Quakes force Dutch lawmakers to cut gas production

Quakes force Dutch lawmakers to cut gas production

Mar 11th, 2015 

by John Donovan. 

No comments yet

Article by Keith Findlaypublished 11 March 2015 byEnergyVoice.com

Extracts

Dutch communities rattled by earthquakes are upending Europe’s energy market.

Towns in the northern province of Groningen sit atop the continent’s biggest gas field, where the Dutch government says exploration by oil and gas majors Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil has triggered 196 earthquakes since 2013, damaging buildings and making home sales difficult.

Lawmakers, seeking support in provincial elections next week, have responded to residents’ complaints with a proposed cut in gas production – the second since December – in the hope that less output means fewer tremors.

The reductions would put the European Union in a predicament. Countries may have to turn to Russia to replace Dutch gas at a time when they’re trying to isolate President Vladimir Putin for his involvement in Ukraine.

FULL ARTICLE

Share this:

• Facebook
• Twitter2
• Email
• Print

Like this:

Loading...

Posted in: Environment, Exxon Mobil, Gas, Groningen Earthquakes, NAM, Netherlands,President Putin, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Russia, Shell, Ukraine.
Tagged: ExxonMobil · Gas · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Russia

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

Dutch Quakes Toss Wrench Into Gears of Europe Gas Market

Dutch Quakes Toss Wrench Into Gears of Europe Gas Market

Mar 11th, 2015 

by John Donovan. 

No comments yet

Article by Isis Almeida published 10 March 2015 by Bloomberg

Dutch Quakes Toss Wrench Into Gears of Europe Gas Market

(Bloomberg) — Dutch communities rattled by earthquakes are upending Europe’s energy market.

Towns in the northern province of Groningen sit atop the continent’s biggest gas field, where the Dutch government says exploration by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. has triggered 196 earthquakes since 2013, damaging buildings and making home sales difficult. Lawmakers, seeking support in provincial elections March 18, have responded to residents’ complaints with a proposed cut in gas production, the second since December, in the hope that less output means fewer tremors.

The reductions would put the European Union in a predicament. Countries may have to turn to Russia to replace Dutch gas at a time when they’re trying to isolate President Vladimir Putin for his involvement in Ukraine. For the Netherlands, the bloc’s biggest gas producer, less gas could reduce national income by 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion), according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

“The coalition parties are overall under pressure,” said Frank van Doorn, head of gas trading at Vattenfall Energy Trading Netherlands NV, the country’s largest retail supplier. “They have to do something to make voters happy and at the same time balance the impact on the Dutch government budget.”

Dutch gas added 0.6 percent to settle at 21.75 euros a megawatt-hour on Tuesday, according to broker data compiled by Bloomberg.

Progressive Cuts

The country counts on its energy industry for about 11 percent of gross domestic product. Export customers include Germany, Belgium and the U.K. The Netherlands produced 70 billion cubic meters of gas on- and offshore last year, according to data from network operator Gasunie Transport Services. That’s more than Italy’s total 2014 demand. The Groningen field accounted for 61 percent of that and generated an estimated 10.7 billion euros in revenue, according to data from Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij, or NAM, the joint Shell-Exxon venture that owns 40 percent of the field, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Dutch lawmakers have progressively cut the 2015 output target for Groningen gas. In December, they announced a 7.3 percent reduction. An additional cut, proposed Feb. 9, sent prices up 11 percent that week — more than in the period following Russia’s Crimea incursion. Now lawmakers are proposing an 11 percent cutback for the full year.

Earthquakes Reported

Earthquakes have been reported in places such as the U.S. state of Oklahoma, where exploration companies drill horizontally and blast chemicals, sand and water into rock to extract fuel, a process known as fracking. Only conventional, vertical wells have been drilled in Groningen, making the tremors there unique, said Heleen Haverkort, a spokeswoman at the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

In the Groningen village of ’t Zandt, artist Wout van Mullem, 57, said he decided to make his house earthquake-proof after almost five years of unsuccessfully trying to sell it. The structure is one of many in the area that suffered from cracking walls or shifting foundations.

