The Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) has published a timely "back to school" report concluding that "frackademia" is alive and well at U.S. universities. 

While only focusing on the people and money behind five recent studies, PAI's report sits within a much broader universe of research in its Frackademia Guide. The new report serves as an update of its February 2015 report titled, "Frackademia in Depth," a title poking fun at hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") front group Energy in Depth (which did not react kindly to its report).

As PAI points out in the new report's introduction, the results of many recent science studies (some funded by the industry) have tarnished the reputation the industry spends so much money aiming to keep shiny. These include studies on fracking's climate impacts and health impacts, environmental justice issues associated with fracking, among others.

Given that backdrop, the oil and gas industry has swept in and funded fresh studies whose outcomes were more favorable — aka "frackademia" — on topics ranging from fracking's groundwater impacts, environmental impacts and economics. 

Rick Berman, Tim Considine

Among the most compelling findings in the PAI investigation is that Rick "Dr. Evil" Berman, infamous for creating industry-funded front groups in many policy arenas via his consulting company Berman & Company, has gotten into the frackademia game.

The Berman connection becomes clear when investigating the men behind the curtain of a study published in September 2014 titled, “Economic and Environmental Impacts of Oil and Gas Development Offshore the Delmarva, Carolinas, and Georgia,” which makes the case for offshore drilling in the Atlantic. As PAI explained, it was funded by Interstate Policy Alliance, "a project of the Employment Policies Institute."

What's Employment Policies Institute? A Berman & Company front group.  

"Though Berman and Company does not disclose the identities of its clients, the firm and its network of front groups have recently begun attacking fracking opponents and climate change regulations, suggesting it has been retained by the oil and gas industry," explained PAI.

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Just as important as Berman, in this case, was the author: Timothy Considine. Considine has been embroiled in other frackademia scandals, including a 2010 study eventually retracted and reissued by Penn State University after it was revealed that he didn't disclose its funder, the Marcellus Shale Coalition lobbying organization.

He's actually featured twice in the PAI report. The other recent Considine frackademia example came in the form of a study titled, “The Economics Impacts of the Proposed Natural Gas Severance Tax in Pennsylvania," funded by the American Petroleum Institute. 

That report predicted brutal impacts for Pennsylvania's economy if its legislature adopts a severance tax for those fracking in the state's Marcellus Shale. 

Harvard, Syracuse

Harvard Business School and Syracuse University also feature prominently in PAI's report. The Harvard Business School example, in particular, serves as almost a perfect case study of how frackademia works in action. 

“America’s Unconventional Energy Opportunity,” the title of Harvard's report published jointly with Boston Consulting Group in June 2015, was featured in an opinion article by The New York Times writer David Brooks and in an uncritical article distributed to newspaper wires worldwide by Reuters.  

Like a prominent 2013 Environmental Defense Fund-convened study on the climate change impacts of fracking, the steering committee of the Harvard study was a who's-who of people with industry ties. 

Image Credit: Public Accountability Initiative

As PAI pointed out, co-author "David Gee, a [Boston Consulting Group] managing partner, has worked for the energy industry for more than 30 years, with stints at Baker Hughes, PG&E, and AES Corporation."

Another co-author not mentioned in PAI's report is Michael Porter, a faculty member of the Harvard Business School and formerly of the Monitor Group, a prominent consulting firm that went out of business in November 2012. Monitor Group has been involved in undisclosed pay-for-play before, conducting de facto shadow public relations work for former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.  

Energy in Depth also stars in PAI's report in the form of a Syracuse University study on fracking and groundwater contamination that served as a counter of sorts to earlier Duke University fracking groundwater contamination studies. 

That study was promoted by both EID and Natural Gas Now, the latter often featuring the work of Tom Shepstone, a former EID employee and current industry consultant. As it turns out, the study was covertly funded by Chesapeake Energy, though the co-authors claimed they had “no competing financial interest” in any entities potentially impacted by the study's results. 

Lead author Donald Siegel "had failed to disclose that, in addition to providing the data upon which his conclusions were based, oil and gas driller Chesapeake Energy had also funded the study and paid Siegel directly," wrote PAI.

"Further, one of Siegel’s co-authors, Bert Smith, is a former Chesapeake employee who now works for Enviro Clean, a firm that consults for Chesapeake Energy. While Smith’s employment at Enviro Clean was noted when the study was published, the fact that his employer works for Chesapeake Energy was not."

On at least one instance, PAI pointed out, Siegel actually wrote an article on EID's website.

Tobacco, Climate Denier Playbook

As highlighted many times in the report, journalists often take press releases from universities and write stories about these studies without following the money.

