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Monday, April 30, 2012

Herbicide Resistant Crops a Huge Concern

Story first appeared in The New York Times.

To a local farmer, it was a telltale sign that one of his tomato fields had been poisoned by 2,4-D, the powerful herbicide that was an ingredient in Agent Orange, the Vietnam War defoliant. Oklahoma City Agriculture Lawyers are concerned about the health and crop risks from extensive spraying of these hericides.

The leaves had curled and the plants were kind of twisting rather than growing straight. The local farmer in Lowell, Ind. is convinced the chemical, as well as another herbicide called dicamba, had wafted through the air from farms nearly two miles away. These distant farms in Kasbeer, Ill. were using Monsanto’s Roundup, a popular herbicide that some say has been used too often to control weeds.

Many farmers are concerned that the Dow Chemical company is on the verge of winning regulatory approval for corn that is genetically engineered to be immune to 2,4-D, allowing farmers to spray the chemical to kill weeds without harming the corn stalks.

That would be a welcome development for some corn farmers, who are coping with runaway weeds that can no longer be controlled by Roundup, the herbicide of choice for the last decade.

But some consumer and environmental groups oppose approval of Dow’s corn, saying it will lead to a huge increase in the use of 2,4-D, which they say may cause cancer, hormone disruption and other health problems. They are being joined by a coalition of fruit and vegetable farmers and canners like Red Gold and Seneca Foods, which filed petitions with the government last week seeking a delay in the corn’s approval.

The Save Our Crops Coalition, as it calls itself, says it is not opposed to biotechnology. But it fears that fruits and vegetables, which will not be immune to 2,4-D, will become unintended casualties of herbicide drift as the chemical is sprayed on tens of millions of acres of corn.

The dispute is the latest iteration in the intense and often bitter battle over genetically modified crops, made even more emotional in this case because of the connection between 2,4-D and Agent Orange, the notorious defoliant that has been linked to birth defects, cancer and other health problems in Vietnamese civilians and American veterans.

Some opponents of Dow’s product call it “Agent Orange corn.” Dow and its allies call that a misleading scare tactic.

Most experts agree that the harm from Agent Orange was caused primarily by its other ingredient, 2,4,5-T, which was taken off the market long ago. By contrast, 2,4-D, first approved in the late 1940s, is considered safe enough for use in many home lawn care products.

The Environmental Protection Agency, after repeated reviews, continues to say that there is not enough evidence to call 2,4-D a human carcinogen. This month, the agency rejected a petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council seeking the removal of 2,4-D from the market on health and safety grounds.

The Agriculture Department is leaning toward approval of the 2,4-D-resistant corn, according to its draft environmental assessment. But it is accepting public comments until Friday, and has already received more than 5,000. Opponents say that 267,500 people have signed a petition asking the government to deny Dow’s request. Dow hopes the approval will come in time for planting next year.

For some farmers, the approval couldn’t come too soon. He said that without new chemical approaches, farmers would have to plow more, increasing soil erosion.

The corn is just the first of a new wave of herbicide-tolerant crops. Dow is also developing soybeans and cotton immune to 2,4-D. Close behind, Monsanto is developing soybeans, cotton and corn that can tolerate dicamba, another old herbicide in the same family as 2,4-D. Bayer, Syngenta and DuPont are developing crops resistant to other herbicides. too.

Of the 20 genetically engineered crops awaiting approval, 13 are intended to be resistant to one or more herbicides.

The activity stems from the huge success, at least initially, of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops, which are genetically engineered to tolerate its herbicide Roundup, also sold generically as glyphosate.

Those crops made it so easy for farmers to control weeds by spraying glyphosate that Roundup Ready crops now account for about 90 percent of soybeans and around 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States. And use of glyphosate skyrocketed, at the expense of rival herbicides.

But farmers relied too much on glyphosate, allowing weeds to develop resistance to the chemical. The problem has been worst in the South, where a particularly strong and prolific plant called Palmer amaranth, or pigweed, has overrun cotton fields, forcing many farmers to hire crews to remove weeds by hand.

