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Trump administration’s zeal for deregulation seen by environmentalists as a recipe for fossil fuel cronyism, runaway climate change and toxic water crises

Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, caused conniptions among scientists this week by claiming that carbon dioxide isn’t the primary catalyst of global warming. Conservative groups and industry, on the other hand, heard hints that a cherished goal may be within reach.

In 2009 the EPA determined that greenhouse gas emissions “endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations”, opening the door to regulation. Donald Trump’s crusade against government strictures could target this finding, effectively making it official US policy that burning fossil fuels poses no threat to Americans, despite a mountain of scientific literature to the contrary.

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South Uist Though we cannot see the hunters their presence is signalled by the waders that suddenly rise in flocks

Far in the distance the craggy peaks of Skye have been rendered Alpine-like by the overnight snow. Away to the north the high hills of Harris also bear a covering, and even South Uist’s less lofty heights have a dusting of white. There is a hint of warmth in the morning sun, but what makes this a glorious day to be outside is the complete absence of wind, for with even a light breeze it would be skin-flayingly cold.

We’re not the only ones to appreciate the calm, dry weather, for there are aerial predators abroad and the machair is full of birds for them to prey upon. Though we cannot see the hunters their presence is signalled by the groups of waders and starlings that suddenly rise in dense panicked flocks.

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Hector Ruiz has made it his mission to convert cars in Mexico City to run on electricity.

A video captures the moment plankton ingest a plastic microfibre.

From an endangered ground-dwelling bird with whiskers like a cat, to a huge glider that is almost like a 'flying koala', Booderee National Park sounds, and is, like no other.

Scientists say there hasn't been enough time for the corals to recover from damage in 2016.

The CSIRO finds Australia's wheat production has flatlined because of climate change; and is there any hope for a free trade deal with India?

Our new study improves estimates of the rate of ocean warming - a critical component of climate change

New research has convincingly quantified how much the Earth has warmed over the past 56 years. Human activities utilize fossil fuels for many beneficial purposes but have an undesirable side effect of adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at ever-increasing rates. That increase - of over 40%, with most since 1980 - traps heat in the Earth’s system, warming the entire planet.

But how fast is the Earth warming and how much will it warm in the future? Those are the critical questions we need to answer if we are going to make smart decisions on how to handle this issue.

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All of the methods of catching moles described in your article (The long read, 8 March) rely on the violent crushing of a sentient creature. Society wouldn’t tolerate killing a dog in this way, yet moles have a nervous system similar to dogs’ (and humans’), which strongly suggests they are capable of feeling pain and thus suffering. As the article indicates, the total cost of mole “damage” is very low but as it is part of the routine, casual cycle of killing practised by country dwellers we’re expected to accept it. All this because of a few piles of earth on a lawn.

The destruction of wildlife should be prohibited unless absolutely necessary – and only after there is evidence that damage is substantial, cannot be prevented by other intervention and that the killing can be done humanely.

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The recent killing of a rhino in a Paris zoo marks a shocking new development in this ruthless global trade but rhino experts remain optimistic that the situation can be reversed

On the black market it is reputedly worth more than its weight in gold or cocaine, and this week the lure of rhino horn brought the bloody business of poaching to a zoo near Paris. There, in the dead of night, criminals broke in, shot a white rhino called Vince three times in the head and then hacked off its eight-inch horn with a chainsaw.

The attack marks a shocking new development in a crisis that sees more than three rhinos killed every day in their southern African homelands. Trade in rhino horn is completely illegal but demand from Vietnam and China fuels poaching and smuggling, putting the rhinos at risk of extinction.

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The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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A rare jaguar sighting in the US, a green toad and spring flowers are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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A trial suggests that an Ebola vaccine could protect gorillas and chimps from the deadly disease.

In the remote Altai mountains, cameras traps are shedding light on the secret lives of these elusive animals, enabling researchers to identify individual leopards in the first ever nationwide census

The snow leopard is so rare and elusive that it’s commonly known as the “ghost of the mountains”. But researchers in the Altai mountains, where the borders of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and China converge, are increasingly coming face to face with this endangered animal through a growing network of camera traps.

On a recent day in Sailyugem national park in Russia’s Altai Republic, rangers in ski goggles and huge parkas were retrieving footage from a high-altitude camera trap – a black box holding a dozen AA batteries, a memory card and a motion-activated lens – nestled among a cluster of dark burgundy rocks covered with orange and green lichen. Such windswept ridges are where snow leopards typically travel in search of prey such as ibex and musk deer, sneaking down from above to break the victim’s neck with one crunch of their powerful jaws.

