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)
Sunday, February 06, 2022
The Labrador Sea keeps the world's oceans alive. Scientists are now closer to understanding how
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The sea is one of the few places where oxygen from the air
The Labrador Sea is one of the few places where oxygen from the atmosphere is transferred to the deepest parts of the ocean and distributed throughout the Atlantic and eventually into the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
"Without this transport of oxygen by the equivalent of our bloodstream there would be no animal life, there would be microbial life, but no animal life in the deep ocean," says Doug Wallace, an oceanography professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
"It's absolutely essential for the deep ocean ecosystems."
How the ocean lung works
Wintertime cooling in the Labrador Sea makes oxygen-rich surface waters denser and heavy enough to sink to a depth of two kilometres where the oxygen is dispersed by deep boundary currents.
Using sensors moored between Labrador and Greenland, researchers measured the flow of oxygen into the deep ocean interior over a two-year period.
Researchers measured the flow of oxygen into the deep ocean interior over a two-year period on the Labrador Sea. (Dariia Atamanchuk, Dalhousie University)
The sensors were deployed at a depth of 600 metres from cables anchored to the ocean floor.
They were located along an array at 53 degrees north latitude where scientists expected deep mixing in the centre of the Labrador Sea to spread into the Atlantic.
Half the oxygen exhaled into deep ocean currents
About half of the "inhaled" oxygen was injected into deep water currents over a five month period.
One of the dissolved oxygen sensors deployed in the Labrador Sea. (Dariia Atamanchuk, Dalhousie University)
"The timing was a surprise actually for us because I think we imagined it would be just spread out over the whole year. But what we see was a very distinct pulse of oxygen for a few months only and then things went back to background," says Wallace, who co-authored a paper on the research published in the journal Biogeosciences.
The research was a collaboration between the Ocean Frontier Institute, based at Dalhousie University in Halifax and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany.
"This study is an example of how monitoring enabled by the latest ocean technology can help us fill in knowledge gaps in this important region," says Dariia Atamanchuk, who leads the oxygen program at Dalhousie
"We wanted to know how much of the oxygen that is breathed in each winter actually makes it into the deep, fast-flowing currents that transport it across the globe. The newly inhaled oxygen was clearly noticeable as a pulse of high oxygen concentration that passed our sensors between March and August," lead author James Koelling said in a statement.
More sensor results expected
In the meantime, more sensors have been deployed in the Labrador Sea closer to western Greenland.
The research is a part of an international effort involving scientists from Canada, the United States and Europe.
When the sensors start coming out of the water as soon as this year, researchers will have a more complete picture of the way oxygen flows within the region.
Dalhousie University oceanography professor Doug Wallace, co-author of a study that measured oxygen flow in and out of the Labrador Sea. (Mark Crosby/CBC)
A window on climate change
Scientists also say this monitoring of oxygen flow can help understand the effects of climate change.
Modelling suggests lighter, freshwater from melting glaciers does not sink as readily and that could reduce deep water mixing.
"So in effect, there's a risk and I'm saying it's a risk that the breathing of the ocean in that region could become shallower... and the transport of oxygen into the deep ocean and therefore into this bloodstream will become less. So that's why we think it's really important to measure it," says Wallace.
To understand how life emerged, scientists investigate the chemistry of carbon and water. In the case of water, they track the various forms, or isotopes, of its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms over the history of the universe, like a giant treasure hunt.
Researchers from the CNRS, Paris-Saclay University, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and the University of Pau and the Pays de l'Adour (UPPA), with support from the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), have followed the trail of the isotopic composition of water back to the start of the solar system, in the inner regions where Earth and the other terrestrial planets were formed.
They did this by analyzing one of the oldest meteorites of our solar system, using an innovative method developed just for their study. Their data show that two gas reservoirs existed during the first 200,000 years of our solar system, even before the formation of the earliest planetary embryos.
One of these reservoirs consisted of the solar gas in which all the matter of our solar system originated. With the meteorite, the scientists were able to measure its record directly for the first time ever. The second gas reservoir was enriched in water vapor and already had the isotopic signature of terrestrial water.