Dow says its crops will provide a way to control the glyphosate-resistant weeds using 2,4-D.

Dow’s crops contain a gene from a soil bacterium that causes them to make a protein that breaks down 2,4-D into other chemicals that are not harmful to plants.

But some critics say the new crops will lead to a manyfold increase in use of 2,4-D and dicamba. Neither is used that much now on corn and soybeans — the two leading crops by acreage — out of fear of harming the crops.

Critics say that weeds will eventually develop resistance to those chemicals as well and that more sustainable methods are needed to control weeds, like planting cover crops and rotating crops.

The new crops ratchet up dependence on the use of herbicides, which is very much a treadmill. Scientists in Nebraska have already discovered a small amount of waterhemp — perhaps the most troublesome weed in the Corn Belt — that is resistant to 2,4-D.

But some other scientists say there is little choice but to turn to the new crops and their matching chemicals. Without them, we’re going to get to a situation where we have no tools at all.

Dow and its supporters say resistance is not that likely to develop because various herbicide-tolerant crops will be competing, meaning no herbicide will be as dominant as Roundup has been.

Then there is the issue of drift. Droplets of any pesticide can drift onto adjacent farms as the chemical is sprayed. But 2,4-D and dicamba can also vaporize — known as volatilization — days after they are sprayed and then travel in the air for miles.

To the extent they now use 2,4-D and dicamba, corn and soybean farmers usually apply the chemicals before the crops are growing, he said. But with resistant crops, the chemicals will be sprayed later in the growing season, when the hotter weather increases the chance of volatilization.

Dow said it had already addressed the concerns by developing a new formulation of 2,4-D that is far less prone to vaporize or drift. BASF, the German chemical company, is working with Monsanto on a new versions of dicamba to limit drift and volatility.

Older formulations will remain on the market, so farmers may use them, especially if they are cheaper. But Dow says it will require buyers of its genetically engineered seeds to use the new formulation. It also says that older formulations will not have been approved for spraying on corn during certain parts of the growing season.

In a statement last week, Dow criticized the coalition’s attempt to delay approval, that there is a better way to address concerns than for one group of ag stakeholders to attempt to deny access to tools that are urgently needed by their neighbors.


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Cybersecurity Bill Up In The Air

Story first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

Congress moved toward gridlock over how to improve the security of the nation's computer networks when the House of Representatives approved a measure opposed by the White House and at odds with Senate efforts on the issue.

House passage of its measure, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, came on a 248-168 vote Thursday and was supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

The House vote came despite a warning by the White House that senior advisers would recommend a presidential veto if the measure also passed the Senate, which is considered unlikely.

The White House prefers a Senate bill that would concentrate cybersecurity efforts in the Department of Homeland Security and would require companies to bolster security for critical infrastructure, such as electrical and water systems. The House bill only facilitates the swapping of threat data between private companies and the National Security Agency and other government departments.

The House version also was criticized by civil-liberties groups that said its provisions allowing businesses to share information with the government to improve cybersecurity could compromise American citizens' privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union called it "a dangerously overbroad bill that would allow companies to share our private and sensitive information with the government without a warrant and without proper oversight."

The Obama administration says cybersecurity and IT security solutions should be overseen by civilian agencies. The Senate bill favored by the White House and supported by Democrats would place Homeland Security officials in charge of the effort.

However, the Senate measure is opposed by business groups because of requirements that businesses adopt measures to improve security, steps executives see as burdensome.

The twin controversies—whether to regulate security and whether a civilian agency should head up the effort—seem likely to snarl efforts to plug the growing gaps in network security.

Earlier attempts at cybersecurity legislation drew broad, bipartisan support but little momentum. In the past year, the debate has grown more polarized over whether government should play a larger role in requiring businesses to strengthen their cybersecurity.

