It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, April 01, 2023
A damaged Russian Soyuz capsule lands back on Earth I WION Shorts
A damaged Russian Soyuz MS-22 capsule landed back on Earth. A significant coolant leak was discovered in the capsule last December which caused by a 0.8-millimetre hole in its outer skin.
SPACE WEATHER
Solar danger: Giant hole 20X larger than the Earth seen on the Sun, second such hole to appear in a month
Because of the giant hole on the Sun’s surface, solar winds are hurtling towards the Earth at a speed of 1.8 million mph, which can potentially take down our satellites and other vital pieces of tech.
Because of the giant hole on the Sun’s surface, solar winds are hurtling towards the Earth at a speed of 1.8 million mph, which can potentially take down our satellites and other vital pieces of tech.
A huge ‘hole’ about 20 times the size of Earth has torn through the Sun, the second in less than a month. The gaping ‘coronal crater’ is hurling 1.8-million-mile-per-hour solar gusts towards Earth, which will hit us on Friday.
Scientists are keeping a careful eye on the situation to see if the winds will affect the Earth’s magnetic field, spacecraft such as satellites and in-flight rockets, and other vital pieces of tech.
The curious case of the solar hole What we refer to hole here, isn’t a hole per se. It is just a “dead” spot or a spot that has gone comparatively colder as opposed to other areas on the Sun’s surface. That is why dead spots or cold spots usually appear darker in colour than other parts of the moon.
The first hole, discovered on March 23, is 30 times the size of Earth, and it emitted stellar winds that caused spectacular auroras as far south as Arizona.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which examines the Sun, caught both holes. According to NASA, “coronal holes are magnetically open areas that are one source of high-speed solar wind.” The second hole sits on the Sun’s equator, NASA revealed.
“They look black when observed through many wavelengths of intense ultraviolet light, such as the one shown here. The solar wind can occasionally cause aurora at greater altitudes on Earth,” read NASA’s statement.
Solar holes or coronal holes are a frequent occurrence While the image may appear frightening at first glance, it does not suggest that we are in peril.
Coronal holes are a frequent characteristic of the Sun, though they show in various locations – especially near the poles – and with greater regularity at different periods of the Sun’s activity cycle. They are more prevalent when the Sun is at a lower stage in its 11-year cycle.
The holes’ effects are usually harmless, although satellite communications and high-altitude radio transmissions can sometimes be temporarily disrupted.
The second hole that appeared this month is intriguing “The form of this coronal cavity is nothing out of the ordinary. Its location, however, makes it very intriguing,” said Daniel Verscharen, assistant professor of space and climate physics at University College London, to Insider. “I would anticipate some fast airflow from that coronal hole to reach Earth around Friday night into Saturday morning this week.”
On March 24, the first coronal hole caused dazzling auroras that filled up the night sky with electric purples and greens. They were triggered by a G3 storm, which is a strong solar storm capable of disrupting electrical systems and satellite operations, including orientation problems.
Giant 'holes' dozens of times the size of our planet are appearing on the sun. Here's how they could affect Earth.
A triangular hole appeared in the sun earlier this week. Solar winds from it could hit Earth by Friday. Insider
Two huge coronal holes, dozen of times the size of the Earth, have appeared on the sun. These have been spewing fast solar winds toward Earth as fast as 1.8 million mph. Experts explain what they are and how they affect the Earth.
Two enormous dark 'holes' have been spotted on our sun this month, as our star nears the peak of its activity.
These coronal holes can spew solar winds at 1.8 million mph toward our planet, which can cause stunning auroras and disrupt satellites.
On their own, such holes aren't particularly dangerous. But if they happen at the same time as another big solar event, they can create a "perfect storm" capable of disrupting power grids and causing radio blackouts.
Here's what coronal holes are, how they form, and what they could do to Earth:
Coronal holes are made by magnetic fields on the sun
A video from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the massive hole in the sun's atmosphere on March 20, 2023. NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory
The sun is a big ball of plasma. Liquid, charged particles boil up from the center of the sun, gurgle around on the surface, and sink back down.
Just like you can get a magnetic field by charging a wire coil, as the plasma travels around, it creates magnetic fields on the surface of the sun.
