moment, I don't know what would be.

I believe that there is a gap in your argument. We have to hustle to hit our Paris Agreement targets, but missing them isn't exactly equivalent to dying - at least, I don't think you've shown it to be. That's why it's not "a race for our lives".

But, you may say, a lot of people will die from climate change. (And a lot definitely die from pollution.) A lot die from malaria, too, but we don't have a "race for our lives" on that one. Cynically, most people don't consider a bunch of other people dying as a "race for our lives".

(We did more or less have a "race for our lives" on AIDS, though. It seems that we start to care when it's hitting closer to home, and we think that it could be us. That's the problem with your argument. You haven't shown people enough evidence that they think it will be them dying, so they don't think it's "a race for our lives".)

Hmmm, for non-scientific discussions, I tend to like the XKCD scale for global temperature averages.

https://xkcd.com/1379/

Going above Paris gets into the "there be dragons" realm of human survival. The Pentagon is predicting mass migrations, wars, famine, and economic implosion[1]. I feel like that certainly constitutes "race for our lives" level of rhetoric.

Usually, when someone balks at strong rhetoric on climate change they are (1) unaware of the scale and severity of the problem or (2) don't see those affected as within their "our" definition (e.g. it will happen to other people, not my people). The former is slowly being solved through increased education and awareness, the later will likely always be present due to human tribalism and racism.

As far as the malaria theory, it's a very different strategy when you are actively causing the problem you are trying to solve. It's as if we are repeatedly shooting ourselves in the foot, then some of us say we should stop, then you say why are you so focused on the foot-shooting vs cancer killing us. One is an immediately addressable problem caused by ourselves, one is a natural threat that is not under our direct and immediate control (thus takes much longer to understand and solve).

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/us/pentagon-says-global-w...

IIRC, Eocene period had atmospheric CO2 up to 2000 ppm, the known max. I figure we'll meet that target (ocean acidification, thawing tundra, desertification). So life will somehow survive. Though I wouldn't place bets that we humans will squeeze thru that keyhole.

How bad does it have to get, eg CO2 ppm or global temperature average or whatever, for this to be a catastrophe?

Define "catastrophe". Is a thousand people dying a catastrophe? A million? Or does it take a billion?

If it's a thousand (or maybe even a million), we're already there just with air pollution. Forget CO2, particulates are already that level of catastrophe.

For just CO2 or global warming, there are projections (or, less charitably, guesses) about how much CO2 will lead to how much warming, which will lead to how many deaths. Pick your level of what constitutes a catastrophe to you, and then pick which projections you find most believable. For actual answers rather than projections, we'll have to wait until after it happens (at which point it's a bit late to try to do anything about it).

I remain keen to learn Knufen's definition of catastrophe.

You might also give yours...

But my point was, there's different levels that are "catastrophic", depending on your definition of catastrophe. There is no one answer to the question.

Let's start with Knufen's definition.

Knufen minimized diafygi's position (acting extreme, paranoid alarmist). So now I want to know what Knufen considers worth his/her concern.

A quick review shows that you were the first one to use the word "catastrophe" in this discussion. Neither Knufen nor diafygi used the word.

But if you insist on getting Knufen's definition of catastrophe, you should also get diafygi's, since diafygi posted the claim that we're arguing about in this sub-thread.

[flagged]

  how many Americans died in Puerto Rico?

A couple of orders of magnitude fewer than in Galveston in 1900.

You can't really be comparing deaths in the era of no forecasting with deaths in the modern era. It's dishonest.

What does forecasting have to do with storm severity? My comment was addressing the conflation of storm severity with climate change. Severity of named tropical storms does not correlate well with temperature data.

You are inferring severity from death count, as I read it.

The existence of category 4/5 hurricanes in 1900 can't really be used to deny global warming if that's what you're after.

Native Texan. Austin and not Austin all my life. Never heard "on balance". Some family in the industry. They know they are seeing the last boom before the bust. I was surprised to hear so few of the wind over there is with any of the big energy companies.

When ever I drive through west Texas all that sticks out to me are the giant wind turbines. Giant as in a 10-15 story building. When you drive up on a large patch of these turbines you might be able to see thousands at once, and there are possibly hundreds of such fields in west Texas.

