Oceanic Climate Change & OPEC Efficiency

Often mistaken for pollution, foam found on beaches is the decaying remains of vast colonies of phytoplankton commonly known as foam algae.

Climate stirring change beneath the waves

By Mark Kinver

Environment reporter, BBC News 

Human-induced climate change is triggering changes beneath the waves that could have a long-term effect on marine food webs, a study suggests.
An assessment of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic found the microscopic organisms' pole-ward shift was faster than previously reported.
It observed that the ocean's tiny plant community was "poised for marked shift and shuffle".
The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Marine phytoplankton are crucial in marine food webs and global biogeochemical cycles and they are incredibly diverse but we don't really have a sense of what all the different organisms do when you modify climate, or even through natural climate variability," explained co-author Andrew Barton, a researcher at Princeton University, working at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
He told BBC News: "This study attempted to get a handle on how all these different kinds of organisms may respond to anthropogenic climate change over the coming century."

Climate change takes from the poor, gives to the rich, study finds

February 24, 2016 via phys.org

Fish and other important resources are moving toward the Earth's poles as the climate warms, and wealth is moving with them, according to a new paper by scientists at Rutgers, Princeton, Yale, and Arizona State universities. 

Climate change is forcing some species of migrating fish to shift their range toward the poles, which means big changes for people whose livelihoods depend on those fish.
"What we find is that natural resources like fish are being pushed around by climate change, and that changes who gets access to them," said Malin Pinsky, professor of ecology & evolution in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.
The stronger and more conservation-oriented the natural resource management in a community, the higher the value that community places on its natural resources, whether those resources are increasing or diminishing, Pinsky reports. If wealthier communities and countries are more likely to have strong resource management, then these wealthy groups are more likely to benefit, thus exacerbating inequality.
Pinsky and his co-authors have published their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Suggests Canada, Others Will Have To 'Get Out' Of Oil

via Huffington Post Canada , video at link

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister has a solution for the global oil glut: Instead of cutting oil production, wait for the world’s most expensive producers to go bust.
Ali Al-Naimi didn’t specifically single out the U.S.’s shale oil fields and Canada’s oilsands as the targets of his comments at an oil industry conference in Houston, Tex., on Tuesday. But as those two are among the most expensive oil plays in the world today, the target of his comments was clear.
“Efficient markets will determine where on the cost curve the marginal barrel resides,” Al-Naimi said, as quoted at Forbes. He added later: “Inefficient producers will have to get out.”
Al-Naimi rejected the idea of an OPEC production cut, saying they won't work to boost oil prices. Cutting production would mean low-cost producers like Saudi Arabia would be subsidizing higher-cost ones.
Low-cost producers cutting their own production “only delays an inevitable reckoning," he said.

Stop the Dangerous Oil Trains. Protect Our Communities and Climate

The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s May 2015 TV program examines the escalating epidemic of oil trains that have been exploding across the U.S. and Canada. Besides explaining why this is happening, we also explain what people can do about it.

Explosive oil trains roll through our local communities in Washington State – Spokane, the Columbia River Gorge, Vancouver, Longview, Chehalis, Centralia, Grays Harbor, Everett, Skagit County, and Bellingham. In fact, all five of us in this TV interview – and all of the volunteers serving on our TV crew – live in communities that are endangered by these explosive oil trains.

At a few points during this TV program we show video footage that Robert Whitlock recorded of an oil train SE of Olympia, and another one crossing the Nisqually River near the border between Thurston County and Pierce County.

All four of our TV guests have been working on the problems – and also the solutions – for several years. They are well informed and very active in several different organizations, especially:

• Matt Krogh works with ForestEthics
• Abby Brockway works with Earth Ministry and the Faith Action Network
• Carlo Voli co-founded and works with 350 Seattle and Rising Tide Seattle
• Rod Tharp is an active member of the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s “Confronting the Climate Crisis” group and is a lead organizer in the “People’s Climate Action Fleet.”

Oil glut continues as prices down; Bakken should be stabilized for safety

(Chart: Business Insider, Data: Baker Hughes)

Oil prices crashed, but US output is still rising. How long can that last?

Brad Plumer      March 27, 2015     Vox

.....When oil prices were soaring during the mid-2000s, energy companies found it highly profitable to use fracking, horizontal drilling, and other techniques to extract oil from shale formations in places like Texas and North Dakota. The result: a glut of oil and a major crash in global oil prices back in 2014.

What's surprising, though, is that US oil output has kept growing even though oil prices have fallen by half since last summer.....

.... Most of the oil wells drilled in the shale regions of North Dakota and Texas tend to produce a lot of crude very early on and then start declining sharply within a few years. (Output from a typical well in the Bakken declines by 65 percent after the first year.)*

So over time, oil producers will need to keep drilling new wells to maintain production. But it's costly to drill a new well, and low oil prices make this a less-attractive proposition at the margins. Companies like EOG Resources and Hess have already announced cuts to capital spending this year.....    more here

Critics press industry to make Bakken oil safer

By Dan Gunderson, MPR.org/100.5 FM      Mar 29, 2015    Duluth News Tribune

MOORHEAD, Minn. — North Dakota environmentalists want oil companies to reduce volatile gasses in Bakken crude. Regulators, however, say they’re taking a different tack that’s cheaper for the industry and still improves safety.

The gasses remain a flashpoint for producers, environmental and safety groups concerned about transporting the highly flammable Bakken crude. Oil train shipments from the Bakken have skyrocketed in recent years, heightening the worries.....

 ....“The bottom line profitability of the oil industry is trumping all the rest of us, our safety,” said Don Morrison with the North Dakota environmental group Dakota Resource Council.

Much of the light crude oil in Texas is stabilized before it’s shipped, he added. “To stabilize the oil so it is safer like they do in Texas, oil companies are going to have to spend some money. That is true. 

But isn’t that the cost of doing business?”....     more here