Sauropod dinosaurs preferred warmer regions of Earth, study suggests

The findings suggest the long-necked animals may have had a different physiology from other dinosaurs.

Image: PA

GIANT SAUROPOD DINOSAURS such as Brontosaurus and Diplodocus preferred to live in warmer, more tropical regions of Earth, according to a new study.

The findings suggest the long-necked animals, thought to include the largest land animals to have ever existed, may have had a different physiology from other dinosaurs.

Researchers at UCL and the University of Vigo investigated why sauropod fossils are only found at lower latitudes, while fossils of other main dinosaur types seem to be present everywhere, with many located in the polar regions.

They analysed the fossil record across the Mesozoic era, lasting from around 230 to 66 million years ago, looking at occurrences of fossils of the three main dinosaur types.

This included sauropods, theropods – which include velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rex – and ornithischians such as the Triceratops.

Combining this data with information about climate throughout the period, and data about how continents have moved across the globe, the researchers concluded that sauropods were restricted to warmer, drier habitats compared with other dinosaurs.

These habitats were likely to be open, semi-arid landscapes, similar to today’s savannahs.

Co-author Dr Philip Mannion, UCL Earth Sciences, said: “Our research shows that some parts of the planet always seemed to be too cold for sauropods.

“They seem to have avoided any temperatures approaching freezing.

“Other dinosaur types, in contrast, could thrive in Earth’s polar regions, from innermost Antarctica to polar Alaska – which, due to the warmer climate, were ice-free, with lush vegetation.

This suggests sauropods had different thermal requirements from other dinosaurs, relying more on their external environment to heat their bodies – slightly closer to being ‘cold-blooded’, like modern-day reptiles.

“Their grand size hints that this physiology may have been unique.”

First author Dr Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, previously at UCL and now based at the University of Vigo, Spain, said: “It may be that sauropods were physiologically incapable of thriving in colder regions, or that they thrived less well in these areas than their dinosaurian cousins and were outcompeted.

“A mix of features may have helped sauropods shed heat more easily than mammals do today.

“Their long necks and tails would have given them a larger surface area, and they may have had a respiratory system more akin to birds, which is much more efficient.”

He added: “Sauropods’ strategies for keeping their eggs warm may also have differed from the other dinosaurs.

“Theropods probably warmed eggs by sitting on them, whereas ornithischians seem to have used heat generated by decaying plants.

“Sauropods, meanwhile, may have buried their eggs, relying on heat from the sun and the ground.”

The study found no occurrences of sauropods above a latitude of 50 degrees north – an area encompassing most of Canada, Russia, northern Europe and the UK – or below 65 degrees south, encompassing Antarctica.

But there were rich records for theropods and ornithischians living above 50 degrees north in later periods (from 145 million years ago).

The authors also suggest sauropods may have had a unique in-between physiology, closer to being cold-blooded than other dinosaur types.

The findings are published in Current Biology.

UK

Swindon couple unearth five 220,000-year-old ice-age mammoths at site near town

By Daniel Wood Facebook and Community Reporter

19th December, 2021

Sally and Neville Hollingworth with Sir David Attenborough

A Moredon couple has made one of the most extraordinary archeological finds in history when they discovered preserved fossils of mammoth in a quarry to the north of the town.

Neville and Sally Hollingworth, part-time fossil hunters, immediately realised the magnitude of their find and called in archeologists from DigVentures as reinforcements - who soon unearthed five ice-age mammoths in an extraordinary state of preservation.

The couple's find was so remarkable that David Attenborough and evolutionary biologist professor Ben Garrod will be presenting a BBC One documentary on it - Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard - which will air on December 30.

Neville and Sally Hollingworth

On top of the mammoths themselves - two adults, two juveniles and an infant that are thought to be 220,000 years old, they have also found giant elks, tiny creatures like dung beetles and snails and even seeds, pollen and plant fossils, as well as human tools like an axe.

Ben Garrod told the Observer: “This is one of the most important discoveries in British palaeontology.” While the odd mammoth bone often turns up, he said, finding such complete skeletons is “incredibly rare”.

“Where these mammoths lie in the ground is exactly where they died a quarter of a million years ago – next to incredible things like stone tools and the snails they trampled underfoot.

“We have evidence of what the landscape was like. We know what plants were growing there. The little things are really revealing the context of these big, iconic giants. It’s a glimpse back in time. That’s incredibly important in terms of us understanding how climate change especially impacts environments, ecosystems and species.”

Sir David Attenborough and Professor Ben Garrod

Also talking to the Observer, Lisa Westcott Wilkins of DigVentures, an archaeology social enterprise, said: “Exciting doesn’t cover it. Other mammoths have been found in the UK but not in this state of preservation. They’re in near-pristine condition. You can’t take it in.”

She added: “Archaeological sites from this period are rare, and critical for understanding Neanderthal behaviour across Britain and Europe. Why did so many mammoths die here? Could Neanderthals have killed them? What can they tell us about life in ice-age Britain? The range of evidence at this site gives us a unique chance to address these questions.”

Sally and Neville had to hand the site over to DigVentures when the magnitude of what they found became apparent, they took part in the show alongside Sir David Attenborough but are yet to see it themselves and learn the outcome of their discovery.

The programme will look at clues left by the fossiles and see if they tell us anything about how our Neanderthal ancestors lived in the harsh conditions of ice-age Britain, a period of prehistory about which little is known.

Close inspection of excavated bones Picture: DigVentures

Garrod said there are a number of theories: “Was there a massive glacial flood that washed these poor animals down? By looking at the mud, it doesn’t look like there was. It’s very uniform all the way down.

"Were they hunted by people? Were Neanderthals crouching down in the rushes and chasing them into the water? Possibly. There is definitely an association between a wonderful hand-axe and other stone tools and these bones. Did they chance upon this bunch of dead mammoths and have a mammoth buffet?

“Or was it just really muddy? With elephants today, if a juvenile gets stuck, often the adults won’t leave the site. They’ll try and help them. This is very thick mud. I’ve grown up near the seaside, near estuaries; you don’t need to be very heavy to get stuck in mud very quickly.”

DigVentures is a team of archaeologists that also runs community outreach. After raising funds from Historic England they are coordinating the dig at the site and hope to continue excavations. The quarry is currently proected by natrual flooding.

Westcott Wilkins praised the Hills Group, the quarry owners, for their co-operation: “There are also early discussions about wanting to build a public outreach centre where we can display some of the finds.”

“People are whizzing by, not realising that feet underneath their car is this scene. It’s very surreal. We’re all still trying to get our heads around what we found.”

For ordinary people this find would be once in a lifetime, but for Neville and Sally it's just another day at the office.

Neville found a preserved ice-age mammoth skull in a gravel pit at Cotswold Water Park in 2004 - only the second to be discovered in Britain.