“You have to face the reality that Dutch society needs the gas from Groningen,” Van Mullem said. “We have to find a way to extract gas from the field in an acceptable manner for everybody.”

Down the road, Jan Boer, 75, is waiting for the community center in the village of Leermens to be reinforced. Angled wooden beams support the external walls and the interior of two rooms. And near NAM’s office in Loppersum, where 3,000 of the area’s 10,000 inhabitants live, paintings in the Petrus and Paulus Church dating from the 1500s have needed restoration.

Groningen Tremors

Tremors in the province started in the 1980s and intensified in the 2000s, according to NAM, the Shell-Exxon venture. The biggest quake, with its epicenter in Loppersum, measured 3.6 on the Richter scale in 2012, resulting in about 12,000 damage claims, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

While NAM said it has plans to strengthen 3,000 buildings in Groningen province this year and has set aside 1.2 billion euros for projects including repairs and the strengthening of homes, Loppersum Mayor Albert Rodenboog said initial calculations show that 30,000 buildings will need reinforcement, costing as much as 6 billion euros.

The government ignored the security of citizens in Groningen for years, according to a February report from the Dutch Safety Board. Trust was already low, Rodenboog said, because in 2013, after the State Supervision of Mines said gas production needed to be cut to keep residents safe, output in Groningen province rose to the highest in 32 years.

Earthquake Intensity

Cutting production will likely reduce the frequency and intensity of the earthquakes, according to Harry van der Meijden, inspector general of the State Supervision of Mines.

NAM takes a different position. Earthquakes aren’t only caused by the volumes of gas produced, said Sander van Rootselaar, a NAM spokesman. When gas production in Groningen climbed to a record in the 1970s, there were no tremors, suggesting other factors may also have an influence, he said.

The Netherlands will decide July 1 whether to reduce 2015 extraction to a maximum 35 billion cubic meters with 2 billion of that to be produced only if needed, Henk Kamp, the minister of economic affairs, said Feb. 12.

Gas production can drop to between 27 billion and 33 billion cubic meters, depending on weather and other factors, and still meet domestic demand and honor export contracts, said Anton Buijs, a spokesman for GasTerra BV, the only marketer of Groningen gas.

As for consumption, the Netherlands depends on Russia for about 4 percent of its gas, but that could increase depending on how much the government decides to cut back, Haverkort said.

Prices Jumped

While European gas prices jumped on the Dutch plans, they have since erased gains as Russia started boosting supplies and more cargoes of the liquefied fuel arrived as Asian prices collapsed to near European levels.

The U.K., Netherlands and Belgium received 24 LNG cargoes in the first two months of the year, more than double a year earlier, according to port authority and ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

“The fact that Asian LNG prices are falling is certainly helping,” said Van Doorn of Vattenfall. “There’s also a good chance that Russia and Norway can put more gas into the European market without driving down prices. There’s no need to panic.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Isis Almeida in London atialmeida3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson atlpaulsson@bloomberg.net Bob Ivry, Dan Stets

SOURCE

Share this:

• Facebook
• Twitter1
• Email
• Print

Like this:

Loading...

Posted in: Bloomberg, Environment, Exxon Mobil, Gas, Groningen Earthquakes, NAM,Netherlands, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Russia, Shell.

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

The New Silicon Valley Movement That Is Taking on the Tech Giants

SHARED FROM

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The New Silicon Valley Movement That Is Taking on the Tech Giants

by Gabriel Thompson

Read »

The New Silicon Valley Movement That Is Taking on the Tech Giants

In the neighborhood where Cesar Chavez got his start, janitors, cooks and shuttle drivers are organizing to end the area’s inequality epidemic.