It was created by a massive influx of interstellar water in the hot internal regions of the solar system, upon the collapse of the interstellar envelope and the formation of the protoplanetary disc. The early existence of this gas with Earth-like isotopic composition implies that Earth's water was there before the accretion of the first constituent blocks of our planet. These findings are published in Nature Astronomy.Organic makeup of ancient meteorites sheds light on early Solar System
We don't know how life emerged on Earth, but one thing is certain: life as we know it on our planet wouldn't exist without the water that wraps around the surface, runs in rivulets, and falls from the sky.
Our planet is the only one known to have life, and the only one on which liquid water can be found in abundance (moons are another story). There are giant question marks over where and how it came from, but new research suggests that it was here in the Solar System before Earth even formed.
According to a team led by geochemist Jérôme Aléon of the French National Museum of Natural History, isotopes of water in a meteorite from the birth of the Solar System match isotopes of water found on Earth today.
"The initial isotopic composition of water in the Solar System is of paramount importance to understanding the origin of water on planetary bodies but remains unknown, despite numerous studies," the researchers write in their paper.
"Here we use the isotopic composition of hydrogen in calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions (CAIs) from primitive meteorites, the oldest Solar System rocks, to establish the hydrogen isotopic composition of water at the onset of Solar System formation."
Certain types of meteorites can act as time capsules from the birth of the Solar System. A star is born from a cloud of gas and dust that collapses under its own gravity, known as the collapse of the protostellar envelope.
Meanwhile, material in the cloud around it flattens into a disk that feeds into the growing, spinning star. Once it has finished growing, what's left of that cloud forms everything else in that star's system – planets, asteroids, comets, and so forth.
Many of these things are even older than Earth; radiometric dating suggests Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago. And, by sheer luck, some of these rocks land right here on our doorsteps.
The whole accretion process usually heats and squeezes those primordial materials into forms that erase traces of its origins. This has made analysis of its water content a challenge.
Yet there are occasional rock samples that make it to Earth's surface that display few signs of overbaking, providing researchers with a prime opportunity.
The Efremovka meteorite, found in Kazakhstan in 1962, has elements that have been dated back to 4.57 billion years ago. It was this meteorite, and its ancient inclusions rich in calcium and aluminium, that Aléon and colleagues analyzed, using a new technique developed just for this purpose.
To measure the water content of the meteorite, they used focused ion beam imaging to identify and probe all the minerals in their sample, comparing the results with eight terrestrial reference materials with a wide range of water content. Then, they examined the ratio of the isotopes of hydrogen in the meteorite.
These ratios, fascinatingly, can be used to identify the signature of water. Isotopes are variants of an element with different numbers of neutrons; deuterium – also known as heavy hydrogen – has one proton and one neutron. Protium, or light hydrogen, has one proton and no neutrons.
Because hydrogen is one of the components of water, the ratio of these two isotopes in rocks can tell us about the water that rock was exposed to. For example, protium is the dominant hydrogen isotope here on Earth. On Mars, deuterium is the dominant isotope, which tells us that something might be stripping the lighter protium.
The minerals and ratios in the Efremovka meteorite revealed that, in the first 200,000 years of our Solar System's history, before the planetesimals (that's planet seeds) formed, two large gas reservoirs existed. One of these reservoirs contained the solar gas from which the matter in the Solar System ended up condensing.
The other, the team found, was rich in water. This water probably came from a massive influx of interstellar material that fell in towards the inner Solar System at the time of the protostellar envelope collapse.
And, fascinatingly, that water is very similar to Earth's water in its isotopic composition. This suggests that water was present in the early Solar System from its very inception – before Earth was even a twinkle in the protoplanetary disk.
"The ubiquitous hydrogen isotopic composition observed in large, early-formed telluric planetesimals … was reached in the first few 100,000 years of the Solar System owing to a massive influx of interstellar matter infalling directly in the inner Solar System, rather than being produced in a more evolved protoplanetary disk," the researchers write.
For a brief period in Earth’s tumultuous early history, a mineral that no longer exists on our planet may have safeguarded the ingredients of water long enough to enable the emergence of oceans that eventually nurtured life.