A combination of real time observations and computer simulations shows the directions of magnetic lines on the sun between Sept. 2011 and Feb 2012 NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Duberstein
When the sun is fairly quiet, these fields live in harmony. But when our star is reaching a peak of activity, like it is now, the magnetic fields crash into each other, merge, and split.
On occasion, these fields point straight up into space. That creates a coronal hole.
Coronal holes don't make the solar winds, they just set them free
The magnetic fields around the sun usually keep the plasma from escaping into space.
"Charged particles have to follow the magnetic field. They trace it out in space," said Mathew Owens, a professor of space physics at the University of Reading.
"When you look at one of these nice images and you see all these loops, what you're seeing is the charged particles."
But open field lines that are pointing straight out into space allow sun plasma to shoot outwards. This creates solar wind formed of plasma that is propelled into space at tremendous speeds.
Coronal winds travel at up to 1.8 million miles per hour
An animation of the solar wind shows particles streaming from the sun towards Earth. NASA
When coronal holes release solar winds, they can hurtle throughout space at remarkable speeds — up to 800 kilometers per second, or 1.8 million miles per hour.
Why these winds can travel faster than other solar winds is still a matter of debate among scientists, the experts said.
One theory is that the movement of the field lines themselves helps propel the winds forward.
"If you stick these open magnetic field lines into this bubbling surface plasma of the sun, it starts to shake the field lines. They move like waves upwards, and that can give extra energy to the solar wind," said Daniel Verscharen, an associate professor of space and climate physics at University College London. Coronal holes can knock out satellites and trigger auroras
The Northern Lights could be visible in skies from Oregon to Michigan on Friday thanks to strong solar winds from a giant "hole" in the sun.
NASA / ALEXANDER KUZNETSOV via Reuters
The solar winds don't tend to be that dangerous on their own, but they can cause some havoc.
"The biggest overall shows and the most hazardous space weather are all driven by coronal mass ejections (CMEs)," said Owens. "But the fast wind can have effects. It's just not quite as spectacular," he said.
The Earth is surrounded by its own layer of fast-traveling magnetically-charged particles, which is called the Van Allen radiation belt.
As particles come from the sun and crash into this belt, they disrupt the magnetic fields in the Van Allen belt. Solar winds from coronal aren't very strong, compared to clouds ejected by CMEs, for instance. But they last a lot longer.
"These wind streams can go on for days, and if you expose the Earth to a long-lasting stream of fast wind from a coronal hole, it actually can put a lot of energy into the Earth system," said Versharen.
The good news is that it can create more auroras. These won't be as spectacular as those we see when a coronal mass ejection lands on Earth, but they can still be enhanced.
The bad news is those particles can mess with satellites in orbit.
"If you're lucky, they just changed a few things in the electronics, they flip a bit over to another value. And so you get some weird disturbances that you can then correct. But in the worst case, they can destroy your satellite," said Verscharen.
The real danger is when solar winds combine with coronal mass ejections
A coronal mass eruption of the sun recorded by STEREO-A. NASA/STEREO
Scientists are most concerned about coronal holes teaming up with CMEs.
CMEs happen when closed magnetic loops become stressed and snap in half, ejecting the plasma that was traveling on their magnetic field into space. If the CME is pointed toward Earth, that cloud of plasma can hit our planet with much more violence than solar winds.
"That's the stuff that scientists are nervous about," said Versharen.
If those CMEs happen near a coronal hole, that cloud can become much more powerful as it heads toward Earth.
"You tend not to get CMEs within coronal holes. But you can get a CME going off close to a corona hole and then if the fast wind comes behind, it can compress and accelerate that CME," Owens said.
This is what solar physicists call "a perfect storm," Alex Young, the associate director for science at NASA Goddard's Heliophysics Science Division, previously told Insider.
This is what happened on the week of March 24, when auroras were seen as far down as New Mexico.
Coronal mass ejections that burst right next to the coronal hole landed on Earth, turning what scientists had thought would be a category G2 storm into a category G4 storm on a scale that goes from 1 to 5.
Had the winds been any stronger, it could have created a G5 storm, which can take down power grids.
When the sun has a coronal hole, it looks like someone has gouged a divot in our star.
But what has happened is not visible to the naked eye. Coronal holes appear in UV imaging, designed to show very hot, magnetically active areas on the sun.
Because the region inside the hole is losing material, it is cooler and less active, which is why it seems darker.
