natural gas

By Clifford Krauss - New York Times, February 27, 2023

Solar, wind, geothermal, battery and other alternative-energy businesses are adding workers from fossil fuel companies, where employment has fallen.

Emma McConville was thrilled when she landed a job as a geologist at Exxon Mobil in 2017. She was assigned to work on one of the company’s most exciting and lucrative projects, a giant oil field off Guyana.

But after oil prices collapsed during the pandemic, she was laid off on a video call at the end of 2020. “I probably blacked out halfway,” Ms. McConville recalled.

Her shock was short-lived. Just four months later, she landed a job with Fervo, a young Houston company that aims to tap geothermal energy under the Earth’s surface. Today she manages the design of two Fervo projects in Nevada and Utah, and earns more than she did at Exxon.

“Covid allowed me to pivot,” she said. “Covid was an impetus for renewables, not just for me but for many of my colleagues.”

Oil and gas companies laid off roughly 160,000 workers in 2020, and they maintained tight budgets and hired cautiously over the last two years. But many renewable businesses expanded rapidly after the early shock of the pandemic faded, snapping up geologists, engineers and other workers from the likes of Exxon and Chevron. Half of Fervo’s 38 employees come from fossil fuel companies, including BP, Hess and Chesapeake Energy.

Executives and workers in energy hubs in Houston, Dallas and other places say steady streams of people are moving from fossil fuel to renewable energy jobs. It’s hard to track such movements in employment statistics, but the overall numbers suggest such career moves are becoming more common. Oil, gas and coal employment has not recovered to its prepandemic levels. But the number of jobs in renewable energy, including solar, wind, geothermal and battery businesses, is rising.

By Jessica Aldridge and Mark Z Jacobson - Eco Justice Radio, February 23, 2023

By Peder Ressem Østring - Just Transition Research Collaborative, February 24, 2023

The recycling of oil rigs can provide new jobs within the circular economy, particularly beneficial for oil-dependent regions. If we get it right, the process of cleaning up after the fossil economy can itself serve as a bridge from fossil dependency towards a just transition.

Globally, there are over 7000 offshore oil and gas platforms. Together with other structures and pipelines, these form an impressive built environment. If we are to have a fighting chance of keeping global warming well below 2°C however, virtually all of these installations would have to be shut down, dismantled and recycled. This process — known as offshore decommissioning — is already taking place, but will see a dramatic increase in the coming decade. It will be increasingly necessary to confront the ways in which decommissioned infrastructure is handled, both with regards to the environment and labour conditions.

A case study of the decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure in the North Sea shows some of both the possibilities and challenges decommissioning presents in terms of a just transition.

While some oil companies would like to leave the oil platforms in the sea, eagerly promoting the idea of repurposing old rigs as artificial reefs, this is not allowed under current regulation. After the plans of Royal Dutch Shell of dumping the oil storage tanker Brent Spar in the North Sea in the 1990s was met with massive public scrutiny and campaigns from environmental organizations, regulations came in place that effectively banned the practice of abandoning manufactured structures in the North-East Atlantic.

Companies have since sought other ways of disposing of the problem with structures put out of commission. Another approach for cutting costs for the oil supermajors has been to send old floating rigs for breaking in the global South. This has taken place under horrendous conditions for both workers and the environment, as has been uncovered by the BBC.

Both these false solutions are in reality ways of externalizing costs of cleaning up after the fossil companies. Both approaches should be rejected, while insisting on the principle that the polluter should pay.

By Julia Conley - Common Dreams, January 3, 2023

New analysis shows how California "can achieve a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels for oil and gas workers."

A new analysis out Tuesday shows how a just transition towards a green economy in California—one in which workers in the state's fossil fuel industry would be able to find new employment and receive assistance if they're displaced from their jobs—will be "both affordable and achievable," contrary to claims from oil and gas giants and anti-climate lawmakers.

The study published by the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI) notes that a majority of workers in the oil and gas sectors will have numerous new job opportunities as California pushes to become carbon neutral by 2045 with a vow to construct a 100% clean electricity grid and massively reduce oil consumption and production.

"The state will need to modernize its electrical grid and build storage capacity to meet increased demand for electricity," reads the report. "Carbon management techniques, plugging orphan wells, and the development of new energy sources such as geothermal will all come into play, providing economic opportunities to workers and businesses alike."

GEPI analyzed the most recent public labor data, showing that the oil and gas industries in California employed approximately 59,200 people as of 2021 across jobs in production, sales, transportation, legal, and executive departments, among others.

The group examined potential job opportunities for fossil fuel workers "in all growing occupations, not solely in clean energy or green jobs," and found that about two-thirds of employees are likely to find promising opportunities outside of fossil fuel-related work.

"Our findings show that a sizable majority (56%) of current oil and gas workers are highly likely to find jobs in California in another industry in their current occupation, given demand in the broader California economy for workers with their existing skills," the report says.

