First poll of Wales since Liz Truss made PM puts Conservatives in ‘electoral wipe-out territory’

25 Sep 2022 

THE NATION CYMRU WALES

Liz Truss. Picture by PA / Henry Nicholls.

The first poll of Wales since Liz Truss became Prime Minister puts the Conservatives “close to a 1997-style electoral wipe-out” according to an expert.

ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University’s latest opinion poll reveals that the majority of people in Wales don’t trust Liz Truss’ government to make the right decisions for the country.

The Barn Cymru poll, conducted by YouGov for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University, shows 66% of people lack faith in the new PM’s government.

Although 12% of those surveyed thought Truss – who won the Conservative Leadership contest on September 6 – would make a good prime minister, nearly half of the respondents thought she’d be a poor or terrible PM.

Looking at Westminster voting intentions, the poll has Labour on its highest share of the vote since March 2018 and the Conservatives on their lowest since June 2016. This brings the gap between the parties now to a substantial 23 point lead for Labour, the highest in almost a decade.

Dr Jac Larner, from Cardiff University’s Welsh Governance Centre, said: “If the Westminster voting intention figures were to play out in a real general election, the Conservatives in Wales are close to a 1997-style electoral wipe-out territory.

“In Senedd voting intentions, we see a similar pattern with Conservative figures dropping to their lowest levels since the summer of 2019, although there are more modest changes for Labour here.

“Plaid Cymru return to being the second largest party in the constituency and list votes, though this is less a result of their numbers growing but more the Conservatives considerable drop.”

Westminster Voting Intention

Conservative – 23% (-3)

Labour – 46% (+5)

Liberal Democrats – 5% (-2)

Plaid Cymru – 15% (-1)

Reform UK – 5% (+1)

Green Party – 3% (-1)

Other – 3% (+1)

Senedd Constituency Voting Intention

Conservative – 20% (- 4)

Labour – 40% (+ 3)

Liberal Democrats – 6%

Plaid Cymru – 22% (+ 1)

Reform UK – 5%

Green Party – 3% (-2)

Other – 4%

‘Insight’

Owain Phillips, ITV Cymru Wales’ Programme and Digital Editor added: “This poll is the first time we’ve surveyed Welsh respondents since Liz Truss became Prime Minister and it suggests she’s got work to do in convincing voters here.

“We’re pleased to be working with Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre who again have provided valuable insight and expertise in interpreting the results of the poll.”

Barn Cymru is a collaborative partnership between ITV Cymru Wales, the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University, and the leading polling agency YouGov. The poll aims to provide an insight into people’s beliefs, attitudes and opinions and to gain real-time feedback on public views in Wales.

YouGov polled a representative sample of 1,014 Welsh voters, aged 16+, between September 20-22 for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University

OPINION

This is a government by the rich, for the rich – and its wealth won’t be trickling over to Wales

23 Sep 2022 THE NATION CYMRU WALES

Prime Minister Liz Truss. Picture by Stefan Rousseau / PA Wire

Ifan Morgan Jones

There is a saying in Welsh, ‘i’r pant y rhed y dŵr’ – the water flows into the dell.

Essentially this means ‘the rich get richer’.

Whoever came up with this saying understood the reality of so-called ‘trickle down’ economics.

In reality, money doesn’t trickle down, it trickles up. It’s the rich who have the gravitational mass and that’s why it’s up to the state to reverse the laws of capitalist physics and pump some of that money back down to the poorest.

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s ‘fiscal event’ today is a budget for the rich, by the rich.

The higher rate of income tax for the very richest earning £150,000+ has been abolished. So too has a cap on bankers’ bonuses, while a rise in corporation tax has been axed.

Meanwhile, the Chancellor has announced new restrictions on welfare for those working part-time, and a clamp down on the rights of trade unions to strike for better pay.

The UK is already one of the most unequal nation-states in the world and this budget seems clearly designed to entrench that inequality deeper still.

But we also have to remember that financial inequality in the UK is also regional inequality within the UK.

The UK includes the richest part of western Europe – London – and also its poorest – the west of Wales and the valleys.

Only 0.3% of people in Wales will benefit from abolishing the additional highest rate of tax. That’s 4,300 people out of a population of 3.2 million.

Meanwhile, the other 3.195 million will now have to contend with another bout of austerity as the UK Government will have less to spend on public services.

