There’s plenty to ponder in the newly released summary of the Annual Energy Outlook 2011 by the Department of Energy. While all such forecasts are implicitly uncertain, this one helps clarify where to focus efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions; reinforces the importance of resolving questions about how to safely expand, while not stopping, extraction of vast domestic reserves of natural gas; and powerfully challenges proponents of accelerated deployment of today’s menu of renewable energy technologies or nuclear power plants to lay out a credible strategy for supplanting coal.

Here’s the chart of existing and projected shifts in the mix of fuels used to generate electricity — which is pretty reliable given the slow rate of change in large-scale technologies:

In the report, there’s no sign of new coal-burning plants, and every sign of a growing role for natural gas (my guess is it will grow even quicker than forecast here). Wind and solar grow, as well, but remain a very constrained portion of the mix. The nuclear slice shrinks slightly. Here’s the relevant excerpt from the report summary:

Non-hydro renewables and natural gas are the fastest growing fuels used to generate electricity, but coal remains the dominant fuel because of the large amount of existing capacity: Coal remains the dominant energy source for electricity generation because of continued reliance on existing coal-fired plants. E.I.A. is not projecting any new central station coal-fired power plants, however, beyond those already under construction or supported by clean coal incentives.

The generation share from renewable resources increases from 11 percent in 2009 to 14 percent in 2035 in response to Federal tax credits in the near term and State requirements in the long term. Natural gas also plays a growing role due to lower natural gas prices and relatively low capital construction costs that make it more attractive than coal. The share of generation from natural gas increases from 23 percent in 2009 to 25 percent in 2035.

The report says that even with a lack of any policy aimed at curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, United States emissions of carbon dioxide are not expected to top those measured in 2005 until 2027 ( click here for a graph).

This is hardly good news of course. The downturn in the last few years was largely a result of the powerful economic implosion. The long-term rise shows that even with steady reduction in emissions compared to economic growth (that old “intensity” measure preferred by the Bush administration), emissions still rise overall along with the American population and resulting resource consumption.

This part of the report reinforces the reality that no policy aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is meaningful unless it’s relevant in  the world’s population billionaires, China and India, where the lion’s share of growth in fossil fuel burning and emissions is coming.

Natural gas, as some analysts have long predicted, is destined to play a growing role in helping supply reliable energy while allowing a shift toward lower-carbon fuels. The vast deposits in shale identified around the lower 48 states have substantially shifted Energy Information Administration projections of the fuel mix in this country:

At the same time, the sometimes loosely governed rush to liberate this fuel from rock deposits through hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has helped invigorate  opponents of drilling. I agree with Christopher Helman over at Forbes, who wrote a couple of days ago that low gas prices mean there’s  little to lose by holding up drilling in highly contested areas (the Marcellus Shale here in New York being the prime battle zone) while an Environmental Protection Agency scientific review is completed.

I was at the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday and officials there made a convincing case that the hydraulic fracturing study, due out in 2012, will clarify where real risks lie.

But campaigners who fight natural gas altogether, like anyone else immersed in the struggle over an  energy policy that works for the long haul, had better come up with a real-world game plan for fostering human progress while limiting environmental risks.

Otherwise, they’ve moved from the Nimby camp to the world of the Banana (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything).

Original Article

FLINT, Mich. — Our nation is in a high stakes race with China to develop clean energy technologies but we are falling behind. It may be hard to remember now, but we surprised the world years ago by overtaking Russia in the space race, and we can surpass China now if we make some small but important changes in government energy policy.

While our industries, universities and research centers have achieved great technological advances through innovation, some of our energy policies are slowing progress, and we are currently stuck in neutral.

The Obama Administration seems committed to the idea that in order to achieve breakthroughs in the development of technologies for low-carbon energy sources, we must raise the cost of fossil fuels.

Thus, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and large industries beginning in January. The agency maintains that power plants and factories can reduce emissions.

Since coal accounts for more than half of the electricity produced in the United States, and no technology for capturing and storing carbon power-plant emissions is commercially available yet, the EPA would force utilities to shut down many coal plants and use alternative energy sources instead.

EPA’s plan is troublesome. Our nation is finally beginning to emerge from one of the worst economic downturns in many years, and raising the cost of burning coal and other fossil fuels will stall the recovery.

