The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007

MONTANA, Mar 28 (Neo Natura) - Although now 135 years old, the 1872 Mining Law still governs mining on public lands for precious minerals such as gold and copper. Signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant, the 1872 Mining Law allows mining companies to stake claims on public land and take whatever minerals they find without royalties to the U.S. citizens that own these resources.

EarthWorks has written the following to congress, "The 1872 Mining Law places the interests of mining corporations above those of U.S. citizens. In 2001, for example, the U.S. Forest Service approved a silver and copper mine that would tunnel directly into the heart of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness Area in northwestern Montana – one of the ten original Wilderness Areas established by Congress in 1964. The mine would pollute the famed Clark Fork River, deplete an important native bulltrout fishery and jeopardize one of the last remaining grizzly bear populations in the lower 48 states. Even though there is broad opposition to this mine, the Forest Service argued that the 1872 Mining Law left them no choice but to approve it."

The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007 (HR2262) consists of the following major points.
• Protect water resources and habitats by establishing strong environmental and cleanup standards specific to mining;
• Provide a fair return to taxpayers, by providing for a reasonable 8% royalty on the value of the precious minerals mining companies take from public lands;
• Defend local communities and special places from irresponsible mining, by giving land managers the ability to balance mining with other uses of the public’s lands;
• Abolish the giveaway of public lands to private mining interests; and
• Create an Abandoned Mine Land Fund and a Community Impact Assistance Fund to address the long-standing hazards of abandoned mines to drinking water, fish and wildlife habitat, and the well being of local communities.

Zero Emission Coal Plant Nixed

MONTANA, Mar 13 (Neo Natura) - When the Department of Energy announced in January that it would cancel funding for the vaunted FutureGen project (to build the world’s first coal-fired power plant with zero carbon dioxide emissions), the decision was widely viewed as the biggest setback to date for carbon capture and storage (C.C.S.) technologies.

First announced by the D.O.E. in 2003, FutureGen was seen as a prototype for a new fleet of coal plants that would strip the carbon from coal and coal plant smokestacks, and bury it deep underground where it would remain for thousands of years. Working with a coalition of domestic and foreign energy companies, the federal government was to pay 74 percent of the cost – which by the time the concept was scrapped had soared to a projected $1.8 billion, up from $1 billion.

FutureGen also bore the hope of industry and government officials that “clean coal” – long an oxymoron to those who actually mine and burn the stuff – could become a reality. In February 2007, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman called FutureGen “one of our most exciting projects,” noting that it would build “the world’s first commercial scale, coal-fired power plant that produces no significant emissions of carbon or pollutants into the atmosphere.” In December, less than two months before the D.O.E. backed away, the new FutureGen plant site at Mattoon, Illinois was announced with great fanfare.

Now those plans are in ruins – along with the projections of the most optimistic proponents, who had hoped to build on a grand scale, so that we could significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions in this country while continuing to rely on coal for most of our electricity.

FutureGen CEO Michael Mudd, for one, hasn’t given up, saying he hopes “to continue to work with the D.O.E.” to salvage the ambitious project, or else to seek new funding from Congress, where members from coal-producing states have been big FutureGen supporters. “FutureGen is too important for the future of coal, and for the advancement of [carbon capture and storage] technology, not only for Illinois and the U.S. but actually for the world, to just to walk away from,” Mudd said two weeks after the D.O.E. decision was made public.

But while it has all the characteristics of a massive government boondoggle – a bloated original concept, ballooning budgets, competing interests focused as much on their own piece of the pie as on the overall goal, and an abrupt and embarrassing pulling of the plug – the FutureGen debacle did not occur within a vacuum. Nor is it the only setback for a viable nationwide C.C.S. system.