The cut in stamp duty will also artificially inflate house prices yet further, making it harder for the poorest to live in their own communities. All this in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

Rebuke

In July of just last year the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, made a speech saying that “for too many people, geography turns out to be destiny”.

He said that GDP in Wales was lower than in the former East Germany, which only reunited with the rest of Germany in 1990.

This was a result of former leaders investing too heavily in London and the South East to the detriment of other parts of the country, he admitted.

Of course, Boris Johnson never actually did anything about this. Levelling up as a slogan ultimately achieved nothing but provide cover for a plan to recentralise funding power from the devolved governments to Whitehall under the guise of the ‘Levelling Up Fund’.

But at least there was a quasi-recognition that there was a problem there that needed to be tackled.

That has gone now. Prime Minister Liz Truss simply does not recognise inequality as an issue as Boris Johnson did in that speech.

Speaking to the BBC, she said: “To look at everything through the lens of redistribution, I believe, is wrong. Because what I am about is growing the economy, and growing the economy benefits everybody.

“This is a really important point. The economic debate for the past 20 years has been dominated by discussions about redistribution. And what has happened is, we have had relatively low growth, and that has been holding our country back.”

But this is simply incorrect. To begin with, there is no correlation between nations having more redistributive policies and a lack of growth. None at all.

Secondly, if you cut taxes for the mega-rich while cutting welfare for the poorest, you’re not benefitting everybody. You’re making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The UK’s own inequality is a rebuke to the very idea that a rising tide lifts all boats. In Wales’ case, a geyser of wealth from the SE of England has left us battered and forgotten on the rocks.

As John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times described the UK: “Essentially, [we] are poor societies with some very rich people.”

Liz Truss may well eke out some growth out of her new policies. But whose growth?

It won’t be trickling down to the people of Wales. I’r pant y rhed y dŵr.

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A WEEK LATER
Fiona blackouts draw renewed scrutiny of Puerto Rico’s electric grid woes

LUMA IS OWNED IN PART BY ATCO AN ALBERTA COMPANY LINKED TO THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION

BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 09/25/22 

Associated Press/Alejandro Granadillo
A fallen tree hangs on electrical wires over a street, blown down by Hurricane Fiona, in Salinas, Puerto Rico, Tuesday, September 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

Hurricane Fiona’s impact on Puerto Rico is drawing renewed attention to the territory’s embattled power system.

The storm left millions of Puerto Ricans without power for several days, and as of Friday hundreds of thousands of people were still without power.

Puerto Rico’s power problems have been compounded by an electric grid that has not been fully rebuilt after the destruction of Hurricane Maria due to bureaucratic struggles, among other things.

“The system was in a state of disrepair five years ago [and] remains in a state of disrepair today without much improvement at all,” said Tom Sanzillo, director of financial analysis at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

It took years for the federal government to fully allocate federal aid to Puerto Rico’s recovery, and only a small fraction of that has actually been used.

In 2020, the Trump administration released billions of dollars of funding for Puerto Rico’s electric grid, but the release raised questions about why the funds were not dispersed until 3 years later.

The administration was generally hesitant to provide assistance to Puerto Rico, expressing concerns about corruption and its ability to manage the money.

Manuel Laboy, the executive director of Puerto Rico’s Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency, said the delay is one reason why the country’s grid has not fully recovered.

“If we had the obligation before 2020, yes, we would have made more progress,” Laboy said.

Since its release, spending on the project has been slow-going.

According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, Puerto Rico has only spent about $5.3 billion, or 19 percent, of the $28 billion it received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for its recovery in general.

The vast majority — 81 percent — of those expenditures were used for emergency work, while just 8 percent was spent on permanent projects.

Sergio Marxuach, policy director at the Center for a New Economy, a Puerto Rican think tank, said that very little of the post-Maria disaster aid has actually been spent because of what he described as a “tug-of-war” between the Puerto Rican and federal governments over what the money can be spent on.

“Usually FEMA only rebuilds up to what was there before the storm. … However, Congress authorized FEMA, in the case of hurricane Maria, to expand the scope and actually, literally, build back better,” he said.

He added that the legislative language was vague, so some of the details will have to be worked out between the federal and territorial governments.

Laboy noted that much of the funding didn’t come through until 2020, so the projects couldn’t start until recently.

“The permanent work obligations started to happen in 2020,” he said.

