Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics: he stood up to the oil industry; The Biden administration suspended new permits for natural gas terminals. Can we see more of this kind of backbone?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/07/joe-biden-big-oil-lng-permitsOpen linkView original on slrpnk.net716
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A great start! We're going to need to see way more of this to reverse the massive increase of natural gas production since Feb 2021 (2.6 trillion cubic ft / month then vs 3.5 trillion now, a 34% increase in less than 3 years and an all-time high for the US)
Yes, but a lot of it goes to the EU and they lost Russias supply. Similar story with oil. There are massive OPEC+ cuts and the US fills the void.
Get over yourself, we'll have global war followed by a thousand years of anarchy before this fucking travesty is over.
Anarchy would be an improvement over this shitscape.
No wonder they all fucking hate him.
But I guess "both sides" are the same and represent the "status quo", right?
Yeah let's all continue to pretend that being better than the Republicans is good enough that is how we will see meaningful change
I don't expect the work of getting off fossil fuels to be completed in the term of any one President; it's a multi-decade project. He's been doing a lot more than 'better than the Republicans' though.
JOE! JOE! JOE!
How do you like me? How do you like me? ~~
Mo'! Mo'! Mo'!
I think I gonna bomb a town, get down!
Joe Bi the Science Guy
Hopefully the trend continues after re-election and this isn’t just a stunt to secure votes.
It's been going on for quite a while.
His administration has overseen the highest domestic oil production of all time, and they've bragged about that... So it is a bit sus
at least until after the election
Yes, yes, we know... All politicians are corrupt and bad, both sides are the same, don't vote, everything sucks, nothing matters, etc.
Or you could have just the tiniest bit of hope and diligence to improve the world...
"It's not perfect, therefore it's useless, and because it is, I'm going to vote for the worse alternative. Don't make me explain my reasoning further."
After the election it'll still be record level drilling, just like there is now.
The record will just be higher
You say that like most Americans wouldn't support doing literally anything that would lower gas prices. The problem is trying to make everyone happy.
I mean, most people I know bring up gas prices before they bring up climate change, if at all. I try to remind these people that while the president/Congress can take actions to increase drilling there are many of us in the US that would prefer they didn't.
I usually then make it clear how obviously easy it is for me to say that as someone that works from home and isn't as impacted by gas prices; context is always important.
related: https://lemmy.world/post/15990629
TL;DR: New fossil fuel permits are no longer needed, and they should no longer be warranted.
Edit: Apparently this article is about export permits, while my link is about production permits.
Why do I feel like every time politicians do the right thing, it's the home budgets of regular people who pay for it?
Regular people are paying for it when a hurricane destroys their city. Think of switching to clean energy as an investment, if having a planet to live on doesn't do it for you. edit: typo
Heat pumps don't really work in extreme cold. My office has only electric heat and it runs constantly when it's really cold, never getting up to a comfortable temp. My home stays warm with gas heat and the furnace runs far less.
So in Montreal everything runs off of electric heat and it gets super cold out and it's pretty warm indoors with the heating running on super low. Maybe you guys just don't know how to use electric heating properly.
Your comment made me curious because I know I have read about heat pumps not operating well in cold temperatures. So I looked it up a little, apparently there are cold climate heat pumps and they aren't installed in most places in the US. Where I live, heat pumps work okay a lot of the year, but we do get cold snaps where they just can't keep up. Apparently you actually have a better heat pump it would seem.
Yupp, they work fine in Norway and it gets cold enough here.
Had spells of -30 °C this winter.
You'd be hard pressed finding a any home here heated with gas. Its all electric or wood fired.
Funnily enough, most of our heating is done using baseboard heaters, or resistance heating. Newer constructions have heat pump/air conditioning combos but I don't know exactly how widespread they are, my parents have one and it's definitely more efficient than the baseboard heaters, but not by a huge margin.
I don't know if you know his channel, but Technology Connections did a couple of videos on heat pumps that were pretty eye opening, I imagine as much for Americans who have been hit hard by gas and oil lobbying, as for me as a Canadian who hasn't ever really seen anything other than electric heating.
Yeah older heat pumps can't stand >5°C temps (at least my 20yo one), newer ones seems to be way better even in cold temp.
This is about blocking export terminals. Building them raises domestic prices. So it has a financial benefit for Americans who use gas for heat and has a climate benefit.
That's because it's electrion year lmao
Isn't that the whole purpose of having elections? To make leaders do the right thing.
I mean I also understand the sentiment that the right thing should be done regardless, but if that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes
He's been doing good things in non-election years too.
I am aware, but the reason we're seeing sensationalist articles right now is because it's election year, and the reason certain things were held off until now is because he wanted to look good during an election year
If it is effective I personally don't care what the motive is. Whether it's effective remains to be seen.
The argument may be that once the election is over these sorts of policies will get rolled back again, killing the effectiveness.
Natural gas is produced as a byproduct of gasoline production. He hasn't done shit besides screw us out of access to a cleaner energy source we're already producing.
You can re-inject it into the reservoir instead of burning it and dumping the resulting CO2 into the atmosphere. He's done a good thing here, especially light of the incredible death toll from the by-products of combustion.
these are export terminals.. which are used by the industry to sell the product for more profit than they can get selling it domestically. it also eliminates the ocean-crossing trips made by those pollution-spouting tankers to deliver the product overseas.
This will drive down domestic energy prices as well. So naturally, Fox News cannot cover this
Natural gas is commonly produced by fracking. And also, this is about export terminals.
Natural gas comes out of the ground naturally, and isn't necessarily a by-product of gasoline refinement. I can't speak from experience on the refinery side of things, but I can speak from experience on the upstream production side of things. The natural gas we use for power generation, and heat at the facility I work at essentially comes straight out of the ground with minimal processing. Any excess is put back in the ground. That's specific to where I work. I imagine other places, the gas is separated out like we do and sent to "the market."
Huh, TIL you can put it back in the ground. I was under the impression it had to be burned off.
Yep! There are two types of oil wells, producers and injectors. Producers produce raw production fluids and gas. Those production fluids/gases need to go through a 3-phase separate vessel to separate the oil, water, and gas. The water and gas is sent back into the ground with the injection wells. The reason for this is to maintain the pressure of the reservoir underground, and to dispose of the fluids/gases.
Some amount of gas is flared (burned) off from the separation facility, and also from refineries. The purpose of the flare is for process safety. If there's an overpressure event, or an equipment shutdown, all the gas production from the field needs to go somewhere while the production wells are shutdown. For that time period, any gas is burned off to prevent a catastrophic failure in the facility.
The amount of gas being flared is monitored and regulated, and any flare event is recorded and reported to the appropriate agencies, generally the EPA, and Relevant state agencies.