Problems with FutureGen had been noted for months, most prominently in a March 2007 report by a research group from Massachusetts Institute of Technology headed by Ernest Moniz, a physics and engineering systems professor. That report characterized the project as overregulated, underfunded, and poorly managed. “The Future of Coal: Options for a Carbon Constrained World” was characterized by the mainstream press as casting a cold eye on the concept of clean coal, particularly on the gasification technology known as integrated gasification combined cycle (I.G.C.C., which involves converting coal into a gaseous state rather than pulverizing it, before it is burned in boilers). That’s not the case: Moniz has stated that I.G.C.C. “looks like the most economic option for using coal and capturing the carbon dioxide for sequestration,” and the report makes it clear that the government should put more, not less, money and muscle into C.C.S. projects.

But the report also states that a single, federally funded “super-project” will be insufficient to prove the technology and attract the investment necessary to make C.C.S. into a reality.

Meanwhile a number of other proposed designs for C.C.S. projects have suffered FutureGen’s fate.

- Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, an electric utility that serves eight states across the Midwest and the Rockies, said in November it will postpone for at least two years its plans to build an I.G.C.C. plant with carbon capture capability in Colorado.
- Rebuffing a coalition of mayors headed by Laura Miller of Dallas, Mike Green, CEO of Texas energy giant TXU Power, said that I.G.C.C. will not work with Texas lignite or Western coal. Green told The Dallas Morning News that I.G.C.C. and C.C.S. are “not ready for prime time.”
- In 2006, Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana announced a grandiose scheme for coal plants featuring C.C.S. technology, saying that Montana and three other Rocky Mountain neighbors could produce enough liquid fuel from coal and oil shale to supply America’s oil and gas needs for the next 800 years. But he has been forced to concede that his original vision was overblown, and that none of his envisioned projects have gotten past the press-release stage.

Despite years of glowing pronouncements from politicians and D.O.E. officials, and hundreds of millions in research and development funds from the states and the federal government, not a spade has been turned to build clean coal plants in Montana – or anywhere else in America, for that matter. Does that mean that carbon capture and storage, and its associated technologies like I.G.C.C., are beyond repair? Hardly. But it does mean that we are moving beyond the period of artists’ renderings and enthusiastic press conferences to a phase of hard realities, as the promise and the challenge of capturing and storing large amounts of carbon dioxide are examined in a harsher light. A look at a pair existing C.C.S. projects – one on the Northern Plains and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas and Mississippi – demonstrates that capturing carbon from coal-based power generation is difficult, storing it for hundreds of years is quite feasible, and building the infrastructure to do so on a national scale is going to be very, very expensive.

It is not entirely accurate to say that FutureGen would have been the world’s first coal-based plant with a carbon-capture system attached. That distinction belongs to the Dakota Gasification Plant about 50 miles northwest of Bismarck, North Dakota. However, Dakota Gas doesn’t produce electricity; it just converts coal into natural gas, in the process capturing carbon dioxide from the coal and sending it via a 325-kilometer pipeline to EnCana’s Weyburn oilfield in Canada. There the carbon dioxide is pumped deep underground to aid with enhanced oil recovery (E.O.R.), prolonging the life of the Weyburn wells.

Dakota Gas is actually a remnant of America’s first energy crisis, the 1970s oil shock that lead to a brief flowering of alternative-energy research, and its tangled history gives an idea of how difficult it might be to finance and build a full-fledged coal-fired electricity industry using carbon capture. Planned and funded under President Jimmy Carter, the gasification plant was completed at a cost of $2.1 billion in 1984 and filed for bankruptcy on the first day natural gas from coal began flowing from the plant. Operated by the government for four years, it was sold in 1988 to the Great Basin Electrical Co-op, which also owns two 450-megawatt coal stations adjacent to the gasification plant.

Now run under a revenue-sharing agreement with the D.O.E., the plant sends an annual 3 million tons of carbon dioxide north to the Weyburn field, which has produced nearly 400 million barrels since its 1954 discovery. There, at a rate of around 125 million cubic feet per day, the carbon dioxide is pumped down into the reservoir, where it mixes with the oil and makes it easier to pump to the surface. Carbon dioxide that is removed with the oil is extracted and recycled back into the wells.