Gabriel Thompson 

March 10, 2015  

• Share
• 
• 
• 

Supporters of Silicon Valley Rising hold signs at the coalition’s launch. (Photo by Tri Nguyen)

On a warm afternoon in late February, two hundred people filed into the social hall of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, set back from a busy street on San Jose’s eastside. The large crowd was excited and boisterous—the event has been months in the making—with people calling out loud greetings to each other in Spanish and English. During a quiet moment, Chava Bustamante stepped up to the podium. A longtime union organizer, he now runs a group called LUNA—Latinos United for a New America—whose logo was emblazoned across his bright yellow shirt. “Make a mental note of today,” he told the group. “When we look back, we’re going to say, ‘I was part of this historic moment.’”

The moment he was referring to was the launch of Silicon Valley Rising. Born in the heart of a booming tech empire, this broad coalition of labor, community, and faith groups hopes to use that boom to benefit, instead of displace, the working poor. Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino is just a dozen miles away. Facebook is further down the highway, in Menlo Park. But those tech companies are only one side of the valley, with their sleek gadgets and social networks and, above all, enormous wealth. This modest social hall, with its cracked ceiling tiles and twice-a-week food service to the hungry, was a reminder that out here, in the center of all that is new and shiny, the age-old problem of poverty persists.

A group of young Latinas stepped forward to share their vision for the future: a Silicon Valley where tents are only used for camping, not as shelters of last resort; where workers are no longer invisible and disposable; where paychecks cover the cost of housing and food. These dreams sound basic, but they are ambitious. Rents in San Jose increased thirteen percent last year, to a median that now exceeds $3,000 a month. Until recently the city was home to “the Jungle,” reported to be the largest homeless encampment in the nation. A 2015 report from the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies found that three out of ten Silicon Valley residents don’t earn enough to support themselves; this includes many of tech’s invisible workers—the security officers, shuttle drivers, janitors, cooks, and landscapers—who are supporting an industry that is pricing them out.

“Things are definitely getting worse,” said Michael Johnson, during an interview several days later. Johnson is an officer with Universal Protection Service, a large security contractor that the union seeks to organize. He has spent a decade guarding tech offices for a handful of security companies, and has seen his pay remain flat—as he puts it, “not a whole lot more than the minimum wage”—and benefits disappear. He lives in a rented room, depending on donated food from a friend, a fellow guard whose worksite has catered meals. He places the blame squarely on the high tech companies, who have forced contractors to cut costs to win bids.

“We’ve participated in their success,” he said of the tech industry. “Why can’t we participate in their prosperity?”

* * *

Can the outsized influence of tech somehow be harnessed to benefit low-wage workers in Silicon Valley?

While this is still a distant dream, there are some promising signs. When anti-gentrification protesters stood in front of Google buses last winter, the news traveled far and wide. Less well known is that the drivers who shuttle tech workers to and fro are going union. Last fall, the drivers at Loop Transportation who drive for Facebook voted to join the Teamsters. Before, their wages averaged $17.93 an hour, and some paid $1200 a month for family health insurance. Under their new contract, wages increased by an average of $5.73 an hour and healthcare is entirely covered by the employer.

Meanwhile, at the end of February, the Teamsters celebrated another victory, when workers at Compass Transportation, which shuttles employees at Apple, eBay, Genentech, Yahoo and Zynga, voted 104-38 to join the union. “It’s on the fringe of even being able to support a family, still,” admits Rome Aloise, a Teamsters Vice President, about the new contracts. “Frankly, what it means to these companies is about what they spend on ping-pong balls for the year.” Still, it is a start, and the Teamsters, who are members of Silicon Valley Rising, hope that their success will embolden other contracted workers on tech campuses to organize.

There is also evidence that the tech companies can be moved. Last fall, after a lengthy campaign by SEIU, Google got rid of Security Industry Specialists (SIS), and took the security workers in house, where they receive the same generous benefits as other Google employees. And on March 3, Apple, which Silicon Valley Rising had planned to protest at its shareholder meeting today, announced that it was following Google’s lead and ditching SIS as well. Guards will now be Apple employees, receiving paid family healthcare and retirement benefits (and presumably, raises).