He said that when he took office in 2021, FEMA and Puerto Rico’s energy regulator hadn’t authorized any projects for repairing the electric grid, but they have since approved 47.

He also said another delay was caused because these projects could not get the cash in advance until June of this year through a new program to give projects 25 percent of the cash up front.

“All those power projects for permanent work, now they can benefit from the 25 percent advance, and so that is going to create a major boost to get more projects on the ground,” Laboy said.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico’s power utility, PREPA, has also struggled with debt and filed for bankruptcy in 2017 prior to Maria. While it still owns the grid equipment, the Puerto Rican government has since contracted with a private company known as LUMA for its operation.

Marxuach said that even prior to Hurricane Fiona, having two separate entities in charge created a confusing situation.

“Even before Fiona, we would have an outage and it was not even raining. PREPA would say it was LUMA’s fault, LUMA would say it was PREPA’s fault, and we had that kind of dynamic already going,” he said. “It appears it has gotten a little bit more intense since the hurricane.”

There have also been disputes about how exactly to rebuild Puerto Rico’s grid. A 2019 law adopted by the island’s government requires it to transition to renewable power by 2050, including 40 percent renewable by 2025.

But the status quo is nowhere close. Between July 2020 and June 2021, 97 percent of its power came from fossil fuels.

In March, PREPA’s executive director, Josué Colón, said he doesn’t think it’s possible for the goals in the 2019 law to be met and called for them to be revisited.

Sanzillo raised concerns that, regardless of the law, if Puerto Rico builds up infrastructure largely based on fossil fuels, that infrastructure will be set in place.

“If they go forward and sign the contracts and do the deal, the law doesn’t matter,” he said.

But Laboy stressed the government’s commitment to renewable energy.

“One of the key components at the core of being resilient and also [adapting] to climate change is renewable energy, so it is at the forefront of our strategy,” Laboy said.

He added that Puerto Rico’s government has awarded contracts for 18 renewable energy projects.

Liang Min, managing director for a Stanford University initiative that conducts grid research, said that Puerto Rico would benefit from increasing its use of distributed solar energy — that is, solar energy that’s built on either individual homes or within communities — and batteries, as opposed to from a large solar farm. 

But he also noted that there’s not just one solution to grid problems, adding that electricity transmission and distribution lines need to be hardened.

Min added that if Puerto Rico continues with the status quo, its electrical problems will be recurring.

“If they do business as usual, as the existing structure they have, as the existing utility planning process they have, this will happen every year,” he said.

The sting of climate risk is in the tails

A boy stands near sheep during a sandstorm in the countryside of Tabqa, Syria, 

June 2, 2022. /CFP

Mark Cliffe

Scientists have longed warned that climate change will adversely affect weather patterns and living conditions around the world. These warnings are now turning into a painful reality. Worse, the range of possible outcomes has proven to be increasingly "fat-tailed": extreme weather events such as heatwaves, severe storms, and floods are more likely than normal statistical distributions would predict.

None of this bodes well for future political stability or economic prosperity. Our best hope is that the sharp sting in these tails will goad us into the necessary remedial action before things get even worse. But will it?

The public is increasingly aware that global warming is leading to more volatile weather. There have been record-setting heatwaves around the world this year, not just in India – where temperatures reached 49.2 degrees Celsius (120.5 degree Fahrenheit) – but also in places like the United Kingdom (40.2 degrees Celsius). France and China are experiencing their worst droughts on record, and four consecutive years of failed rainy seasons in eastern Africa have put more than 50 million people at risk of "acute food insecurity," according to a new study backed by the World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization. Meanwhile, devastating storms and floods have hit Madagascar, Australia, the United States, Germany, Bangladesh, and South Africa.

A group of people walk on the sea wall as a man kayaks through

 the flooded parking lot in downtown Annapolis, Maryland, 

U.S., October 29, 2021. /CFP


These events are causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and enormous economic and financial damage each year, making weather volatility an increasingly important factor in risk assessment. Whereas temperature increases of 0.5 degrees Celsius here or there are barely perceptible, droughts, floods, and other short-term weather fluctuations can wreak deadly havoc.

Moreover, extreme weather events can cause changes that last far beyond the immediate shock and damage, especially when they accelerate developments that might otherwise have taken many years. Scientists are increasingly worried about "tipping points" – such as the melting of polar ice sheets – that would carry us across thresholds of irreversible change. That could create damaging feedback loops between interconnected climate risks, all of which would spill over into the real economy, driving defaults, job losses that disproportionately harm disadvantaged communities, and political turmoil.