That’s the conclusion of a recent study led by Xiao Dong, a materials scientist at Nankai University, that presents a new possible origin story for Earth’s water—the most essential ingredient for life as we know it. In addition to yielding new insights into Earth’s ancient oceans, the new study also has implications in the search for water, and therefore alien life, on other planets.
As our young planet was bombarded by asteroids and comets more than four billion years ago, a “now-extinct” permutation of magnesium silicate might have kept hydrogen and oxygen atoms securely locked away deep underground so that they could eventually survive and upwell as liquid water at the surface, according to the study, which appears in Physical Review Letters.
“The origin of water on the Earth is a long-standing mystery, requiring a comprehensive search for hydrous compounds, stable at conditions of the deep Earth and made of Earth-abundant elements,” said Dong and his colleagues in the study.
The team undertook just such a search with the help of an algorithm called Universal Structure Predictor: Evolutionary Xtallography (USPEX) developed by study co-author Artem Oganov, who is a professor at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. USPEX is able to predict exotic crystal structures to fit a variety of parameters, including compounds that would have existed within the extreme conditions in the interior of our infant planet.
The researchers used USPEX to search for compounds that contain hydrogen and oxygen, the two constituents of water, that would be stable at the high temperatures and pressures that existed hundreds of miles under our planet’s ancient surface. The results revealed a magnesium silicate that is two parts magnesium, one part silicon, five parts oxygen, and two parts hydrogen. This compound “must have existed in the Earth, hosting much of Earth’s water” during “the first 30 million years of Earth’s history, before the Earth’s core was formed, according to the study.
As Earth’s core formed, these silicates disintegrated, a process that released hydrous constituents as water. Over the course of 100 million years, this water made its way to Earth’s surface, where it became the life-sustaining force that still exists today. In this way, these silicates “likely contributed in a major way to the evolution of our planet,” the team said.
These now-extinct compounds may also contribute to the evolution of other planets, which makes them relevant to the search for extraterrestrial life.
Planets that are smaller than Earth, such as Mars, cannot achieve the interior pressures necessary to create these magnesium silicates, which means any water on these worlds had to have a different origin. Meanwhile, planets larger than Earth, such as the tantalizing “Super-Earths” observed in other star systems, would likely support pressures that could preserve huge volumes of these hydrous compounds.
While some scientists have speculated that Earth’s water may have been delivered from outer space by comet impacts, the new study shows that our precious oceans may have emerged from the opposite direction—as byproducts of long-lost compounds hidden deep underground.
The abyssal world: The last terra incognita of the Earth's surface
by MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
An effort of 15 deep-sea international expeditions has allowed the analysis of abyssal sediments collected in all major oceanic regions, including the Arctic and Southern Oceans. Credit: Andreas Worden.
The deep-ocean floor is the least explored ecosystem on the planet, despite covering more than 60 percent of the Earth surface. Largely unknown life in abyssal sediments, from benthic animals to microbes, helps to recycle and/or sequester the sinking (in)organic matter originating from pelagic communities that are numerically dominated by microscopic plankton. Benthic ecosystems thus underpin two major ecosystem services of planetary importance: the healthy functioning of ocean food-webs and the burial of carbon on geological timescales, both of which are critical regulators of the Earth climate.
Researchers from the Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE), Bjerknes Centre for Climate research, the University of Geneva, as well as from the CNRS/Genoscope and IFREMER in France, have massively sequenced eukaryotic DNA contained in deep-sea sediments from all major oceanic basins, and compared these new data to existing global-scale plankton datasets from the sunlit and dark water column, obtained by the Tara Oceans and Malaspina circumglobal expeditions. This provides the first unified vision of the full ocean eukaryotic biodiversity, from the surface to the deep-ocean sediment, allowing marine ecological questions to be addressed for the first time at a global scale and across the three-dimensional space of the ocean, representing a major step toward "One Ocean ecology."
"With nearly 1700 samples and two billion DNA sequences from the surface to the deep-ocean floor worldwide, high-throughput environmental genomics vastly expands our capacity to study and understand deep-sea biodiversity, its connection to the water masses above and to the global carbon cycle," says Tristan Cordier, Researcher at NORCE and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Norway, and lead author of the study.
