E&E News on Fact-Checking Claims about Federal Oil and Gas Leasing, Court Cases and Permit Approvals

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A drilling rig stands out from the sagebrush in 2012 in Converse County north of Douglas. Wyoming’s energy industry continued to limp along in September with price, production and employment indexes trailing far behind last year, a new report published by Wyoming’s Economic Analysis Division shows.
Alan Rogers/AP

I’m always interested in parallels between the forest products industry and the oil and gas industry, which are so different and yet.. so enemized by some (of the same) folks.  Here’s a case where according to some politicians, O&G is bad if they drill (we’ve been hearing about that for years) but now we are told that they are equally bad for …  not drilling, as political winds and international events have shifted.  It doesn’t seem altogether rational.  In my FS career, I found that when people aren’t logical.. there’s usually politics involved.  Of course, I’m sitting here on computer (powered by coal and natural gas), heated by propane, hoping for a snowplow (no electrical ones yet available) to run by.. The transition to low carbon energy will be at least ten years, and also adaptation may well  call for the increased of fossil fuels, say in fire suppression- airplanes, trucks and so on.

Are we planning to demonize the oil and gas industry from now until then? Because that seems like not a good use of our time and emotional energy, let alone the impacts on my neighbors and colleagues producing energy for which I, for one, am grateful.   Perhaps it’s easier to vilify industries if you don’t know the folks involved in producing it. Real people doing real things that we really use every day.  I think you can be for appropriate regulation without the good guy/bad guy rhetoric. I think there’s something else at work here, in this kind of industry-hate, but I don’t know what.

Anyway, I think E&E News had a good article on “fact-checking five claims in the Russian energy debate”.  As far as I can tell it’s open for non-subscribers.  Here’s what the reporters pieced together.  The Admin is apparently approving APD’s but not leasing.  Perhaps one of our legal friends can help us understand the difference between onshore and offshore litigation here.  Based on this story.. onshore leasing litigation led to court-induced stoppage, but the courts also struck down a freeze on offshore leasing.   Does offshore use a different social cost of GHG? Or wasn’t there an offshore lawsuit on that? Somewhat puzzling to observers.

 

When it comes to onshore leasing, a decision last month from a federal judge blocking the administration’s use of the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions has resulted in further delays for Biden’s planned auctions.

While the administration has continued to approve permits to drill new oil wells, it has yet to conduct onshore auctions for new leases, which are normally held four times a year across multiple states (Climatewire, Feb. 22).

But some industry advocates have dismissed the Interior Department’s excuses regarding climate litigation. They recall that candidate Biden ran on a plan to ban oil on federal lands.

And even though the courts have ruled against a leasing moratorium, Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma argued a ban remains “in effect because no leases have been offered for sale. Period.”

Only recently has the president reversed course and urged oil companies to drill after he banned imports from Russia (Greenwire, March 9).

When it comes to offshore leasing, a judge last year struck down the early Biden freeze, and the Gulf’s largest offshore lease sale was held in November.

But conservation groups sued, and a judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the sale. The administration opted not to appeal the decision. The fate of an additional Gulf sale scheduled for later this year is unclear.

Industry advocates lamented the disruption of future oil and gas on those leases, which would have lasted for at least 10 years.

More broadly, industry players expressed concern the administration does not appear on track to release a lease schedule when the current one expires in June.

“Uncertainty around the future of the U.S. federal offshore leasing program may only strengthen the geopolitical influence of higher emitting — and adversarial — nations, such as Russia,” said Erik Milito, president of National Ocean Industries Association.

The U.S. hasn’t had an offshore lease sale since November 2020, but experts said general uncertainties about future plans are likely causing more trepidation.

“I don’t think you can just discount it,” Book said of Biden’s early signaling to industry on drilling. “It’s part of the story and it depends from company to company and project to project. But being told, ‘No more leasing’ is not nothing. It doesn’t mean that it stops production tomorrow, but it may discourage investment for years to come.”

And while the Biden administration approved more oil and gas permits on public lands in his first year than President Trump, in recent months the increase has tapered off (Energywire, March 14).

I could easily see a rush to get your APD approved.. if you think it’s only a matter of time until the Admin figures out a legal way to slow or stop those as well.  And..below is a big issue for those who follow NGO’s like the Center for Western Priorities..

