Earlier this month, the Maryland General Assembly gave final passage on a bill to ban fracking within the state.
It is now awaiting Governor Larry Hogan’s signature for completion.
Since we are situated in Baltimore, this is big news for us Marylanders.
Environmentalists and climate change activists have pressed for years to ban the controversial form of drilling, more formally known as hydraulic fracturing, for natural gas in the western portion of the state.
Hogan took the activists by surprise by throwing his support behind the legislative ban.
It passed 35–10.
The Maryland House of Delegates had earlier approved the same bill 97–40.
Once the governor has signed the bill, Maryland will become the second state to ban fracking by passing a law against it.
Vermont has a fracking ban law in place, but unlike Maryland, the state does not have the shale formations where fracking can be performed.
New York, which does have shale gas, has banned the process by executive order over legislation.
“This ban is a major step for Maryland’s path to a clean energy economy,” said Josh Tulkin, director of Maryland’s Sierra Club, one of the groups in the Don’t Frack Maryland Coalition.
With alternative energy sources still in their infancy and no truly comparable substitutes for fossil fuel consumption available, the best thing to do is economize and revolutionize the process, as demand is ever growing.
The pipeline of new projects is too small, and we could be setting up for a potential supply shortage by 2020.
It is very possible that the future of the oil industry could become a revolutionary “green” process in the near future.
A Houston-based company, Raven Petroleum, plans to build the largest new oil refinery in the United States in 40 years. The company says it’s going “green.”
Managing director Christopher Moore announced in February that the company will partner with Austin-based Thermal Energy Partners to build a 55,000 barrel-per-day crude oil refinery with an on-site geothermal plant on 832 acres just east of Laredo, Texas.
It intends to process crude from Texas’s Eagle Ford shale and will export diesel fuel, jet fuel, naphtha, gasoline, and liquefied petroleum to Mexico via railway.
“This is going to be a near-zero net emission plant, and we will not be burning any dry gas for our energy,” Moore told The San Antonio Express News during a press conference. “We will be pulling that completely from geothermal.”
The geothermal power plant will have the capacity to generate 20 megawatts of power from using heat from 12,000-foot-deep wells to power turbines, according to James Jackson, the Chief Business Development Office at Thermal Energy Partners.
“The idea is to make the cleanest, greenest refinery possible, and the intent is to replicate this model,” Jackson continued to say. He has already been approached not just by other oil companies, but also by completely different industries altogether, interested in using geothermal energy to power their large-scale operations.
Jackson believes strongly that Texas holds huge untapped potential: he estimates that Texas holds up to 10% of the total geothermal energy latent in the United States.
However, this isn’t the perfect solution to all problems.
There are many aspects of the refinery process that pose environmental dangers to the neighborhoods they are located in.
“If they use renewable energy to power the plant, that still has nothing to do with emission,” said Tricia Cortez, Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Study Center, an environmental nonprofit located in Laredo and a member of the STAR coalition.
The process of refining crude oil produces a plethora of toxins and volatile organic compounds, all of which have been proven contributors to pulmonary and respiratory diseases, cancer, birth defeats, and numerous other health problems.
There are many locals who are not happy with a huge refinery moving in just miles away from schools and neighborhoods, contaminating the air and hogging the water supply.
While the new refinery has generated plenty of buzz on both sides of the spectrum, the project is still in the early stages of development.
Raven Petroleum has yet to apply for the required permits through the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality, but it is expected to do so by the second quarter of this year.
In the meantime, Jackson urges critics to remain patient while the plans are finalized.
“This isn’t going to be a normal refinery,” he insists. “I think people are going to be really happy.”
Until then, the full scope of the refinery’s “greenness” remains uncertain, but it appears to be heading in the right direction.
Speaking of moving in the right direction, many analysts are predicting a bullish year for the oil industry in 2017.
Many companies have been focusing on streamlining and economizing their processes and cutting capital expenditures.
With all of these changes made, the entire industry is expected to make a slow and gradual climb upwards.
With rising confidence across the board, a barrel of oil has been predicted to steadily grow to $50 or perhaps even $60 throughout the year.
Oil companies, their employees, and shareholders all benefit from rising oil prices. Producing states and countries also benefit from rising oil prices because both employment and tax revenues also rise.
There is also a potential benefit for the environment. Higher oil and gasoline prices encourage consumers to buy smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles and limit driving.
Consumers of gasoline, diesel fuel, and heating oil are the losers when oil prices rise.
But current oil and gasoline prices appear to roughly be in balance, representing good economic news over all.
The higher prices are designed to assist struggling states and countries, but they are not so high to cause detriment to consumers’ wallets.
Oil prices have shown a good recovery towards the end of 2016. The upward oil price corrections are likely to continue in the first half of 2017, and the second half has the potential to deliver an ever better performance.
That’s all for now.
Until next time,
John Peterson
Pro Trader Today