The pair also made an incredible discovery of rare marine fossils - called crinoids - during the second lockdown at a site also near Swindon. They were recently on Blue Peter because of it

Five ice-age mammoths unearthed in Cotswolds after 220,000 years

David Attenborough will tell of ‘pristine’ skeletons found with other extinct species

Sir David Attenborough with some of the mammoth bones found in the gravel quarry near Swindon. Photograph: Julian Schwanitz/BBC/Windfall Films


Dalya Alberge
Sun 19 Dec 2021

Five ice-age mammoths in an extraordinary state of preservation have been discovered in the Cotswolds, to the astonishment of archaeologists and palaeontologists.

The extensive remains of two adults, two juveniles and an infant that roamed 200,000 years ago have been unearthed near Swindon, along with tools used by Neanderthals, who are likely to have hunted these 10-tonne beasts. More are expected to be found because only a fraction of the vast site, a gravel quarry, has been excavated.

Judging by the quality of the finds, the site is a goldmine. They range from other ice-age giants, such as elks – twice the size of their descendants today, with antlers 10ft across – to tiny creatures, notably dung beetles, which co-evolved with megafauna, using their droppings for food and shelter, and freshwater snails, just like those found today. Even seeds, pollen and plant fossils, including extinct varieties, have been preserved at this site.

An artist’s impression of the Steppe mammoth. 

Photograph: Beth Zaiken/Reuters

All these will now offer new clues into how our Neanderthal ancestors lived in the harsh conditions of ice-age Britain, a period of prehistory about which little is known. The exceptional discoveries will be explored in a BBC One documentary, Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, to be aired on 30 December, in which Sir David Attenborough and evolutionary biologist Professor Ben Garrod join archaeologists from DigVentures to film the excavation.

Garrod told the Observer: “This is one of the most important discoveries in British palaeontology.” While the odd mammoth bone often turns up, he said, finding such complete skeletons is “incredibly rare”. “Where these mammoths lie in the ground is exactly where they died a quarter of a million years ago – next to incredible things like stone tools and the snails they trampled underfoot.

“We have evidence of what the landscape was like. We know what plants were growing there. The little things are really revealing the context of these big, iconic giants. It’s a glimpse back in time. That’s incredibly important in terms of us understanding how climate change especially impacts environments, ecosystems and species.”

Lisa Westcott Wilkins of DigVentures, an archaeology social enterprise, said: “Exciting doesn’t cover it. Other mammoths have been found in the UK but not in this state of preservation. They’re in near-pristine condition. You can’t take it in.”

Archaeologists excavating the mammoth bones. Photograph: DigVentures

She added: “Archaeological sites from this period are rare, and critical for understanding Neanderthal behaviour across Britain and Europe. Why did so many mammoths die here? Could Neanderthals have killed them? What can they tell us about life in ice-age Britain? The range of evidence at this site gives us a unique chance to address these questions.”

The researchers believe that the mammoth remains and the artefacts date to around 220,000 years ago, when Britain was still occupied by Neanderthals during a warmer interglacial period known as MIS7. Falling temperatures had forced Neanderthals south, and this site was then a lush, fertile plain to which both animals and humans were drawn.

The earliest mammoths came from Africa about five million years ago. This particular species, the Steppe mammoth, was the largest of them, and lasted from about 1.8m years ago to about 200,000 years ago.

Garrod, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of East Anglia, said the species weighed up to 15 tonnes, twice or three times the weight of an African elephant: “This was the largest species of mammoth ever. By the time they were about to be gone, they had dropped down to 10 tonnes, which still sounds a lot. We think that was an adaptation to the change in environment, climate and resource availability. It was becoming colder at that time, resources were getting sparser, and it drove that shrinking of the species. On top of that, there would have been undoubtedly local pressure from hunting and competition from other species.”

Speculating on why so many animals died at this site, he added: “Was there a massive glacial flood that washed these poor animals down? By looking at the mud, it doesn’t look like there was. It’s very uniform all the way down. Were they hunted by people? Were Neanderthals crouching down in the rushes and chasing them into the water? Possibly. There is definitely an association between a wonderful hand-axe and other stone tools and these bones. Did they chance upon this bunch of dead mammoths and have a mammoth buffet?

Close inspection of the excavated bones, some of which have possible butchery marks. 

“Or was it just really muddy? With elephants today, if a juvenile gets stuck, often the adults won’t leave the site. They’ll try and help them. This is very thick mud. I’ve grown up near the seaside, near estuaries; you don’t need to be very heavy to get stuck in mud very quickly.”

The excavations also revealed further evidence of Neanderthal activity on the site, including flint tools that would have been used for cleaning fresh hides. Some of the bones have possible butchery marks.

DigVentures is a team of archaeologists that specialises in public outreach. They were called in after a Neanderthal’s hand-axe was found with the initial discovery of mammoth remains by amateur fossil-hunters Sally and Neville Hollingworth.

DigVentures raised the funding from Historic England, dug the site and is coordinating the analysis and research. They hope to continue excavations once further funds have been raised. The site is now protected from fossil hunters by natural flooding.

Westcott Wilkins praised the Hills Group, the quarry owners, for allowing them as long as they need: “There are also early discussions about wanting to build a public outreach centre where we can display some of the finds.” Other finds are expected to go to the Bristol Museum.

She noted that the mammoths were barely five metres below ground level and close to a busy road: “People are whizzing by, not realising that feet underneath their car is this scene. It’s very surreal. We’re all still trying to get our heads around what we found.”

“Or was it just really muddy? With elephants today, if a juvenile gets stuck, often the adults won’t leave the site. They’ll try and help them. This is very thick mud. I’ve grown up near the seaside, near estuaries; you don’t need to be very heavy to get stuck in mud very quickly.”

The excavations also revealed further evidence of Neanderthal activity on the site, including flint tools that would have been used for cleaning fresh hides. Some of the bones have possible butchery marks.

DigVentures is a team of archaeologists that specialises in public outreach. They were called in after a Neanderthal’s hand-axe was found with the initial discovery of mammoth remains by amateur fossil-hunters Sally and Neville Hollingworth.

DigVentures raised the funding from Historic England, dug the site and is coordinating the analysis and research. They hope to continue excavations once further funds have been raised. The site is now protected from fossil hunters by natural flooding.

Westcott Wilkins praised the Hills Group, the quarry owners, for allowing them as long as they need: “There are also early discussions about wanting to build a public outreach centre where we can display some of the finds.” Other finds are expected to go to the Bristol Museum.

She noted that the mammoths were barely five metres below ground level and close to a busy road: “People are whizzing by, not realising that feet underneath their car is this scene. It’s very surreal. We’re all still trying to get our heads around what we found.”

Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard: Why an Ice Age discovery near Swindon has excited archaeologists

James Rampton - Friday

If you were hoping to find the remains of Ice Age beasts, you might expect to travel to Siberia, not Swindon. But that is exactly where Sally and Neville Hollingworth, two amateur archaeologists from Wiltshire, made a spectacular find.

Exploring a quarry north of the town in 2017, they spotted something sticking up out of the ground. They were astonished to find it was the fossilised humerus – a leg bone – of a Steppe mammoth, a forerunner of the more famous woolly mammoth.

Further excavation of the site revealed three more mammoths, as well as a Steppe bison and a brown bear, all perfectly preserved in the prehistoric riverbed of the Thames.

Sally Hollingworth also disinterred a rare hand axe made of flint, lying beside the remains. As the dig progressed, more handmade tools were unearthed – suggesting there was a relationship between the animals and humans.

This story – and the discoveries still emerging from the site – is the subject of an absorbing new BBC documentary, Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, airing after Christmas. In this one-off film, Sir David Attenborough, who has been a passionate fossil-hunter since he was a small boy, joins the excavation and investigates the importance of the finds.

Unlike most mammoth bones, which are “merely” tens of thousands of years old, experts using state-of-the-art soil-dating technology estimate the site discovered by the Hollingworths dates back 215,000 years. These are some the oldest mammoth remains ever unearthed in the UK.

The human-made implements could also be gamechangers for our understanding of the lives and capabilities of the Neanderthals, who were supplanted soon afterwards by our own species, Homo Sapiens.

Led by Professor Ben Garrod from the University of East Anglia, the excavation prompts – and helps to answer – many fundamental questions: Why were the mammoths at this particular place? How did they meet their ends? Could the Neanderthals have killed them or was there some kind of cataclysmic event?

The Hollingworths, who both have day jobs in an office and whose house is a wondrous small museum dedicated to fossils, feel a real connection with their discovery. They even used the hand-axe to cut their wedding cake – before, Attenborough jokes, eating “a mammoth meal.” (As archaeologists might say, the old ones are the best.)

Sally Hollingworth recollects her emotions when she first picked up the hand-axe. “I had the feeling that I was the first human to touch this stone tool in thousands of years.”

Attenborough agrees. “It’s a great thrill, this whole business, isn’t it?” he says. “The finds of this remarkable site have given us a rare glimpse of early Britain, a time when humans were fully immersed in the wild, living as part of Nature.”

Garrod is equally moved by the whole venture. Sitting in the mud on the site with three colleagues, he exclaims: “Isn’t it wonderful to think that the last time someone sat exactly in this spot with a little group of people, and that stone tool in their hands as a mammoth was lying there, was 200,000 years ago? We are talking about it now hundreds of thousands of years later. It’s quite poignant, isn’t it?”

Lisa Wescott Wilkins, an archaeologist whose company DigVentures is excavating the site, reinforces the significance of the discovery by describing her own joy when she first visited the quarry north of Swindon two years ago.

“I can remember the feeling of stepping onto the site for the first time very, very clearly because it’s something that I had never expected to experience in my career as an archaeologist,” she tells i. “Just seeing a mammoth tusk in the ground, and knowing what had been found close to it, and feeling the potential of the site – it was heart-stopping. I’m still buzzing really!”

Wescott Wilkins’ excitement was heightened when she and three colleagues helped lift an exceedingly heavy one-and-a-half-metre long mammoth tusk from the site. “If someone asks me how much it weighs, I’ll just have to say, ‘Well, it’s four-people’s worth!’”

The archaeologist is particularly pleased by the discovery of the flint hand-axe, “because what that might be showing is the actual interaction of the Neanderthals with the mammoths. We have bones that look to the naked eye like they’ve got cut marks on them. If they do, that is a smoking gun for this time period. It means the mammoths could have been either hunted or scavenged.

“The bones are in such amazing condition. They haven’t been knocked around. They are exactly where they fell. Also, the tools are still so sharp, you could use them today. So this is really indicating that an episode happened here. Such evidence has never been found before. My heart speeds up even thinking about it!”

Wescott Wilkins adds that “archaeology is so exciting because it gives you that sense of touching something that is bigger than yourself, and that really applies to this site. It’s very, very special. As an archaeologist, you can never know everything – and what fires me up about this site are all the amazing new things I’m learning. That is a fantastic reason to get out of bed every morning.”

Although prehistoric, this site also tells a very pertinent, up-to-the-minute story about climate change. The Neanderthals had to adapt rapidly as temperatures dropped steeply during the Ice Age.

“The Neanderthals were having to deal with changes in the landscape that were beyond their control,” says Wescott Wilkins. “Weather events would have affected the environment and the amount of food that they could find.

“All that was happening around them and they had to cope with it. Looking at the impact of climate change on this Neanderthal population, it’s definitely a cautionary tale about how far it can change the way we live.”

Attenborough echoes those sentiments: “It is thought that Neanderthals may have been around for some 400,000 years. Their survival relied on their instinctive understanding of the natural world. Whether our own species can thrive for quite as long remains to be seen.”

But we leave the last word to the woman without whom none of these extraordinary advances in our understanding of prehistory would have been possible. How would Sally Hollingworth sum up this venture? “It’s like a time travel through the gravel.”

Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, BBC1, Thursday 30 December, 8pm

Daniel Yergin: Why the energy transition will be so complicated

The degree to which the world depends on oil and gas is not well understood

Publishing date:Dec 14, 2021 • 

Wind turbines operate at the West Coast One wind farm near Vredenburg, South Africa, on Oct. 6, 2021. 

PHOTO BY DWAYNE SENIOR/BLOOMBERG FILES

To appreciate the complexities of the competing demands between climate action and the continued need for energy, consider the story of an award — one that the recipient very much did not want and, indeed, did not bother to pick up.

It began when Innovex Downhole Solutions, a Texas-based company that provides technical services to the oil and gas industry, ordered 400 jackets from North Face with its corporate logo.

But the iconic outdoor-clothing company refused to fulfill the order. North Face describes itself as a “politically aware” brand that will not share its logo with companies that are in “tobacco, sex (including gentlemen’s clubs) and pornography.”

And as far as North Face is concerned, the oil and gas industry fell into that same category — providing jackets to a company in that industry would go against its values. Such a sale would, it said, be counter to its “goals and commitments surrounding sustainability and environmental protection,” which includes a plan to use increasing amounts of recycled and renewable materials in its garments in future years.

But, as it turns out, North Face’s business depends not only on people who like the outdoors, but also on oil and gas: At least 90 percent of the materials in its jackets are made from petrochemicals derived from oil and natural gas. Moreover, many of its jackets and the materials that go into them are made in countries such as China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, and then shipped to the United States in vessels that are powered by oil. To muddy matters further, not long before North Face rejected the request, its corporate owner had built a new hangar at a Denver airport for its corporate jets, all of which run on jet fuel.