By almost any measure, the Dakota Gas/Weyburn project has been a success. It has proven the technological and geological feasibility of stripping carbon dioxide from coal prior to burning and using it for E.O.R. – an increasingly important technique as domestic oilfields face depletion. The economics, though, are a different matter.

“If this thing cost $2 billion in the 1970s, what do you think it would cost today?” asks Gary Loop, the C.O.O. of Dakota Gas. He questions whether such greenfield plants can be built and run to make them commercially profitable. In fact, a Phase 2 plan to build a generating station at the Beulah facility using gas from the Dakota Gas plant has been on the books for years, but Loop says, “We don’t believe Phase 2 is economical.”

“Of course, we’ve got 1970s technology,” he adds. The company is currently looking for a partner – and federal funding, naturally – to build such a generating station nearby, plus an expanded pipeline system that would collect carbon dioxide from other plants in the region and ship it north to Weyburn. “If you took all the carbon being produced in electrical plants in this area – most of which have carbon dioxide that would be more difficult to capture than ours – there’s enough known E.O.R. sites within 300 miles, which is the economic distance, to handle all the output for the next 50 years.”

There are several “ifs” embedded in that statement: if you could find a way to economically retrofit the existing plants; if the utilities could find financing to build the new capture systems; if consumers could be convinced to absorb the added price per kilowatt-hour of their electricity; and if you could successfully store the CO2 underground once you ran out of oil wells needing E.O.R.

That last question is the piece of the puzzle being examined by a team of geologists and oilfield engineers, at the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas. With funding from the D.O.E.’s Regional Carbon Sequestration Program, which is backing seven such partnerships around the country, the researchers have spent the last 4 years injecting 1,850 tons of carbon dioxide into the Frio formation, about 30 miles east of Houston. Soon they’ll begin scaling up the system for a much more ambitious project near Natchez, Mississippi.

Scheduled for 10 years, with $38 million in D.O.E. funding, this second phase will be the first long-term project in the U.S. to study the feasibility of injecting large volumes of CO2 into underground storage locations. Unlike the Frio project, which stored relatively small amounts, the Mississippi experiment will handle commercial volumes, from a plant owned by Denbury Resources, Inc. of Plano, Texas. According to lead scientist Susan Hovorka, that will come to around 1 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. “We need to go to the next level,” says Hovorka. “We’ll be injecting at a rate of 1 million tons a year in four wells.”

Noting that a typical 450 MW power plant produces 5 million to 8 million tons of CO2 annually, Hovorka says, “The math is easy – you’ll need a well field. If we can get 1 million tons [a year] easily in four wells, and you want to do five times that, that gives you 20 wells.”

So far the data from the Frio tests has been encouraging. The carbon dioxide injections have been stable, and no leaks have been detected – to the extent that even drilling a well and trying to “produce” carbon dioxide (i.e., pump it to the surface) proved difficult. The storage part of capture-and-storage is “in the bag,” says Hovorka. “If you want it, it’s there,” she adds. “The question of whether you want to pay for capturing it also remains open.”

Alberta - Montana Power Line Approved

MONTANA, Feb 04 (Neo Natura) - Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. (MATL) has received the final Canadian go-ahead to build and operate a 346km, 230kV AC power line from Lethbridge, Alberta to Great Falls, Montana. On January 31, the Alberta Energyand Utilities Board (EUB) gave conditional approval to build the Canadian portion of the line.

"We are very pleased to receive the EUB's approval, a major step inmoving the project forward," said Mr. Bob Williams, MATL Vice President, Regulatory.

Among the conditions, the EUB has directed MATL to conduct further discussions with affected landowners to address the mitigation of specific impacts on individual landowners.

"We heard the landowner concerns during the public hearing in November. We made commitments to the landowners on are solution process and we are ready to live up to those commitments beginning immediately," said Mr. Williams.

MATL must report back to the EUB by April 30,2008. The MATL line received National Energy Board (NEB) approval in April 2007and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval in the United Statesin July 2006. US Department of Energy (DOE) is the final regulatory approval required before construction can begin. An Environmental Impact Assessment is scheduled for release in the next several weeks followed by a public comment period before the DOE can release its decision.