Aside from the damage to the physical environment, extreme weather may therefore trigger abrupt and sometimes permanent shifts in social attitudes and public policy. When people start losing their homes, livelihoods, or even their lives, politicians must respond.

Surprisingly, while we are all acutely conscious of extreme weather, forecasters still widely overlook its role in accelerating structural changes. Mainstream climate scientists and economists tend to focus on the longer-term effects of climate change brought about by global warming, with an emphasis on scenarios involving global average temperature increases in the range of only 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius – the targets enshrined in the Paris climate agreement. And even in higher-temperature scenarios, it is assumed that the effects – on sea levels and agricultural output, for example – will accumulate only gradually, implying that the ultimate reckoning is several decades away.

But a recent paper – "Climate Endgame: Exploring Catastrophic Climate Change Scenarios" – shows that this conventional scenario analysis gravely understates the long-term risks, because it fails to give the more extreme climate outcomes (the fat tails) the attention they deserve. As the statistician Nassim Taleb has pointed out in the context of financial markets, conventional models struggle to handle the consequences of fat-tail events, creating a dangerous blind spot in their outlook.

Higher temperature pathways would unleash what the authors call the "four horsemen" of the climate endgame: famine and malnutrition, extreme weather, conflict, and vector-borne diseases. It does not take much imagination to see how this herd of apocalyptic harbingers might create social and political chaos, especially when they are all galloping together – as is already the case today with the global food crisis, a new war in Europe, and the ongoing pandemic. Worse, the mention of the second horseman suggests that the more immediate risks of climate change are still being underplayed. After all, extreme weather is also a driver of the other three horsemen, making it arguably the most important.

Weather shocks cause suffering that grabs society's attention far more than abstract (though no less warranted) warnings of long-term doom. Polls show that support for climate action is greater for those who have personally experienced extreme weather. Although the current upsurge in inflation means that people are less enthusiastic about measures that would hurt their own finances, the growing incidence of disasters is shrinking the minority that remains skeptical of climate change or climate policies altogether.

In this way, the fat tails of the weather – rather than the fat tails of long-term climate change – are far more likely to prompt action within the shorter time horizons that preoccupy politicians and business. Let us hope that as the stings from these tails become ever more common and painful, they will spur us to sustain the policies necessary to keep the climate horses in their stable.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.

Editor's note: Mark Cliffe is a visiting professor at the London Institute of Banking and Finance, and former chief economist of the ING Group. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Australia climate change failings violated indigenous rights: UN committee

The UN ruled in favour of indigenous Torres Islanders 

who had filed a complaint against Australia over its failure

 to adapt to climate change. 

PHOTO: REUTERS

GENEVA - Australia violated the rights of indigenous people by failing to adequately protect them against the effects of climate change, a United Nations watchdog has ruled, ordering Canberra to pay compensation.

In a ground-breaking decision, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled in favour of indigenous Torres Islanders who had filed a complaint against Australia over its failure to adapt to climate change.

The Islanders had pointed to measures such as failure to upgrade seawalls on their islands or to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

"Australia's failure to adequately protect indigenous Torres Islanders against adverse impacts of climate change violated their rights to enjoy their culture and be free from arbitrary interferences with their private life, family and home," the committee said in its decision issued on Friday.

Eight Australian nationals and six of their children - all indigenous inhabitants of Boigu, Poruma, Warraber and Masig, four small, low-lying islands in Australia's Torres Strait region - filed the complaint in 2019.

They claimed that changes in weather patterns had direct harmful consequences on their livelihood, culture and traditional way of life.

Severe flooding had destroyed family graves and left human remains scattered across their islands, they said

They also argued that the changing climate, with heavy rainfall and storms, had degraded the land and trees, reducing the amount of food available from traditional fishing and farming.
Islands could 'disappear'

"Advancing seas are already threatening homes, as well as damaging burial grounds and sacred cultural sites," the claimants said when they filed their complaint.

"Many Islanders are worried that their islands could quite literally disappear in their lifetimes without urgent action."

The committee, whose 18 independent experts are tasked with monitoring the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, found that Australia had violated two articles of the convention in the case.