To spotlight the obvious contradiction, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association presented its first ever Customer Appreciation Award to North Face for being “an extraordinary oil and gas customer.” That’s the award North Face spurned.

A pedestrian carries a North Face shopping bag in the SoHo neighbourhood of New York on Oct. 24, 2021. 

PHOTO BY NINA WESTERVELT/BLOOMBERG FILES

Different people will draw different conclusions from this episode. Central to the response to climate change is the transition from carbon fuels to renewables and hydrogen, augmented by carbon capture. This was highlighted at the historic COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, which emphasized the need for urgency and a greater ambition on climate backed by a host of significant initiatives, including carbon markets, and country pledges of carbon neutrality by 2050 or a decade or two thereafter. The North Face story, however, offers a difficult reminder that the energy transition is a whole lot more complicated than may be recognized.

As if to remind us of the complexities, a most unwelcome guest appeared on the doorstep of the Glasgow conference: an energy crisis that has gripped Europe and Asia. Energy crises traditionally begin with oil, but this recent one has been driven by shortages of coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG). That sent prices spiking, disrupting electricity supplies in China, which then led to the rationing of electricity there, the closing of factories, and further disruptions of the supply chains that send goods to America.

In Europe, the energy shortages were made worse by low wind speeds in the North Sea, which for a time drastically reduced the electricity produced by offshore wind turbines for Britain and Northern Europe. Gas, coal, and power prices shot up — as much as seven times in the case of LNG. Factories, unable to afford the suddenly high energy costs, stopped production, among them plants in Britain and Europe making fertilizers needed for next spring’s agricultural season.

Trailing the other fuels, oil prices reached the US$80 range. With a tightening balance between supply and demand, some were warning that oil could exceed US$100 a barrel. Gasoline prices have hit levels in the United States that alarm politicians, who know that such increases are bad for incumbents. That — along with worsening inflation — is why the Biden administration asked Saudi Arabia and Russia to put more oil into the market, so far to no avail. The administration then announced, on the eve of Thanksgiving, the largest-ever release of oil from the U.S. government’s strategic petroleum reserve, in coordination with other countries, to temper prices.

Energy shock

An electricity pylon in front of a cooling tower at Uniper SE’s coal-fired power station in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, U.K., Dec. 2, 2021.

 PHOTO BY CHRIS RATCLIFFE/BLOOMBERG FILES

Is this energy shock a one-off resulting from a unique conjunction of circumstances? Or is it the first of what will be several crises resulting from straining too hard to bring 2050 carbon-reduction goals rapidly forward — potentially prematurely choking off investment in hydrocarbons, thus triggering future shocks? If it’s a onetime event, then the world will move on in a few months. But if it is followed by further energy shortages, governments could be forced to rethink the timing and approach to their climate goals. The current shock offered just such an example: Although Britain is calling for an end to coal, it was nevertheless forced to restart a mothballed coal-powered plant to help make up for the electricity shortage.

Jean Pisani-Ferry, a French economist and sometime adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron, is among the most prominent voices pointing to the consequences that could result from trying to move too fast. In August, before the current energy crisis began, he warned that going into overdrive on transitioning away from fossil fuels would lead to major economic shocks similar to the oil crises that rocked the global economy in the 1970s. “Policymakers,” he wrote, “should get ready for tough choices.”

The term energy transition somehow sounds like it is a well-lubricated slide from one reality to another. In fact, it will be far more complex: Throughout history, energy transitions have been difficult, and this one is even more challenging than any previous shift. In my book The New Map, I peg the beginning of the first energy transition to January 1709, when an English metalworker named Abraham Darby figured out that he could make better iron by using coal rather than wood for heat. But that first transition was hardly swift. The 19th century is known as the “century of coal,” but, as the technology scholar Vaclav Smil has noted, not until the beginning of the 20th century did coal actually overtake wood as the world’s No. 1 energy source. Moreover, past energy transitions have also been “energy additions”—one source atop another. Oil, discovered in 1859, did not surpass coal as the world’s primary energy source until the 1960s, yet today the world uses almost three times as much coal as it did in the ’60s.

The coming energy transition is meant to be totally different. Rather than an energy addition, it is supposed to be an almost complete switch from the energy basis of today’s $86 trillion world economy, which gets 80 percent of its energy from hydrocarbons. In its place is intended to be a net-carbon-free energy system, albeit one with carbon capture, for what could be a $185 trillion economy in 2050. To do that in less than 30 years — and accomplish much of the change in the next nine — is a very tall order.

Here is where the complexities become clear. Beyond outerwear, the degree to which the world depends on oil and gas is often not understood. It’s not just a matter of shifting from gasoline-powered cars to electric ones, which themselves, by the way, are about 20 percent plastic. It’s about shifting away from all the other ways we use plastics and other oil and gas derivatives. Plastics are used in wind towers and solar panels, and oil is necessary to lubricate wind turbines. The casing of your cellphone is plastic, and the frames of your glasses likely are too, as well as many of the tools in a hospital operating room. The air frames of the Boeing 787, Airbus A350, and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet are all made out of high-strength, petroleum-derived carbon fibre. The number of passenger planes is expected to double in the next two decades. They are also unlikely to fly on batteries.

Oil products have been crucial for dealing with the pandemic too, from protective gear for emergency staff to the lipids that are part of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Have a headache? Acetaminophen—including such brands as Tylenol and Panadol—is a petroleum-derived product. In other words, oil and natural-gas products are deeply embedded throughout modern life.

Existential question

Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s former oil minister and now minister of education, during the 6th OPEC International Seminar in Vienna, Austria, on June 3, 2015. 

PHOTO BY LISI NIESNER/BLOOMBERG FILES

There’s another complexity beyond the technical challenge. Call it a new “North–South divide.” The original divide emerged as an economic struggle in the 1970s between the developed countries of the Northern Hemisphere and the developing countries (and former colonies) of the Southern Hemisphere. That was the decade when OPEC burst onto the global scene, with the price of oil very much at the centre of the battle. The rancor of that divide was reduced over time with the advance of globalization, the rise of emerging markets, and increased economic integration.

A different divide is beginning to develop today around differing perspectives on how to tackle climate change. It once again pits the developed world against developing countries, but the contours are different. For the developed world, as Glasgow demonstrated, climate is an overwhelming imperative — often described by political leaders as the “existential” question. While also deeply concerned about climate, developing countries face other existential questions as well. In addition to climate, they struggle with recovering from COVID-19, reducing poverty, promoting economic growth, improving health, and maintaining social stability.

For India, it’s a question of “energy transitions” — plural — which reflects the fact that its per capita income is only one-tenth that of the United States. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has announced very ambitious goals for wind, solar, and hydrogen, and has set a net-zero target for 2070. Yet at the same time, it has said it will continue to use hydrocarbons to achieve its immediate priorities. As the government put it in an official report, “Energy is the mainstay of the development process of any country.”