I am not pro or anti gas, oil, or wind. The primary difference is that wind is linked to the grid. Its not a package available for export. Oil and gas are chemically stable (roughly speaking, non-degrading) liquids that can be transferred anywhere. This makes fossil fuels ideal for export where wind is not, but damn there is a lot of investment in wind energy generation.

As an additional matter of perspective I live very close to one of the largest oil refineries in the world, which is really close to one of the largest petroleum export harbors in the world. I am currently living in Kuwait. I really don't see anything here that would classify as a petroleum culture.

Most oil companies own wind and PV investments. They're aware that oil is going to run out or get expensive some day and diversify their assets. The enviromentalists are just ignorant and get all worked up.

I doubt we will ever run out of oil. Yes, there is a specific non-renewable supply of it underground, but there is just so much of it and people are only able to consume it at a measurable declining pace. I bet demand will almost completely fall off long before we get anywhere close to running out.

> I doubt we will ever run out of oil.

Of course we won't.

We will run out of oil that is worth extracting, because the cost to extract the next unit will exceed the value provided.

> people are only able to consume it at a measurable declining pace

The pace of global oil consumption has been increasing for a long time, other than a brief period of decline in the late 1970s to early 1980s.

> I bet demand will almost completely fall off long before we get anywhere close to running out.

Over the long term, consumption is going up as are real prices (though the price trend is noisier than consumption.) There's not really consistent with demand declining at all, much ledd heading to the point of completely falling off.

Instead, it shows demand increasing faster than supply.

In the US and Europe consumption is declining. Globally the growth of consumption is declining. Additionally, the US is now (recent estimations) the global dominant exporter of oil recently surpassing Russia. These trends break all traditional projections and are largely due to shifting energy consumption as a result of technological innovation and continued investment in the energy sector. Since the new trends are independent of market demand for oil, as demand for energy overall continues to climb, these new trends may well continue until killed by economic demand such that there is more oil available than people are willing to consume and store.

* https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/the-surprising-declin...

* http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2014/07/10/world-sets-new...

>(I know, hypocrite)

I'm guessing you added this to avoid inevitable flames.

I don't think its hypocritical though. We all live in a world where fossil fuels are dominant. Its reasonable to fight to lower emissions while still emitting yourself (within reason).

If you make it so that only the whitest of the white says anything, no one will.

On the other hand, I never had the option for 100% renewable energy before until I moved to Texas, thanks to their highly competitive energy market which was created via legislation. Some parts of Texas are backwards, but some parts of Texas are way ahead of other places.

This is a complete house of cards, for multiple reasons. It's yet another boom that will result in a lot of hardship for people.

First, all the fracking in Texas is fueled by cheap interest rates and private equity. The industry as a whole is losing money -- to the tune of $600 billion since 2007. And when investors (I'm looking at you pension funds) finally realize that there is no path to making these companies profitable, especially when the decline rate on their wells is 70% in the first year, they will stop pouring money in. A lot of companies will vanish when this happens.

Second, the media loves to play up the notion of "energy independence" and headlines of the United States producing more than Russia/Saudi Arabia, but neglects to understand the differentials in crude quality. The US (especially Texas) is producing light oil, which increasingly is not wanted in the industry. The refineries in the US have consumed all they can and are increasingly in need of heavier oil to mix with, hence why you see the US exporting our oil and importing oil from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. When exports have been maxed out and foreign buyers slow their purchases these companies will have nowhere to send their oil and will need to slow drilling.

I don't think things are quite as bad as you paint it, markets are not irrational and they really are not going to keep investing in a losing enterprise.

As for the crude quality, this seems like an ideal synergy with heavy oil sourced from the Alberta tar sands, and yet another good reason for constructing the Kinder-Morgan pipeline to make importing it cheaper and more environmentally friendly. People will probably jump all over me for saying that - but the alternative is not leaving it in the ground, the alternative is Diesel powered trains, which are just riskier, costlier, and worse for the environment. This is one of the few (only?) Obama-era decisions that Trump has rolled back where I actually think he did the right thing.

True, there is a bit of hyperbole in my comments. It's certainly not a sub-prime mortgage type situation. But at the same time people have been pouring money into these companies for 10 years and have seen no free cash flow to speak of. When 70% of the asset you just invested in disappears in the first year, it's a vicious cycle to get out of. That difficulty gets compounded with the service companies like Schlumberger/Halliburton increasing their costs (32% in the last year) and interest rates creeping back up.