In response to Republican attacks on the leasing ban, Biden and other Democrats note that oil and gas companies already hold thousands of approved permits on federal lands.

“They have 9,000 permits to drill now,” Biden said last week. “They could be drilling right now, yesterday, last week, last year.”

That number is correct, with the Bureau of Land Management reporting 9,173 onshore permits available to drill at the end of last year. But industry sources and observers said there are myriad reasons why a given company might not drill a permit right away — including that it might not have much oil.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki has also suggested reporters should be asking executives why they are sitting on their hands.

“Do you think the oil companies don’t have enough money to drill on the places that have been preapproved?” she asked.

The industry rejects that line of argument as a red herring, and experts generally said the White House is oversimplifying. Drilling programs are dictated by the rise and fall of the price of oil but also the amount of free cash to drill and investor support for that spending.

Companies with footprints in different oil and gas regions are weighing all their drilling opportunities against each other, for the best place to expend capital at any given time.

That said, experts expect drilling to pick up following a post-pandemic lag caused by companies shifting cash back to investors rather than in new projects.

Book also noted that companies are already going through their inventories of “drilled but uncompleted” wells, or DUCs, which have been drilled but not yet fracked.

“It’s not like not using a permit is a business strategy. If they’ve decided not to use a permit, it probably reflects conditions economically and to some degree their expectations for what they think the market future looks like,” Book said. “There’s a little latency built into this, but right about now I’d expect to see some more permits being used.”

Timber sustained-yield requirements for forest plans

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In our recent discussion of the Nantahala-Pisgah forest plan revision, Sharon said, “Jon, that raises a question, how is sustained yield considered in the 2012 Rule and regulations?”  Nicholas Holshauser did a pretty good job at answering there, but I want to provide a little more context because it’s a really good question with a complicated answer. I’ve highlighted terms to keep an eye on to help understand this.

Here are the relevant sections of NFMA:

  • 1604(e)

In developing, maintaining, and revising plans for units of the National Forest System pursuant to this section, the Secretary shall assure that such plans—

(2) determine forest management systems, harvesting levels, and procedures in the light of all of the uses set forth in subsection (c)(1) of this section, the definition of the terms ‘‘multiple use’’ and ‘‘sustained yield’’ as provided in the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960, and the availability of lands and their suitability for resource management.

  • 1611(a)

The Secretary of Agriculture shall limit the sale of timber from each national forest to a quantity equal to or less than a quantity which can be removed from such forest annually in perpetuity on a sustained-yield basis: Provided, That, in order to meet overall multiple-use objectives, the Secretary may establish an allowable sale quantity for any decade which departs from the projected long-term average sale quantity that would otherwise be established…  Provided further, That any such planned departure must be consistent with the multiple-use management objectives of the land management plan. Plans for variations in the allowable sale quantity must be made with public participation as required by section 1604(d) of this title (procedures for plan revisions).

The law does not define sustained yield, and other language used here is not self-explanatory.  That is most likely because it merely codifies the historic practice of the agency in its timber management planning, which was thoroughly understood by everyone at the time.  Wilkinson and Anderson take this view in their contemporaneous examination of NFMA where they state:  “The Forest Service has always placed a ceiling on each national forest’s annual timber sales from the suitable land base to insure a perpetual yield of timber” (p. 122), and, “the NFMA requires the Forest Service to follow NDEF policy (see below), with some exceptions.”   That historical understanding was reflected in the 1982 planning regulations, and is still included in the Forest Service timber management planning handbook (§2409.13, Chapter 30).

Thus, sustained yield was always, and would be under NFMA, determined by identifying the land that would be used for timber production (suitable acres) and the volume per acre that would be yielded over time (including any reductions to accommodate other uses), and projecting the maximum harvest that could be achieved per decade over time without declining between any two decades (perpetually).  Sustained yield thus required non-declining even flow of timber volume (NDEF), which was characterized as the “base sale schedule” for a forest plan.  A declining flow would be referred to as a “departure” from this schedule and from non-declining flow.  Because the parameters determining timber volume (acreage and competing uses) would change for each forest plan alternative, the sustained yield would also be different.