The cost of switching fuels for utility companies will be in the tens of billions of dollars – and it will be passed directly to businesses and households in the form of higher electricity prices. Thousands of U.S. jobs could be in jeopardy.

If the EPA proceeds with carbon regulation and power plants are forced to close, energy costs will climb and companies will have less money available for the very research on clean-energy technologies that we need in order to stay competitive with China and other countries.

The Obama Administration’s policy of picking winners and losers in energy development is really not helpful. It should stop subsidizing renewable sources like solar thermal power, wind energy and biomass that can’t compete in the marketplace. Solar and wind energy can only provide energy intermittently at best, and even with heavy subsidies, they still account for only a small fraction of America’s energy production.

The need for energy technologies that are reliable and affordable is too great to allow ideologues and government bureaucrats to stop the country from doing what needs to be done.

Private industry needs the freedom to innovate and discover new technologies. Over the past five years, oil and natural gas companies have developed safe and efficient techniques to drill through shale. Through a combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, companies can now reach enormous deposits of natural gas in Appalachia, Texas, Louisiana and other regions of the country. And some of the same techniques are now being used to access large deposits of oil in western North Dakota.

This advance in drilling technology has reduced market prices dramatically and made natural gas the new fuel of choice.

Because natural gas produces 60 percent less carbon than coal and no mercury or other particulate emissions, its use as a fuel for electricity production is certain to grow. It’s reliable. It’s clean. And it’s ushering in a low-carbon future at a fraction of the cost of government regulation.

A free market can deliver the energy Americans need. Congress needs to make sure the EPA doesn’t sabotage that process with costly, ideological rules.

Original Article

NEW ORLEANS — The big set of sand barriers erected by Louisiana’s governor to protect the coastline at the height of the Gulf oil spill was criticized by a presidential commission Thursday as a colossal, $200 million waste of BP’s money so far.

Precious little oil ever washed up on the berms, according to the commission — a finding corroborated by a log of oil sightings and other government documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.

Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered the berms built over the objections of scientists and federal agencies — and secured money from BP to do it — out of frustration over what he saw as inaction by the Obama administration.

During the crisis, Jindal boasted that the sand walls were stopping oil from coming ashore, and the idea proved popular in Louisiana.

In its stinging report, however, the commission, appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the spill, called the project “underwhelmingly effective, overwhelmingly expensive.” Still, the panel did concede that the sand might ultimately prove helpful in Louisiana’s long-term effort to restore its badly eroded coastline.

Jindal disputed the commission’s findings on the berms.

“This report is partisan revisionist history at taxpayer expense,” the governor said in a statement. “The report’s assertion that the berms did not pass the commission’s ‘cost benefit analysis’ is insulting to the thousands of people whose way of life depends on the health of our working coast.”

A BP spokeswoman said the company had no comment.

Over the summer, the state received grudging government approval to build 36 miles of berms, and it has erected roughly 14 miles so far. An estimated 19 million cubic yards of sand has been moved to make the barriers, which rise six feet above sea level and are around 300 feet wide at their base.

BP originally committed $360 million to the project. Of that, $195 million has been spent so far.

Garret Graves, who has been helping coordinate the project for the governor, said the state will press on with the project, but will make the sand barriers deeper instead of extending them lengthwise. He said that will allow them to serve a dual purpose: protecting the shoreline from oil and restoring the coast.

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Jindal, a first-term Republican governor and former congressman who has been mentioned as possible presidential hopeful in 2012, has pronounced the sand barriers a “great success.”

“We disagree,” the commission said in its report. “From a long-term coastal restoration perspective, the berms may indeed be a ‘significant step forward,’ as Gov. Jindal has claimed, but they were not successful for oil spill response.”

The government has said that much of the crude that spewed from BP’s well following the April 20 rig explosion was skimmed, burned, collected or dispersed. E-mails, internal reports and a log of oil sightings obtained by AP confirm that very little of the estimated 200 million gallons that gushed from the bottom of the sea has been seen on or recovered from the berms.

In its report, the commission said the National Incident Command — the task force headed for much of the crisis by retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen — was initially skeptical of the plan, but allowed “political considerations” and influence from the White House to affect its posture toward the project.