By various - Chief Sustainability Office, Los Angeles, December 10, 2022

By various - Fossil Free California, November 22, 2022

By Lopa Pal, Elizabeth Bast, Nnimmo Bassey, Colin Rees, and Rebecca Solnit - Oil Change International, November 7, 2022

By Cara Bottorff, Noah Ver Beek, and Leah Stokes - Sierra Club, October 2022

Rapidly cleaning up the electric sector is key to achieving our climate goals. We need electric utilities to retire coal plants, cancel plans to build new gas plants, and accelerate clean energy deployment to achieve 80 percent clean electricity by 2030 and 100 percent clean electricity by 2035. This is in line with the United States’ climate commitments and scientific consensus of what is needed for a livable planet.

Many utilities have pledged to clean up their electricity production, but our research shows these promises often amount to little more than greenwashing. In our 2021 report, released a year and a half ago, we analyzed the plans of 77 utilities owned by the 50 parent companies most invested in fossil fuel generation. We found that despite pledges to reduce emissions from many of these companies, most utilities did not have plans that would actually achieve the necessary emissions reductions by 2030.1, 2 This updated report investigates what progress, if any, these utilities made over the last year and a half to turn their pledges into real action. We want to know: have utilities stepped up to meet the challenge and make the changes needed to save lives, reduce costs, and address climate change by transforming our power system?

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Leonor Canadas - Common Dreams, July 3, 2022

Amidst the threat of nuclear war posed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which explicitly exposed Europe's dependence on oil and gas from Russia, one could expect that the smart solution would be to get away from fossil fuels and make massive investments in renewable infrastructure and production.

The war should have accelerated the transition to an economy moved fully by renewable energies. Yet, quite the contrary has happened. The European Commission proposes that investments in fossil, gas, and nuclear power are labeled "sustainable investments," understanding them as "transitional" energy sources.

At the same time, European countries, in order to condemn Russia, are looking for fossil fuels elsewhere, shifting dependence to other countries, where gas and oil exploitation perpetuate colonial exploitation or support authoritarian regimes. Shifting from one authoritarian regime to another is not the solution, and neither is shifting from one kind of fossil fuel to another by using gas as a "transitional" energy source, nor by going back to coal.

In Europe's westernmost country, Portugal, the government sees this war and crisis as an opportunity, claiming that it "has the unique conditions to be a supply platform for Europe," talking about how the Port in Sines could be an entry point to supply Germany with the gas it needs. Particularly, gas from the USA and Nigeria could arrive in Sines and then be transported to other places in Europe. This would require the expansion of the LNG terminal in Sines and the construction of new gas pipelines in Portugal and Spain, to overcome the Pirenees. This is obviously a megalomaniacal plan, which doesn't mean it will not get the green light.

Fossil infrastructure is exactly why we are trapped in this crisis, and why capitalism will never be able to avoid climate collapse. If we take climate science seriously, no project that leads to an emissions increase could go forward. We need to cut 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to the 2010 emissions levels. Consequently, there can be absolutely no option on the table when it comes to new fossil projects and infrastructure. On the contrary, we need plans for just and fast transitions and the shutdown of existing infrastructure. That is not the plan in Portugal, in the EU or in the richest countries in the world, by a long stretch.

By Jackson Chiappinelli, Dustin Renaud, and Kendall Dix - Earthjustice, June 29, 2022

Amid climate crisis and record gas prices, new analysis debunks oil and gas industry claims on need for new federal leasing by offering further evidence that ending new federal offshore leasing would not raise gas prices for nearly two decades, and would have virtually no net economic impact.

According to a new report out today, putting an end to new federal offshore leasing on public waters for the next five years:

• Would result in less than a cent increase in gas prices at the pump over the next two decades
• Would still maintain close to current levels of oil production capabilities for many years
• Would not have the drastic impact on workers in the Gulf or the national economy that the fossil fuel industry has purported. Industry’s claims about economic impacts fail to account for the ways that energy and job markets gradually adapt and the burdensome climate costs averted from transitioning to clean energy
• Result in between $23 billion and $365 billion dollars in climate benefits through 2040

The new report, which was supported by Earthjustice, Healthy Gulf, and Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy (GCCLP) and published by Apogee Economics and Policy, a leader in energy production forecasts and benefit-cost assessments related to energy development, rebuts industry claims that ending leasing would significantly impact production and the economy. Instead, the report provides analysis that shows that the Biden administration can end new leases for the next five years without raising gas prices, preventing oil production, and negatively impacting jobs. The new report supports the opportunity for moving the United States away from fossil fuels and meaningfully addressing the worsening climate crisis, instead of giving into demands by the oil and gas industry to double down on decades of more carbon pollution.

For years, oil and gas development has contributed to worsening climate impacts, devastation for Gulf communities, environmental destruction, and dangerous conditions for offshore workers. Because federal offshore leasing locks in development for decades, putting an end to leasing is essential if the Biden administration is going to meet its national climate pollution and Paris Agreement targets and environmental justice commitments.

The new report comes just ahead of the release of the Interior Department’s next five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program. In the upcoming program, Interior will propose a schedule of federal offshore oil and gas lease sales for the next five years and has the option to not hold any new lease sales over that five-year period.