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Ship ran aground at Raja Ampat, one of the country’s most popular dive sites that has been likened to an underwater Amazon, reports Mongabay

One of the main coral reefs at Raja Ampat, an Indonesian island chain home to perhaps the world’s richest marine biodiversity, was severely damaged last week when a Bahamian-flagged cruise ship smashed into it at low tide, according to an official report.

The 90-meter Caledonian Sky, owned by tour operator Noble Caledonia, ran aground in an uncharted shoal in West Papua province after completing a bird-watching trip on Waigeo Island on 4 March.

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“Flabbergas” in Beijing

The Sichuan basin is one of China’s premier shale gas plays, and when it comes to developing Chinese resources, state-owned enterprises like Sinopec have the inside running.

I met with Sinopec geologists earlier this week in Beijing to discuss collaborations and asked how their Sichuan Basin gas plays were shaping up. I was curious, having been told some years back by a senior Shell shale-gas engineer his view was “too deep and too tight”. After some initial interest, in 2016 Shell announced it was getting out of the Sichuan.

Somewhat to my surprise, my Sinopec colleagues were very upbeat claiming their shale gas production was on target. With a production schedule targeting some 8000 terajolues per day I wondered aloud, how long they thought they would need our LNG exports. They must have sensed some concern and quickly said not to worry. The cost of production from their Sichuan plays was well above the price they were paying for our gas. They wouldn’t be leaving us stranded any time soon, they assured me.

I then told them about the domestic prices here in Australia, where spot prices regularly sit at around $12 per petajoule and where future contracts are reputedly now being offered at up to $20 petajoule. Their reaction, in a word, “flabbergasted”. How could it be that we paid more for our own gas than they did to import it? For reference, Henry Hub spot prices in the US are currently settling at around AUD$3.4 per petajoule, just 30% of the Australian price (AUD$11.4) at the time of writing.

And importing our gas, the Chinese are. Back in 2015, BP reported that China imported around 50 million tonnes in barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) in energy terms, representing about 6000 terajolues per day.

Chinese gas production and consumption figures as terms of Million of barrels of oil equivalent per year, until end of 2015. Data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2016. While production has risen sharply, more than doubling in the last decade, consumption has risen much faster with a separation occurred around 2008. Consumption outstripped production by about 50 million tonnes in 2015, the equivalent of 7000 terajolues per day. Eastern Australian gas exported via the Gladstone ports will make a significant contribution to Chinese imports into the future, because the marginal cost of production in China’s frontier unconventional basins such as the Sichuan is above the price they pay to import.

The Gladstone Port Authority reported a touch under one million tonnes of LNG left Curtis Island in Queensland bound for China last December. That amounts to a daily rate of about 1600 terajolues. In total, Curtis island shipped 1.7 million tonnes in 27 cargoes in December, equating to about 3000 terajolues per day. That represented around 70% of the total production of 4200 terajolues per day from all the gas fields across eastern and southern Australia that are physically connected to the export facilities. The exports outstripped our domestic consumption in the eastern states by a factor of about 2.5.

The point is worth reiterating. In December last year more gas was shipped to China from Queensland than was used locally across the four eastern sea- board states and South Australia. That wouldn’t be a problem if there was enough gas to go round. But there is not, and instead we have entered the “red zone”.

Into the “red zone”

With the first shipments leaving Gladstone just a touch over two years ago, in January 2015, it is hardly surprising that the gas market is causing ructions here in Australia. In fact it shouldn’t surprise anyone as problems were anticipated as far back as 2013, as I discussed in a post mid last year titled “We really must talk about gas”.

And so it would seem we are now really talking about gas.

As illustrated in the figure below, the last few years have witnessed an unprecedented change in our eastern gas market. Production has risen 250% in just two years, from an average of 1800 terajolues per day in the last half of 2014 through to 4600 terajolues per day in last half of 2016.

Total production from the gas fields serving the eastern Australian gas market, coloured by producing region, along with the monthly averaged exports from Gladstone. Production data from AEO, export data from Gladstone Port Authority.

Also shown is exported gas, and the amount of gas used to deliver gas from the producing fields to the export facilities. The amount of additional gas needed for processing is a somewhat uncertain number but is likely to be more than 10%. In the figure above I assume 12%. Finally, I also show the contracted position of our LNG exporters who are ramping up to around 24 million tonnes of LNG exports per year (CLE), with an assumed additional load of almost 3 million tonnes needed to deliver that to the cargo (marked as “CLE+proc”).