What lives in this dark and hostile environment?
By comparing sediment DNA sequences with the ones from pelagic realms, it was possible to distinguish indigenous benthic organisms from sinking plankton that had reached the seafloor from the overlying water column. Results indicate that this benthic biodiversity could be three times larger than in the water masses above; and this diversity is composed of very different taxonomic groups that are mostly unknown.
"We compared our deep-sea benthic DNA sequences to all references sequences available for known eukaryotes. Our data indicates that nearly two third of this benthic diversity cannot be assigned to any known group, revealing a major gap in our knowledge of marine biodiversity," says Jan Pawlowski, Professor at the Department of Genetics and Evolution of the University of Geneva and at the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Sopot.
What can plankton DNA in deep-sea sediments tell us?
Analysis of the abundance and composition of plankton DNA in deep-sea sediments confirmed that polar regions are hotspots of carbon sequestration. Moreover, the composition of the plankton DNA in sediments predicts the variation of the strength of the biological pump, an ecosystem process that transfer atmospheric carbon dioxide into the deep ocean, hence regulating the global climate.
"For the first time, we can understand which members of plankton communities are contributing most to the biological pump, arguably the most fundamental ecosystem processes in the oceans," says Colomban de Vargas, researcher at CNRS in Roscoff, France.
How will the deep sea be impacted by global changes?
This genomic dataset represents the first consistent snapshot of whole eukaryotic diversity in the modern ocean. It provides a unique opportunity to reconstruct ancient oceans from the DNA contained in the cumulative sediment record, to assess how climate has impacted plankton and benthic communities in the past.
"Our data will not only address global-scale questions on the biodiversity, biogeography and connectivity of marine eukaryotes. It can also serve as a basis to reconstruct the past functioning of the biological pump from ancient sedimentary DNA archives. It would then inform on its future strength in a warmer ocean, which is key for modeling the future carbon cycle under climate change," explains Tristan Cordier.
"Our study further demonstrates that deep-sea biodiversity research is of paramount importance. Huge numbers of unknown organisms inhabit ocean-floor sediments and must play a fundamental role in ecological and biogeochemical processes. A better knowledge of this rich diversity is crucial if we are to protect these vast, relatively pristine ecosystems from the impacts of possible future human incursions and understand the effects on it of climate change," concludes Andrew J. Gooday, Emeritus Fellow at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, who was also involved in the research.
The deep-ocean floor is the least explored ecosystem on the planet, despite covering more than 60% of the Earth surface. Largely unknown life in abyssal sediments, from benthic animals to microbes, helps to recycle and/or sequester the sinking (in)organic matter originating from pelagic communities that are numerically dominated by microscopic plankton. Benthic ecosystems thus underpin two major ecosystem services of planetary importance: the healthy functioning of ocean food-webs and the burial of carbon on geological timescales, both of which are critical regulators of the Earth climate.
Researchers from the Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE), Bjerknes Centre for Climate research, the University of Geneva, as well as from the CNRS/Genoscope and IFREMER in France, have massively sequenced eukaryotic DNA contained in deep-sea sediments from all major oceanic basins, and compared these new data to existing global-scale plankton datasets from the sunlit and dark water column, obtained by the Tara Oceans and Malaspina circumglobal expeditions. This provides the first unified vision of the full ocean eukaryotic biodiversity, from the surface to the deep-ocean sediment, allowing marine ecological questions to be addressed for the first time at a global scale and across the three-dimensional space of the ocean, representing a major step towards “One Ocean ecology.”
“With nearly 1700 samples and two billion DNA sequences from the surface to the deep-ocean floor worldwide, high-throughput environmental genomics vastly expands our capacity to study and understand deep-sea biodiversity, its connection to the water masses above and to the global carbon cycle,” says Tristan Cordier, Researcher at NORCE and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Norway, and lead author of the study.
What lives in this dark and hostile environment?
By comparing sediment DNA sequences with the ones from pelagic realms, it was possible to distinguish indigenous benthic organisms from sinking plankton that had reached the seafloor from the overlying water column. Results indicate that this benthic biodiversity could be three times larger than in the water masses above; and this diversity is composed of very different taxonomic groups that are mostly unknown.