The 2012 Planning Rule states:

  • 219.11(d)(6)

“The quantity of timber that may be sold from the national forest is limited to an amount equal to or less than that which can be removed from such forest annually in perpetuity on a sustained yield basis. This limit may be measured on a decadal basis. The plan may provide for departures from this limit as provided by the NFMA when departure would be consistent with the plan’s desired conditions and objectives. Exceptions for departure from this limit on the quantity sold may be made only after a public review and comment period of at least 90 days. The Chief must include in the Forest Service Directive System procedures for estimating the quantity of timber that can be removed annually in perpetuity on a sustained-yield basis, and exceptions, consistent with 16 U.S.C. 1611.

Planning Handbook now states

  • (§63.41)

 “The Responsible Official shall determine of the sustained yield limit as the amount of timber that could be produced on all lands that may be suitable for timber production, assuming all of these lands were managed to produce timber without considering other multiple uses or fiscal or organizational capability.

This new “sustained-yield limit” is obviously an entirely different beast.  The acreage used includes lands that are not suitable for timber management, and the projected volume does not reflect other multiple-use decisions made in a forest plan (including such NFMA requirements as plant and animal diversity).  The SYL does not vary by alternative, and would obviously be much higher than under existing forest plans.  And since the replacements for ASQ (PTSQ and PWSQ) are supposed to be based on expected resource conflicts and financial constraints, volume targets based on these figures could never exceed that “capacity.”

The sustained yield “limit” is not actually a limit, and does not serve the purpose intended by NFMA of sustainable harvest volumes through its non-declining flow requirement.  In fact, the Rule (despite requiring consistency with NFMA language) refers to “departures from this limit” instead of departures from NDEF.  While the sustained yield “limit” may be non-declining, there is no determination that the actual harvest volume (PTSQ/PWSQ) could be sustained (unlike the former ASQ).  Consequently, harvest levels (over time) have not been determined for the plan based on all multiple uses or based on NDEF, as required by NFMA.  This seems especially problematic on the Nantahala-Pisgah, where they admit they calculated the sustained yield based on lands suitable for timber production that they claim will never be harvested; that’s an inherent contradiction.  Until someone does the correct analysis, it’s hard to say how these changes affect this plan’s timber volume or whether there is a departure from NDEF that they should have disclosed to the public.

While there was some public involvement in developing the Planning Handbook (much less than for the 2012 Planning Rule), this radical break from tradition (and possibly from NFMA), was not made apparent to the public.  It was only acknowledged in comments when the final Handbook was published.  The Administrative Procedure Act requires effective public notice when an agency changes its procedures to this degree.  There are therefore both substantive and procedural questions about this change in how timber management is being addressed in this and other forest plans.

It has always looked to me like this was a search for the “holy grail” of having their trees and logging them, too.  More to the point, a national forest would have a much expanded land base relative to their expected timber volume targets, so they have a much easier job finding where to meet them.

 

 

 

Practice of Science Friday: Who Is Holding the Climate Research Funding Flashlight and How it Affects Our Thinking

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One memorable summer or fall day, probably over ten but less than twenty years ago,  when I worked for the Forest Service, I attended some kind of conference (most likely planning) in Missoula.  Missoula was very smoky from wildfires.  Several colleagues of mine and I sought out a brewpub after the conference, but it was too smoky to sit outside, so I remember us getting a keg and retiring to a colleague’s home.

Now we know.. via many scientific studies, that wildfire smoke is bad for you.   Perhaps we knew it then, but then it just seemed like part of life in wildfire-prone country.  What has changed?  Scientists have studied it extensively and found it to be bad for health.  The same particles were always bad, but now scientific studies exist to tell us that they are bad.  I think of scientific interest as a flashlight.  The world goes on, but the part that gets highlighted as “science” depends on who’s holding the flashlight. This is much discussed in the history and sociology of science literature, but not so much questioned day to day information sharing and reporting.

And who is holding the flashlight is a complex multi-actor and institution process that is not well understood. If we look at relative funding for sociology of science,  we can see why.

What made smoke suddenly more interesting and worthy of research?  Was it the fact that highly populated areas were getting more smoke?  Was it the fact that suddenly wildfires were “due to” climate change and there’s plenty of money in climate change?

I remember clearly one day when I worked in the WO in Vegetation Management and Protection Research, Elvia Niebla our USGCRP (US Global Change Research Program) staff person, came and said “there’s going to be huge amounts of money for climate change.”  So I asked her “everything we deal with is affected by climate, so couldn’t anything be funded?” This seemed like a great deal for almost any researchers. But it couldn’t fund everything, so people had to decide what is more worthy in topic and approaches.