The MATL line ties together the Alberta and Montana power grids bringing much needed transmission capacity to Alberta and providing access to the grid for a number of proposed major wind power projects in Northern Montana. As a merchant power line MATL will pay to build and operate the line. There will be no cost to utility rate payers. Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. is a Calgary based company formed to build and operate the Montana Alberta Tie.

Environmentalists vs. Coal

MONTANA, Feb 04 (Neo Natura) - In federal and state courtrooms across the country, environmental groups are putting coal-fueled power plants on trial in a bid to slow the industry's biggest construction boom in decades. Environmental opposition has sped up since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that said carbon dioxide is a pollutant open to regulation.

The case, Massachusetts vs. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, involved vehicle emissions. Some believe environmentalists aim to use the decision as a fulcrum to leverage regulators to take a harder line on greenhouse gases in several emerging power-plant disputes.

At least four dozen coal plants are being contested in 29 states, according to a recent Associated Press tally. The targeted utilities include giants like Peabody Energy down to small rural cooperatives.

From lawsuits and administrative appeals against the companies, to lobbying pressure on federal and state regulators, the coordinated offensive against coal is emerging as a pivotal front in the debate over global warming.

"Our goal is to oppose these projects at each and every stage, from zoning and air and water permits, to their mining permits and new coal railroads," said Bruce Nilles, a Sierra Club attorney who directs the group's national coal campaign. "They know they don't have an answer to global warming, so they're fighting for their life."

Among the projects being challenged is a 680-megawatt coal-gasification plant proposed by Energy Northwest, a public-power consortium based in Richland.

Industry representatives say the environmentalists' actions threaten to undermine the country's fragile power grid, setting the stage for a future of high-priced electricity and uncontrollable blackouts.

"These projects won't be denied, but they can be delayed by those who oppose any new energy projects," said Vic Svec, vice president of the mining and power company Peabody Energy.

While observers say forecasts of power-grid doom are exaggerated, the importance of coal -- one of the country's cheapest and most abundant fuels -- is undeniable.

Coal plants provide just over half of the nation's electricity. They also are the largest domestic source of the greenhouse-gas carbon dioxide, emitting 2 billion tons annually, about a third of the country's total.

Environmental groups cite 59 canceled, delayed or blocked plants as evidence they are turning back the "coal rush." That stacks up against 22 new plants now under construction in 14 states -- the most in more than two decades.

Mining companies, utilities and coal-state politicians promote coal in the name of national security, as an alternative to foreign fuels. With hundreds of years of reserves still in the ground, they're also pushing coal-to-diesel plants as a way to sharply increase domestic production.

The outcome of the fight over coal could determine the nation's greenhouse-gas emissions for years to come, said Gregory Nemet, assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin.

"It's pretty much irreversible," Nemet said. "Once a coal plant is built, it will last 50 years or so. There's too much pressure -- in terms of energy independence and the inexpensiveness of that resource -- to not use that coal," Nemet said.

One of the latest challenges to a utility came in the heart of coal country -- Montana, which boasts the largest coal reserves in the nation.

On Friday, a state panel refused to rescind an air-quality permit it had granted for a plant proposed for the Great Falls area by Southern Montana Electric, despite concerns about the plant's carbon-dioxide emissions. The 250-megawatt plant is projected to emit the equivalent of 2.8 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, as much as 500,000 vehicles.

The Montana Environmental Information Center, which had asked the panel to review the permit, vowed to appeal the ruling.

Nilles said the Sierra Club spent about $1 million on such efforts in 2007 and hopes to ratchet that figure up to $10 million this year.

Meanwhile, coal interests are pouring even more into a promotional campaign launched by the industry group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. It spent $15 million last year and expects to more than double that to $35 million in 2008, said the group's director, Joe Lucas.

Funding for the group comes from coal-mining and utility companies such as Peabody and railroads that depend on coal shipments for a large share of their revenues.