“We compared our deep-sea benthic DNA sequences to all references sequences available for known eukaryotes. Our data indicates that nearly two-thirds of this benthic diversity cannot be assigned to any known group, revealing a major gap in our knowledge of marine biodiversity,” says Jan Pawlowski, Professor at the Department of Genetics and Evolution of the University of Geneva and at the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Sopot.
What can plankton DNA in deep-sea sediments tell us?
Analysis of the abundance and composition of plankton DNA in deep-sea sediments confirmed that polar regions are hotspots of carbon sequestration. Moreover, the composition of the plankton DNA in sediments predicts the variation of the strength of the biological pump, an ecosystem process that transfer atmospheric carbon dioxide into the deep ocean, hence regulating the global climate.
“For the first time, we can understand which members of plankton communities are contributing most to the biological pump, arguably the most fundamental ecosystem processes in the oceans,” says Colomban de Vargas, Researcher at CNRS in Roscoff, France.
How will the deep-sea be impacted by global changes?
This genomic dataset represents the first consistent snapshot of whole eukaryotic diversity in the modern ocean. It provides a unique opportunity to reconstruct ancient oceans from the DNA contained in the cumulative sediment record, to assess how climate has impacted plankton and benthic communities in the past.
“Our data will not only address global-scale questions on the biodiversity, biogeography, and connectivity of marine eukaryotes. It can also serve as a basis to reconstruct the past functioning of the biological pump from ancient sedimentary DNA archives. It would then inform on its future strength in a warmer ocean, which is key for modeling the future carbon cycle under climate change,” explains Tristan Cordier.
“Our study further demonstrates that deep-sea biodiversity research is of paramount importance. Huge numbers of unknown organisms inhabit ocean-floor sediments and must play a fundamental role in ecological and biogeochemical processes. A better knowledge of this rich diversity is crucial if we are to protect these vast, relatively pristine ecosystems from the impacts of possible future human incursions and understand the effects on it of climate change”, concludes Andrew J. Gooday, Emeritus Fellow at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, who was also involved in the research.
Reference: “Patterns of eukaryotic diversity from the surface to the deep-ocean sediment” by Cordier T., Barrenechea Angeles I., Henry N., Lejzerowicz F., Berney C., Morard R., Brandt A., Cambon-Bonavita M.A., Guidi L., Lombard F., Martinez Arbizu P., Massana R., Orejas C., Poulain J., Smith C.R., Wincker P., Arnaud-Haond S., Gooday A.J., de Vargas C. and Pawlowski J., 4 February 2022, Science Advances. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj9309
A carnivorous plant with leaves that snap shut around insects and spiders? What's not to love! Real Science reveals the weird biology of Dionaea muscipula, aka the Venus flytrap. Native to North and South Carolina in the US, the plant was first described in 1759 by Colonial governor Arthur Dobbs. The following is from a letter Dobbs wrote the following year to botanist Peter Collinson:
The great wonder of the vegetable kingdom is a very curious unknown species of Sensitive. It is a dwarf plant. The leaves are like a narrow segment of a sphere, consisting of two parts, like the cap of a spring purse, the concave part outwards, each of which falls back with indented edges (like an iron spring fox-trap); upon anything touching the leaves, or falling between them, they instantly close like a spring trap, and confine any insect or anything that falls between them. It bears a white flower. To this surprising plant I have given the name of Fly trap Sensitive.
Primate proteins evolve to guard against pathogens, study finds
Proteins on the surface of cells act as sentries—and microbes hoping to invade will evolve tricks to evade these front-line defenses. But the host cell's proteins don't sit back helplessly. They, too, can evolve in ways that makes it harder for microbes to get through.
In a new study, researchers in the lab of UO biologist Matt Barber look at a family of proteins found on the surface of epithelial cells. Epithelial cells line many surfaces in the body that are important for microbial interactions, like the inside of the mouth and nose as well as the digestive and reproductive tracts.
Even in closely related primates, those proteins have evolved into strikingly distinct versions that can block different kinds of bacteria, Barber and his team found. They report their findings Jan. 25 in the journal eLife.