The Canadian situation is unfortunate. Collectively, it represents so much lost revenue for them. Setting aside the environmental issues and inefficiencies with shipping by rail and truck, companies are having to sell their oil at a steep discount to what they could otherwise be getting.

>people have been pouring money into these companies for 10 years and have seen no free cash flow to speak of.

I find that highly improbable. They would have run out of cash long ago. Or if they were super-rich from money earned elsewhere, then they would be smart enough to not throw it away like that.

Another key point you neglect is that the efficiency of fracking keeps improving, so it can turn a profit at ever lower prices.

Why do you find this improbable? It's easily verifiable. This is all public financial data we're talking about. Here are some sources to avoid having to crunch the data though:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/opinion/the-next-financia...

http://ieefa.org/ieefa-u-s-more-red-flags-on-fracking-focuse...

The technology improvements (namely horizontal drilling) have just allowed the companies to suck more oil out faster. It hasn't changed the economics of it. Particularly because you're dealing with an expendable resource and to move on to the next well requires further capital investment.

Here is a great (recent) podcast that discusses exactly what I'm talking about:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2018-12-13/bethany-mcle...

thematt is absolutely right with everything he says. Without external funding pretty much all companies would not operate at all.

Many did run out of cash in the last downturn. Those that survived did so by

a) external funding (that can dry up quickly) - debt and equity offerings b) high-grading their drilling inventory, only drilling the very best locations, boasting efficiency-improvements (and collecting more money) c) real technical improvements that are far from enough to be cash-flow positive long term

The efficiency is not improving as much as they make you think. It even declines when they stop drilling their best wells. They reduced their costs substantially in the downturn because they gobbled up fire-sale equiqment from bankrupt competitors, squeezed service margins etc.

All that will be gone at some point. Interest rates rise. Best wells will be drilled. Acres in the permian are damn expensive now. Service companies need to raise prices.

The 70%yoy decline rates are absolutely terrible. They will keep growing a few years, but after that they will have to drill so damn much in worse spots than now, that many will crash down quickly. Losing 70% of producing assets every year is just terrible and puts you to the full market forces. There is pretty much no way to stop drilling because that would decimate your company by 5-6% every month. So drill baby, drill!

> the alternative is not leaving it in the ground, the alternative is Diesel powered trains, which are just riskier, costlier, and worse for the environment.

I'm not sure if I get where you are coming from. Why not electric powered trains? (and in the near future electric cars, etc.)

Electric powered freight trains in the US don't exist (at least in general) they're all diesel-electric locomotives.

But even if you solve that, it's not going to be as efficient or safe as a pipeline.

A pipeline is still safer and cheaper.

the argument is that such oil-bearing trains derail frequently enough that they actually spill more oil than the pipelines would

Well, there is a stable nearby country that wants to pay for and build a pipeline to carry some of the heaviest oil known to man, but somehow that isn’t flying.

The worst part is that private companies make the profit while tax payers clean up the mess. Reverse socialism at its worst.

How will tax payers clean up the mess ? What do you mean by it ?

Many of the extraction companies will eventually go bankrupt and liquidate, leaving toxic waste sites behind. Then the government ( funded by taxpayers) will have to step in and clean up the mess.

It is a synthetic problem of the commons: they can incur expenses that someone else pays off. As you're hinting, it'd be trivial to shift the incentives via taxes, clean up liability etc.

A similar problem exist with the petroleum economy vs climate change.

And a third case is that the residents near the oil filed bear the burden while the benefits, both huge and trivial, are gained by individuals far away.

Each of which would be addressed if the distribution of power were different.

You profit. You pay far lower gas prices than in Europe for example. You also pay less for products. You benefit from cheap, plentiful oil, regardless of who “profits.”

The fuel prices in Europe are like that mostly because of taxes.

In e.g. Italy, where the taxation is especially heavy when oil prices halved gasoline went down 30% at best.

I think the worst part is that fresh water is used for fracking fluid and the contaminated waste water is injected back into the earth, when we can look at the water usage rates and population and see a problem coming in fresh water supplies.

"Residents with no say in these decisions are stuck with the consequences" - I'm pretty sure that these residents get to vote for state assembly people who obviously support the policy, to vote for city council people who support the policy, for US Congress, House and Senate, and for the presidency. Saying that you "don't have a say" when a democratic decision goes against you is pretty misleading - perhaps more accurate to say "some residents, who disagree with the democratically taken decisions at local, state and federal levels..."