"Because the field is open, it can escape into space and so there's just less material there," said Owens.
It is rare for coronal holes to line up with the Earth
Coronal holes don't usually line up with the Earth because at quiet times they tend to stay toward the poles of the sun.
"Normally these coronal holes sit at the north and south poles of the sun," said Owens.
At that point, the winds are being ejected into space and won't line up with the Earth.
But the sun is currently nearing its solar maximum, a period that rolls around about every 11 years when solar activity is ramping up, which means it is much more likely for these open magnetic field lines to appear around the equator, where they can be pointing straight at Earth.
"As solar activity ramps up as we get towards the solar maximum, we do start to see more of these coronal holes reaching down to the equator. That means it's easier for that fast wind to get to Earth," said Owens.
Coronal holes are different from sunspots
The Giant sunspot 720 that led to the 2005 solar flare was captured by Jan Koeman of the Netherlands on Jan. 15, 2005 NASA
While coronal holes and sunspots may look similar to the untrained eye, they are very different.
For one, sunspots happen on the surface of the sun and can be seen in visible light. Coronal holes happen in the "corona," the atmosphere of the sun, and can only be seen in UV or X-ray light.
Sunspots happen at the two ends of a closed magnetic line which curves up and back down like a rainbow and is connected to the sun at both ends. Coronal holes happen when the magnetic lines point straight outwards. Sunspots can create coronal mass ejections, coronal holes cannot.
We could see this month's coronal holes again next month
The coronal hole came into view as the sun rotated. These holes can spew incredibly fast solar winds, and these are likely to reach Earth. NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory
As the holes spin around the sun and go out of our sight, they could still be spewing solar winds away from the Earth.
But they can be pretty stable, which means we could see the coronal holes again as they rotate back into view in about a month — enough time for the sun to rotate on its axis.
However, they may disappear.
"These holes that reached out to the equator, they tend not to last as long as the ones up at the poles that will sit there for years at a time," said Owens.
"When they're at the equator, it's normally around solar maximum and everything on the sun is just changing rapidly," he said.
A mission will aim to see coronal holes a few days earlier
An artist's rendition of what ESA's Vigil mission could look like, which aims to put a satellite where it can see the sun from a different angle. ESA
According to Verscharen, we are about forty years behind in space weather predictions compared to what we do for normal weather predictions.
After all, if you can't see the back of the sun, you can't know what's coming around the corner. But a mission from the European Space Agency called Vigil, planned to launch mid-2020s, is aiming to remedy that.
The idea is to place a satellite at a point where it can still communicate with Earth, but will also be able to see the sun from a different angle.
"So that means from there, when you look at the sun, you can see the surface already four and a half days before," said Verscharen.
Don’t Read Too Much into River Otters’ Return
Everyone knows about the canary in the coal mine. Well, river otters ain’t that Otters are way more resilient in the face of environmental contamination than we thought.
Standing at the foot of a rocky sandstone cliff, biologist Michelle Wainstein inspected her essentials: latex gloves, two long cotton swabs, glass vials, and tubes filled with buffer solution. She placed them in a blue dry bag, rolled it up, and clipped it to a rope wrapped around her waist. It was late afternoon, and she was slick with dirt and sweat from navigating the dense terrain. Her destination lay across the frigid river: two small logs of otter fecal matter resting on a mossy boulder. In she plunged.
The river, the Green-Duwamish in Washington State, trickles out of the Cascade Range and empties 150 kilometers downstream into Puget Sound. The last eight kilometers of the run—known as the lower Duwamish—is so polluted the US Environmental Protection Agency designated it a Superfund site in 2001. For a century, Seattle’s aviation and manufacturing industries routinely dumped waste chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) into the water.
“A lot of the river is still really polluted,” says Jamie Hearn, the Superfund program manager at Duwamish River Community Coalition. “The mud is thick and black, and you can smell it.”
Despite the pollution, river otters are everywhere along the waterway, even in the most contaminated areas near the river’s mouth. “I would be walking the docks looking for scat,” remembers Wainstein, “and a couple of times we were lucky enough to see moms with their pups.”
