⛽⛴️ 🏭 🚨 MORE THAN 70'000KM OF NEW GAS PIPELINE UNDER CONSTRUCTION GLOBALLY
In excess of 70'000km (43'495mi) of new gas pipeline is being constructed globally at a cost of approximately $194 billion, according to data published by Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a San Francisco-based company in the United States.
The data published points out that 83% of new gas pipeline being built in Asia at a cost of $117.2 billion, with India and China leading the way in new pipeline construction.
New pipeline construction increased by 18% in 2023, with 57'000km being built in Asia, 5'600km under construction in Europe, 4'700km in the Americas, and another 1'800km in Africa.
The top ten builders of new pipelines include China, India, Iran, Russia, Pakistan, the United States, Nigeria, Italy, Argentina and Canada.
In Asia, China is in the process of constructing 30'300km of new gas pipeline in 150 total projects. Russia, meanwhile, is building another 2'900km of pipeline for approximately $8.2 billion.
In Iran, 5'000km of new gas pipeline is under construction for a total cost of roughly $18 billion, while Pakistan is currently building 1'800km of pipeline for an estimated cost of $3.7 billion.
Across the globe, the total length of proposed gas pipelines and pipelines currently in the project phase totals approximately 159'000km.
"There can be no doubt that citizens across the world are saying to their leaders, you have to act and, above all, have to act faster," a U.
A large majority of the global population, including people who live in oil, gas, and coal producing countries, supports a fast transition to clean energy and a phaseout of fossil fuels, a poll released Thursday showed.
Across 77 countries, 72% of those surveyed supported a quick fossil fuel phaseout, while an even higher percentage, 80%, supported stronger climate action in general, according to the poll, called Peoples' Climate Vote and conducted for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with the University of Oxford and GeoPoll.
"There can be no doubt that citizens across the world are saying to their leaders, you have to act and, above all, have to act faster," UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner toldThe Guardian. "This is an issue that almost everyone, everywhere, can agree on."
Even as Hurricane Florence makes its terrifying debut, news arrived this week that the Trump administration is seeking to ease drilling-industry restrictions and allow even more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. Our view. Other views.
Center for Biological Diversity: Massive Fossil Fuel Expansion on Pace With Trump Administration
Federal data show the Biden administration approved 9,779 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first three years, nearly keeping pace with the Trump administration’s 9,982 drilling-permit approvals in its first three years.
The Biden administration’s policy of oil and gas expansion contradicts the clear climate science that fossil fuel growth must be stopped and governments must phase out fossil fuels to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. In December the United States and other countries agreed to a phasedown and ultimate phaseout of fossil fuel extraction.
“Given the urgency of the climate crisis and our nation’s pledge to phase out oil and gas extraction, the Biden administration needs to pump the brakes right now on issuing drilling permits on our public lands,” said Jeremy Nichols of the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s time for the administration to show the world what true climate leadership looks like.”
The pace of new oil- and gas-drilling approvals stands in contrast to the administration’s action last week to temporarily pause new gas-export projects. While met with support, the pause is not permanent and does not stem new fossil fuel production.
“The temporary pause on new gas-exports projects is a good step, but for it to be meaningful, the Biden administration needs to make it permanent and stop rubberstamping more fossil fuel production,” said Nichols.
More than 6,000 of the drilling permits granted by the administration are on public lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s New Mexico office, followed by 1,793 permits in Wyoming and several hundred each in Utah, Colorado, California and North Dakota.
Scientific analyses show climate pollution from the world’s already producing fossil fuel developments, if fully developed, will push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius. Avoiding such warming requires ending new investment in fossil fuel projects and phasing out production to keep as much as 40% of already developed fields in the ground.
The Biden administration has not enacted any policies to significantly limit drilling permits or manage a decline of production to avoid 1.5 degrees of warming. It supported Sen. Joe Manchin’s demands to add provisions to the Inflation Reduction Act that will lock in fossil fuel leasing for the next decade.
The administration has also ignored petitions from hundreds of climate, conservation, Indigenous and environmental justice groups calling for a phaseout of federal oil and gas production.
"This is a huge victory for the protection of our public lands," said Friends of the Earth.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will have to reevaluate the wildlife and public health impacts of a major 2022 oil and gas lease sale in Wyoming after a federal judge ruled Friday that the agency had overlooked "what is widely regarded as the most pressing environmental threat facing the world today" when it moved forward with leasing 120,000 of federal land.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled in Washington, D.C. that the BLM did not halt the lease sale even after it acknowledged that oil and gas drilling on the federal lands could result in the same negative environmental and social impacts as the addition of hundreds of thousands of cars to U.S. roads each year.
Moving forward with one of the Biden administration's largest lease sales despite its likely environmental harm, said Cooper, was illegal under the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws.
Representing The Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth (FOE), environmental legal group Earthjustice sued BLM over its leasing plans' potential impact on the greater sage grouse, an endangered bird species, and other wildlife, as well as groundwater impacts.
The judge found BLM did not complete a sufficiently detailed review of drilling impacts on the greater sage grouse, and relied too heavily on outdated and overly broad analyses of oil and gas drilling in Wyoming.
Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania float punitive control of local governments favouring fossil fuel.
Republican lawmakers want to punish municipalities attempting to protect local residents and public safety, and impede their compensation for environmental destruction by gas drillers.
Saturday, October 12, 2024 Sen. Bartolotta, Sen. Yaw Announce Bill To Withhold Gas Drilling Impact Fees To Municipalities That Set More Protective Standards On Natural Gas Development Than State Law, And While There Is a Legal Challenge To Local Restrictions History Of Preventing Local Regulation Of Oil/Gas The Bartolotta/Yaw announcement forgets to mention Act 13 of 2012 setting up the impact fee also originally included a provision preempting any local regulation of drilling operations. That provision was declared unconstitutional by the PA Supreme Court in a landmark ruling in December 2013 based on the Environmental Rights Amendment in Pennsylvania’s Constitution.
I think it’s interesting how the Republican lawmakers say: “Impact Fee dollars were never intended to go to municipalities that took unreasonable actions to prevent ongoing natural gas development within the municipality.” I absolutely want impact fees that would make almost all natural gas development prohibitively expensive.
My letter to my state rep, state senator, and the governor:
I oppose any attempt to keep Act 13 impact fees compensation from municipalities. It seems obvious that this is an authoritarian attempt to punish localities that are protecting local citizens and the local environment. In fact, I want impact fees so high it makes natural gas development as prohibitively expensive as it actually is in reality. The expense to public health and the environment is already prohibitively expensive, and it’s wrong that industry reaps private profits while the losses and expense are pushed upon the taxpayers and future generations. It’s time to stop subsidizing fossil fuel industry that’s causing public health threats and a threat to human survival itself.
Please feel free to repurpose for your own letters to reps.
I have not forgotten about Dimock. (Ban fracking.)
Susquehanna County environmental activists hope new environmental research center will controversial technology's future use
Victoria Switzer says Coterra Energy, once Cabot Oil & Gas, is fracking again under her home in Dimock, Pennsylvania. She blames Gov. Josh Shapiro for allowing the state's Department of Environmental Protection to lift a moratorium on fracking in 2022.
My letter to reps, including VP Harris and Governor Shapiro.
Ban Fracking. I have not forgotten about Dimock.
People frame things as “conservative vs. liberal” but there’s also “regular people vs. elites” and successful fiction writers know this, bec
Christmas movie propaganda, job creator myths, and “sides” in perpendicular axis Dec 25, 2023
(excerpt, references on substack)
So many politicians promised that the gas fracking boom would be an economic boon to our area, and create tons of jobs for Pennsylvanians, and anything but that happened, and worse did. It turned out to be also largely about real estate speculation which maybe makes sense why there was a bust after the subprime mortgage crisis driven financial crash.
Some people who interviewed for these jobs were asked if they had experience in the fossil fuel industry, and were told that the employer would be going with an out-of-towner who was willing to relocate and already had experience in the industry. So Pennsylvanians were left out in the cold, and we knew that people from other areas were being brought in to take these promised jobs.
To add insult to injury, we then had to hear about all these people who when the boom went to bust, they lost their jobs, and of course would qualify for Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation. The interesting part about it was that Pennsylvania residents with PA UC benefits had mandatory work search requirements and very punitive investigations of determining if people were active enough in “looking for work” - this was the mid 2010s when the economy certainly had not really recovered from the Great Recession in northeastern Pennsylvania. People who came in for gas fracking jobs, made their 6 figure income money, then when they lost their jobs they collected PA UC benefits (probably at the maximum), but since they went back to their own states, we heard that they were NOT subject to work search requirements, while Pennsylvania residents had to jump through hoops and were under scrutiny.
The influx of people from other areas during that time drove up housing prices and apartment rent prices to way above what any locals could ever afford.
And people who own property were incentivized to push out their long-time tenants in order to jack up the rent and take advantage of the transplants who were willing to pay thousands for a room above a garage. This had a knock-on effect to where these rural areas pushed out disabled, elderly, and poor people, and so they came to towns like Scranton to seek subsidized or cheap housing, which then exacerbated the public housing wait lists and drove up rents in the towns. There were stories in the news about disabled people living in campers set up in the yards of their family members.
Then came the stories of people having their well water contaminated and unusable. The companies denied it. And worse, the government went along and sided with the companies and failed to protect citizens, and we all knew it at the time, but it took more than a decade for there to be any formal recognition of that fact.
When the stories out of Dimock were put into a documentary called “Gasland” in 2010, I remember there was some effort to smear it all as made up or at least exaggerated. Meanwhile these people have been living by having tankers of water delivered in order to live in their homes, because their wells were ruined and they have no water systems in that area. A year ago a company was found responsible and now has to pay to construct a new public water system and cover 75 years of water bills for homeowners that were impacted.
Yet now the latest news is that they’re actually going to start drilling in Dimock again!
Woodbourne Forest And Wildlife Preserve in Dimock Township Pennsylvania USA - Taken on October 7, 2017