It’s tough. If economic interests dominate the political scene in that region, then the vote of the people may have little effect on the broader situation. We would do well to remember that the idea of a perfect democracy is certainly a huge simplification that we regularly see proven wrong. So it may well be that the voters of that region are not well represented by their “representatives”.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat."

Authoritarianism is a wolf deciding what is good for a group of lambs.

As flawed as it is, give me democracy.

This looks like a "False Dilemma" fallacy.

A third, preferable alternative is that wolfs and lambs alike get to decide over their own bodies and their own affairs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

What's the mechanism by which the wolfs stop wanting to have lamb for dinner?

> What's the mechanism by which the wolfs stop wanting to have lamb for dinner?

Lambs exercising their 2nd Amendment rights?

Perhaps there are no candidates who represent the residents views.

Then they wouldn’t have a say.

> Perhaps there are no candidates who represent the residents views.

Then they can run themselves. That's sort of the concept of a Democracy.

In order to run as a candidate you need to have a certain amount of capital. If you're in an area that's economically depressed, the only people that are going to be able to run are those attempting to extract as much profit as possible to the detriment of the locals.

America is far from a democracy considering only the wealthy are able to actually run as candidates.

> In order to run as a candidate you need to have a certain amount of capital.

Most political races don't have many more voters than the average class president election. And a lot of those positions have a lot of power.

You raise the capital. That’s how campaigns work. You start with a small office. Then you raise money to go bigger. Joe Biden wasn’t wealthy at all, yet he never lost an election, starting with the New Castle Counsel. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t have a ton of money. Look at Maxine Waters. Plenty of “poor” people get elected. You just have to be smart, organized and have a message. Certainly running for Senate or President isn’t easy, but local races are winnable which springboard you to higher office of you’re any good.

That’s a generic argument. You ignore that we’re talking about running against candidates who are favored by billion dollar businesses, and the people on the other side are not wealthy. Where can they ‘raise’ this capital from?

Sure. But they have the right to run for office - so if none of the 100's - 1000's of people who do represent their views chose to run, isn't that a choice too?

Wouldn't a simpler explanation be that the more popular choice won i.e. overall, the people of the city decided that the benefits outweighed the harm? And as more evidence of harm is accumulated, I'm sure their views on regulation will change. But I think it's unhealthy to imply that when "our side" loses, then the results are not legitimate, but when "our side" wins, only then is it "democracy in action", "will of the people" etc

Of course that's exactly what happened. The anti views are the minority. Their complaint is actually that they're losing out to a more popular position in a Democracy. The oil industry jobs pay extraordinarily well compared to (non-existent) alternatives that were there before the oil boom. There was no economy in West Texas before the fracking output soared. There's nothing out there other than Midland and Odessa, and their populations hadn't changed much in 30 years. The choice is extraction economy or no economy. And if by some unexpected effort + resources the state decided to invest vast tax revenue to build up a non-extraction economy in the area, it will take decades anyway.

As usual an unpopular yet sound argument from adventured. The real losers are people downvoting because of their shallow mental models.

West Texas oil is making US more secure and access to cheap energy will not only make things better in Texas, but Mexico is going build on this supply of NG.

West Texas is extraction colony, for America. The rest of the world is buying because it is sweet as hell and produced in most stable region on the planet.

Nobody is implying that when ‘our side loses’ the results are not legitimate. That’s a weird thing to say.

I’n not on a side on this issue.

However it’s also obvious that running for office isn’t free and that often elections are decided on the basis of who can buy the most publicity.

A random person standing against petrochemical interests is clearly at a massive disadvantage.

There seems to be a fair amount of cognitive dissonance here.

The central complaint almost seems to be that it's getting exported, rather than getting used domestically.

And as a non American I'm struggling to understand the lack of environmental opposition. Is the article biased, or does environmentalism not exist in Texas?

Finally speaking as someone from the UK. This is scary. Theres been an ongoing battle over fracking, with the first well drilled this year. Hopefully we have better standards in place.

Texas is one of the worst polluters in the entire US. Why anyone would still move there is beyond me.

[1] https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/mercury-e...

[2] http://scorecard.goodguide.com/env-releases/state.tcl?fips_s...