For several weeks in the summer of 2016 and 2017, Wainstein surveyed otter poop she collected from a dozen sites along the river. Comparing contaminant concentrations in the otters’ poop between the river’s industrial and rural zones, Wainstein uncovered the lingering legacy of the region’s toxic past. The poop from otters in the lower Duwamish contained nearly 26 times more PCBs and 10 times more PAHs than poop from their cousins in cleaner water upstream. PCBs disrupt hormonal and neurological processes and affect reproduction in mammals. Both PCBs and PAHs are human carcinogens.
The discovery that otters along the lower Duwamish are living with such high levels of contamination upends a common narrative: that river otters’ return to a once-degraded landscape is a sign that nature is healing.
In Singapore, where smooth-coated otters have reappeared in canals and reservoirs, they have been embraced as new national mascots. “It plays into that rhetoric that government agencies want to project,” says environmental historian Ruizhi Choo, “that we’ve done such a good job that nature is coming back. That image of a city in nature is the new marketing branding.”
In Europe, the once-common Eurasian otter similarly began reappearing in the late 20th century following successful river cleanup campaigns. Conservationist Joe Gaydos at the SeaDoc Society thinks that this phenomenon has helped form the mental link between otters and ecosystem health.
“The number of animals is our first indicator,” Gaydos says. But few seem to ask the next question: are those animals healthy?
As Wainstein’s study suggests, perhaps not. The otters she analyzed in the lower Duwamish have some of the highest concentrations of PCBs and PAHs ever recorded in wild river otters. Previous research has found a correlation between PCB exposure and health risks in wild river otters, including increased bone pathologies, reproductive and immunological disorders, organ abnormalities, and hormonal changes.
Even so, the contamination is not manifesting in physically obvious ways. “They’re not washing up on shore with tumors all over their bodies,” Wainstein says, and neither is their population dwindling. “They’re not setting off this direct alarm with a big change in their ability to survive.”
The otters’ ability to bear such a heavy contaminant burden suggests that a population resurgence alone may not reflect the quality of an environment. They just become as toxic as the environments they inhabit.
However, their localized bathroom habits, mixed diet of fish, crustaceans, and mammals, and persistence in the face of pollution make them useful indicators of environmental contamination.
River otters have played this role before. Following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, river otters lingered in oil-drenched waterways, allowing scientists like Larry Duffy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks to track the effectiveness of the oil cleanup. In 2014, scientists in Illinois discovered dieldrin in otter organ tissue even though the insecticide had already largely been banned for 30 years. In these cases, the collection of long-term pollution data was made possible by the creatures’ resilience in contaminated waterways. Wainstein wants to similarly use the Green-Duwamish River otters as biomonitors of the Superfund cleanup over the next decade.
Watching workers dismantle a portion of the river’s levied banks to make channels for salmon, Wainstein thinks about the seabirds, shorebirds, and small mammals, like beaver and mink, that were driven out by industrial contamination. She wonders if one day the rumbling machinery dredging up clawfuls of sediment from the riverbed will be taken over by the piercing cries of marbled murrelets, the croaks of tufted puffins, and the bubbling twittering of western snowy plovers.
“How long will it take? And will it actually work?” she says of the cleanup effort. The otters might hold the answer.
Report: Renewable energy growth falls short of climate goal
Deployment of new wind and solar power plants needs to be drastically ramped up by the end of the decade to meet the world's climate goals, the International Renewable Energy Agency said Tuesday.
But in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and put the world on track to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), existing targets for renewable power deployment would need to be more than doubled, the Abu Dhabi-based agency said.
Governments agreed in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit the global temperature rise to 2 C (3.6 F) -- ideally no more than 1.5 C -- above pre-industrial averages. The lower target would prevent significant harm from climate change but is increasingly difficult to achieve given that temperatures have already increased by 1.1 C (2 F) since the 19th century and emissions show no sign of dropping fast.
Farmer, Ron Lamb, installed solar panels to power his irrigation systems on the family farm near Claresholm, Alta., Tuesday, June 18, 2019.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Experts say the amount of carbon dioxide and other polluting emissions released into the atmosphere by 2050 shouldn't exceed the amount that can be captured through natural or artificial means.
"A profound and systemic transformation of the global energy system must occur in under 30 years," IRENA Director General Francesco La Camera said at an energy transition conference in Berlin.
The agency has estimated that annual public and private investments in renewable energy need to exceed $5 trillion, including for power generation, electrification, transmission grids and efficiency measures.