Rob Young, a coastal scientist at Western Carolina University, said the $360 million could have been better spent on removing oil and restoring damaged lands than on a “back-of-the-napkin kind of project” that so far has amounted to nothing more than drawing a “pencil line of sand.”

But Billy Nungesser, president of oil-soaked Plaquemines Parish, said the berm project was absolutely the right decision at the right time.

“It’s easier to throw rocks now,” he said. “If they let us armor those islands, it will be the start of the coastal restoration that will protect the marshlands that have been so badly damaged.”

Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said the episode will be a “bit of a blow” to Jindal politically, but shouldn’t be too much of a problem if the governor continues to hammer home his argument that the state was taking action when Washington wasn’t.

“Half the people will believe him,” Cross said.

Original Article

PARKER COUNTY, Texas—Holding a lighter to water from his well here, Steven Lipsky watched it catch fire.

The question of how natural gas seeped into Mr. Lipsky’s water has ignited a dispute between federal and state regulators over whether the contamination is related to nearby natural-gas drilling—and what should be done about it.

The regulators’ disagreements underscore the difficulty of gauging the hazards associated with drilling for natural gas in shale, a practice that is growing as companies perfect methods to break tight rock formations to extract the gas inside. These shale reservoirs, which can stretch for hundreds of miles, sometimes sit under heavily populated areas.

Unlike conventional natural-gas reservoirs which can flow freely, freeing gas from shale rock requires pumping large amounts of water and chemicals under heavy pressure.

A natural-gas drilling rig in Parker County, Texas, near an area where federal regulators say two water wells have been contaminated.

Shale gas production has been hailed as a job generator and a way to lessen the U.S.’s dependence on foreign oil. But the practice also has been linked to gas contamination in places such as Shreveport, La., and Dimock, Pa. On Thursday, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., a natural-gas drilling company operating in Dimock, agreed to pay $4.1 million to residents with contaminated water and install water-treatment systems in their homes.

Despite tools that measure the impact of drilling, some geologists say it is difficult to determine exactly what happens underground. So regulators and industry are squabbling over the issue even in places like the Barnett Shale, a massive gas reservoir in northern Texas that has been tapped for the past decade.

The spat in Texas became public last week when the regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency criticized state regulators for failing to protect residents living in an area close to where Range Resources Corp. was drilling for natural gas. The EPA blamed the company for the contamination of Mr. Lipsky’s well water and another resident’s, and said there was an “imminent and substantial risk of explosion or fire.”

Overstepping state regulators, the EPA ordered Range Resources to identify how its gas reached the water well and eliminate the flow. The Fort Worth-based company denies its drilling is responsible.

The panel that regulates the gas industry in Texas, the Railroad Commission, said there was insufficient evidence to support the EPA’s claims. One commissioner accused the federal agency of “grandstanding” and practicing “Washington politics of the worst kind.”

Meanwhile, communities sitting atop the Barnett Shale aren’t getting any definitive answers. “It’s frustrating,” said Mark Riley, the top Parker County executive. “There seems to be more attempts at denying the problem and blaming Washington for interfering than there is to grab ahold of it and solve it.”

On Wednesday, two residents of nearby counties filed federal lawsuits against Chesapeake Energy Corp., Devon Energy Corp. and Encana Corp., alleging drilling polluted their well water.

An Encana spokesman declined to comment until the company has time to review the case.

Devon spokesman Chip Minty said: “While we cannot comment directly on pending litigation, it is important to note the…well was reported and the [plaintiff's] concerns were investigated by the Texas Railroad Commission in 2009. That investigation found no evidence linking the…water well to natural-gas drilling operations.”

Chesapeake couldn’t assess the claims because it hasn’t yet been served by the suit and it has no record of the resident who filed it ever contacting the company to complain about her water quality, a company spokesman said. He added that Chesapeake has an “outstanding record” of protecting the region’s ground water.

In Parker County, west of Fort Worth and home to some 1,000 natural-gas wells, Mr. Lipsky’s said his well started fizzing this summer. He called the Railroad Commission and the EPA for help.

The EPA has become a more aggressive enforcer under President Barack Obama, and had already been scrutinizing Texas regulators.