Plenty of environmentalists all over the place. plenty of people not happy about it. None you will hear about because who would you hear it from? The 9 o'Clock news?(Brought to you by Ford and Chevron.) Even "grass roots" social media platforms; You subscribe to any local Texas groups on twitter/insta/whatever?

Texas is a single state with 4 times the land mass of the entire UK. Do the people Glasgow stop what they are doing, take vacation time and go to protest a new Tesco building over a historical site in London? Likewise people in Houston have little reason and large costs to fight something happening 500 miles away. Nor do they have anything to say about or vote to cast in (almost) any elections that would have (directly) altered policy in the area, which is again, 500 miles(800km) away.

The article doesn't contain the voices I would expect. I'm wondering whether that is an article bias, or just that those voices aren't present.

I don't know the ideology of the newspaper, I don't know the local politics. Which is why I asked the question.

No offense was intended.

Curious what that'll do to West Texas' non-extraction economy.

Once a whole nation state depends on extraction, they usually lose other forms of economic activity. This is usually called "Dutch Disease" for historical reasons. But what happens when a small region within a country becomes entirely dependent on resource extraction?

Norway seems to have taken the edge off by taxing fossil fuel use every bit as hard as the rest of Western Europe does and investing a large portion of the profits into a permanent fund for their residents in anticipation of an end to the bonanza, only taking a small percent out per year. “Never get high on your own supply,” as that song about dealing another harmful, addictive substance goes.

Unfortunately, West Texas doesn’t have a permanent fund for its residents' current and future oil-industry-driven needs and to even out the boom-bust cycle. Midland and Odessa are cities that only became cities once oil was discovered out there in the 20s. Before, they were little towns. So there wasn’t a ton of economic activity out there before oil - just a railroad interchange, mostly for shipping cattle, I think.

I remember seeing a half-built skyscraper in Midland while visiting relatives there in the late 90s, a leftover of the 80s bust that drove the S&L crisis.

There never was a non-extraction economy in West Texas. The place is empty. Some cattle. Fire ants. And the occasional SS retiree living in a mobile home in the middle of nowhere (such as the lady highlighted in the article).

Weep over the rainforests. Weep over the wetlands. Heck, you can even weep over the drained swamps. But, spare your tears for West Texas... there is NOTHING you could do to that terrain or ecosystem that wouldn't be an improvement over the wasteland that it now is.

How about weeping over natural gas flaring equivalent to daily exhaust emitted by about 2.7 million cars?

It's a temporary thing.

Once the number of LNG liquefaction plants in North America more than doubles, NG will be worth collecting for export to markets that pay more than domestic buyers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LNG_terminals#North_Am...

The oil market is much more globalized than NG.

There are other industries.

There's wind power, which has been doing well and probably will continue to.

And there's agriculture on irrigated land, which isn't a new thing but never went away. The US is the world's top exporter of cotton, Texas produces more cotton than any other state, and West Texas is the center of that production. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_production_in_the_Unite... and http://cotton.tamu.edu/funfacts.html .)

> Weep over the rainforests. Weep over the wetlands. Heck, you can even weep over the drained swamps. But, spare your tears for West Texas... there is NOTHING you could do to that terrain or ecosystem that wouldn't be an improvement over the wasteland that it now is.

You’re making up an argument I didn’t make.

It has happened before. If you drove through west Texas during the early 90s you would have seen places like Pecos, where there were lots of nice houses that were completely abandoned. The whole area is littered with dying small towns from various boom eras.

I don't own a car. I also think climate change is similar to fighting obesity: "you must change your behavior today or something will kill you in x years" Usually people have a wake up call(cardiac event, can't run up stairs without being winded, etc), before they get really serious about weight loss. What would be a similar wake up call for the planet? People don't attribute floods and stuff to climate change, so therefore it's not a wake up call.

I'd wager that most people's wake up call would be weather that's more extreme than climate change will likely produce. I imagine climate change to be worrying when plants don't grow around me and that probably will never happen, some just plants will recede into colder ranges and plants from warmer ranges will come in.

If you live in the right place that is. There are countries worrying about completely disappearing (due to raising sea levels) right now.

One could also argue that it's not just a problem of act, but also method. If you do not fit in the "mainstream" way to act, even if you reach the goal, you're gonna provoke the ire of the "righteous" ones. Health wise, if you lose weight going, say, on a full carnivore diet, you're still gonna have specist and environmentalist on your back.