Taking account of the islanders' close, spiritual connection with their traditional lands, it questioned "the delay in seawall construction" on their islands and ruled that Australia's failure to take timely and adequate measures to protect them had led to the violation of their rights.

MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Islanders sue Australia for inaction on climate change

The committee, whose opinions and recommendations are non-binding but carry reputational weight, called on Australia to "make full reparation to individuals whose Covenant rights have been violated".

The country, it said, should "provide adequate compensation (to the islanders) for the harm that they have suffered" and should also "engage in meaningful consultations... to conduct needs assessment".

It should also implement the measures needed to "secure the communities' continued safe existence on their respective islands", it said.

In the ruling, the committee listed a number of arguments by Australia, including that climate change was a global phenomenon attributable to the actions of many states and requires global action.

The decision could have implications for other countries as well.

"The Committee has created a pathway for individuals to assert claims where national systems have failed to take appropriate measures to protect those most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change on the enjoyment of their human rights," committee member Helene Tigroudja said in a statement.

"States that fail to protect individuals under their jurisdiction from the adverse effects of climate change may be violating their human rights under international law," she added. 

AFP

Interview: New UN climate chief takes the fight personally
For the United Nations’ new climate chief, the fight is personal.

By Seth Borenstein

The Associated Press
Sat., Sept. 24, 2022timer5 min. read


UNITED NATIONS (AP) — For the United Nations’ new climate chief, the fight is personal.

As a former engineer who says he knows “how to make things work and get things done,” it wasn’t just what Simon Stiell did before he became a top U.N. official, it was where.

Stiell was the environment and climate resilience minister on the small island nation of Grenada until he started his job as the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change a few weeks ago. It’s now his job to make sure the world cuts about half emissions of heat-trapping gases — which are helping trigger unprecedented frequent weather disasters — in just eight years, or as he puts it, two World Cups or two Olympics away.

“Living half my life in a climate-vulnerable nation gives me a deep appreciation,” Stiell, 53, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’ve lived through two hurricanes ( Ivan in 2004 and Emily in 2005). I’ve seen my country flattened through hurricanes. I’ve seen sea level rise around my ankles. ... And I’ve also been in government finding solutions and responsible as the lead policymaker in how we build a more resilient nation with the limited resources that we have.”

Simon Stiell, the UN official now in charge of the fight to curb climate change, has a personal stake in the battle to reduce emissions. (Sept. 24) (AP Video: Robert Bumsted and David Martin)

And Grenada, which had losses that doubled its annual gross domestic product, is far from alone. In Pakistan, for example, a third of the country is under water.

“Billions of dollars in damages, lives lost, millions displaced. How do they recover from that?” Stiell asked from the 10th floor of the U.N. headquarters, overlooking the East River. Rich polluting countries will have to pay to help poorer countries that are climate victims, like his, he said.

Polluters paying for what their emissions have done is just as important as cutting what comes out of smokestacks and tailpipes, Stiell said. High-emitting countries reimbursing poorer, vulnerable nations — called “loss and damage” in the world of climate negotiations — is now so important it is one of four pillars of the fight against climate change. The others are cutting emissions, adapting to a warmer and wilder world, and rich nations financially aiding poor nations to develop green energy and adapt.

“Loss and damage has to be addressed,” Stiell said. “It’s a very difficult conversation, but it’s a conversation that has to be had. Positions have softened over the years from nonacceptance and refusal to discuss this to a point now where these are agenda items in the negotiations. So that is a step forward.”

Rich nations pledged several years ago to spend $100 billion a year in aid to poor nations to help them adapt to climate change and develop cleaner energy systems, though not as compensation for damage. Even those pledges, however, especially from the United States, have not been fulfilled. Stiell hopes they are getting close.

Coming from a country hit hard by climate gives him “a deep understanding,” but Stiell says his new job means “I also have to factor in the positions of some of those richer nations” and bring everyone together.

Poorer countries see an ally.

“It’s a huge job, and it’s good to see someone from a climate vulnerable country taking the helm. As someone from Grenada, he doesn’t need reminding what is at stake,” said Mohamed Adow of think tank Power Shift Africa. “For too long the perspectives of the global north have held sway at the climate talks and led to foot dragging and inaction. We’re starting to see this change, but it really needs to be accelerated.”

Since 2015, small island nations with little economic and political power have been using their moral authority to get big concessions from the rest of the world, said longtime climate negotiations analyst Alden Meyer of the think tank E3G.