Earlier this year, the agency tossed out much of the state’s process for granting air permits to refiners and manufacturers, alleging it failed to meet federal clean-air standards. More recently the EPA chided the state for letting sewage treatment plants operate under expired permits that it feared could be allowing companies to pollute the state’s lakes and streams.

The EPA says a detailed analysis found the natural gas in Mr. Lipsky’s well is virtually the same as what Range Resources is extracting nearby, and that the contamination only appeared after the company started drilling in the area in August 2009.

The Railroad Commission, which directed Range to conduct similar tests, said it couldn’t yet determine the source of the pollution. It also said there was “no known or demonstrated human health effects associated with drinking or bathing” with water with methane, which is a highly explosive component in natural gas. The EPA doesn’t dispute the Railroad Commission’s position on the health issue.

Range said it tested its well and found no leaks. It questions the accuracy of the EPA’s analysis and attributes the gas in Mr. Lipsky’s well to natural migration underground. As evidence, the company points to a water well drilled just months after Mr. Lipsky’s well in 2005—years before Range Resources began drilling in the area—which contained significant quantities of natural gas.

Mr. Lipsky, for his part, said one thing was clear about his well: “It’s no longer a water well. It’s a gas well.”

Original Article

Chevron on Thursday gave another multibillion-dollar vote of confidence to the future of oil and gas activity in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico.

Despite lingering regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. offshore region created by the BP oil spill, the nation’s second-largest oil company after Exxon Mobil said it will spend $4 billion over the next several years to develop its Big Foot field, 225 miles south of New Orleans.

The move comes less than two months after the San Ramon-based oil giant approved a $7.5 billion project to develop its Jack and St. Malo fields in the deep-water Gulf, one of the biggest investments ever in the region. And it’s the latest sign of the area’s strategic importance to Western oil companies as the global hunt for oil becomes more difficult.

“The fact that one operator has approved this amount of capital expenditure really shows in a tangible way the value of the deep-water Gulf of Mexico,” said Matt Pickard, a senior market analyst with Quest Offshore Resources in Sugar Land.

At Big Foot, Chevron plans to build a tension-leg platform capable of producing 5,000 barrels of oil and 25 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. However, because of the massive scale of the project, production is not expected to begin until 2014.

The long development timeline is typical of complex deep-water projects, which often take a decade or more from the time of discovery to yield their first drops of oil. Chevron,

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for instance, announced its Big Foot discovery in 2006.

Located in 5,200 feet of water in an area known as Walker Ridge, the field is estimated to hold total recoverable resources in excess of 200 million oil-equivalent barrels, the company said.

Chevron holds a 60 percent stake in Big Foot and is the operator, while Norway’s Statoil has a 27.5 percent stake and Japan’s Marubeni has 12.5 percent.

With crude prices hovering near $90 a barrel, oil companies have plenty of incentive to pursue such large-ticket projects. But many have been cautious about new investments in the Gulf in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon accident in April.

Original Article

Group says workers in tourism ignored

BATON ROUGE — With chants of “write the check,” more than 250 people gathered at the state Capitol on Thursday to complain that oil spill claims coordinator Kenneth Feinberg is not doing enough to process requests by the poorest claimants.

Led by ministers affiliated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the group said hotel maids, restaurant workers and others at the bottom end of the economic ladder often see their claims denied or ignored with no explanation.

“We must have inclusion. We must have our rights,” said the Rev. Art Rocker, a special assistant to the chairman of the SCLC.

The group came to voice its collective frustrations to Gov. Bobby Jindal, but the governor was in Texas on a fundraising trip. His chief of staff, Timmy Teepell, addressed the group.

Teepell read a statement from Jindal that said his administration “continues to have concerns about the fairness, timeliness and accuracy” of the claims process.

Jay Patel, who described himself as a spokesman for the hotel industry, said only 10 percent of the roughly 700 Indian-American hotel and motel owners who filed spill-related claims have been paid.

Original Article

On Wednesday, several of the country’s leading energy experts gathered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC for the Energy Innovation 2010 conference. Their purpose? Reframing the national energy discussion in the aftermath of cap and trade and beginning the transition to a new federal clean energy strategy.