I attended an SAF meeting somewhere in New York (perhaps in the 80’s?) and a Station Director (FS research equivalent of Regional Forester) told me that his Station wouldn’t be doing much work with the National Forests anymore as they had tapped into climate change bucks and they were going to do “real science.”

And most recently, just a few years before I retired, I received a call from a nice woman in Missoula who had been tasked to ask research users what our social science needs were.  After talking about it, it became clear that this was because they had received climate change funding, so they couldn’t actually study today’s problems and issues- only those  due to climate change. Understanding how to reduce recreation impacts? Uh, no.  Housing in resort communities? Well, perhaps if they were climate refugees..  Peoples’ attitudes toward prescribed fire? Yes, if due to climate change.  It’s perhaps a slippery slope from rationalizing useful research by highlighting the climate aspects, to publishing studies that unintentionally encourage people to overlook other sources of problems.

I don’t think that we have adequately thought about how this infusion of money (and chasing after it) may have changed the way we view issues, the disciplines we hire (or don’t) and how that affects what’s illuminated by the flashlight, the way we approach issues about forests, and so on.  And there is definitely a tendency for the volume control holders (media, foundations and interest groups) to highlight certain results.   Certainly “climate change is not a big factor in this” is not as attractive as “climate change is going to have really bad effects.”

For whatever reason, there was a push for many years to value mitigation over adaptation.  And the sciences involved in mitigation (atmospheric physics and chemistry) became way cooler and more important than say, hydrology or wheat breeding (adaptation sciences).  If we look back at the history of science, we can just barely see the fingerprints of the physical sciences being way cooler than others (aka  the well-known “physics envy”).  Conceivably much of the funding could have been sent instead, once the climate problem was identified, to coalitions of engineering schools to figure out cost-effective ways to decarbonize.   What factors of the scientific enterprise kept modelling so high in importance, and figuring out ways to fix that are relatively low in importance?  And does this age-old historical bias against applied science and engineering unconsciously play out in what is covered in the media… leading to climate despair? And how does this play into the availability of satellite data (another flashlight) , journals favoring global conclusions, and studies getting further and further from real people (social sciences) and real places (the scale at which actions take place).

An example of the mitigation/adaptation disconnect is this Katharine Hayhoe (et tu, TNC, Chief Scientist?) interview on On Being with Krista Tippett.   She says that Texans need to give up barbecue and pickups for a better world.. meanwhile, auto manufacturers are producing electric pickups.

We can look at other examples as we encounter them.

 

 

Peter Williams on Valuing Collaborative Input to Agency Decisions

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! It’s snowing and blowing and drifting here pretty seriously so I won’t be heading to the pub.

I thought everyone could use a break from trying to understand the complexities of oil and gas production.. so here’s a brief post by Peter Williams, as a collaboration literature expert,  in answer to my question:

If you have a collaborative group and the FS doesn’t accept their recommendations, is there some literature around what is considered “good faith”, or what is input that is accepted or valued, and how do you tell if it’s valued if it’s not entirely accepted?

Granted, now that I look at it, perhaps I went off a little bit bringing up the “good faith” concept, but I think his answer is still helpful.

On the good-faith question, the literature is difficult because “good-faith” has a specific meaning in business, as does “stakeholder”, and also collaboration tends to mean something different in the private sector than the public because of the question of “decision authority” or responsibility. The question or phrase is different in each of the two sectors.

I guess a third consideration might be that a “values-based” or values-driven decision process can lead to a situation where a recommendation isn’t followed, but the values driving that recommendation are applied to make a different decision. That result would seem consistent with a collaborative process, whereas a collaborative process that produces a recommendation and then treats the recommendation as somewhat of a “position” is actually less collaborative than some participants might realize (Kuhn would call this “internally inconsistent” in his discussion of scientific revolutions).