In Paris for the 2015 agreement, small island nations forced the rest of the world to agree to a stricter temperature goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times and a mechanism that requires nations to increase their emission cut targets every five years, Meyer said.

“They have clear moral authority and are showing they can build pressure on the bigger players,” Meyer said.

Stiell is living out of a hotel in Germany, where the U.N. climate agency is based, until international climate negotiations in Egypt in November. He isn’t as focused on wins from the upcoming climate talks as he is about something longer term. He said he’s aiming at 2030 and the need for dramatic pollution cuts to keep temperatures from passing the 1.5 degree goal — something that’s looking less likely because it is only a few tenths of a degree away and approaching fast. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

“We tend to look at incremental progress. And incremental progress isn’t going to provide us with the transformational shifts that we need,” Stiell said.

Taking that 2030 goal and “working backwards will actually increase the pressure,” Stiell said. “So it is not to say let us kick the can down the road. It’s the complete opposite. It’s bringing the can forward right at our feet. ... We’re close to running out of time.“

Because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis it triggered, countries have stepped backwards on their commitments to phase out coal, Stiell said. “But hopefully it is a temporary regression, and those countries are going to accelerate as the crisis diminishes, which it will.“

The United States, the second biggest carbon polluter, took “a major step forward” and is sending a signal to the rest of the world with the Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed this summer. China, the top carbon emitting nation, is also doing more, Stiell said.


“Is it as far as they need to go? Is it as fast as it needs to go? No. But this requires collective effort,” Stiell said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regularly ratchets up the rhetoric. This week, he has called on nations to institute a windfall profits tax o n fossil fuel companies that could then be used to help compensate climate-change victims and people facing high energy and food prices.

Stiell said Guterres’ role is that of a “truth-teller” in carrot-and-stick negotiations with countries, while his new job is that of an arbiter “bringing parties together.”

“It’s hard. It’s frustrating,” Stiell said. “But ultimately the critical focus is achieving that goal of limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees. And that requires extraordinary action.”


___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Follow AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein on Twitter at http://twitter.com/borenbears. Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment and for more AP coverage of the U.N. General Assembly, visit https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations-general-assembly

Beto O’Rourke Says US Guest-Worker Program Would Help Slow Inflation

“A Texas-based guest-worker program allows us to meet our economic opportunity, the needs that we have in our economy -- supply chain problems, inflation issues,” O’Rourke said at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday. “Texas, the defining border and immigrant state, could lead the way for our country.”

O’Rourke has said creating a way for non-citizens to obtain temporary work permits would provide workers for the farm, energy and manufacturing sectors as they struggle to hire amid a US unemployment rate of just 3.7%. That in turn should help with supply-chain issues and alleviate inflation that hit a four-decade high earlier this year, he said.

O’Rourke, a former congressman from El Paso, trails the incumbent Greg Abbott by five to nine percentage points in most recent polls, with surveys showing voters trusting the Republican more when it comes to the issue of immigration. No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas in almost 30 years, though O’Rourke said Saturday that he expects to emerge victorious on Nov. 8.

“The only poll that matters is the one we take on election day,” he said at the event.

NOT ENOUGH

How U.S. Shale Is Reducing Its Emissions

By David Messler - Sep 19, 2022

• Growth in shale production has brought with it growing public awareness of the environmental impact of oil and gas extraction from hydraulic fracturing operations.
• 
  
• Improved water treatment technology and in-basin use of frac sand are rapidly becoming industry best practices.
• 
  
• Many operators are moving to retire old diesel-fueled equipment, replacing it with cleaner all-electric equipment.

Fracture stimulation of shale rock, conventionally known as “Fracking or Frac’ing,” has turned America into an energy powerhouse, over the last 12 years. This bounty from shale has enabled the country to provide much of its own energy needs with a substantial amount left over for export. Particularly in the form of natural gas as LNG.

Growth in shale production has brought with it growing public awareness of the environmental impact of oil and gas extraction from shale strata. To coax oil and gas into flowing from the tightly compacted rock from which shale is constituted, an enormous amount of resources are expended on each well during fracking. A typical, 2-mile-long horizontal well will require-

• 20 million gallons of water
• 3-million pounds of sand
• Several thousand truck trips to the location
• Directly consuming 200,000 gallons of diesel
• Emitting ~ 2,400 Tons of CO2 through burning diesel

The case has been made in governmental and investor circles that this burden on the environment must be reduced. Toward that end, the EPA has mandated emission standards for non-road diesel engines that require the use of Tier II and Tier IV engines in fracking operations. These substantially reduce CO2 emissions from earlier equipment.