Hosted by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation and Breakthrough Institute, and co-sponsored by a large coalition of think tanks across the political spectrum, the conference drew hundreds of attendants for a day of presentations and panels. Speakers and moderators included ARPA-E Director Dr. Arun Majumdar, DOE Under Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi, Nobel Laureate Burton Richter, Andrew Revkin of New York Times, Bryan Walsh of Time Magazine, and many others.

For forty years, the federal government has failed to implement a strategy for cutting U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. And for over a decade, cap and trade has defined the federal policy vision of the U.S. clean energy and environmental community, only to collapse in summer 2010.

This context framed the central question at Energy Innovation 2010: where does the United States go from here, and what kind of approach can finally forge the consensus we need to build a clean energy economy? And what key lessons can the U.S. take from the role of federal policy in driving previous technological and economic transformations?

Throughout a wide range of discussions — including scientists, business leaders, think tankers, policymakers, and administration officials — the overarching consensus was clear: the U.S. must leverage its innovative capacity to drive down the price of clean energy technologies as rapidly as possible through targeted investment across the innovation pipeline, including institutional reforms to the national innovation system.  Just as importantly, this alternative approach has the potential to garner unique and powerful bipartisan support.

This position builds on a growing national consensus, recently represented by U.S. business titans in the American Energy Innovation Council, as well as President Obama’s chief science and technology advisors.  The conference also marked the release of the Energy Innovation Tracker website, and a new Breakthrough Institute report, “Where Good Technologies Come From.”

“The promise of a clean, secure, and prosperous energy future continues to disappoint because it has been, for four decades, premised on the notion that the technologies necessary to deliver that future are close at hand. They are not,” wrote the hosts Dr. Rob Atkinson, Ted Nordhaus, and Michael Shellenberger.  ”It’s time to change that.  It’s time to drive energy innovation… [federal] commitment needs to be stronger, and more strategically built around particular technology pathways and policies focused on innovation.”

This perspective was echoed by nearly all the participating energy scientists and policy experts.  According to Dr. Nate Lewis, a leading energy scientist and director of Caltech’s Energy Innovation Hub, the U.S. cannot unleash an energy technology revolution with the current federal R&D budget.   William Bonvillian, director of MIT’s DC office and author of Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution, warned that without a serious energy technology strategy, the U.S. could miss the next great wave of global innovation.  Armond Cohen, Executive Director of the Clean Air Task Force, said the U.S. has seemingly forgotten the critical federal role in technology innovation and needs a new political movement on this front.  Indeed, as Jesse Jenkins and Dr. Daniel Sarewitz presented, U.S. technological leadership has historically depended in large part on public investment.

A similar consensus emerged that the next federal clean energy agenda must break out of the highly polarized climate change debate in order to succeed.  Nobel Laureate Burton Richter argued that advocates have excluded potential allies by focusing so exclusively on climate change as the primary reason for action.  He stressed the importance of the recent “Post-Partisan Power” report from scholars at Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, and Breakthrough Institute for its ideas and bipartisan potential. Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. and Steven Hayward, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said that an energy innovation strategy could be justified even without belief in climate change, given the other public benefits.

Energy Innovation 2010 essentially represented the first major national conference focused on discussing a serious federal alternative to cap and trade. As some panelists emphasized, this is the beginning of a long-term discussion and consensus-building effort that will take years to accomplish.

The near-term political challenges for any serious federal energy agenda are considerable. This reality was especially clear in the final panel, “A New Centrism: Making Clean Innovation Policy Bipartisan,” including leading Senate energy staffers and think tankers from the center, left, and right. Despite the benefits of federal energy innovation investment, the current appetite for new spending of any kind makes it highly unlikely in the upcoming Congress.

The measure of success in the near-term, then, should not be whether this type of approach can immediately advance, although advancing specific incremental pieces is an urgent cause.  After all, it took 10 to 15 years for cap and trade to get a real hearing in Congress.  Rather, the measure of near-term success should be whether this approach can continue building consensus among advocates, thought leaders, and committed policymakers, with an eye toward medium and long-term implementation.