Here’s an example from the business world where “good-faith” and stakeholder are both emphasized, but in a different way than you and I would mean:

**Here’s the abstract of that paper for those interested:

Abstract
Although stakeholder theory is concerned with stakeholder engagement, substantive operational barometers of engagement are lacking in the literature. This theoretical paper attempts to strengthen the accountability aspect of normative stakeholder theory with a more robust notion of stakeholder engagement derived from the concept of good faith. Specifically, it draws from the labor relations field to argue that altered power dynamics are essential underpinnings of a viable stakeholder engagement mechanism. After describing the tenets of substantive engagement, the paper draws from the labor relations and commercial law literatures to describe the characteristics of good faith as dialogue, negotiation, transparency, and totality of conduct; explains how they can be adapted and applied to the stakeholder context; and suggests the use of mediation and non-binding arbitration. The paper concludes by addressing anticipated objections and shortcomings and discussing implications for theory and research.**

Back to Peter:

In my own work (FWIW), I’ve drawn from the decision-making literature, framing collaboration as a decision process and the question about “good-faith” as input to a decision, especially when the decision process is a collaborative one (i.e., decision is informed by a collaborative process, as opposed to being made collaboratively).

What I do is ask early about how participants (including the decision-maker(s)) might measure success. And then I split that into several key parts because sometimes success can be defined in an inappropriate or counter-productive way, like whether a group recommendation is accepted by the decision-maker (positional) as opposed to used by that person (values-driven). Also, there’s the question of whether the input is valued in the sense of informing the decision and whether it’s valued in the sense of having been heard. Both can be important, so speaking to both seems essential.

In practice, what I do is look for ways the deciding official or agency can, first, make it clear that they heard the input, which is similar to active listening. Then I look for ways to make a clear link between what was heard and the pending decision, so the discussion becomes “here’s what I heard” followed by “here’s how your input and participation helped.” And I also then talk about how the decision leads to actions (i.e., implementation) and that there are ways to stay engaged to help implement the action or otherwise pursue those driving values.

NEPA Reform: Impacts Outside of the US

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Dovetail Partners has published a report suggesting that NEPA ought to be revised to include the environmental impacts of proposed actions beyond the borders of the U.S. The report discusses an example: When timber harvesting declined after the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented, timber production shifted to Canada. As Canada shipped more timber to the US, it shipped less to Asia. Japan, Korea, and Taiwan turned to Russia for timber, where forests are far less productive than in the PNW.

Dovetail’s Jim Bowyer, the author of the report, proposes adding this to NEPA:

“Regarding (i) and (ii) above, any proposed action that would have the effect of significantly reducing or effectively eliminating potential domestic mineral, energy, timber or other critical resource development must be accompanied by a statement regarding likely environmental impacts of the proposed action beyond the geographic area of focus, including outside U.S. borders.”

I suggest that NEPA also should require consideration of impacts with in the US but outside of the region in which the project would be implemented. For example, after the NW Forest Plan, the US Southeast picked up production.

Competing Narratives About Oil and Gas Production and the Role of Federal Lands: II. The WaPo “Truth” Story and the Role of Big Investors

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You can see the federal oil and gas production for 2014 for your state by going to this ballotpedia site.https://ballotpedia.org/Oil_and_natural_gas_extraction_on_federal_land

Last time we talked about how much oil and gas is produced on federal lands and waters, and how much demand there is domestically. So now let’s dig further into available information.

It seems like only one of these things can be true: (1)  Whatever percentage of federal production is a small part of US demand so it can’t have that much of an effect on climate, especially since in the real world, we import to make up the difference (substitution).(T)

This is against what the Sierra Club and others have been saying…

(2) Fossil fuel production on federal lands is destroying the planet. If we follow this, this statement must be (F). Well, many in Political World engage in hype, but I think we want to peer through the hype curtains to see the truth or truths, insofar as we can.

If it is a small proportion, and doesn’t have impact on supply or prices, then inquiring minds might wonder “why was/is there such a grandiose campaign about this?”  Including all the D candidates for Prez weighing in? These facts have been known for a long time. Both the proportion of production, the economic contributions, and US demand.  Of all the possible climate targets, why was this one selected and what was their reasoning? It could be that it was aligned with the idea of “protecting” federal lands, which would leave the proponents in an awkward spot with regard to wind turbines, solar arrays and mining for erstwhile green materials. Or it was a convenient nexus because federal land policy is necessarily federalized-if you get it nationally you don’t have to deal with it state by state.

Economics (a science) tells us that if you reduce supply without reducing demand,  prices increase. And we know that that  would have an unequal impact on poorer folks who must drive to work.  And rural poor folks can’t simply be exhorted to take the bus..because there are none.   And it’s not a great thing for many folks not poor, coming into the mid-term. So that’s why the Admin is trying to hook up with the Saudis, Iran and Venezuela.