Peabody's Svec acknowledged a rush to build new plants but denied the goal was to beat any of at least seven bills pending before Congress to restrict carbon-dioxide emissions -- a charge leveled by some environmentalists.

Rather, he said, the construction boom is driven by projections that the country will fall into a power deficit within the next decade if new plants are not built.

Industry attorney Jeffrey Holmstead said that could lead to rolling blackouts as the economy expands and electricity consumption increases. Holmstead was in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's air program during the first five years of the current Bush administration.

The power deficit cited by industry officials is based on projections from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. NERC Vice President David Nevius said his group is "neutral" on what kind of plants should be built to meet rising demand.

"We're not saying the lights will go out. We're just saying additional resources are needed," Nevius said. "We don't say coal over gas over wind over solar."

Utilities now burn more than 1 billion tons of coal annually in more than 600 plants. Over the next two decades, the Bush administration projects coal's share of electricity generation will increase to almost 60 percent.

That projection held steady in recent months even as courts and regulators turned back, delayed or asked for changes to plants in at least nine states.

Some were canceled over global-warming concerns. Utilities backed off others after their price tags climbed over $1 billion because of rising costs for materials and skilled labor.

Bozeman Hosts CREBS Workshop

MONTANA, Feb 04 (Neo Natura) - MSU Extension and the Northern Rocky Mountain RC&D will host a workshop on Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBS) in Bozeman on Feb. 28.

County commissioners, city council members, and community planners are invited to attend the workshop to learn about wind project development due diligence, bond counsel considerations, and bond underwriting fundamentals specific to CREBS. Featured speakers include Mae Nan Ellingson from Dorsey & Whitney LLP and Chris Flannery, vice president of the fixed income division of Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis.

Since 2006, the Internal Revenue Service has awarded bonding authority more than 47 times for CREBS to municipalities and school districts in Montana. The bonding process, as well as the accompanying wind generation project, is complex. This workshop will help decision makers understand the bonding authority, assess the project proposals for their area, and make decisions regarding how to proceed with CREBS.

"The CREBS bonds are very complicated," said Carbon County Commissioner, John Prinkki, who attended a version of the training in 2007 in Helena. "The workshop that I attended helped me to evaluate the risks and rewards for Carbon County. I believe we avoided some costly missteps because we, as commissioners, were able to understand the project we were evaluating."

Proposed Federal EIS Plan

MONTANA, Jan 31 (Neo Natura) - A public discussion on the proposed federal EIS project, a plan to designate energy corridors on federal land in 11 Western states, drew few comments at a public meeting in Helena, but for the most part was supported from representatives of organizations who attended.

Use this form to submit comments on the Energy Corridor Draft Programmatic EIS. All comments received or postmarked by Thursday, February 14, 2008 will be considered. You can also view the proposed corridor area.

Most favored a route for oil and natural gas pipelines, power lines and distribution facilities that follows U.S. 287 from Townsend to Three Forks, then westward toward Butte and Anaconda and splitting to run north and south along the inter-states.

Another favored route could run from Townsend across Interstate 15 and the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, then north to Garrison and continue into Idaho.

“I’m bringing 200 petition letters asking for either the Garrison/Milltown or Townsend/Three Forks/Milk Creek routes,” Linda Sather, Anaconda-Deer Lodge County commissioner said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We want this in our county. We welcome it and support it wholeheartedly.”

But others are wary of the corridors, saying they could run through roadless areas. In New Mexico, critics said the map of the proposed corridors show only disconnected lines and that connecting the corridors would involve pipelines and power lines crossing state, tribal or private land. They said the connecting routes should be determined before the true impacts of the corridors can be measured.

Throughout the West, the proposed corridors cross through 12 national parks, monuments or recreation areas and three wildlife refuges. That’s down from the initial plan that involved 29 national parks, monuments or recreation areas; 15 wild-life refuges; and 58 wilderness areas.