Environment aside, what's the expected long term impact of lifting oil export restrictions?

I've seen a video which made a lot of sense to me, but what I think is happening is the American government is better there will be an oil glut in the future. Not only have more countries found large supplies of oil, but with electric cars quickly become a huge market and tech adoption being high they are betting this will lower oil demand.

That's not even mentioning that we are only one valid solid-state battery breakthrough from making large vehicles electric too.

The restrictions were intended to make sure America was energy independent. Since that goal was accomplished, there isn't really a reason to keep them.

Increasing American exports hurts countries that depend on energy exports. America can manage both with and without exports, but other countries can not.

The next step in my mind is increasing non-oil American energy and exporting even more oil, this would further destabilize those oil-dependent countries (most of whom are not friends of the US).

Venezuela is one of the first test cases for those consequences. Their system put them down, the US no longer needing/wanting their sour crude will make it far more difficult to get back up. US oil imports from Venezuela were near one million barrels per day as recently as 2012. It's down about 40% from there, and the US now buys around 60% of their total oil output. It has also been hitting Cuba indirectly (as a Venezuela dependent) for some time and now appears to be entering another stage there.[1] By the time Venezuela gets itself back together as a functioning country and could think about rebuilding its output, the world is unlikely to have much demand for its oil. The IEA is expecting their oil production to drop below one million barrels per day soon (from 3.5 million barrels per day in ~1998). Their estimated extractable reserves was always a bit farcical, however even if you chopped that down by 2/3, roughly 100 billion barrels, that still ends up being several trillion dollars in national wealth that will mostly never be realized.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-economy/reality-bite...

You cannot put the collapse of Venezuela on US policies... The US didn't put Chavez / Maduro in power, and they didn't ask them to oppress their own people.

Oil export restrictions could never have helped make us energy independent. They were at best neutral. At worse they were a break on energy development in the U.S. because if you're going to bump up against export restrictions, then you'll have a problem. It turns out that oil export restrictions were just a show.

I thought this would be obvious to people. An oil glut means fewer dollars spent on gas, making an effective tax cut for Americans, and putting that money into the economy in a more productive way.

The opposite actually. Allowing exports gives a market to that glut, keeping prices in the US higher.

Imagine a scenario where the US pumps more oil than we can use - prices would crash (until enough non-profitable production shuts down). Instead we sell the oil, and prices remain higher.

They don't go extra high mind you, it's more of a stabilizing influence, keeping prices inline with global prices instead of being extra low in the US, because obviously on a global scale more oil pumped by the US means lower prices (since there's more oil), and oil production is shut down in other parts of the world.

Give that argument, wouldn't Texas be better off seceding from the rest of the union and not exporting any oil? Practically free energy for all their residents!

Of course that would be foolish, they need to import things in return. Similarly, the US is benefiting from importing goods that are cheaper than they otherwise would be, because it's exporting more oil and lowering the market price.

I don't think you have to secede from the union to not export oil. Just add some really bureaucratic and complicated zoning for any export pipelines or terminal construction, etc.

If there were free energy there people would start energy intensive industry, over time enough demand would go up enough to balance out supply.

That's basically what happens in Iceland with alumunium, or Canada with Hydro-Quebec. You can check out their economies to see real-world examples.

Quebec issue is really a NIMBY syndrome, they have no problem using gas/oil, but they have no problem 1) using Alberta's oil, and 2) getting boatload of (dirty) money from the equalization policy.

You were in so much rush to spill some hate on Quebec that you failed to realize that your comment has no relationship with the point that the parent was making. Oil in Quebec has no relationship to the previous comment, the comment was how some energy-intensive industries develop in economies where energy is dirt cheap. What is dirt cheap in Quebec is electricity (made out of water, hydro-electricity), which created the aluminimum industry and lots of data center.

How is that any relevant on how Quebec doesn't want to have pipelines?

No, because no one would bother to produce oil they could not sell at a profit. There's a lot more to economics and politics than the price of oil anyways.

> The opposite actually. Allowing exports gives a market to that glut, keeping prices in the US higher.

Then why are gasoline prices nearly 9% lower than they were last year this time? [1] That's 9% directly into American's pocketbooks.

The glut I'm speaking of is the one in the world markets.

If US producers have a bigger market, they will produce more oil, which results in, well, more oil.

More oil produced from the US will require less oil produced from elsewhere to balance (in the world markets), or there will be a glut.