But there have been some news articles that look into this question more deeply. Again, let’s think about this in the context of private vs. federal, oil vs. gas, and onshore vs. offshore subcategories. Sometimes it’s hard to tell in news stories which of these they are talking about in which paragraph. So I’m hoping together we can parse some of this out, even if we have to go into areas that are way beyond our usual habitat (e.g. behavior of investors).

Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post wrote an article titled Seeking the Truth which is worth a read. Sadly I think it’s behind a paywall, which more biased, inflammatory,and some untrue articles are not.

I did question one thing he said..

“The reverse can also be true. The Trump’s administration’s opposite “green light” approach — few regulations and no restraints — led some oil drillers to invest in unprofitable wells.”

Perhaps it’s just the WaPo pro forma swipe at the Trump Admin, but “no restraints” seems a little over the top if you’re talking about federal lands. And if you’re talking about private, states regulate them.  And it seems to me, at least in Colorado, that Trump had little or an actual negative influence on state policies (whatever he was for, they were strongly against. Here’s another statement.

In 2021, the United States slipped to third place in oil production, behind Russia and Saudi Arabia. That’s mainly because large shale companies committed to Wall Street that they would continue to limit production and return more cash to shareholders — “an effort to win back investors who fled the industry after years of poor returns,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Scott Sheffield, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, told investors in February: “$100 oil, $150 oil, we’re not going to change our growth rate.”

U.S. oil producers boosted output by more than 50 percent between 2016 and 2020, so it’s certainly possible for the United States to once again become the world’s biggest oil producer. But investors are demanding that companies do not overspend on new investments this time around.

So.. we know that the Biden Admin and its favored interest groups have been against oil and gas production. They seek to reduce it via shutting it down on federal lands (if legal) and increasing regulation. Not that those regulatory ideas are necessarily bad, but they are certainly sending a less than positive message to the industry and investors. Which of us would invest in an industry that seems on the cusp of the Admin and its allies dreaming up new tactics to shut it down? But what I didn’t see in the WaPo article was the role of “institutional investors”, including those divesting from fossil fuels

For example, Tisha Schuller talks about BlackRock in a series of her posts:

Climate-aligned strategy. The opening sentence on climate risk in BlackRock’s proxy voting guidance: “BlackRock believes that climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects.” Therefore, BlackRock specifies that its portfolio companies should:
Articulate how their business models align with “a scenario in which global warming is limited to well below 2°C, moving towards global net zero emissions by 2050.”
Disclose business plans that articulate how they will deliver long-term financial performance through the global net-zero transition.
Demonstrate that these plans are resilient under likely decarbonization scenarios and the global aspiration of limiting warming to 1.5C.
Establish (in a continuation of previous guidance) short-, medium-, and long-term science-based targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions.

So in effect, it could be that in the efforts to “do the right thing” climate wise, investors may be doing “the wrong thing” for citizens of say, the US. And it probably isn’t too great a leap to think that less-well off people don’t have much of a voice in these decisions. So perhaps the monied set policy indirectly.

In case you’re wondering “who the heck is BlackRock?” here’s an article.. which notes that they are an increasingly influential player in Washington DC. Apparently they are the world’s largest asset manager.

So.. some have portrayed industry’s unwillingness to invest in capacity as greed.. but as we often say re:forest issues.. “it’s more complicated than that.”

Wildfire, Carole King and an Urban Majority House Committee- Tomorrow!

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From the national presentation as part of the NFF roundtables.

Bill Gabbert at Wildfire Today has a helpful post with links on the Congressional hearing tomorrow on wildfire.

Remembering that Congressional Hearings are political theater.. it’s only appropriate that Carole King will be talking about how to deal with wildfires.   I guess the only witnesses who have worked directly with fire suppression are Chief Moore (they had to ask him, I guess) and the (one) minority witness, Jim Hubbard. Not a good look, majority. Not to disrespect TEK or scientists.