Mixing all exploitable energy resources is the only feasible way forward in our context

DHARMENDRA PRADHAN

“Our energy requirements are vast and robust. Mixing all exploitable energy resources is the only feasible way forward in our context,” Dharmendra Pradhan, until recently the minister of petroleum and natural gas and now the minister of education, told me. “India will pursue the energy transition in our own way.”

So while the European Union debates whether natural gas has any appropriate role in its own future energy program, India is building a US$60 billion natural-gas infrastructure system to reduce its reliance on coal, thereby reducing stifling pollution for its urban population and bringing down carbon-dioxide emissions. It is also delivering propane to villagers so that they don’t have to cook with wood and waste any longer, and suffer resulting illnesses and premature death from indoor air pollution.

A similar point was made by Nigeria’s vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, when I spoke with him this year. “The term energy transition itself is a curious one,” he began. “We sometimes tend to focus on one element of the transition. But in fact, that energy transition itself is multidimensional” and must take “into account the different realities of various economies and accommodat[e] various pathways to net zero.”

Osinbajo is particularly worried about European banks and international financial institutions “banning” the financing of hydrocarbon development, especially natural gas, owing to climate concerns. “Limiting the development of gas projects poses big challenges for African nations, while they would make an insignificant dent in global emissions,” he said. Natural gas and natural gas liquids, he continued, are “already replacing the huge amounts of charcoal and kerosene cookstoves that are most widely used for cooking, and thus saving millions of lives otherwise lost to indoor air pollution annually.”

Aissatou Sophie Gladima, the energy minister of Senegal, put it more pithily: Restricting lending for oil and gas development, she said, “is like removing the ladder and asking us to jump or fly.”

Moreover, a number of energy-producing developing countries depend on exports of oil and gas for their budgets and social spending. It is not obvious what would replace those revenues. In October, a top U.S. government official warned American companies of “regulatory actions” and other potential penalties if they made new investments in African oil and gas resources. Yet there’s no ready alternative for Nigeria, with a population of more than 200 million and a per capita income that’s one-12th of the United States’, and which depends on oil and gas exports for 70 percent of its budget and 40 percent of its GDP.

“Africa did not cause climate change, and its role in emissions is very small,” says Hakeem Belo-Osagie, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School focusing on the business and economy of Africa. “Covid has wrecked [the] finances of many African countries, and African countries cannot be expected to cut fossil-fuel production, as it is essential to the finances of several African countries.”

Will a new North–South divide lead to a fracturing in global policies? For an early indicator, look at what happens in the next two years on global trade. The growth of trade and the opportunities it presented to developing countries have done much to ease the original divide. But signs of the new tensions are certainly there.

Europe is moving to establish a “carbon border adjustment mechanism,” which is a complicated name for what is essentially a carbon tariff. It will be assessed according to “carbon intensity” — that is, the amount of carbon expended in making a product. Europe sees these tariffs as a way to ensure that its policies and values on climate change are adopted globally, while providing protection to European industries that face higher costs because of carbon pricing. The EU is starting with tariffs on a limited number of goods but is expected to expand the list. The Biden administration is also mulling carbon tariffs. Yet developing countries regard the moves as discriminatory and an effort to impose Europe’s policies on them.

The 2015 Paris climate conference established the “what” — the goal of carbon neutrality. COP26 in Glasgow resulted in major steps forward on the “how” — achieving the goal. But when it comes to the energy transition itself, we may still have much to learn about the complexities that lie ahead.

Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit, is a Pulitzer Prize winning author. His latest book is “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.”

Copyright: Daniel Yergin. Originally published by The Atlantic.

Mapping the world’s oil and gas pipelines

Every day the world consumes some 100 million barrels of oil and 60 million equivalent barrels of natural gas.

By Mohammed Hussein
Published On 16 Dec 202116 Dec 2021

Over the past 50 years, the world’s annual energy consumption has nearly tripled – from 62,949 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 1969 to 173,340 TWh in 2019.

For centuries, burning coal was the main source of the world’s energy

By the 1960s, rapid advancements in sourcing, transporting and refining oil and gas allowed those energy-dense fossil fuels to overtake coal and become the world’s primary source of energy – which they remain today.

Despite advances in renewable energy, fossil fuels including coal, oil and gas still make up more than 80 percent of the world’s primary energy consumption.

(Al Jazeera)

Every day, the world consumes some 100 million barrels of oil and 60 million equivalent barrels of natural gas.

To transport this massive amount of energy, pipelines – usually made out of carbon steel – are widely used.

In the following infographic series, we map the world’s current and planned oil and gas pipelines.

Global pipelines – 30 times Earth’s circumference

According to the Global Energy Monitor, there were at least 2,381 operational oil and gas pipelines distributed across some 162 countries as of December 2020. The combined length of these pipelines is more than 1.18 million km (730,000 miles) – enough to circle the Earth 30 times.

The countries with the longest network of oil and gas pipelines include:
United States – Oil: 91,067km (56,587 miles); Gas: 333,366km (207,145 miles)
Russia – Oil: 38,419km (23,872 miles); Gas: 92,831km (57,683 miles)
Canada – Oil: 23,361km (14,516 miles); Gas: 84,682km (52,619 miles)
China – Oil: 27,441km (17,051 miles); Gas: 76,363km (47,450 miles)
Australia – Oil: 1,636km (1,017 miles); Gas: 23,002km (14,293 miles)

The map below shows pipeline networks across the globe. Pipelines that are shorter than 100km (62 miles) or that have a capacity of less than 6,000 barrels per day are not included.

(Al Jazeera)

The companies that own most of the of oil pipelines by length include:
Transneft, Russia – 42,383km (26,335 miles) – 15 percent
Enbridge, Canada – 33,750km (20,971 miles) – 12 percent
PipeChina, China – 15,947km (9,909 miles) – 5 percent

The companies that own most of the gas pipelines by length include:
Gazprom, Russia – 103,212km (64,133 miles) – 11.2 percent
TC Energy, Canada – 99,440km (61,789 miles) – 10.8 percent
Kinder Morgan, US – 82,075km (50,999 miles) – 9 percent

(Al Jazeera)

Pipelines by region

Americas

A little more than half (51 percent) of the world’s total oil and gas pipelines by length are in the Americas.

Some of the most noteworthy pipelines include:

The Keystone Oil Pipeline
Length: 3,462km (2,151 miles)
Capacity: 700,000 barrels per day
Start year: 2010
Runs from Alberta province in western Canada down to refineries in Illinois and Texas in the US. In 2021, an expansion to the pipeline known as Keystone XL was cancelled after its permit was revoked by the administration of US President Joe Biden.