These one-off fights targeting the world’s most recognizable companies have highlighted the plight of tech’s impoverished service workers, but the coalition plans to scale up quickly. “We have to convince the private sector to change strategies,” says Derecka Mehrens, the executive director of Working Partnerships USA, a community-labor alliance that was critical to the formation of Silicon Valley Rising. “They are driving major income inequality—but we can show them there is a model” to help combat this inequality.

The model is based on the innovative living wage ordinance advocates pushed through Santa Clara County last fall, which covers the 17,000 employees whose companies do business with the county. Along with a minimum wage of $19.06 an hour, the measure provides workers with protection against unpredictable scheduling and anti-union harassment. The challenge now is to get the tech industry to voluntarily agree to similar standards.

Left unchecked, the economy—no matter how fast it grows—will do little to raise people out of poverty. There are 1.1 million low-wage workers in the Bay Area, which includes Silicon Valley, and it is projected that only about 310,000 middle-class jobs will be created by 2020. Members of the coalition have played a key role in trying to raise the floor for these low-wage workers. In 2012, they spearheaded San Jose’s successful ballot measure to increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour, an improbable effort that grew out of the class project of a group of undergraduate students at San Jose State University. And other cities in Silicon Valley are following suit, including Sunnyvale and Mountain View—home to Google—which raised the minimum wage last fall to $10.30, with plans to increase it to $15 an hour. But coalition members see these efforts as only the beginning of a long project to turn traditionally low-wage jobs into something more sustainable.

“What we’re talking about is occupational segregation,” says Ben Field of the South Bay Labor Council. “We believe this problem cannot be solved without major reforms.”

The other giant challenge is housing. Last fall, San Jose passed a new surcharge for developers, which the city expects to raise as much as $30 million a year to fund the construction of affordable housing. “The problem is that we need billions,” says Mehrens of Working Partnerships. Much of the state funding has long since dried up, and the coalition hopes to bring tech on board to push for new solutions. While it will be a big lift to get tech to the table, Mehrens says that there is already a natural interest, as executives often cite the need to house their workforce as one of their most pressing concerns.

Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!

More immediately, coalition partners like the Affordable Housing Network seek to strengthen San Jose’s weak rent protections, which allow landlords to raise rents eight percent a year, and bar landlords from rejecting applicants simply because they receive Section 8 housing subsidies. (In California, such discrimination is legal.)

Robert Aguirre lived with his wife in the sprawling homeless encampment known as the Jungle until it was dismantled by the city last December. The 61-year-old was lucky enough to find a landlord that would accept his subsidy, but he knows many people who are still searching for a home. He now spends his days coordinating food deliveries and trash pick-ups at the dispersed homeless camps that have sprouted up in the wake of the Jungle’s closure. “People out here are in survival mode,” he said. “They are evicted from camp after camp, but there is nowhere for them to go. This can be a very hostile city. ”

* * *

Back in East San Jose, the people who had gathered at the church social hall knew all about the challenges facing the working poor. They also knew the road ahead would not be easy. But the mood was still upbeat and the event ended with optimistic chants of “Si se puede!” Many of the speakers likened their current fight to that of the late farmworker leader Cesar Chavez, who lived just a few blocks away from the church and whose turn to organizing was encouraged by a local activist priest named Father Donald McDonnell, for whom the social hall where the group was gathered had been named.

That was back in the early 1950s, before the computer revolution, when this area was still known as the Santa Clara Valley. Much has changed since then, but there is still much that is recognizable. In Chavez’s day, the region relied upon the invisible workers—mostly Latino—who spent long days in the surrounding fields and orchards, harvesting the bounty that helped make the state an agricultural powerhouse. Today it is still mostly people of color who do much of the valley’s invisible labor, including those who put in long hours cleaning and protecting tech’s sparkling campuses.

“It was here in this neighborhood that Cesar Chavez began his work,” Ben Field of the South Bay Labor Council told the crowd. “And it is here that we have chose to begin our work—towards a new vision for Silicon Valley where all workers are valued.”

Read Next: How 262 cable technicians defeated a union-busting giant

Gabriel Thompson 

March 10, 2015  

The TRUTH will set you FREE.