Overall, the conference was a display of new optimism and direction for the U.S. clean energy movement.  Transforming the U.S. and global energy industry is a daunting task, and the road to establishing a new national energy consensus will be long.  In many ways this is only the beginning of a different energy and climate dialogue, and much work is left to be done.  But a new framework has finally emerged into the center of discussion after years of effort, and with enough committed thinking and leadership, the United States might just achieve the energy revolution we need.

Original Article

Slowly but surely, the energy landscape in America and around the globe is changing. Crude is still king, but oil and gas companies are increasingly folding in more and different assets.

Shell (RDSA), for example, has purchased and developed tons of natural gas assets, even though the commodity sells for cheap in the current market. To get some insight into Big Oil’s strategy for the future of energy, Fortune spoke with President of Shell Oil Company, Marvin Odum. Odum filled us in on the long-term natural gas outlook, drilling in the Gulf after BP (BP) muddied the industry’s reputation and why Shell feels like oil sands are cleaner than you think.

Fortune: Energy as we know it is changing, how will Shell adapt?

Odum: One of the interesting things about our portfolio is that Shell, by 2012, will actually produce more gas than it does oil. And that’s done with intent. We see increased demand for gas. Economies around the world are growing, and we see gas as being a big part of the solution with a lower environmental impact.

But isn’t it a problem that natural gas is so cheap?

There is a degree of drilling in the system right now that’s oriented towards maintaining acreage for longer-term development–so there’s additional production that doesn’t look economically rational. A rational market would hold off from drilling some of those wells, but instead you get this aberration of drilling to hold acreage for a longer-term position. But I do think we’ll see that play out certainly over the next two years, if not the next 18 months.

How?

Put yourself on the consumer side of this: if you have a choice between building a coal-fired power plant or natural gas-fired power plant, part of what you’re going to want to know is what’s going to happen to natural gas in the future. With all of the resources that have been identified now across North America, consumers have confidence that not only will the supply be there, but also there will be a dampened volatility of natural gas price. And that’s helping natural gas.

So the cheap price of natural gas now could help the industry long term?

It’s not just the current low prices, it’s actually being able to look at the magnitude of these resources and imagining their development over time.

What about exporting liquefied natural gas?

When it comes to the skills and the technology around liquefied natural gas, we’re well-placed if not the best placed company in terms of bringing the solution to that equation. As this market continues to develop, if the right thing is for this resource to leave the continent, we’re in a good place to do that.

And you’re actually working on turning liquids into gas, right?

Gas to liquids a step further beyond an LNG project. We’re moving into Qatar, which will be by far the worlds’ largest gas to liquids facility with some proprietary technology. Qatar has the largest gas provinces in the world, and the ability to take part of that stream, which will have a different market than natural gas, was a natural step for us.

Any interest in drilling in deepwater?

Deepwater continues to be an important area for us. We’ve made a number of significant discoveries, and are anxious to get back to the Gulf of Mexico.

Has the BP spill affected your goal of getting back to the Gulf?

Absolutely. I’ll start with the obvious statement, which is that most people lost faith in the industry as a results of that event. The trust that was there had been built up over many decades, but it’s something that we have to rebuild. I personally have spent a lot of time over this last year to basically be present to answer questions and work directly with the oil spill commission and the regulator. It did a lot of damage to the industry.

You’re in charge of prioritizing Shell’s exploration assets–how do you choose which ones to develop?

You have to be looking forward in what most people would think of as the distant future to think about how the energy mix for the world is going to be changing over decades. There are near term, mid-term, and long term aspects of that. You have to be able to think across a number of different time scales that really matter for this business.

You’ve added oil sands to Shell’s portfolio too. That’s a controversial play right now.

I think the thing about the oil sands that needs more public conversation is that it carries the heavy burden of being detrimental from an environmental perspective. The bottom line is that from an emissions standpoint, these resources are about 5-15 percent more CO2 intensive than the equivalent amount of crude.

So we–Shell and our partners–are now pursuing a carbon capture and storage project with government leaders in Canada. My point is, yes, it’s a higher energy intensive research to develop, but we’re in parallel working on the elements to reduce emissions and increase efficiency.

We see the criticality of the resource and say that this is an important place to be. We also recognize that further development of the oil sands will come with further development of environmental technology. I clearly don’t like it when it appears that things we do don’t hang together well. But that just requires the opportunity to have the full conversation.

Original Article