So how does the figure above help us understand what has happened to so dramatically upset our gas markets here in Australia.

Firstly, note how our exports have tracked upwards more steeply than the production from our developing coal-seam gas fields in Queensland from the production region of Roma (shown in green). In the last few months the combination of exports plus the new processing load has begun to outstrip the total production from the new CSG-fields. Production from our older, conventional gas fields such as the Gippsland Basin in Victoria (in red) and the Cooper Basin in South Australia (in dark blue) is being partially used to fill the export cargoes. In short, we are short on gas, having entered the “red zone”.

In a previous postI have discussed the recent dynamics of gas pricing and availability in the National electricity market and its impact on prices, showing how quick we have switched from the “ramp-gas phase”. That is the stage when CSG fields were being developed prior to the completion of the export facilities, providing abundant flows of cheap gas for the local market. Now we are in the “scarce-gas” phase, or the “red-zone” as I like to call it. It is one of the key reasons for the recent doubling of spot electricity prices (another is the extra electricity demand from the LNG processing themselves, providing a double whammy for electricity users, as explained here). But scarcity pricing in the gas market is affecting all users, not just electricity generators.

And the reality is that now we are in the “red-zone” scarcity pricing is here to stay. In the medium-term it only seems likely to get worse. If no new production is bought to market, exports rise to meet contracts, and around 12% of additional gas is needed for export processing, then we we will be excising conventional resources to the export market at a rate of about 400 terajolues per day or about 30% of what would otherwise have been available for domestic use. While there remain many “ifs” in that scenario, it is a hugely worrying shift in the balance of demand and supply.

With politicians now scurrying to address the situation it is worth reflecting why has it taken so long to do so. It is not as though it wasn’t predicted. To quote from that earlier piece of mine - developing the new CSG fields at such scale was always going to risk that production would fall short of targets. As much was acknowledged by the 2013 Department of Industry and Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics study into Eastern Australian gas markets

The current development of LNG in eastern Australia and the expected tripling of gas demand are creating conditions that are in stark contrast to those in the previously isolated domestic gas market. The timely development of gas resources will be important to ensure that supply is available for domestic gas users and to meet LNG export commitments. Such is the scale of the LNG projects that even small deviations from the CSG reserve development schedule could result in significant volumes of gas being sourced from traditional domestic market supplies

That was some 2 years before the first LNG exports. Now some four years on and it is patently clear that Eastern Australia is short on gas, given the existing export contracts. While new conventional fields such as Kipper in the Gipplsand Basin are coming on stream (often with a hefty load of CO2 to complicate matters), existing fields are depleting.

To remedy the situation, there will be predictable calls such as for gas reservation (including by myself), and new exploration, including the lifting of on-shore moratoriums. All should be considered from a rational perspective, since the situation is urgent. But it should be eyes-wide-open, as all have problems.

No doubt, new production from unconventional resources such as shale and tight gas might alleviate the scarcity pricing events we are witnessing as we now enter the “red zone”, but it will not return us to the halcyon days to times past. Developing new unconventional gas fields is generally proving expensive. Just ask the Chinese. It is after all why they will continue to import our gas. The exception is the US, and that’s because US shale gas rides on the back of the US shale oil. Unconventional gas with liquids is a whole different ball-game.

Disclosure

Mike Sandiford receives funding from ANLEC and from the ARC.

A geobiologist has built this complex of buildings out of eco-friendly materials around a wooden main house, with scope for tourist rentals

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Cairngorms National Park We’ve tried to spot this mountain dwelling grouse in its white-feathered finery, but it’s elusive

Every birder has a “bogey bird”, a species they have repeatedly failed to encounter. For my father and me, this bird is the winter-plumaged ptarmigan.

We have made numerous visits to the Cairngorms in the hopes of seeing this mountain dwelling grouse – Lagopus mutus – in its white-feathered finery. But it has proved to be frustratingly elusive. Previous attempts have been foiled by extreme weather, from 90mph winds and whiteout conditions to horizontal rain and shrouding cloud.

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Former Climate Change Authority member reveals what went on before he quit and offers a withering assessment of the PM

Clive Hamilton has been at the pointy end of public discourse on climate change for more than 20 years.

Among lots of other things, he’s written challenging books on the science, founded a progressive thinktank and had a failed crack at being an MP for the Greens.

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