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Thread: Water the next oil?

  1. #1
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    Default Water the next oil?

    Could Oil Pipelines Solve America’s Water Crisis?
    By Felicity Bradstock - Sep 25, 2021

    Big oil could help tackle the water shortage in the western United States by repurposing existing infrastructure to help transport clean water to the areas most in need. Innovations such as this highlight how oil and gas majors, and their infrastructure and knowledge, will always be relevant even in a country continually pushing for decarbonization and renewables. As severe weather events appear to be happening on a more regular basis, hitting the same areas of the U.S. year after year, flooding and drought is not the only thing that the western United States needs to be concerned about. At present, Louisiana is facing severe water shortages. Groundwater levels in the state are decreasing more rapidly than in other areas across the country and underground aquifers are at an all-time low.

    This is largely due to decades of heavy use, the lack of regulation in water use by the industrial and the agricultural sectors, and little action by legislative bodies to respond to the issue in the past.

    In addition, following the devastating effects of Hurricane Ida, much of Louisiana has been left without power and clean water for weeks. This reflects the poor resilience of the existing utility infrastructure in the wake of a severe weather event, an issue that Louisiana has been facing continually over the last decade. This also adds to the existing scarcity issue, as greater investment is needed to strengthen the West’s water system

    The reason for the current water crisis, following Ida, is largely down to the destruction of power lines needed to provide water systems with the electricity to pump groundwater and run treatment parts. While the state mandates that all water systems must have backup generators, this rule has been largely ignored, and those that do exist have failed due to ongoing power cuts following the storm.

    The infrastructure failures have arisen due to aging water systems and a lack of maintenance. Around 60 percent of Louisiana’s water system is over 50 years old, and most are poorly maintained. Studies from the Louisiana Department of Health suggest that 831 water systems, providing water to 606 communities, had 4,582 violations of water quality standards.

    With the local and federal government doing little to respond to the issue of aging utility infrastructure, not just in Louisiana but across the West and the rest of the U.S., an unlikely candidate could provide the resources and infrastructure needed to fix the problem. Oil majors across the U.S. have decades of experience carrying fuel safely across huge distances to communities across the country. In fact, the U.S. is home to an astounding 2.3 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, most of which start or end in oil giants Texas and Louisiana.

    Experts responding to water scarcity in the U.S. agree that a federal approach to approving and constructing a major new water pipeline would be lengthy and expensive, likely to take decades to complete by which time the water problem will have worsened. In addition, following recent action taken against the proposed construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, it could be canceled before it was ever finished. Ultimately, drought-prone areas such as Arizona, California, and Nevada are likely to run out of water far before a pipeline can be built if the issue is not tackled.

    Steven Bingler and Martin Pedersen made a compelling argument this month suggesting that as well as repurposing oil and gas infrastructure for the transportation of renewable energy, the infrastructure could be used to capture and transport water to the areas in the U.S. most in need of potable water sources. They suggest that “Utilizing existing infrastructure is the only approach that meets the urgency of the moment.”

    They highlight the successful reuse of existing pipelines for new purposes and the experience that oil majors already have in constructing, setting up, and, where necessary, changing the purpose of their pipeline infrastructure. Therefore, using disused oil and gas pipelines, as renewable alternatives become more prevalent, could be the answer to America’s water scarcity problem.

    Repurposing pipelines would be infinitely cheaper than constructing a new mega-pipeline. The existing expertise of oil and gas firms would support the repurposing projects and could attract federal funding as a sustainable emergency response action. In addition, it would avoid oil and gas pipelines eventually falling into disuse thereby putting the infrastructure to waste.

    Oil and gas pipelines are being repurposed or have the potential to be repurposed for various other energy delivery options. So, could the potential of these huge existing structures win Big Oil the favor of skeptics as well as helping to support the green energy movement without totally disowning fossil fuels? As strategies for hydrogen transportation in old gas lines become more prevalent, so too could alternative uses such as water and other energy transportation.

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G...er-Crisis.html

  2. #2
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    And now they will be in control of water and next air??? Maybe an air tax for cleaning the air?
    “Duck hunting gives a man a chance to see the loneliest places …blinds washed by a rolling surf, blue and gold autumn marshes, …a rice field in the rain, flooded pin-oak forests or any remote river delta. In duck hunting the scene is as important as the shooting.” ~ Erwin Bauer, The Duck Hunter’s Bible, 1965

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    Quote Originally Posted by darealdeal View Post
    And now they will be in control of water and next air??? Maybe an air tax for cleaning the air?
    Maryland taxes you based on the amount of rain falls and runs off your lawn.

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    Yes. Will private succeed first to force .gov to regulate or will .gov beat private to the endzone. Can there be a Duke Energy of water?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Elcid_Fowler View Post
    Can there be a Duke Energy of water?
    We believe the water space is in a similar positon to the energy industry more than a decade ago, where rising prices coupled with technical advancement encouraged a seismic shift away from big, centralized production facilities toward distributed-scale alternative energy projects. Given the growing cost of securing water resources as the result of population growth, climate change, and groundwater overdraft, local water end-users are similarly reducing their dependence on centralized water storage, distribution, and treatment networks in favor of localized solutions that address their specific needs.
    http://www.summitwatercapital.com/

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    What happens when a town can not pay the bill and goes bankrupt or something to that extreme? They gonna cut the towns water supply?
    “Duck hunting gives a man a chance to see the loneliest places …blinds washed by a rolling surf, blue and gold autumn marshes, …a rice field in the rain, flooded pin-oak forests or any remote river delta. In duck hunting the scene is as important as the shooting.” ~ Erwin Bauer, The Duck Hunter’s Bible, 1965

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    Quote Originally Posted by Elcid_Fowler View Post
    Can there be a Duke Energy of water?
    Duke Power used to own Electric City Utilities
    Quote Originally Posted by Glenn View Post
    Have you tried mashin' ctrl/alt/del?

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by darealdeal View Post
    What happens when a town can not pay the bill and goes bankrupt or something to that extreme?
    It is called Austerity and I would be way in over my head trying to even explain it, but yeah, they are getting their money until the town runs out of assets to sell off...

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    Quote Originally Posted by reeltight View Post
    Maryland taxes you based on the amount of rain falls and runs off your lawn.
    That bill didn't pass. It was brought to the floor - an indication of the lunacy of Muhrlund.


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    Quote Originally Posted by boondoggle View Post
    That bill didn't pass. It was brought to the floor - an indication of the lunacy of Muhrlund.


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    I've got an El Cid mirror in my garage with your name on it.

  12. #12
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    Piping water to places that were never meant to have it is a zero sum game. Read Aldo Leopold's story about ducking in the Colorado River Delta. Which doesn't exist anymore
    Last edited by GMAC; 09-28-2021 at 07:52 PM.

  13. #13
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    You’d be shocked to know the terrible shape and or age of most underground infrastructure
    I am a nobody, that met somebody, that can save anybody.

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