It called for current fossil fuel investments to be diverted to renewable sources and greater financial help for developing countries that are struggling to fund alternatives to coal, oil and gas power plants.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Monday that it projects the share of electricity generated from wind power in the United States will rise from 11% to 12% from 2022 to 2023, and that solar will grow from 4% to 5% during the period.
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Banks in France Face More Than $1.1 Billion Fines After Raids
Alexandre Rajbhandari Tue, March 28, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- French banks including Societe Generale SA and BNP Paribas SA face collective fines of more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) as part of a probe into tax fraud and money laundering related to dividend payments.
HSBC Holdings Plc, Natixis SA and BNP’s Exane unit are also part of the investigation, according to the prosecutors office in Paris, which said that the fines include penalties and back interest. Preliminary investigations related to the raids were opened in December 2021, the prosecutor said.
The raids relate to a dividend arbitrage strategy known as Cum-Cum where shareholders transferred stock for a short period to investors based abroad to avoid a dividend tax. Investors held the shares during the period when dividends were paid out and either weren’t taxed or taxes were refunded. They then sold the securities back to the original owner and the amount saved was split between the parties.
BNP, HSBC, and Natixis representatives didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for SocGen confirmed that the bank is part of the probe.
The raids add to further negative sentiment around the banking industry in both the U.S. and Europe, where investors have been hit by the emergency rescue of Credit Suisse Group AG and seizure by regulators of Silicon Valley Bank.
SocGen declined as much as 2.4% before paring gains to trade down 1% as of 1:03 p.m in Paris. BNP was 0.5% lower and HSBC fell about 0.2% in London.
French Investigation
The French investigation, which the prosecutor said has been in preparation for months, involves 16 local magistrates, more than 150 investigators and 6 prosecutors from Cologne. The avoidance of tax payments on dividends in Germany has been an ongoing scandal in that country for the best part of a decade. A similar scheme, known as Cum-Ex, allowed short-sellers and the actual holder of shares to all claim tax credits on a dividend paid only once.
A trader in a German Cum-Ex trial in 2019 told the court that Cum-Ex was five to six times more profitable than Cum-Cum. However, Cum-Cum was far more widespread, especially in interbanking trading, as the legal risks were deemed to be much lower.
Cum-Cum has been widely practiced because it was believed to not raise any legal issues in the same way that Cum-Ex did. That long-running investigation has swept up thousands of potential suspects across the financial sector and seen almost every major international bank raided in Germany. It has spawned civil and criminal cases in Germany, the UK and Denmark.
The French prosecutor also invited anyone wishing to bring further information related to the French inquiry to come forward.
--With assistance from Karin Matussek and Donal Griffin.
High-tech, year-round sustainable farming comes to Cochrane, Alta.
Kevin Green CTV News Calgary Video Journalist Updated March 28, 2023
A high-tech farm near Cochrane, west of Calgary, is producing thousands of heads of lettuce, and other vegetables every week, even in the darkest and coldest days of winter.
Good Life Farms Inc. operates a vertical-wall hydroponic garden inside two shipping containers.
"We are growing everything from arugula to graziano leaf lettuce, KC butterhead lettuce (and) we are actually experimenting with some root vegetables as well," said Good Life Farms founder Chad Randal.
"We've grown turnips, radishes (and) we're growing carrots as well. We're just actually planting our first tomato crop. A lot of these items, we feel that there's economic value in growing them."
Before setting his sights on hyperlocal farming, Randal spent his career in the oil patch running a successful water conservation and treatment company.
That experience piqued his interest in the sea-can gardens, as the computer-operated system occupies just under 30 square metres (320 square feet) and uses just 20 litres of water a day.
"They're a completely self-contained system. Everything has been engineered and designed to stay in a smaller footprint, eight by 40 foot footprint. We can essentially move these wherever we want, so we can set these up in parking lots.
"We can operate them on a smaller scale for smaller communities."
Randal sees it as a way for communities to set up local container farms to help overcome food scarcity issues. He says container farms can be trucked into small communities and be up and running quickly, supplying enough ongoing fresh produce for a small town.
"Our vision is to establish fresh produce for everyone or to make food available to the local community. We envision putting these facilities in all the small towns throughout Alberta, wherever opportunities present themselves."
The container farms are also partly powered by rows of solar panels on their roof, which supply just under 50 per cent of the power even through the dark days of winter.