House sponsors of the legislation cast it as a necessary first step in the process to protect American networks from groups in places like China and Russia who are pilfering intellectual property from U.S. businesses. Government and industry experts warn that as cyberattack tools become more widely available, capabilities once reserved for governments could extend to rogue states, terrorists or so-called hacktivist groups.

Setting aside the criticism, the House put together a strong bill that will help stop cyberattacks that threaten our economy and our privacy while keeping the Internet free from government control.

But sponsors of the leading Senate measure said Friday that the House should have included provisions to protect computer systems running critical infrastructure, as the Senate bill does.


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Dirty Oil Coming from Canada Raises Concern

Story first appeared on CNN.
U.S. imports of what environmentalists are calling "dirty oil" are set to triple over the next decade, raising concerns over the environmental impact of extracting it and whether pipelines can safely transport this Canadian oil. Petrochemical Expert Witnesses have become involved due to the delicate nature of this situation.

The United States currently imports over half a million barrels a day of bitumen from Canada's oil sands region, according to the Sierra Club. By 2020, that number is set to grow to over 1.5 million barrels -- or nearly 10% of the country's current consumption.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's overall Canadian oil production numbers are in-line with the Sierra Club's projected pace.

Bitumen is a heavy, tar-like oil. It needs to be heavily processed in order to be turned into lighter, easier to refine, crude oil. Because bitumen is so thick, to make it more fluid and easier to move by pipeline, it gets diluted with natural gas liquids.

Besides the sheer amount of energy and water needed to process and extract bitumen, environmentalists say it's more dangerous to move because it's more corrosive to pipelines than regular crude. Bitumen is not only more abrasive than traditional crude, it's 15 to 20 times more acidic.

While the industry maintains bitumen is safe, the danger of transporting it is one of the reasons there is so much opposition to the Keystone pipeline expansion, which is supposed to carry it, among other oil products. The Sierra Club, along with other environmental groups, recently put out a report showing that pipelines in Alberta, where bitumen is commonly transported, had 16 times the number of leaks than pipelines in the United States, which generally don't carry it.

Plus, when bitumen does leak, environmentalists say it's harder to clean up. Unlike regular oil, they say it's heavier than water, meaning it will sink to the bottom of lakes, rivers or bays. The technical sophistication to vacuum oil off the bottom of a river just doesn't exist currently.

Bitumen currently comes into this country via a pipeline running from Alberta to Wisconsin and in the original Keystone pipeline that terminates in Illinois. But Canada is planning on vastly increasing the amount of oil -- and bitumen -- that it gets out of its oil sands region. To get that oil out, more infrastructure needs to be built.

Along with the proposed Keystone expansion, other ideas call for pipelines to Canada's West Coast, to the Atlantic Coast through New England, and an expansion of rail lines. All of these routes would pass through sensitive ecological areas.

Canada's oil industry rejects the "dirty oil" moniker. They say it is more energy and water intensive than some forms of light crude, but not more so than many of the other heavy oils used in the Untied States from places like Mexico, Venezuela, or even California.

The pipeline industry says transporting bitumen isn't any more dangerous than transporting regular crude. They point to other studies that show it's not any more abrasive or corrosive to pipelines. The Alberta-to-U.S. bitumen pipeline leak comparison isn't fair, they say, because Alberta uses a different metric to measure pipeline leaks.

More importantly, the industry says the pipeline companies would not agree to carry this stuff if it really was destroying their systems.
No pipeline operator would want to spend billions of dollars to transport something their pipeline can't handle.

Plus, refineries, which are basically a massive twist of steel pipes, would not want this stuff if it really was more corrosive. The industry says that because the bitumen is blended with natural gas liquids, it does not sink in water.  Therefore it would not be any more difficult to clean up in the case of a spill.

For now, what all sides seem to agree on is the need for more study. The U.S. Department of Transportation, which regulates oil pipelines in the United States, said it is studying the transport of bitumen to see if it is any more dangerous, as required by the recently-passed pipeline safety bill.