Seeking to reduce the carbon footprint of fracking, oil companies have been increasingly looking for ways to improve the ESG ranking of their operations. These efforts have focused primarily on several areas, including water recycling, emissions reduction at the well site, and the use of in-basin sand to eliminate drying and long-haul transport. Companies that provide fracturing services to oil companies have found it incumbent in their business plans to upgrade their equipment beyond current government standards in furtherance of meeting operator goals in the case of emissions. With the challenge of water recycling, new technologies have been implemented to drastically reduce the amount of freshwater used in fracking operations.

In this article, we will look at how key elements of the fracking industry are working to help the industry accomplish these goals.

Water recycling

The vast amounts of water used in frack operations have required a shift in thinking from what was prevalent just a couple of years ago. The old mindset was to send water flowing back from the well and water produced with oil and gas to disposal wells. The increase in induced seismicity, particularly in the Permian basin that has resulted over time from over-injection has brought this issue front and center into the public’s consciousness and brought with it rule changes by the Texas Railroad Commission-TRCC. 

The TRCC is the state agency that governs permitting of oil and gas wells in Texas, as well as the disposal wells used previously to inject frac and produced water into permeable reservoirs. The linked WSJ article above notes that the agency sharply reduced injection in key areas of the Midland basin.

“The Railroad Commission in September curtailed the amount of water companies were permitted to inject into some wells near Midland and Odessa, and has since suspended some permits there and expanded the restrictions to other areas. It has said the suspensions are in effect until further notice.”

For companies operating in these areas, such as Chevron, (NYSE: CVX), and Coterra Energy, (NYSE:CTRA), trucking water to new disposal sites, would have increased field expenses by tens of millions of dollars annually. The obvious answer is recycling on-site and storage of treated water volumes for reuse in future fracking operations.

One company that has led the charge in this effort from the services side, is Tetra Technologies, (NYSE:TTI). Tetra is a leader in treating large volumes of flowback and produced water with mobile recycling equipment that can be quickly transported to an operator’s site, erected, and put in operation, processing as much as 40,000 barrels a day often with just a single field representative.

In the picture above taken by the author, a 40,000 bbl static tank is shown that is supplied by flowback and produced water from local wells.

This photo depicts the chemical stabilization of the water taken from the tank in the previous picture. Solids are removed by sparger-type tank directly behind the “Swiftwater” tank (a division of TTI), and then the clarified water is sent to a million-barrel lined berm tank shown in the background (behind the pickup trucks). (Author’s files)

The water that is clarified and put into the million barrel tank, is shown at the extreme left in the picture above, and had a turbidity of value of 19 NTU-Nephelometric Turbidity Units, clearer than tap water in many cases. The picture at the right and center shows samples in intermediate stages of treatment. (Author’s files)

This technology appears to be rapidly gaining client acceptance and implementation, as noted by Brady Murphy, Tetra’s CEO, in the company’s 2-Q quarterly analyst call-

“We are seeing significant demand for produced water recycling to help our customers reduce disposal costs and address increasing seismicity events with 4 new recycling projects added in the second quarter. In the Permian alone, we recycled 571 million gallons in the second quarter, up 62% from a year ago and up 17% from the first quarter of 2022.”

TTI

This is a huge market application. With roughly 8,000 new wells annually, and about 40,000 existing ones, there are as much as 11 billion barrels of water needing treatment in the Permian basin alone.

Emissions reduction from frac spreads

In advance of threats promulgated by the EPA this summer to declare a “non-attainment” crisis in the Permian, which would mandate activity reductions, the fracturing service industry has seized the bull-by-the-horns in the effort to improve ESG metrics. Much of the older Tier II diesel equipment has been retired, and the Tier IV equipment is being upgraded to DGB-Dynamic Gas Blending. Frac pumps that are configured to this standard use local natural gas as a part-feedstock to reduce the amount of diesel being consumed in the fracturing operation.

The graph below, taken from a pamphlet distributed by U.S. Well Services, (NYSE: USWS), a leading provider of fracturing services, shows that depending on the load up to 70% of diesel demand can be shifted to natural gas. This results in significantly lower overall carbon emissions than just burning diesel alone.