Here’s the witness list:
Mr. Randy Moore
Chief, U.S. Forest Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture

Panel II

Ms. Carole King
Celebrated Singer-songwriter, Land Conservation Advocate

Ms. Ali Meders-Knight
Mechoopda Tribal Member
Traditional Ecological Knowledge Practitioner

Dr. Michael Gollner
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
Deb Faculty Fellow
Berkeley Fire Research Lab

Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala
Chief Scientist, Wild Heritage
Project of Earth Island Institute

Mr. James Hubbard (minority witness)
Former Under Secretary, Natural Resources and Environment
Department of Agriculture

I thought that this was rather odd:

While wildfires are an important part of maintaining healthy forest ecosystems, careful prevention work is crucial to mitigating the damage from increasingly dangerous fires.  The hearing will examine several strategies the Forest Service employs to prevent wildfires including prescribed burns, thinning, and commercial logging, as well as the challenges the Forest Service faces, such as a tight budget and an influential commercial logging industry.

I wonder how exactly the commercial logging industry is a problem.. for those of us in Colorado and the SW, a lack of logging industry is a problem, let alone an influential one. If you look at the map above, you’ll see lots of firesheds at risk with minimal timber industry. Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, LA, San Diego, the Front Range of Colorado, around Santa Fe, Albuquerque and so on.

But perhaps members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Environment Subcommittee aren’t familiar with these areas. Let’s look at the composition of the majority..

Ro Khanna, California, Chair- representing Silicon Valley
Jim Cooper, Tennessee – Nashville
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York City
Rashida Tlaib, Detroit
Jimmy Gomez, LA
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Chicago
Cori Bush, St.Louis

Well then.

Then there’s the fact that this is usually the biz of the Natural Resources Committee, so it seems unlikely that this will yield anything substantive.

But maybe these folks will learn something about our world (she said optimistically). Might  be interesting.

USFS Staffing Shortage

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From Politico today:

‘Pretty brutal’: Hiring woes plague Biden effort to contain wildfires

The Forest Service has long struggled with staffing shortages, but the challenges have intensified amid a hyper-competitive labor market and cost-of-living concerns.

The U.S. Forest Service has had chronic staffing shortages for over a decade. But amid rising wages and a fierce competition for labor across the U.S. economy, the agency faces a particularly bleak hiring picture, even as it looks to add an untold number of forest management staff (the Forest Service has declined to estimate just how many people it needs to hire) — to fight wildfires in what could be another tough season, carry out an aggressive new land management plan and continue regular forest management and surveys.

In an email obtained by POLITICO, Forest Service officials are already warning employees in California that there have been 50 percent fewer applications submitted for GS3 through GS9 firefighting positions this year compared to last. And regional Forest Service officials from across the Western fire regions reported struggling with low staffing on a Feb. 15 call with Fire and Aviation Management, the minutes of which were obtained by POLITICO. “Hiring frenzy – lack of candidates, unable to staff 7 days in many places. Continued decline of folks to do the work,” the minutes read, describing comments made by Regional Fire Director Alex Robertson.

 

Combustion of Aboveground Wood from Live Trees in Megafires

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Here’s a new open-access publication by Oregon State’s Mark E. Harmon, with Chad T. Hanson and Dominick A. DellaSala. This is interesting and needed research, but the authors’ focus on carbon emissions from burned trees is only one part of the bigger picture. The write that “if logged and removed for biomass energy, much of this carbon could be released relatively quickly.” True, but that would offset fossil CO2 emissions. Likewise, harvesting and processing into lumber and mass timber products would sequester CO2 for many decades or perhaps longer, also potentially offsetting fossil CO2 emissions from the production of non-renewable building materials, such as concrete and steel. IMHO, Hanson and DellaSala have long campaigned against salvage logging, which seems to be their aim here.

Conclusions

Our field-based examination of the amount of live aboveground woody biomass combusted indicated that while rates for small branch segments can be quite high (i.e., 100%), these rates do not translate in to major losses at the stand or landscape level. This is because high combustion rates in smaller structures are countered by other factors as one proceeds from branches to trees to stands, and to landscapes. The end result in the forests we examined is that even very severe fires combust <2% of live aboveground woody biomass on average. Our work as well as that of others [10] suggests that additional field research is needed to determine how wildfires release carbon to the atmosphere in a wide range of forest structures and fire-weather conditions. We suggest that researchers and policy makers avoid using estimators that are not field-based, because they currently appear to overstate the wildfire emissions used in carbon emissions reporting. As such, they have the potential to misdirect climate mitigation policy. The fact that the vast majority of aboveground woody biomass is not combusted raises the question of when fire-killed trees actually release their carbon. If dead trees are allowed to remain in place, the natural decomposition process could take many decades to centuries to release fire-killed carbon [39]. In contrast, if logged and removed for biomass energy, much of this carbon could be released relatively quickly [40]. Therefore, additional research is also needed to determine the degree that post-fire forest management influences the temporal profile of carbon release.