"Since the tobacco industry pioneered the use of compromised scientists to sow doubt about the harmful effects of smoking, corporations have employed a complex of industry-funded academic institutes, public relations outfits, lobbying firms, and independent consultants to provide seemingly independent support for their lines of business," explained PAI.

PAI has done a great public service by naming names and doing the work journalists all too often fail to do to reveal conflicts of interest.  

Photo Credit: Jannis Tobias Werner | Shutterstock

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“Once the oil started to sink, it made things a lot more difficult on our recovery.”

Those were the words of Greg Powell of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during his presentation on March 10th at the National Academy of Sciences conference on the Effects of Diluted Bitumen on the Environment. Powell was one of the people involved in the response and clean up of the Kalamazoo River tar sands dilbit spill in 2010 where an Enbridge pipeline cracked and spilled approximately one million gallons of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.

Powell presented a disturbing account of what happened at Kalamazoo with pictures showing a river with “bank to bank” oil and contamination for almost 40 miles. This damage took over four years and more than a billion dollars to clean up. And Powell explained the main reason was that diluted bitumen isn’t like other oil.

Dilbit is a mixture of two distinct materials. One is the heavy tar-like bitumen that is the result of tar sands mining. The other is the highly flammable natural gas condensate that is mixed into the bitumen to lower the mixture’s viscosity and allow the diluted bitumen to be pumped through a pipeline or transported in a rail tanker car.

Throughout the two-day meeting, multiple presenters explained that the natural gas condensate/diluent starts evaporating as soon as there is a dilbit spill. This produces serious air quality issues due to the high levels of benzene involved. EPA's Powell had a slide on that: 

Additionally, as has been shown with two recent dilbit-by-rail accidents, the natural gas condensate can also easily catch fire and cause explosions.

Once the diluent has fully volatilized or burned off, what is left is bitumen, which is what took years to clean up in Kalamazoo after it sank in the river. 

And in Kalamazoo it wasn’t just that the bitumen sank, but the way it adhered to plants and surfaces and didn’t come off.

“We had to remove all of the vegetation along the stream bank because that oil would not come off,” Powell explained. He later said that they would, “Pressure wash rocks with it directly on the rocks and we couldn’t break that oil loose once it adhered to the rock.”  At one point he stated, “it was like roofing tar.”

In one of Powell’s summary slides he made several observations about the spill noting that the focus of the cleanup “switched to submerged oil about a month after the release” and that the bitumen sank “within 2 weeks of the spill.” 

What made Powell’s description of the behavior of the oil in the Kalamazoo spill particularly noteworthy was that it contradicted claims made in a presentation by the American Petroleum Institute (API) during Day 1 of the meeting. Peter Lidiak of the API said results from a new API-funded study about dilbit will be released in the near future but based on the preliminary findings, dilbit floats and doesn’t sink. 

An interesting part of that study is that it lasted for 13 days. Dilbit doesn’t sink right away. Since it is a mixture of bitumen and volatile diluents like natural gas condensate, it doesn’t sink until the lighter natural gas condensate evaporates, leaving the heavier bitumen behind.

A 2013 study funded by Endbridge — the company that owned the pipeline that spilled dilbit into the Kalamazoo River — also concluded that dilbit didn’t sink. That study also only lasted 13 days. Powell had noted that the bitumen sank, “within two weeks of the spill.”

In much the same manner the API has claimed Bakken Shale oil isn’t different from other oils, citing studies funded by the oil industry, the industry is taking the same approach now with dilbit. Which make senses because the efforts with the Bakken oil have been very successful.

As reported recently by Reuters, the directive to have nothing in the new oil-by-rail regulations to require oil companies to remove the explosive natural gas liquids from Bakken oil prior to shipment, came from the White House. Meanwhile, two more Bakken oil trains have recently crashed and exploded.

Regardless of the industry-funded studies claiming dilbit is not going to sink, it is unlikely anyone who has seen the Kalamazoo River accident will believe them. Greg Powell’s presentation even contained a slide titled, “How To Sink Dilbit In A River” explaining how the bitumen ended up under water. 

The sole public commenter at the NAS meeting was Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska, a grassroots group fighting eminent domain and the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline and working to hold the corporations accountable for spill response and safety.

Kleeb explained to DeSmogBlog that Bold Nebraska has asked that all pipeline companies be required to have proper Material Safety Data Sheets available to local first responders detailing what is moving through the pipelines. The group also asked for the companies to provide proper equipment for first responders in the event of a dilbit spill in rural Nebraska.

Bold Nebraska had little success with either request.

“TransCanada has constantly pushed back on us saying we are alarmist and extremists and that it is not necessary,” Kleeb told DeSmogBlog.

During the conference it was noted that one of the problems with the Kalamazoo spill response was that initially Enbridge provided the wrong MSDS to the first responders.