U.S. Well Services

The shift to DGB frac equipment has been slowed by budget exhaustion on the part of service companies, like U.S. Well Services-being acquired by ProFrac Holdings, (NYSE:PFHC), Liberty Energy, (NYSE:LBRT), and others. Margins, while improving are not yet back to 2019 levels. Additionally, CEO’s are very reticent to allocate new growth capital, which can run to $40-$60 mm per fleet as their balance sheets are just recovering from the 2020 downturn. 

Liberty CEO, Chris Wright commented in regard to an analyst question on fleet reactivations and upgrades-

“We don’t have any plans to add capacity per se. Our plan and we do have a plan on (Tier II) fleet modernization is sort of a continued gradual program. But I would say the migration to next-generation fleets, the economics are going to pull that pretty strongly. These next-generation fleets have meaningfully lower emissions.”

The next generation of fracking will be driven by all-electric equipment run off electricity generated in the field, most likely from natural gas. A number of companies, driven by premium pricing offered by ESG-conscious clients who want the latest and best equipment available, are rolling out these all-electric fleets.

The leader in this area is U.S. Well Services which just announced in May, 2022 a significant Permian basin contract for its Nyx CleanFleet electric pumping spreads. By the end of next year, USWS expects to have a ~dozen of these electric fleets working for ESG-conscious clients. Other companies including Liberty Energy will be following suit with their Digifrac offering.’

In-basin sand

The use of “in-basin” sand is another step change improvement from the original frack model, which drew ultra-pure white sand from Wisconsin to the Permian by rail car. It was then moved on demand from centralized depots to field locations where it was to be used, requiring dozens of truck trips. Wisconsin sand known as “Northern White,” was prized for its sphericity, and crush resistance. Over time operators began to experiment with local, reddish sand, to lower this transportation cost. At first drying it in centralized locations to reduce weight, at an enormous fuel cost. Now wet sand is being taken from sites adjacent to the fracking operation, cutting last mile costs to the bone and reducing the environmental impact.

In an effort to reduce “last mile” shipping costs a company called PropX (acquired by Liberty Energy in 2021), has been at the forefront of minimizing these costs. This company containerizes this local sand for maximum dustless deployment at the rig site.

Shale drillers like Devon Energy, (NYSE:DVN) are also rethinking sand logistics. Devon last year introduced a “mobile sand mine,” to move sand logistics closer to the rig location. Clay Gaspar, COO of Devon commented in the Q-1 earnings call about the impact of this mobile sand mine on Devon’s Delaware basin operations-

“This mobile sand mine is the first of its kind in the Delaware Basin and is expected display up to 25% of our profit requirements in the basin this year. In addition to providing a certainty of supply, this mine could save us up to $200,000 per well relative to the rising spot prices we are experiencing across the basin as activity picks up and sand supply is tightened.

Equally important, this mine also has significant environmental and safety benefits due to the need for fewer trucks on the road. And it eliminates the combustion related emissions associated with drawing the sand that occurs in normal mining processes.” 

Devon Energy

Your takeaway

Fracking is necessary for America’s shale miracle to continue. Without it, shale production would drop precipitously. The natural decline rate of shale reservoirs is about 30% per year, so in three years of no fracking U.S. onshore production could be back where it was in 2010. In that case, instead of importing ~5-6 mm BOPD from the Middle East, we could be needing 12-14 mm BOPD. The bad news is they don’t have it to spare, and we would be in a bad situation. OPEC+ has been under-lifting its quotas by as much as three million barrels a day. There is no spare capacity.

Necessary as fracking is to maintain our lifestyle and energy security, the industry is committed to doing it while meeting the highest ESG standards obtainable. The industry has demonstrated the ability and willingness to improve on old practices and to be good stewards of increasingly scarce resources, such as water. Most oil companies are now using 80-90% recycled water in their fracking operations.

On the emissions side, the industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade older Tier II equipment to Tier IV DGB status, and eventually replace that with electric frac equipment. 

As in the case presented by Devon Energy, shale drillers are taking action to reduce the ESG impact of exploiting shale resources. Moving the mine to the location is a dramatic change from the model of just a few years ago. Going forward the fracking industry will be a partner in the production of oil and gas using the best-demonstrated technology with much less environmental impact than just a few years ago.

By David Messler for Oilprice.com