"One of the coolest things is just how rapidly these proteins can change," said postdoctoral researcher EmilyClare Baker.
This group of proteins, known as CEACAMs, is a particularly interesting case study because immune defense isn't their primary job, Baker said.
"Immune cells interact with microbes all day long, but CEACAM proteins have a lot of other roles in the body," she said, like helping cells stick together and supporting cell-to-cell communication.
But by virtue of their positioning, they're also a first point of contact for many microbes. Bacteria target CEACAM proteins as a way to infect cells and colonize surfaces in the body.
"One of the broad goals in my lab is understanding how animals have evolved to defend themselves against pathogens," Barber said. "We've thought a lot about how the dedicated immune system responds to pathogens, but the first step is making contact with a cell," Barber said.
If CEACAM proteins change too much to skirt microbes, it could disrupt their other crucial non-immune-related functions.
Barber's team surveyed CEACAM proteins across primates, comparing the genetic sequences of human CEACAM proteins with the versions of these proteins found in a variety of primates.
They found surprising variability in CEACAM proteins' genetic sequences, even in closely related apes. That suggests the proteins are under pressure to evolve differently in response to different microbes they may have encountered in their different habitats, Barber suggests.
A closer look revealed that different CEACAM proteins had swapped genetic components, mixing up their sequences. Barber calls it "copy/paste evolution"; it's a way that proteins can quickly make big evolutionary changes.
For example, one CEACAM protein found in bonobos had borrowed components of another kind of CEACAM protein to create a completely distinct protein.
The researchers also identified variants of human CEACAM proteins that had mutations making them resistant to the bacteria that cause gonorrhea. The find suggests that this gene-swapping is continually shaping diversity in human populations.
Next, Barber's team plans to investigate other effects of the mutations. The changes could affect the proteins' other roles in the body.
And genetic mutations that protect against gonorrhea or other, deadlier diseases might be beneficial in certain contexts, Barber said. But because so many different species of microbes interact with CEACAM proteins, those changes might also have consequences for microbial communities in the body more broadly.Fatal attachment: How pathogenic bacteria hang on to mucosa and avoid exfoliation
More information:Evolution of host-microbe cell adherence by receptor domain shuffling.eLife2022;DOI: 10.7554/eLife.73330
The world’s largest oil companies are ramping up drilling operations despite recent net-zero pledges
WoodMac VP for exploration: The majors are still exploring and say much less about it than they used to
With or without the IEA’s roadmap to net zero, this year could see an uptick in new drilling
The International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 roadmap, issued last year, has become something of a textbook example of bad timing. Just four months later, the agency said the world needs more investment in oil exploration because of dwindling OPEC spare production capacity.
Besides these mixed signals, the agency also lashed out at OPEC+ last year, accusing it of keeping the global oil supply artificially tight to keep prices high. At first glance, one might think the world’s most influential energy body, per the FT’s Tom Wilson, does not really know what it’s talking about. Yet Big Oil does not care about that. Big Oil is drilling. It’s just not talking about it.
“The majors are still exploring and say much less about it than they used to,” Andrew Latham, vice-president for exploration at Wood Mackenzie, told the FT’s Wilson this month. “You have to be a real specialist sector watcher to know these kinds of things [because] they don’t talk about it.”
According to the consultancy, a total of 798 appraisal and exploration wells were drilled last year, which was about the same as was drilled a year earlier. It was also substantially less than what was drilled in 2019, at 1,256 wells, but the drop was, according to Latham, connected to the pandemic.
This means that, with or without the IEA’s roadmap to net zero, this year could see an uptick in new drilling, especially given the strength of oil demand, as admitted by that very same IEA to have exceeded market observers’ expectations.
Shell struck a potentially major deposit in Namibia earlier his month, according to reports. It wasn’t the company that announced the find. It was Reuters, citing unnamed sources in the know who said the government of the southern African country would make an official announcement this week.
Exxon continues to make find after find offshore Guyana. The latest update came earlier this month and was about plans to start pumping from a second platform in the Stabroek Block, which would boost the country’s oil output three times. Meanwhile, the supermajor has also announced plans to become a net-zero company by 2050.