1. https://ycharts.com/indicators/gas_price

Crude export restrictions were lifted in 2016.

Lower world oil prices, which in turn should weaken the power of the mostly horrible oil producing states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela. Also Norway.

This should make the world marginally better for human rights and marginally worse for climate change.

Disclaimer: I'm just some programmer who reads the web too much.

In The Dictator's Handbook, by Bruce bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, the authors outline why those who live in an extraction economy often do so under what we term dictatorships. Briefly, the supporters that are needed to maintain that extraction economy are a very small subset of the population and, from a government perspective, are not essential. The supporters you end up needing are the portion of the working class needed to run the extraction operation and a police force to keep the rest of the population in check. (Well, and a treasurer and some other bureaucrats, but the application here is to Texas in the U.S., where those services, and an army to defend your territory, are provided by the federal government.) In banana and oil republics, it's actually beneficial for the ruling class if most of the population is weakened and starving, as they are less able to organize.

Contrast this with a classical democracy, where the support base is the general population, and the treasury is made possible by the increased productivity of an educated populace who have access to infrastructure that supports their economic activity. In that instance, it is, broadly speaking, the health of the populace that feeds the health of the state.

I bring this contrast up at this time for two reasons. First, in the present case of an extraction colony existing inside a U.S. state, we can find a coherent theory of the difference between Republican/Conservative policies, such as states rights, authoritarianism, veneration of the mythology of the (by definition unempowered) individual, and left policies (I leave out Democrats, our centrist party): The former policies are tailored to preserve capital concentrations, favor extractive economic activity, curb controls on pollution, and suppress unions, all with the all-too-easy resort to violence (or it's equivalent, the all-too-common occurrence of looking the other way). The latter policies, from the left, are the opposite, intended to protect the (in fact) powerless and to broaden economic benefit, often through redistribution. Republicanism in this country, allied with business, exists in order to set up and protect banana republics at the state level.

Second, we can point to other trends that are worrying in the U.S. For example, infrastructure decay should be seen as a lagging indicator of the economic vitality of a democratic nation; if the benefit of infrastructure accrues indirectly to the ruling class through the productivity of the working classes, then it (infrastructure) will be maintained. After that benefit has gone away (say after manufacturing, technology, and information jobs have moved overseas) the infrastructure can be allowed to decay, as other economic systems arise to extract what's left. Unfortunately, what's left is the remaining savings of the working classes. Think ad revenue for eyeballs, opaque healthcare markets and lack of medical accountability to generate and capitalize on health calamity, cornered apartment markets to extract rent, isolated extraction economies like Dakota shale and the Permian basin, farmland, and so on. No longer relevant to the productivity of a nation, the citizen becomes, at best, a resource; at worst, a burden.

Anyhow, for the reasons above, I find the presence of these extractive economies inside the U.S. worrying, more so if they are increasing. The dynamics of power, namely wealth extraction in order to pay supporters, do not bode well if it really has come to this.

if the benefit of infrastructure accrues indirectly to the ruling class through the productivity of the working classes, then it (infrastructure) will be maintained. After that benefit has gone away (say after manufacturing, technology, and information jobs have moved overseas) the infrastructure can be allowed to decay

I'm trying to apply this reasoning to a different place (Los Angeles), but it doesn't seem to fit. Trucks, owned by the ruling class (i.e. shareholders of trucking companies) depend directly on those roads to make money. But the infrastructure is decaying anyway.

The US is just returning to its traditional political economy, where the land is pillaged by elite interests, the rabble is dealt with as it can be, and any "freedom" anyone has is totally coincidental and mainly stems from the failure of elites to even pay attention to them because they are making so much more money subjugating and impoverishing rabble elsewhere.

The mid-20th century was a bizarre anomaly brought on by a number of non-repeatable factors, most notably WW2, the arms race, and Jim Crow, where we accidentally had broad-based economic growth that included a (almost totally white portion of the) working class. For centuries before that, the entire economic purpose of America was to be a literal extraction colony.

The infrastructure needed to run the wealth pumps (for example, the pipelines needed to pump crude from the Permian to the Gulf, or the West Coast ports needed to import Chinese-made dollar store tchotchkes) will not decay, but things like public transit, water treatment, and midcentury highway tunnels will probably get worse, at least outside elite enclaves like New York and San Francisco.

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