“Although the Energy Department has made significant improvements in their proposed corridor designations, the proposed corridors still lack thorough consideration of the likely damage to federal lands and other places,” said Nada Culver, who has tracked the process for the Wilderness Society since it began. “In Montana and elsewhere, the Energy Department needs to come up with alternatives to minimize the number of corridors and maximize use of renewable energy, and it should include firm requirements to limit all projects to designated corridors.”

The energy corridors are part of an energy bill passed in 2005 to provide more energy to Western states and shorten the length of time it takes the energy industry to gain approval to run pipelines and power lines.

Once projects are proposed for the corridors, they would undergo additional environmental review before permits were issued and rights-of-way granted.

Jeff Barber with the Montana Environmental Information Center said the center supports the idea of energy corridors, but would like them placed within existing transmission routes and, if possible, to limit the export of Montana power.

“If it’s a coal plant exporting power, that’s not a direction we want to go,” Barber said. “But if it’s wind generation we want to export, that’s a different situation.”

Overall, the corridors include 6,055 miles over almost 3 million acres in Montana, California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Idaho, New Mexico and Arizona.

Brian Mills, Department of Energy environmental protection specialist, said the corridors would be about 3,500 feet wide — although that could vary — with 3,700 miles in existing corridors’ right of way.
In Montana, the proposed corridors cover 102 miles over 42,000 acres of federal land.

NWE Plans Anaconda NG Plant

MONTANA, Jan 24 (Neo Natura) - NorthWestern Energy is considering a site east of Anaconda, Montana for a proposed natural gas fired electric generation facility. The facility under consideration would provide regulating reserves within the company's transmission control area and must be approved by the MT Public Service Commission prior to the company committing to construction.

The site selection is the first of many remaining steps necessary to determine the viability of the project. The company must still obtain competitive bids for generation equipment and submit all of the necessary environmental permitting applications before determining the actual size of the project and whether it is economically viable. If, after further analysis, the project is deemed appropriate, it will be submitted to the Montana Public Service Commission in the spring or early summer for review and approval.

"There's still much work to be done; however, the site selection is necessary before proceeding with technology and environmental evaluations. Our independent engineering firm evaluated several possible sites in Montana and we chose the Mill Creek site due to the proximity and availability of electric and gas transmission facilities, access to rail and water supply," said Bill Rhoads, Director -- Montana Production.

Dave Gates, Vice President -- Wholesale Operations added that the proposed plant, adjacent to the company's Mill Creek Substation, would be built and operated in full compliance with Montana environmental statues and meet or exceed all air and water quality standards. The power from the plant would be used to balance the company's transmission system and to provide the ancillary services needed to integrate the company's existing and any additional wind energy that may be added to NorthWestern's portfolio of electric supply resources. The exact size of the proposed plant has yet to be determined pending technology and environmental evaluations, but the range under consideration is 120-220 MW with an estimated cost in excess of $100 million.

NorthWestern Energy operates a 7,000-mile high voltage transmission system that requires adequate reserve capacity to maintain federal reliability standards. Currently, the company must purchase and import these services from utilities in the northwestern US and Canada. Until recently the company was not allowed to own rate-based generation resources. The market availability of regulating reserve capacity is shrinking throughout the region because utilities are now using more of their own regulating reserve capacity for projects on their own systems.

Farmer's Camelina Seed Reimbursed

MONTANA, Jan 16 (Neo Natura) - Montana farmers in 32 northern and eastern counties can now get reimbursed for their camelina seed costs as part of the new Montana's "Agro Energy Plan".

The program covers Camelina costs of up to a $1.30 per pound and up to 80 acres, at seeding rates of three to five pounds per acre.

Montana Department of Agriculture Director Ron De Yong says they're looking to help the growing agricultural sector and that he hopes the project will encourage farmers to gain experience planting the oilseed crop.

"We'd like to get enough Camelina grown to actually get this industry started. So, if you've never raised Camelina before it's pretty hard to think about raising it when you have all these good options right now which is unusual for farmers to have."

The camelina crop is planned to be used for the production of bio-diesel through the process of transesterification.