French TotalEnergies, formerly just Total, has been particularly active in new oil well drilling, even as it also ramps up renewable energy expansion. The French company drilled the most new exploration wells last year, according to Wood Mac data cited by the Financial Times, coming ahead of both Exxon, which was second, and Norway’s Equinor, which came in third.
For Exxon, it is mostly business as usual. The company has some activist shareholders on its tail but no court rulings obliging it to shrink its oil output, unlike Shell. It is perhaps this fact that makes the Shell case especially interesting. The supermajor was ordered by a Dutch court to slash its emissions footprint by 45 percent within ten years last year, and it said that its production had peaked anyway back in 2019.
Yet Shell is drilling—and not just drilling but doing it in a frontier region with no well-developed infrastructure or oil industry of any sort. This means higher investments should the find be confirmed. Why is Shell doing this?
Reserve replacement is one reason. Even with plans—and an obligation—to produce less oil in the future, the company is not completely giving up its core business. Oil demand, regardless of various forecasts, looks like it still has a few good decades in it. The costs of new wind and solar installations are rising, the supply of critical minerals and metals is limited, and new mine lead times are even longer than the lead times for offshore oil wells. This doesn’t bode well for the renewable revolution, but it does bode well for oil and gas demand.
Another reason is oil prices. With these higher, drilling in new underexplored regions becomes more affordable. With Brent crude at $91 per barrel, exploration is a lot more attractive than it probably was with Brent at $40, not least because high oil prices strongly suggest demand is exceeding supply.
Carbon Tracker earlier this month published a report warning that new oil and gas exploration could result in stranded assets worth $500 billion because over the long term, oil demand would perish. Yet the same organization last year forecast a continued slump in the costs of wind and solar power, and that did not exactly play out, just a year after the report, so whether or not these assets will indeed be stranded remains a wide open question.
Big Oil—and small and medium oil, too—is doing what any business would do in the current environment. Said environment suggests that the demand for Big Oil’s products is strong. Naturally, they would try to respond to that strong demand by producing as much as they can to satisfy it. But they won’t talk about it as openly as they used to before. Instead, they would highlight their investments in wind, solar, and EVs while quietly drilling to ensure there will be enough oil for tomorrow and the day after.
WE NEED NDP PROVINCIAL INSURANCE Everything you need to know about Alberta’s new auto insurance system
As of Jan. 1, drivers in Alberta are compensated through their own insurance company for no-fault crashes
On Jan. 1, Alberta became the latest Canadian province to implement a “direct compensation for property damage” (or DCPD) auto insurance model, following in the footsteps of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island.
DCPD requires insurance providers to compensate drivers who end up in no-fault crashes, a change the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) says could reduce premiums for 42 per cent of drivers in the province.
What exactly does the change mean for drivers in Wild Rose Country? “For the majority of drivers, DCPD will either reduce their premiums or they will see no change at all,” the IBC says on its website.
Here’s a quick look at what a DCPD model actually means for your rate — and whether you’ll be one of the lucky drivers who pays less every month for car insurance in Alberta. What is direct compensation for property damage (DCPD)?
If you’re behind the wheel in a car crash that isn’t your fault, your insurance company will automatically cover any repair costs. It’ll then be responsible for arranging reimbursement from the insurance providers of any other drivers involved in the crash. “It’s really just a streamlining process for how a claim is handled moving forward,” said Jaime Tempeny, branch manager at Westland Insurance, in an interview with CTV News in December.
After a crash, DCPD covers basic property damage (e.g., a smashed-in fender or broken windshield), any contents inside the vehicle that are damaged, and loss of vehicle use.
According to Alberta’s Automobile Insurance Rate Board , drivers in a DCPD model won’t pay out-of-pocket for these expenses if they are found to be 100 per cent not at fault for a crash. Perhaps most importantly for drivers, DCPD is mandatory for auto insurance policies in jurisdictions that implement it, so you’ll be covered no matter who insures you.
