Next week's OTC conference will have a full session on offshore wind and wave energy. Pictured here: the Fukushima Offshore Wind Farm off the coast of Japan.
Tens of thousands of folks from the offshore drilling industry will gather in Houston starting Monday for the massive, week-long Offshore Technology Conference, aka OTC. Since 1969, the conference has been a hotspot for offshore oil and gas technology. Think of it as SXSW for offshore drilling.
But it’s not all fossil fuels grabbing attention. A full technical program at the conference Thursday will look at ‘Offshore Wind and Wave Energy,’ with a keynote by Greg Matzat, Senior Advisor for Offshore Wind Technologies at U.S. Department of Energy.
“It’s a component of energy resources that are going to be developed offshore, so it’s a natural fit for our program,” says Stephen Graham, executive director of the conference.
It’s not the first time offshore wind and wave energy have been explored at the conference, Graham notes. But there’s new support in Texas for researching offshore wind’s potential, including millions of dollars for research from the state and federal governments.
Another topic on tap next week will feature experts from Japan talking about their work producing natural gas from methane hydrates, which are trapped in ice deep below the ocean floor. There are potentially massive deposits of natural gas that could be produced if harvesting methane hydrates proves viable, including in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Parrs says drilling near their property made them sick. A Dallas jury agreed, awarding them nearly $3 million.
When a Dallas jury awarded a North Texas family $3 million for damages from natural gas drilling near their property last week, the Internet went wild. Opponents of hydraulic fracturing called it a landmark, a game changer, the first “anti-fracking” lawsuit to result in a jury award. In truth, the case involved not just fracking, but all the operations that go along with natural gas production.
It was brought by the the Parr family. They sued a drilling company, Aruba Petroleum, one of several gas companies that were operating near their North Texas ranch. The Parrs claimed they were poisoned by Aruba’s activities.
Their troubles started in late 2008. Lisa Parr had just married Bob and moved with her daughter, Emma, to his ranch in Wise county.
“I started feeling bad,” Lisa Parr recalls. “I blew it off as the flu.”
But as several months went by, she still felt sick.
“I had a rash throughout my body, my lymph node stuck out in my neck like the size of pecans,” she says. “There was four of them on each side.”
Rod Gonzalez lives in the Magnolia Park neighborhood, not too far from some of them. He just moved here three months ago from south Texas, and he said Houston’s air feels different from what he’s used to.
“It’s definitely a different quality of air,” he said. “You know, I do experience a lot of allergy and watery eyes, and sometimes I don’t really know if it’s actually, you know, nature or my allergies or if it’s something that’s triggering it.”
There is no telling if this has to do with the recycling plants in the area but what is known is that tests have found higher than usual levels of hexavalent chromium, also called Chrome VI, in the air around these plants. Chrome VI is a metal air pollutant and has been found to increase the risk of lung cancer in workers exposed to it on a daily basis. Continue Reading →
East Texans opposed to the Marvin Nichols Reservoir testified Wednesday before the Texas Water Development Board.
The Texas Water Development Board will soon decide whether to continue planning for the controversial Marvin Nichols Reservoir or take it out of the state’s water plan.
The decision is just the latest in a battle that pits the thirsty Dallas-Fort Worth metro area against rural residents in East Texas.
On Wednesday, a bus carrying dozens of East Texas land and business owners traveled to Arlington for the last public hearing before the water board makes its decision.
Most have been battling for years to take the 70,000-acre Marvin Nichols Reservoir off the table as a future water supply. Continue Reading →
We recently spoke with the Sierra Club’s Conservation Director Cyrus Reed, who says the group’s worried about the precedent the ruling could set for other citizens or groups hoping to oppose similar licenses. Continue Reading →
A female Alligator Snapping Turtle at the West Midlands Safari Park in Bewdley, Worcestershire. The Alligator Snapping Turtle is one of the largest freshwater turtles in the world, and was recently found to be not one but three distinct species.
A new study places one of Texas’ strangest—and most imposing—reptiles in a very precarious position.
Published in Zootaxa, the study confirms that the alligator snapping turtle, thought to be just a single species, is actually three genetically distinct species. Alligator snapping turtles, dinosaurian creatures that range throughout river systems in the American Southeast, are the largest freshwater turtles in the world, and the findings put Texas’ already at-risk turtles and their neighboring cousins in further danger.
Though the population split between the three species isn’t equal, simply put, there are now fewer turtles of each species to stand up to pressures from illegal harvesting and habitat loss.
Alaska funds its state government largely by taxing oil production. But last year, faced with dwindling production, the legislature narrowly passed tax cuts to lessen the burden on energy companies in hopes of encouraging more drilling and generating more tax revenue.
One Alaska lawmaker said they looked to the Lower 48 for inspiration.
“Because we kept hearing all the booming oil work that is being done in Texas and North Dakota and people said hey, that just goes to show you, Texas has a lower tax rate. And that just goes to show you how increased taxes are causing less exploration and development here in Alaska,” said Alaska State Sen. Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat from Anchorage.
Texas Tech climatologist Katharine Hayhoe was recently selected as one of Time Magazine's '100 Most Influential People.'
Yes, you can believe in both God and climate change. Just ask Katharine Hayhoe, Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech, who is well known for her work on the impacts of climate change. She’s also an evangelical Christian, and has become a vocal proponent for doing more to bridge the divide between faith and science.
After receiving the honor, she spoke with KUT’s David Brown, host of the forthcoming daily news show, Texas Standard. Hayhoe learned of her selection via email. “I actually thought the email was spam at first,” Hayhoe tells Brown.
Take a listen to Hayhoe explain how she thinks accepting and acting on the science of climate change is a responsibility for Christians:
Receding waters have ravaged communities in the Highland Lakes.
It’s almost strange to refer to the Highland Lakes of Central Texas as “lakes.” They’re sitting at just over a third full, and Lake Travis looks more like a river with plenty of bare, scraggly shoreline. The lake system is the crucial water supply for the million-plus people in and around Austin, and they could reach their lowest levels ever this summer.
While the drought is one of the reasons the Highland Lakes are in dire straits, they would be about double their size today if massive amounts of water hadn’t been sent downstream to rice farmers in 2011. It was enough water from the lakes to supply the City of Austin’s share for three years. And the decision to release that water – by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) – is coming under renewed criticism from Republican state Senator Troy Fraser (R-Horsehoe Bay), chairman of the powerful Senate Natural Resources Committee. He’s threatening to try and have the LCRA’s permit revoked.
Fraser says that decision three years ago to release water to rice farmers is just one of several mistakes made by the LCRA during the drought, but it might be the costliest. “Because they mismanaged the lakes, they’ve now caused [for] themselves a financial crisis,” Fraser says. Continue Reading →
“Shade-grown” coffee uses a traditional farming method that uses a natural canopy of forestry. Environmentalists favor this technique because it keeps the landscape relatively intact and supports native species such as migratory birds.
Mike McKim, owner of Cuvee Coffee, a roaster in the Austin area, attributes the quality of his coffee in large part to shade-grown techniques.
“The better [farmers] take care of their land, the better their coffee is, in general,” McKim says.
But beyond the U.S., consumer demand and a drop in global coffee prices is causing a global shift toward growing the cheap stuff, which is used for instant coffee. According to the report, the “proportion of land used to cultivate shade-grown coffee … has fallen by nearly 20 percent globally since 1996.”
While shade-grown coffee production is growing, non-shade-grown coffee is growing at a much faster rate. And in regions such as Africa and Asia, where coffee production on the whole is increasing, farmers are growing a lot of it.
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