Competing Narratives About Oil and Gas Production and the Role of Federal Lands: I. What Do the Data Tell Us?

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If you’ve been following the coverage of energy needs and why gas prices are high, as the war in the Ukraine has caused concerns about disruptions to energy in Europe, the U.S. and other places, it seems like both the coastal media, ENGO’s and oil and gas producers are, naturally, telling different stories.  Can we parse these out and see some of what the facts tell us,  and what the federal lands have to do with it?  I’m hoping that people more knowledgeable than I on these topics can contribute.  Fortunately both the BLM and EIA have easily accessible data, so we should be able to draw our own conclusions. I’d also like to go back to an old post featuring Michael Webber, a mechanical engineering professor:

Take climate change: When scientists and environmental activists take stock of the mess we are in, the oil and gas sector is a handy villain. For people tapping into their instinct for retribution, the petroleum industry ought to be punished for the damage it has caused and cut out from any opportunity to participate in the upcoming transition to a clean energy economy.

Later in the article, he says:

But blaming the industry leaves out our own culpability for our consumptive, impactful lifestyles. Oil consumption is as much about demand as supply.

I received an email from the Sierra Club “URGENT: Fossil fuel leasing on public lands is destroying the planet.”  So let’s look at their claim from the demand side.

The WaPo has an article from March 8 describing where countries can go to replace oil  from Russia. It’s got some interested charts. According to them,

This is a daunting task, especially since global demand for oil is expected to climb 3.2 million barrels a day in 2022 to a total of 100.6 million a day, according to the International Energy Agency’s most recent monthly report.

I think these discussions are confusing, for one reason, because people don’t necessarily separate oil from natural gas when people talk about “fossil fuels.”  And the second thing is that production, workforce, investments, facilities and so on (plus markets) are extremely complicated.  It’s dubious as to whether most of the people talking about stopping fossil fuels understand the mechanics of all that.  So there is a gap between the talkers and writers, on the one hand, and the doers, on the other hand.

So if we’re to examine the Sierra Club’s claim, first we would look at how much oil and natural gas is actually produced on federal lands?

Here’s what BLM says:

For fiscal year (FY) 2018, sales of oil, gas, and natural gas liquids produced from the Federal and Tribal mineral estate accounted for approximately 8 percent of all oil, 9 percent of all natural gas, and 6 percent of all natural gas liquids produced in the United States.

Another problem with our understanding, besides the oil/natural gas difference, is the onshore versus offshore difference. Clearly they are different in both environmental impacts, and affected and concerned states. And people who round up the numbers don’t use the same years. But we can still see a general outline of the picture.

Conveniently, our friends at the Congressional Research Service published a study in 2018 with a handy table.

Now, I’m definitely not an expert on this, but it’s interesting to me how little the onshore produced compared to private and offshore federal. It’s 5% of domestic oil production. Using the same numbers, for 2017, I came up with 10% for onshore natural gas. (Total of domestic production for all federal was 13% for gas).

But what did the US consume in oil and natural gas? According to the EIA,

In 2021, the United States consumed an average of about 19.78 million barrels of petroleum per day, or a total of about 7.22 billion barrels of petroleum.

and

The United States used about 30.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas in 2020, the equivalent of about 31.5 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) and 34% of U.S. total energy consumption.

I’d have to say that I can’t agree with the Sierra Club that federal land fossil fuel extraction is “destroying the planet.” It seems like a relatively small piece of the national (no to speak of the planetary) puzzle.  It’s also helping out poorer states with bids and royalties, which seems like social justice.

You can check out revenues to states and counties, as well as Native Americans, on this handy DOI website.

I’d like to give a big shoutout to BLM, the Natural Resources Revenue Data folks, and EIA for making my work on this topic relatively easy.

And circling back to the WaPo article, an Admin that favors equity and social justice, it seems logical to me, would prefer production and the associated benefits to accrue to say, Louisiana, rather than to Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Venezuela.