Kleeb told DeSmogBlog she was pleased with one result from the meeting. “I was very relieved to know that the EPA and the Coast Guard both acknowledge the fact that yes, dilbit or tars sands or oil sands or however you are going to call it, does sink and that it is a problem.”

However, she maintains a healthy skepticism and expressed concern about the current study due to an earlier NAS study about the effects of dilbit on pipelines that was so popular with the industry it is touted on the Enbridge website.

“I fear the NAS study could just be a repeat of the first one,” said Kleeb.

While recent rail accidents with dilbit have resulted in reported spills of one million liters of dilbit as well as ruptured tanker cars ending up in a river, the conversation about dilbit in the environment at the meeting was dominated by the Kalamazoo event.

At one point, the EPA’s Powell was describing the spill response as it played out, and he recounted how someone called him to explain what seemed like good news.

“Get up here at 12 miles down the river, the oil disappears.” 

We now know that it didn’t disappear and Powell explained what really happened. “Well it didn’t disappear, it just took on a new form once the condensate volatilized off,” he said.

The natural gas condensate volatilized off and the bitumen sank — which it does in the real world — but apparently does not in American Petroleum Institute and Enbridge-funded studies.

At the end of the two-day meeting, Commander Joseph Loring was asked what he would want to know first and foremost as a first responder to a dilbit spill. In his response, Loring referred to a dilbit spill as a “ticking time bomb” and summed up the one most important piece of information he would want to have.

“How long is it going to float?” Loring said. “That is the ultimate, I want to know how long I have.”  

Image credit: U.S. EPA

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Thanks to Alberta's tar sands, coal-powered energy production just got cheaper, and dirtier.

That is largely due to an often overlooked byproduct of bitumen upgrading: petroleum coke. The byproduct, commonly referred to as petcoke, is derived from the excess heavy hydrocarbons necessarily processed out of bitumen in the production of lighter liquid fuels like gasoline and diesel. The leftover condensed byproduct, petcoke, bears a striking resemblance to coal, and is being integrated into coal power plants across the US and internationally, contributing a tremendous amount of carbon emissions to the tar sands price tag that has been previously unaccounted for.

That is, until the research group Oil Change International released a research report that calculates the use of petcoke in American energy generation increases the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline's emissions by a staggering 13 percent. 

The report, Petroleum Coke: The Coal Hiding in the Tar Sands, suggests that while groups like the European Commission use specific inputs to determine a 'well-to-wheels' analysis of tar sands emissions – which figures the unconventional fuel emits emissions 23 percent greater than conventional crude – such calculations do not account for petcoke and so only tell a portion of the story.

"Petcoke," states the Oil Change website, "has even higher carbon emissions than already carbon-intensive coal, emitting between 5 to 10 percent more CO2 than coal per unit of energy produced. A ton of petcoke yields on average 53.6 percent more CO2 than a ton of coal."

What is worse, as a byproduct petcoke is sold at a "to move" price, pushing the dirty fuel source into the market at a 25 percent discount to coal. Because petcoke undercuts the price of coal so significantly, the coal industry has begun to incorporate petcoke into its power generation.

"At the end of 2011 nearly 80 million tons (72.3 million metric tons of petcoke was stockpiled in Alberta. The stockpile is growing at the rate of about 4 million tons (4.4 million metric tons) a year." Image located on page 20 of the report.

"Indeed industry analysts have shown that a typical 1 gigawatt coal plant can save around $120 million per year in fuel costs by blending petcoke with coal in their boilers. That sounds to us like a boon for coal-fired generators and a bad deal for cleaner fuels competing with coal in a tight market."

The Petcoke Craze

The report's introductory blog post by Lorne Stockman highlights some significant statistics on the relationship between tar sands production and petcoke. 

• There is 24 percent more CO2 embedded in a barrel of tar sands bitumen than in a barrel of light oil.

• 15 to 30 percent of a barrel of tar sands bitumen can end up as petcoke depending on the upgrading and refining process used.

• Of 134 operating U.S. refineries in 2012, 59 are equipped to produce petcoke.

• U.S. refineries produced over 61.5 million tons of petcoke in 2011 – enough to fuel 50 average U.S. coal plants each year.

• In 2011, over 60 percent of U.S petcoke production was exported.

"Petcoke in the tar sands is turning American refineries into coal factories."

"Keystone XL refineries are among the biggest petcoke factories in the world," is the caption to this image, figure 3, found on page 17 of the report.

The Keystone XL refineries have a petcoke production capacity of 50,375 tons per day. 

Because of this, the "Keystone XL will fuel five coal plants and thus emit 13 percent more CO2 that the U.S. State Departmet has previously considered." The five coal plants would produce "16.6 million metric tons of CO2 each year."