Rockies Express Gas Pipeline
Length: 2,702km (1,679 miles)
Capacity: 102 million cubic metres (3.6 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 2009
The pipeline system is one of the largest natural gas pipelines ever built in North America. It runs from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to eastern Ohio, crossing through US eight states.

GASBOL Gas Pipeline
Length: 3,150km (1,957 miles)
Capacity: 30 million cubic metres (1.06 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 1999
Also known as the Bolivia–Brazil pipeline, GASBOL is the longest natural gas pipeline in South America.

Colonial Pipeline
Length: 8,850km (5,500 miles)
Capacity: 3 million barrels per day
Start year: 1962
It is the largest pipeline system for refined oil products in the US. In May, hackers launched a cyberattack against the company that disrupted fuel supplies and led to shortages across the East Coast.

(Al Jazeera)

Europe

About a quarter (27 percent) of the total length of the world’s pipelines are in Europe.

Some key pipelines in Europe are:

Druzhba Oil Pipeline
Length: 5,100km (3,169 miles)
Capacity: 1.4 million barrels per day
Start year: 1962
It is the world’s longest oil pipeline and one of the largest oil pipeline networks in the world. It carries oil from the eastern part of Russia to points in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany.

Yamal-Europe Gas Pipeline
Length: 1,660km (1,031 miles)
Capacity: 90 million cubic metres (3.2 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 2006
Transports gas from Russia’s Yamal Peninsula to European consumers across Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany, among other countries.

Greece-Italy Interconnector Gas Pipeline
Length: 800km (497 miles)
Start year: 2010
It is an onshore and offshore natural gas pipeline that runs from Greece to the Apulia region in southeastern Italy.

(Al Jazeera)

Middle East and Africa

About 6 percent of the total length of the world’s pipelines cross through the Middle East and Africa.

Some of the main pipelines include:

Trans-Mediterranean Gas Pipeline
Length: 2,475km (1,538 miles)
Capacity: 92 million cubic metres (3.3 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 1983
Begins in Algeria, passes through Tunisia and crosses the Mediterranean Sea on to Italy and Slovenia.

East-West Crude Oil Pipeline
Length: 1,200km (746 miles)
Capacity: 5 million barrels per day
Start year: 1982
Known as the Petroline and Abqaiq-Yanbu oil pipeline, the Saudi oil pipeline runs from Abqaiq in the east of the country to Yanbu Oil Terminal on the Red Sea coast.

Tazama Oil Pipeline
Length: 1,710km (1,062 miles)
Capacity: 22,000 barrels per day
Start year: 1968
Runs from the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania onto Ndola in central Zambia.

(Al Jazeera)

Asia Pacific

About 16 percent of the total length of the world’s pipelines cross through the Asia-Pacific region.

Some of the main pipelines include:

Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean Oil Pipeline

Length: 4,857km (3,018 miles)
Capacity: 1 million barrels per day
Start year: 2009
It is used to export Russian crude oil to Asia-Pacific markets, including Japan, China and South Korea.

West-East Gas Pipeline
Length: 18,854km (11,715 miles)
Capacity: 82 million cubic metres (2.9 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 2005
Consists of four pipelines that run between Xinjiang in the west of China to Shanghai in the east.

Moomba to Sydney Gas Pipeline
Length: 2,081km (1,293 miles)
Capacity: 13 million cubic metres (463 million cubic feet) per day
Start year: 1976
Runs from gas fields in southern Australia to gas distribution systems in Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong, and Canberra.

(Al Jazeera)

About 200,000km of planned expansions

There are currently at least 212,049km (131,761 miles) of ongoing and planned pipeline expansions costing an estimated $1 trillion.

China’s 32,800km (20,381-mile) expansion of its oil and gas pipeline is the highest in the world. PipeChina, known formally as China Oil and Gas Pipeline Network, will soon become the largest builder of gas pipelines in the world, according to Global Energy Monitor.

The map below highlights where these planned pipelines are located.

(Al Jazeera)

Some notable pipelines include:

Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline
This 1,230km (764-mile) gas pipeline is set to run from Ust-Luga in Russia to Greifswald, Germany, and to carry 151 million cubic metres (5.3 billion cubic feet) of natural gas per day. The pipeline will cost $11.6bn, and plans to start operations in 2022.

Capline Oil Pipeline
Running from Pakota, Illinois to St James, Louisiana in the US and scheduled to open in 2022, this pipeline will have a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day and total length of 1,017km (632 miles).

Niger-Benin Oil Pipeline
Stretches from Agadem oil field in Niger to the port of Seme Terminal in Benin. Its capacity is 90,000 barrels per day and its total length is 1,980km (1,230 miles). The pipeline will cost $7bn and is slated to start operations in 2024.

Xinjiang Coal-to-Gas Pipeline
Runs from Xinjiang Autonomous Territory to Shaoguan, Guangdong, China. Its capacity is 82 million cubic metres (2.9 billion cubic feet) per day and it has a total length of 8,372km (5,202 miles). The pipeline was planned to start its operations in 2021.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Shifting sands
Impact concerns remain as silica plan pivots from fracking to solar power

By: Ben Waldman
Posted: 2:00 AM CST Monday, Dec. 13, 2021
Last Modified: 11:59 AM CST Monday, Dec. 13, 2021 | Updates



Alberta’s Canadian Premium Sands Inc. announced plans last week to pivot to solar glass production and has chosen Selkirk as the base of its manufacturing operations.

A Canadian company previously engaged in hydraulic fracturing is pivoting to solar glass production, and has chosen Selkirk as the base of its manufacturing operations.

Alberta’s Canadian Premium Sands Inc., and the City of Selkirk announced the plans last week.

The move toward solar panel glass production is considered by the city to align with its sustainability mandate, and will create an estimated 300 jobs, while the company said the move toward solar panel development made strong business sense. Selkirk director of sustainable economic development Tim Feduniw called it "potentially the largest single industrial investment in the last 100 years in Selkirk."

When Canadian Premium Sands first received approved quarry leases in Seymourville, located about 160 kilometres north of Selkirk on the territory of Hollow Water First Nation, the company intended to use the silica sand deposits in fracking — a process in which silica sand particles are injected into the earth to extract resources.

Although the First Nation’s government agreed to the leases with CPS, which had its licence issued and approved by the province in May 2019, there has been opposition from some community members concerned over impacts on nearby bodies of water, air and land, as well as a lack of community consultation by their government or a community-involved environmental review beforehand.

"The silica sand of this unique landscape is central to Ojibwa spirituality," Hollow Water’s Marcel Hardisty wrote in a 2019 op-ed for the Free Press. "It is like the stars in the Milky Way. We come from the stars, and we return to them — that is our belief. As a way of honouring that link, sand was used in burial rituals, placed on the ground around the deceased to guide them home to their place among the stars with their ancestors."