"We still pull off the grid as well, but we are using green energy off the grid," said Randal.
"We've established ourselves as a microgeneration facility as well, but the facilities essentially take all the all the energy that the solar power, or the solar panel system can produce."
Local chef Jason MacKenzie regularly stops by Good Life's Cochrane facility to harvest fresh produce for meals he creates at a nearby retreat centre.
"It's community supportive, it's fantastic for the environment," said MacKenzie.
"I'm getting fresh produce on a daily basis if I need it that hasn't been shipped up from California."
He says it's an excellent source of fresh food, on any day of the year.
"If you went out into your garden on July day and picked some fresh lettuce, that's what you're getting (here), but I can do this in December and January, February, March – year round – and the quality is always there. The nutritional value is always there."
Randal plans to sell his fresh produce at local farmers' markets, and has recently inked a deal to sell his produce at a local retail grocery in Cochrane.
Each seacan garden costs approximately $200,000 to initially get up and running. They have an expected lifespan of more than 30 years.
Good Life Farms’ Cochrane-based facility is one of about 600 similar systems worldwide.
Randal sees his facility, in part, as a proof-of-concept for southern Alberta's climate, but says it has been so successful, he has already set his eyes on expanding and opening another seacan farm in a nearby southern Alberta community.
No matter what the weather is outside, Good Life Farms is able to grow all kinds of fresh vegetables including lettuce, carrots, radishes and more. Good Life Farms uses two seacans for its hydroponic operation, which grows fresh vegetables year-round, no matter what the weather is outside.
Crescent Point’s $1.3 Billion Shale Deal Speeds Alberta Push
Robert Tuttle Tue, March 28, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Crescent Point Energy Corp. is accelerating its shift into Alberta’s shale plays with a C$1.7 billion ($1.3 billion) acquisition of Spartan Delta Corp.’s assets in the prolific Montney formation.
The purchase will add 600 drilling locations and production equivalent to 38,000 barrels of oil a day, Calgary-based Crescent Point said Tuesday. The cash acquisition — which will be financed through Crescent Point’s existing credit facilities — immediately adds to key per-share cash flow metrics, the company said.
Crescent Point Chief Executive Officer Craig Bryksa, who took over about five years ago, has shifted the company from its heavy focus on Saskatchewan to acquiring assets in western Alberta’s Montney and Duvernay shale plays. The Alberta wells decline more rapidly than those in Saskatchewan but offer a higher rate of returns, Bryksa said.
“We think of balancing those assets,” he said in a phone interview.
The Spartan Delta locations, which yield 55% oil and liquids, are near the Kaybob Duvernay shale positions in western Alberta that Crescent Point bought from Shell Plc two years ago, which the company says will help operating efficiency. The Montney is major natural gas and light oil formation that straddles the Alberta-British Columbia border and accounts for about half of Canada’s natural gas output.
Read More: Shell Unloads Alberta Shale Assets in Latest Canada Energy Deal
Following the transaction, which closes in the second quarter, the company plans to sell non-core assets to shore up its balance sheet and reduce its net debt by C$1 billion over the next year. Assets that may be sold include positions in southern Alberta’s Swan Hills as well as some sites in Saskatchewan and North Dakota, Bryksa said.
Crescent Point will spend about C$250 million to drill about 25 wells annually in the area. The company forecasts the transaction will help production grow to 195,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day by 2027 from about 180,000 barrels a day after the deal closes. The Montney and Duvernay will increase to 60% of the company’s output during the five-year plan, versus 45% after the deal closes.
Crescent Point shares fell 0.6% to C$9.01 in Toronto, and Spartan Delta gained 7.2% to C$14.78. Crescent Point is down 6.7% this year versus a 5.6% decline for the S&P/TSX Energy Index.
Crescent Point opened a new, two-year revolving credit facility for C$400 million to provide additional liquidity. The company said it will have C$850 million of unused credit capacity when the deal closes.
Spartan Delta has been an active driller in Alberta, completing 52 wells last year, including 12 in the Bezanson field and 11 in the Elmorth field near Grand Prairie. Earlier this month, a land company paid C$16,727 per hectare for parcels of drilling rights near Grand Prairie in an area where Spartan Delta had a major presence. The amount was the highest paid in eight years on a per-hectare basis.