 The "PetKoch" Connection

Oxbow Corporation, owned by lesser-known Koch brother William Koch (sibling of oil and gas magnates Charles and David Koch), is the largest petcoke trader in the world. The corporation is one of the largest donors to Republican Super PACs, with political contributions tallying at $4.25 million. 

The company also spent $1.3 million on lobbyists in 2012 alone.

Oxbow ships "11 million tons of petcoke annually around the world primarily from the Gulf Coast to Asian, Latin American and European markets."

The report states that "Oxbow's biggest facility and primary laboratory and testing facility are located in Port Arthur, Texas, where the Keystone XL pipeline would terminate and where some of the biggest petcoke producing refineries in the world are located."

Industry's Downplay

Last week, TransCanada, the company currently building the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, announced the pipeline's construction was proceeding smoothly and without delay. This despite a prominent and ongoing protest along the route, with future sit-ins scheduled for Washington DC. 

"We factor things like that into our planning," Shawn Howard, a spokesman for the company told Reuters. "We've got a pipeline route that's hundreds of miles long so if there are activities that take place on one property, our crews still have plenty of work to do."

According to The Washington Post, the oil industry was quick to dismiss the findings of Oil Change International's report. 

TransCanada said the report contained "nothing new" and was merely "the latest attempt by professional activists who opposed Keystone XL to change the discussion." 

A statement issued by the company read, “Let’s be frank: this is not about the Keystone XL Pipeline, diluted bitumen, emissions or a substance that is in a particular blend of oil. It’s about a group that wants to end the use of fossil fuels entirely.”

Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, one of the most power oil and gas lobby groups in the U.S., had this to say: “It once again boils down to a political decision by the White House: will they follow what’s in the best interest of the country, or will they follow other political pressures?”

“It clearly is in the national interest, and that’s the only decision the president needs to make,” Gerard told The Washington Post, adding he saw carbon emissions as one of the “tangential issues to the conversation.”

The Keystone Conundrum

The Keystone XL pipeline will introduce a consistent stream of tar sands bitumen into the United States. The bitumen boom is creating a petcoke boom that is "an insidious aspect of tar sands production that is, until now, undocumented."

The report adds, "to date, petcoke has been hidden in most discussions about the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) intensity of the tar sands." That, crucially, includes discussions surrounding the Keystone XL.

If the pipeline is approved, "around 15,000 tons of petcoke per day will be produced from the bitumen in the dilbit it will deliver…That is over 50,000 tons of CO2 every day or over 18.3 million tons (16.6 metric tons) of CO2 a year."

The reality of the rise of petcoke means that the tar sands are significantly worse for the environment than previously thought. And the growing dependence on petcoke-generated energy will only increase that carbon-burden for the forseeable future.

At the very least, these are not numbers we can afford to ignore any longer.

"With more than 300 billion barrels of recoverable tar sands bitumen still in the ground in Alberta and hundreds of billions of barrels of extra-heavy and heavy oils in reserves around the world, it is time we understood the full impact of exploiting these low quality, high impact hydrocarbons."

The report traces the rise of petcoke energy and emissions through investments that have "transformed North America into the petcoke production center of the world." Pg 18.

The Consumption Quandary

Petcoke use, in comparison to coal-generated energy production, is small at this stage, although the overall effect of discounted petcoke in the energy market is unknown at this point. 

A number of negative consequences of increased petcoke consumption are likely, however, such as the lengthened life-span of coal-fired power power plants enabled by a steady stream of cheap petcoke. This in turn will assist in the continued suppression of large-scale investments in cleaner sources of energy in the U.S. and internationally. 

While an in-depth consequential life-cycle analysis of tar sands production may enable us to make more precise estimations of the greenhouse gas impact of opening up this vast resource, it seems clear the impact is subject to the basic laws of economics. More supply lowers prices, increases demand and competes with cleaner alternatives that are fighting to achieve the economics of scale. 

 

in addition, we must not forget that even if petcoke did replace coal consumption one-to-one and did not represent an increase in coal demand, which seems unlikely, its emissions are five to ten percent higher on a unit of energy basis. Petcoke is making coal-fired power generation more carbon intensive and cheaper at exactly the time that we urgently need low carbon solutions to energy production. 

The report concludes:

considering tar sands emissions in their entirety must surely lead to the conclusion that we cannot possibly exploit all the recoverable tar sands bitumen. this in turn should highlight the urgent need for society to grapple with one of the most crucial and challenging questions of our time: Which fossil fuels should we leave in the ground and how do we manage the process? 

Be sure to take a look through the entire report, which is thorough, informative and full of interesting visuals, graphs and images that bring this formerly obscure subject to light.

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