Alberta’s Canadian Premium Sands Inc. announced plans last week to pivot to solar glass production and has chosen Selkirk as the base of its manufacturing operations.

Now, instead of fracking, the publicly traded company intends to use that silica sand to manufacture panelled glass for the solar power industry.

CEO Glenn Leroux says the move makes good business sense. "When the oil and gas sector cratered, and then COVID hit, our original business plan wasn’t viable anymore." So the company reconsidered potential uses for the low-iron silica, which is a base component of glass for solar panelling. Market research showed there were no North American solar glass manufacturers, Leroux said; all such product was sourced from China and other countries in the Pacific rim.

"This is a dramatic pivot for us, but every potential customer we’ve spoken to has growth plans," he said. "Solar is going to be a huge component of (future policy and carbon reduction targets). It’s rapidly growing, and let’s face it, it’s where the world is going, so it’s the right thing to do."

Even with the change in plans, some are skeptical and remain concerned over potential environmental impacts of the proposed operation.

Mary-Jane McCarron, who lived on Hollow Water for years and whose two sons are members, says while fracking is much more detrimental, there are still fears over the potential impact on the water, air, and land surrounding the quarry in Seymourville through extraction for glassmaking. As well, there are concerns the operation will go through the local trap line.

"This looks like a panicky effort to come up with something that looks environmentally responsible in order to get the money out," said McCarron, who is involved in Camp Morning Star, a demonstration set up after CPS was first issued licences in Hollow Water.

Don Sullivan, a research associate for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, wrote in an online article for the CCPA last week that the revamped plan "contains a good deal of greenwashing."
Jim Mone / The Associated Press Files

Low-iron silica is a base component of glass used for solar panels.

Leroux disputed that statement, and said the change in direction was not a strategic way of "greening up," but that it made economic sense as solar power installation is anticipated to increase significantly in the next decade. Profit-wise, it was a better option, he said; environmentally, too.

On the environmental front, he said one-tenth as much silica will need to be extracted and processed for patterned-glass making annually as would have been extracted for fracking purposes. He also emphasized the products being made would promote a reduced reliance on carbon and promote renewable energy development. And, they wouldn’t be coming from thousands of kilometres away.

"This is green, but we didn’t set out to see how we can ‘green’ this company," he said. "The business opportunity for solar glass was a way better opportunity."

He also said that quarry leases are granted by the provincial government’s mines branch. "CPS has participation agreements with financial benefit elements in place with both Hollow Water and Seymourville, the details of which are confidential," he wrote in an email.

Leroux said the company will need to receive a notice of approval for an alteration of its environmental licences, along with approval of business permits. Plus, the company will have to raise "hundreds of millions" of dollars in funding. Should they be successful in those regards, he anticipates development of the manufacturing facility could begin by the end of 2022.

For the city of Selkirk, that manufacturing facility would create approximately 300 jobs, according to a release from the company, and could potentially spur other developments in the solar energy sector.

A city spokesperson reiterated Selkirk’s role is as host, not as partner, in the proposed project. "We recognize that there were concerns about a proposed past project that did not go forward," an email read. "What has been presented to us is a very different project with very different environmental outcomes. It is solely about the manufacturing of solar glass."

"CPS in our dealings have demonstrated their belief and commitment to environmental licensing processes as well as respecting and working with (I)ndigenous communities and their associated land rights," the email continued. "It is our view that this project represents a positive transition in the energy sector as it looks to divert resources to greener energy products for the benefit of all."

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca

Ben Waldman
Reporter
Ben Waldman covers a little bit of everything for the Free Press.

Yukon Court of Appeal strikes down more claims in oil company's lawsuit on government's fracking ban

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The government said there were still parts of the lawsuit

 that stood no chance of success

CBC News · Posted: Dec 09, 2021 4:40 PM CT | Last Updated: December 9

Chance Oil and Gas, formerly Northern Cross, is suing the Yukon government for $2.2 billion. It stems from a 2015 moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. (Northern Cross)

The Yukon Court of Appeal has tossed out more parts of a $2.2-billion lawsuit against the territorial government.

Chance Oil and Gas is suing over the government's 2015 moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking. In January, a Yukon Supreme Court judge threw out part of the lawsuit, but the government appealed, saying there were still parts of the lawsuit that stood no chance of success.

The appeal court has now agreed — in part. It's thrown out claims that the moratorium unjustly enriched the government.

The court also said the government's moratorium amounts to the unlawful cancellation of the company's permits

The lawsuit has yet to go to trial.

• Court tosses parts of oil company's lawsuit against Yukon government

The Yukon Supreme Court previously struck down three of the company's lawsuit claims at the start of this year.

That included a claim of unlawful interference with economic interests and the company's request to order the government to exempt it from the fracking ban.

The court also granted a request from the government to remove Ranj Pillai, Yukon's energey minister at the time, from the suit.

The former Yukon Party government issued the fracking moratorium in 2015 following months of hearings on the practice by a select committee of the Legislative Assembly.

Fracking is only permitted in the natural-gas rich Liard Basin in southeast Yukon, and only with the approval of local First Nations.

The Liberal government, elected in November 2016, later said it would not issue permits for fracking operations anywhere in the territory.

A ‘false solution’? How crypto mining became the oil industry’s new hope

Illustration: Kat Morris/The Guardian

Supported by


Leanna First-Arai
Thu 16 Dec 2021 

In January of 2019, Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness, recently reunited prep school pals from Denver, drove out to the snow-covered plains of Wyoming to bring a piece of tech culture to the American heartland. Trembling in -20F (-29C) temperatures, they wired up a prototype of their brainchild: a machine that harnesses the “waste gas” from oil rigs to power mining for cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, the most-popular decentralized digital currency, have a notoriously large carbon footprint (bitcoin mining alone consumes about half as much electricity in a year as all of the UK). So to leverage a cheap source of energy to run their bitcoin mining operations, Lochmiller and Cavness found themselves partnering with oil companies to repurpose a byproduct, primarily methane, that’s typically vented or burnt off in flares.


Waste from one bitcoin transaction ‘like binning two iPhones’

“We flipped the switch and saw all the bitcoin mining servers light up green, and you could see the flare physically shrink a little bit,” said Lochmiller, a self-described “city kid” who had never before set foot in an oilfield.

“It was kind of a Frankenstein moment, like ‘Oh my god, it’s alive!’”

Their creation is part of a niche wave of tech startups that are now eyeing the oil and gas industry to help power the cryptocurrency boom. Lochmiller and Cavness, who started a bitcoin mining company called Crusoe Energy, see their fix as a marriage between two problems capable of “solving” one another: the wasting of gas flaring that contributes to the climate crisis, and the need for cheaper energy as crypto increases in popularity.

Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness, founders of Crusoe Energy, show off their modular data centers. Photograph: Crusoe Energy

Climate experts, however, warn it’s a “false solution” so long as oil and gas production is allowed to continue. The world’s leading authority on climate science concludes that only a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will help avert a climate calamity; merely finding alternate uses for “waste gas” doesn’t confront the dire need to curb fossil fuel consumption. If anything, researchers warn, oil companies may feel incentivized to drill even more.

“At the end of the day, they’re still burning natural gas,” said Arvind Ravikumar, a methane researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, who deemed flare mitigation and companies proposing similar technologies a “scam”.

Lochmiller and Cavness, however, say their work helps the industry produce oil in as clean a way as possible, buying time, or “extending the runway” for the energy transition.

Their company has attracted high-profile investors, including Bain and Winklevoss Capital, raking in $125m for their second round of fundraising in April. They plan to roll out 100 bitcoin mining data centers by early 2022, up from the 65 units already in place.

Crusoe has trademarked its solution as “digital flare mitigation”. They install fleets of data centers that hum in shipping container-like structures next to remote oil rigs. Oil producers are then paid for the waste gas they otherwise wouldn’t use because it’s cheaper to burn than to pay to transport to market. In return, Crusoe can use the byproduct to power energy-intensive computing operations on-site.

Lochmiller and Cavness say their work helps the industry produce oil in as clean a way as possible. Illustration: Kat Morris/The Guardian

The data centers burn through enormous amounts of energy because there’s no centralized “bank” that holds cryptocurrency. Instead, new coins are created by solving complex equations that require heavy computing power to authenticate. The currency is then tracked on a decentralized ledger, known as the blockchain, which is also resource-intensive to maintain.

The new technology comes amid a “great mining migration” that’s currently underway in the United States after China banned crypto mining in September. And with renewed global focus on cutting the highly-potent greenhouse gas, methane, which is the primary “waste gas” in flaring, the model is particularly in vogue.

Oil-friendly regulators, elected officials, industry groups and financial services giants have been taking note. Commissioner Jim Wright of the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency charged with regulating oil and gas, told the Guardian that modular mitigation setups like Crusoe’s are “most appealing”. Texas senator Ted Cruz is also a fan.

Meanwhile, North Dakota lawmakers on both sides of the aisle passed a law this year making oil producers eligible for a tax credit if they employ onsite flare mitigation. Crusoe, which is based in Williston, North Dakota – the heart of the Bakken shale – worked closely with legislators to pass the bill.

According to Paasha Mahdavi, a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who co-authored a 2020 paper on methane mitigation measures, new technologies that stop flaring at the source do seem like they would reduce emissions.

But in practice, he said, projects designed to capture otherwise flared or vented gas have resulted in an overall increase in gas production. After all, they create a new source of demand.

“It’s like if you had a leaky gasoline pipeline and, instead of fixing the problem, you plugged in a Humvee next to the leak and left the engine on in perpetuity with the A/C on full blast,” Mahdavi said.

Cavness, the chief executive of Crusoe Energy who goes by “Electron Cowboy” on Twitter, grew up envisioning himself jumping on the family bandwagon. He would get an internship with Shell, and follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to carve out a career in the oil and gas industry.

But then Cavness landed at Middlebury College, a prestigious liberal arts school in Vermont with a reputation as the alma mater of global climate campaign, 350.org founders, and home of the university fossil fuel divestment movement.

“Climate was the whole conversation,” Cavness said, noting that he felt pressure to downplay his oil and gas roots.

After going down the climate rabbit hole at Middlebury, and spending a year after graduation studying the “morality of energy”, Cavness’ job was troubling his conscience. He’d been losing sleep thinking about the unfathomable amount of gas the industry was wasting. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2020, 142bn cubic metres of gas was flared – the energy equivalent of providing electricity to 49m homes.

When Cavness reunited with Lochmiller in 2018 during an 18-hour hiking trip in the Rocky Mountains, they hatched a plan: Lochmiller, an MIT graduate based in San Francisco, had recently left a position as a partner at a cryptocurrency investment firm, while Cavness was with a separate firm that invested in oil and gas. Together, they would combine their worlds of bitcoin and big oil.

Chase Lochmiller, a co-founder of Crusoe Energy, says their company supports new fossil fuel exploration and drilling. 

Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Unsurprisingly, the bitcoin flaring option is enormously appealing to the industry. Crusoe’s data centers are set up without cost to producers, who earn money on gas they otherwise wouldn’t.

“It’s essentially a free offering to the oil company,” Cavness explained earlier this year at Hart Energy’s Developing Unconventional Gas virtual conference for the Bakken and Rockies regions.

Cavness and Lochmiller say they’re on the cusp of the latest climate research. But critics warn their company sits squarely within the techno-optimistic ecosystem of Silicon Valley, where the hunt for innovative solutions may blind even the most climate-literate entrepreneurs.

Climate experts warn Crusoe’s outlook, and it’s proposed “fix”, reflects a selective understanding of the science. Even the most conservative forecasts say oil and gas exploration must stop immediately to prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis, including unnecessary loss of human lives. But despite Crusoe’s climate-focused branding, Lochmiller confirmed the company supports ongoing exploration and drilling.

As Cavness sees it, even after his now-infant daughter grows old or reaches the end of her life, fossil fuels will still be around. If the oil industry will be “required to sustain life on the planet” anyway, Cavness asks, why not drill in the cleanest way possible?

While the Crusoe chiefs say their digital flare migration technology is buying time for new clean energy sources, some fear their strategy is more like placing a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. Nine out of ten climate experts who responded to requests for comment, including top methane researchers, political scientists, and climate analysts, said that oil and gas exploration and new drilling – even if equipped with methane mitigation technologies – is not in line with a future in which warming is curbed in accordance with global climate pledges.

Of this group, the one dissenting voice, an academic and co-founder of a greenhouse gas monitoring company, said continued exploration and drilling can “probably” happen in a clean way.

It’s like … if you plugged in a Humvee next to the leak and left the engine on in perpetuity with the A/C on full blast

Paasha Mahdavi

Climate experts are more split over the degree to which cryptocurrency operations should be allowed to consume renewable energy. Three out of ten climate experts the Guardian spoke with were intrigued by one element of Crusoe’s model.

Similar to waste gas operations, the company has a set of data centers slated to run on wind farms designed to tap energy available when gigawatts generated exceed those demanded. Crusoe’s ability to pay for that energy, according to the company, will enable renewable developers to underwrite new fleets.

But not all are optimistic. Heather Price, an atmospheric chemist and professor at North Seattle College, worries that flare mitigation technology is little more than a greenwashing tactic meant to spin fossil fuels in a positive light.

“I have no faith that this use of flares for crypto would be a temporary situation,” she said. “The fossil fuel industry and crypto companies should not get a ‘cookie’ for this move.”


This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story