The lowdown on the Montney: Canada's next big energy bet has same high stakes as oilsands
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Industry spending billions to get natural gas out of the ground, but getting it to market is bigger challenge
An aerial view of a drilling operation in the Montney. (Seven Generations Energy)
Not many folks outside of Alberta pay much attention to Grande Prairie, a northern outpost tucked away in the bush about 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. Even within the province, the growing city of more than 60,000 keeps a low profile — but that's about to change.
Across the province, another frontier town, Fort McMurray, knows what's coming. When 170 billion barrels of oilsands bitumen were reclassified as official oil reserves in 2003, the recognition put northern Alberta on the map as a serious global petroleum player.
Canadians have since been inundated with talk of the oilsands, whether it's the economic benefits, the "dirty oil" label or the inescapable pipeline politics. Early last decade, though, it was the sheer size of the reserves that had an oil-hungry world just whispering the number, 170 billion barrels, for fear anything louder might spook away the oil in the ground.
Instead of fretting over dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, the discussion is now about peak demand, meaning big reserve numbers no longer capture the mainstream imagination. It's in this new world order that the next big thing for Canada's energy industry has quietly arrived.
Like the oilsands, the industry has long known about the Montney formation, which stretches 130,000 square kilometres in a football-shaped diagonal from northeast British Columbia into northwest Alberta.
Underneath this huge tract of land, the National Energy Board (NEB) estimates there's 90 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe), most of it natural gas. That's more than half the size of the oilsands, yet the Montney has received only a fraction of the attention, at least from the public at large. For oil and gas types, the gold rush is already on.
Output from the Montney has doubled since 2012 and now comprises a third of Western Canada's natural gas production. By 2040, the NEB projects it will make up more than half of the country's production, a future that would make the energy industry positively giddy, if only it were guaranteed.
Every issue that threatens to derail the ambitions of Canada's oil and gas industry — access to market, First Nations land rights, public acceptance of infrastructure projects and, especially, the climate consequences of burning fossil fuels — is writ large in the Montney.
The National Energy Board (NEB) estimates there's 90 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe), most of it natural gas, buried under the Montney, a 130,000- square-kilometre tract of land that runs from northeast B.C. into northwest Alberta. (Seven Generations Energy)
Even so, it's the one bet a financially strapped industry remains willing to place. In the next four years, natural gas producers are expected to spend more than $34 billion on drilling and completing wells there, according to an estimate from FirstEnergy Capital.
Throwing a staggering pile of cash at one place to drill thousands of new wells may go smoothly. More likely, though, the conflicts currently playing out in the oilsands, NEB hearing rooms and along proposed pipeline routes are about to get a new front line.
The energy industry faces similar challenges in the Montney as it does in the oilsands, including concern from environmentalists. (Seven Generations Energy)
Arguably no one knows the pending opportunity or opposition in store for the Montney better than Pat Carlson, the chief executive of Seven Generations Energy.
His company, which only four years ago produced 4,000 boe per day, is now the de facto face of the Montney after its production climbed to more than 100,000 boe per day. The trajectory of this still relatively unknown company, which itself spent $1.1 billion around Grande Prairie last year, underscores the Montney's economic potential, as well as how it could hijack Canada's climate change agenda.
Among the world's largest gas plays, the Montney is comparable to the Marcellus, the Utica, the Eagle Ford and the rest of the flagship names that make up America's natural gas revolution. Beyond size, its geology is also changing the economics of Canadian gas production.
Whereas 10 years ago, finding gas in an underground zone that spanned five metres was considered a tidy score, the evolution of fracking means Montney drillers are tapping zones with a thickness of 100 to 300 metres. It's a bona fide jackpot, but it still doesn't mean the industry can rest easy.
U.S. natural gas output is up so much that the Canadian industry is now fighting to defend its traditional markets in Central Canada from interloping cross-border competitors. Even if Canada wins this fight, which isn't a lock, the next hurdle is finding more customers for Montney gas.
At a time when protesters are stopping NEB hearings and activists are blocking a pipeline project in North Dakota, Carlson says the oilpatch needs to forget about the old ways of doing business. Those who insist on putting the words social licence into air quotes, he believes, are part of the problem.
Hearing him talk is like listening to a revival tent preacher, only instead of faith he's proselytizing for belief in the natural gas industry.
