Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics: he stood up to the oil industry; The Biden administration suspended new permits for natural gas terminals. Can we see more of this kind of backbone? : climate

[–] _haha_oh_wow_ 71 points 8 months ago

"...bUt wE hAvE tO mEeT LiTeRaL NaZiS hAlFwAy!"

-"moderates" probably

[–] [email protected] 46 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

A great start! We're going to need to see way more of this to reverse the massive increase of natural gas production since Feb 2021 (2.6 trillion cubic ft / month then vs 3.5 trillion now, a 34% increase in less than 3 years and an all-time high for the US)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Yes, but a lot of it goes to the EU and they lost Russias supply. Similar story with oil. There are massive OPEC+ cuts and the US fills the void.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Get over yourself, we'll have global war followed by a thousand years of anarchy before this fucking travesty is over.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Anarchy would be an improvement over this shitscape.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No wonder they all fucking hate him.

But I guess "both sides" are the same and represent the "status quo", right?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (2 children)

JOE! JOE! JOE!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Joe Bi the Science Guy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

How do you like me? How do you like me? ~~

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Mo'! Mo'! Mo'!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I think I gonna bomb a town, get down!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Hopefully the trend continues after re-election and this isn’t just a stunt to secure votes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

It's been going on for quite a while.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

His administration has overseen the highest domestic oil production of all time, and they've bragged about that... So it is a bit sus

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

at least until after the election

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes, yes, we know... All politicians are corrupt and bad, both sides are the same, don't vote, everything sucks, nothing matters, etc.

Or you could have just the tiniest bit of hope and diligence to improve the world...

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago

"It's not perfect, therefore it's useless, and because it is, I'm going to vote for the worse alternative. Don't make me explain my reasoning further."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

After the election it'll still be record level drilling, just like there is now.

The record will just be higher

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

You say that like most Americans wouldn't support doing literally anything that would lower gas prices. The problem is trying to make everyone happy.

I mean, most people I know bring up gas prices before they bring up climate change, if at all. I try to remind these people that while the president/Congress can take actions to increase drilling there are many of us in the US that would prefer they didn't.

I usually then make it clear how obviously easy it is for me to say that as someone that works from home and isn't as impacted by gas prices; context is always important.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

TL;DR: New fossil fuel permits are no longer needed, and they should no longer be warranted.

Edit: Apparently this article is about export permits, while my link is about production permits.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Why do I feel like every time politicians do the right thing, it's the home budgets of regular people who pay for it?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Regular people are paying for it when a hurricane destroys their city. Think of switching to clean energy as an investment, if having a planet to live on doesn't do it for you. edit: typo

[+] [email protected] -11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Heat pumps don't really work in extreme cold. My office has only electric heat and it runs constantly when it's really cold, never getting up to a comfortable temp. My home stays warm with gas heat and the furnace runs far less.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So in Montreal everything runs off of electric heat and it gets super cold out and it's pretty warm indoors with the heating running on super low. Maybe you guys just don't know how to use electric heating properly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Your comment made me curious because I know I have read about heat pumps not operating well in cold temperatures. So I looked it up a little, apparently there are cold climate heat pumps and they aren't installed in most places in the US. Where I live, heat pumps work okay a lot of the year, but we do get cold snaps where they just can't keep up. Apparently you actually have a better heat pump it would seem.

[–] Bronzie 7 points 8 months ago

Yupp, they work fine in Norway and it gets cold enough here.
Had spells of -30 °C this winter.

You'd be hard pressed finding a any home here heated with gas. Its all electric or wood fired.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Funnily enough, most of our heating is done using baseboard heaters, or resistance heating. Newer constructions have heat pump/air conditioning combos but I don't know exactly how widespread they are, my parents have one and it's definitely more efficient than the baseboard heaters, but not by a huge margin.

I don't know if you know his channel, but Technology Connections did a couple of videos on heat pumps that were pretty eye opening, I imagine as much for Americans who have been hit hard by gas and oil lobbying, as for me as a Canadian who hasn't ever really seen anything other than electric heating.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah older heat pumps can't stand >5°C temps (at least my 20yo one), newer ones seems to be way better even in cold temp.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

This is about blocking export terminals. Building them raises domestic prices. So it has a financial benefit for Americans who use gas for heat and has a climate benefit.

[+] candyman337 -20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That's because it's electrion year lmao

[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Isn't that the whole purpose of having elections? To make leaders do the right thing.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago

I mean I also understand the sentiment that the right thing should be done regardless, but if that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes

[–] [email protected] 46 points 8 months ago (1 children)

He's been doing good things in non-election years too.

[+] [email protected] -77 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Natural gas is produced as a byproduct of gasoline production. He hasn't done shit besides screw us out of access to a cleaner energy source we're already producing.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

You can re-inject it into the reservoir instead of burning it and dumping the resulting CO2 into the atmosphere. He's done a good thing here, especially light of the incredible death toll from the by-products of combustion.

[–] the_post_of_tom_joad 40 points 8 months ago

Yeah i criticize Biden all the time and while I'll always say "he could go further" i can't find enough to hate here. It actually looks kind of good. Ill have to dig deeper if i want to hate this move.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 8 months ago (1 children)

these are export terminals.. which are used by the industry to sell the product for more profit than they can get selling it domestically. it also eliminates the ocean-crossing trips made by those pollution-spouting tankers to deliver the product overseas.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 8 months ago

This will drive down domestic energy prices as well. So naturally, Fox News cannot cover this

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago

Natural gas is commonly produced by fracking. And also, this is about export terminals.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Natural gas comes out of the ground naturally, and isn't necessarily a by-product of gasoline refinement. I can't speak from experience on the refinery side of things, but I can speak from experience on the upstream production side of things. The natural gas we use for power generation, and heat at the facility I work at essentially comes straight out of the ground with minimal processing. Any excess is put back in the ground. That's specific to where I work. I imagine other places, the gas is separated out like we do and sent to "the market."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Huh, TIL you can put it back in the ground. I was under the impression it had to be burned off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Yep! There are two types of oil wells, producers and injectors. Producers produce raw production fluids and gas. Those production fluids/gases need to go through a 3-phase separate vessel to separate the oil, water, and gas. The water and gas is sent back into the ground with the injection wells. The reason for this is to maintain the pressure of the reservoir underground, and to dispose of the fluids/gases.

Some amount of gas is flared (burned) off from the separation facility, and also from refineries. The purpose of the flare is for process safety. If there's an overpressure event, or an equipment shutdown, all the gas production from the field needs to go somewhere while the production wells are shutdown. For that time period, any gas is burned off to prevent a catastrophic failure in the facility.

The amount of gas being flared is monitored and regulated, and any flare event is recorded and reported to the appropriate agencies, generally the EPA, and Relevant state agencies.

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