The industry is hoping the study will prove them right.


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Yet Another Oil Spill....

Story first appeared in Fox News.

Exxon Mobil Corp. says it is cleaning up about 80,000 gallons of oil that spilled from a pipeline in rural Louisiana. New Orleans Environmental Lawyers are monitoring the progress.

The company says the pipeline was shut down Saturday night after a loss of pressure. The spilled oil was discovered on Sunday in Pointe Coupee Parish, northwest of Baton Rouge.

No injuries have been reported. The company doesn't yet know what caused the pipeline to break.

Exxon Mobil says vacuum trucks are cleaning up the site, and air is being monitored for quality.

The oil came from a 22-inch pipeline that originates in St. James Parish southeast of Baton Rouge and carries crude oil to northern Louisiana.

Exxon Mobil says that federal regulators have been informed and that the cleanup is being coordinated with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.


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Friday, April 27, 2012

Coal Prices Down Say Producers

Story first appeared in Reuters.

Consol Energy Inc, whose first-quarter profit fell short of Wall Street estimates, cut coal production targets for this year but said it will reopen an idled mine producing steelmaking coal now that prices appear to have bottomed out.

The lowered outlook and earnings miss -- blamed on lower prices and higher costs -- combined to send the company's stock down 3.9 percent to $33.21 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Another negative factor for Wall Street was that Consol said it contracted to sell some high-quality metallurgical coal to steelmakers at prices below the current benchmark.

But later, the Chairman and Chief Executive was upbeat with analysts, telling them the company was reopening the Buchanan mine in Virginia next week, after almost two months, because there were signs that prices were rebounding.  The company states that it is a high value, low cost mine.

In its earnings release, Consol said it will receive $119 per short ton for the Buchanan mine's low-volatility coking coal, which is equal to about $185 per metric ton -- below the current $210 benchmark level.

Harvey said overseas steelmakers have been taking advantage of a lull in the strong longer-term market to pressure coal producers into accepting prices below the benchmark. Though the market is starting to see signs that the low-vol coal market has bottomed.

On the natural gas side, Consol said it expects to produce 157 billion to 159 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in 2012, more than last year's record 153.5 Bcf, as it increased production in the Marcellus Shale region of the northeastern United States.

The gas will find a solid footing based on fundamentals because of our low-cost structure. Natural Gas Experts state that the prices of natural gas are expected to rise to more normal levels and then expect to see a rise in demand for gas on the domestic front.

Power generation over the next several years is also expected to expand dramatically.

Consol's first-quarter net earnings were $97 million, or 42 cents per share, compared with $192 million, or 84 cents per share, in the same quarter of 2011. Analysts on average were expecting 58 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue fell to $1.43 billion from $1.47 billion, said Consol, noting that total costs for coal mining rose 20 percent to $54.40 per ton in the first quarter.

Average realized prices for its metallurgical coals fell, to $157.78 per ton from $165.49 for high-quality coal and to $66.28 from $77.40 for lower quality. The average realized price for thermal coal rose to $61.39 from $57.82, Consol said.

The bottom line is that Consol's results are highly disappointing, especially regarding realized and expected prices at its Buchanan mine.

Consol said it produced a total of 15.7 million tons of coal in the first quarter, line with its forecast. But it lowered second-quarter forecast to a range of 14.2 million to 14.9 million tons from a previous estimate of 15.5 million to 15.9 million tons. For 2012 it lowered the forecast to 58.9 million to 60.9 million tons from 59.5 million to 61.5 million tons.

The lower profit resulted from the very warm winter, weakened economy and low natural gas prices which have quickly turned a tight coal environment into a surplus.

But he said all of Consol's thermal coal had been contracted for this year at favorable pricing and nearly half of its gas production was hedged at prices higher than current levels.

Consol said that on May 1 it will reopen the Buchanan mine and also restart thermal coal mining operations at its Blacksville mine in West Virginia, which the company idled in February to manage production in response to weak demand and prices.


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