"You just can't say, 'I'm good at making buggy whips and I've always made buggy whips,' when buggy whips are no longer required," Carlson said. "We're looking at our stakeholders and we're saying, 'What can we do to serve them better so they have more confidence in us' so that's reflected in a licence to do things … because I believe what we're trying to do is in the best interests of all Canadians."
Fracking tours
In the past three years, his company has brought around 75 groups — made up of politicians, government officials, regulators, investors, First Nations members, media and whoever else will listen — to the forest around Grande Prairie to show them exactly what fracking and drilling look like on the ground.
It's a rare effort, especially for such a young company, but Carlson knows public perception of the oil and gas industry must change for the Montney to reach its potential.
Pat Carlson, CEO of Seven Generations Energy, gives a tour of his company's operations. (Paul Haavardsrud/CBC)
For industry, a best-case scenario would see liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals go ahead on the West Coast, while a new generation of natural gas-fired power plants comes into service across the country.
The broadest trend in the energy world right now, electrification, suggests these pieces could be falling into place. An expanding global population and electric cars on the horizon, explains Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, will only send the world's power needs higher. As yet to be determined is the role of natural gas, which is more climate-friendly than coal, but less so than nuclear and renewables.
"Years ago, I was giving speeches to oil executives, asking them the question rhetorically, 'What business are you in?'" Tertzakian said. "Inevitably, someone would put up their hand and say, 'I'm in the oil business', and I'd say, 'No you're not, you're in the business of turning wheels, that's your business. You should be concerned about what's happening to the transportation market.'"
With two-thirds of every barrel of oil used to move cars, trucks, planes and boats, a shift towards electric vehicles could cause global gas demand to surge.
A look at a fracking site in the Montney. (Paul Haavardsrud/CBC)
That scenario could see the usual boomtown pressures — the social ills, housing shortages and disregard for environmental and safety standards — descend on Grande Prairie, the regional hub for the Montney.
It's a fate the city's mayor, Bill Given, doesn't see as a foregone conclusion.
"The Alberta mythos is that it's the Wild West and you go out and do your thing," he said. "More and more companies are attempting to take a balanced approach and I don't think that's something we would have seen five or 10 years ago."
Grande Prairie Mayor Bill Given doesn't think his city will be overcome with the pressures and problems that often come with being the hub of a regional energy boom. (CBC)
If a more enlightened approach is, indeed, the new normal, the test will come when gas prices move higher, LNG projects go ahead, and a boom starts in earnest.
Before any of that happens, Canada will need to define natural gas's role in the transition to renewables. While the energy sector is quick to position gas, which has half the carbon emissions of coal, as a bridge fuel to a cleaner future, environmentalists are less enamoured.
Environmental no-man's land
If Canada is to meet its climate change goals, the green lobby doesn't see a big role for gas past 2030. Given how long a power generator would need to run a gas-fired plant to make it profitable, this timeframe leaves gas in an environmental no-man's land.
"This idea of developing and marketing gas as a solution to climate change, I would disagree with," said Matt Horne, a climate change expert with the Pembina Institute, an energy think-tank. "If we have the right policies in place there will be a role for gas. I don't think we create that role by making more and more gas available, that role is created by having strong climate change policy."
Developing the Montney on a grand scale would take a national climate change strategy — as opposed to the current patchwork of provincial regulations — that makes room for natural gas by prioritizing energy efficiency and cutting greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere, like the oilsands.
It's a formidable pan-Canadian goal, but without it, the opposition to pipelines such as Energy East shows what to expect for proposed infrastructure that would carry gas from northeast B.C. to projects like the Pacific NorthWest LNG facility.
Protesters gathered outside the building where NEB hearings on the proposed Energy East pipeline were scheduled to take place in downtown Montreal back in August. Officials decided to cancel the hearings that week. (Charles Contant/Radio-Canada)
The rapid growth of a company like Seven Generations shows how quickly Montney gas can fill up an LNG terminal. Still, building the infrastructure to bring that gas to market can't happen without government policy support and broad social licence from the public.
This, in a nutshell, is the great frustration of the energy industry. The environmental movement, meanwhile, is equally worried about what development without the right climate policies in place will mean for the planet.
This stalemate is, by now, a well-worn part of the national conversation. Given what's coming, the Montney may turn into the defining referendum that determines whether Canada can find any middle ground.