Alberta’s previous insurance model could be particularly aggravating. Before Jan. 1, drivers who were considered not at fault for a crash were required to go after another driver’s insurance provider in court for compensation — an expensive and time-consuming process for anyone. (Although, as the IBC points out, drivers can still sue for injuries under a DCPD model.)
Will Albertans’ auto insurance rates drop because of the DCPD model?
The answer really depends on how expensive your vehicle is. As the IBC explains on its website, DCPD is supposed to better align a driver’s insurance premium with repair costs.
“This means that, typically, owners of less expensive vehicles that cost less to repair will pay less for their insurance,” according to the IBC. “Similarly, owners of more expensive vehicles that cost more to repair may pay more.”
The IBC estimates that 42 per cent of drivers will see a rate reduction as a result of DCPD, while around 15 per cent will see no change to their premium. On the other end of the scale, about 34 per cent of drivers may see an increase in their premium of up to 5 per cent.
What isn’t covered by direct compensation for property damage?
DCPD only covers drivers who aren’t at fault in a crash — drivers who want coverage in case of an at-fault crash will still need to buy collision insurance.
Unfortunately, DCPD can’t help drivers who are the victims of hit-and-runs (your insurance company can’t bill a third party if their insurance provider can’t be found).
Alberta’s new DCPD model may feel unfamiliar to drivers used to the process of billing a third party’s insurance provider directly, but the IBC says it’ll ultimately make the post-crash insurance process more straightforward.
LowestRates.ca is a free and independent rate comparison website that allows Canadians to compare rates from 75+ providers for various financial products, such as auto and home insurance, mortgages, and credit cards.
Tesla factory fire in Fremont is under investigation
By Michael McLaughlin Published February 4, 2022
Tesla factory fire in Fremont is under investigation
Pallets of cardboard and other debris caught fire outside Tesla's factory in Fremont. No one was injured and the cause of the fire is under investigation the Fremont Fire Department said. SkyFOX recorded this footage from the factory.
A fire ignited outside the Tesla plant in Fremont where pallets of cardboard debris went up in flames, according to the Fremont Fire Department.
The fire led the Fremont department to request neighboring firefighters to help extinguish the blaze before the fire was knocked down.
Pakistan’s plans to open up access to LNG imports: Energy Minister Hammad Azhar
Federal Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar. — Twitter/National Assembly
Hammad Azhar reveals a bill is currently in parliament which seeks to expand LNG access to foreign suppliers.
Pakistan expects a third terminal to be operational next year.
Qatar is also looking to invest in an import facility.
Federal Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar has revealed that a bill is currently in parliament which seeks to expand liquefied natural gas (LNG) access to foreign suppliers in the local market to offset dwindling local production and meet surging demand, Bloomberg reported.
Shedding light on Pakistan’s plans to open up access to LNG imports, the minister said: “The current supplies are such that we can barely even meet our current customers. Gas is running low in Pakistan and we have to supplement it.’
However, the dilemma remains whether price-sensitive buyers in the nation, one of the fastest-growing LNG importers, will be open to paying extra for the super-chilled fuel, especially after international prices rallied to records this winter.
Azhar said: “Domestic gas production has fallen by about a fifth over the past two years and the bill that will allow LNG to be supplied to local customers is set to go to the upper house for approval.”
“As LNG is more expensive than local gas, a detailed discussion on pricing will be needed, but increases won’t be drastic,” he asserted.
It is pertinent to mention here that Pakistan has borne some of the brunt of Europe’s energy crisis as the region outbid rivals in China, Japan and South Korea and traders including Eni SpA and Gunvor Group Limited skipped cargo deliveries to the South Asian nation in recent months.
“One of the traders is expected to default on a cargo this month,” Azhar said, without giving details.
Pakistan imports LNG through two terminals and the minister expects a third site to be operational next year after it was hit by delays. Moreover, one of the top suppliers in Qatar is also looking to invest in an import facility.
Azhar added that the government is looking into “setting up its import facility by converting a portion of a state-owned liquefied petroleum gas terminal.”
“Pakistan is also using its surplus electricity as an alternative to reduce the demand for gas. The government, which has already offered incentives to use electricity rather than gas for heating, is exploring ways to encourage industries to move permanently away from gas-fired generators,” he stated.
