Speaking of
stranded assets,
let’s compare Spectra Energy stock to SolarCity stock.
Spectra (SE) is up about 20% ever, while SolarCity is up 500% in one year.
Just like solar stocks in general are vastly out-performing fossil fuel stocks
Investors: do you want to make money,
or do you just want to trash our fragile watersheds and take property from
people who won’t profit at all from
Spectra’s proposed methane pipeline?
Stock quotes by
Google Finance.
-jsq
Injury to workers or local people, limited local resources, property rights, and more concerns all bubbling to the top in central Florida like methane from a deep well.
Briana Harper reported for GTN 29 January 2014, Natural Gas Pipeline Cause Concern for Property Owners,
The Sabal Trail Gas Pipeline is a project more than 400 miles long spanning across three different states. The purpose is to provide domestically-produced natural gas for the southeast region. But this pipeline comes at a cost to property owners. Eminent Domain Attorney Brian Bolves says, “It’s a big scale project that’s coming through the community. It will change the character of a lot of people’s property,there have been a lot of surveyors assessing people’s property and so people have a lot of concerns about the nature of this facility.”
The project will affect Continue reading Central Florida property owner pipeline concerns –GTN
Its name is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but lately it’s been sounding more like a marketing firm for pipeline companies. You can help fix that.
Bill Thompson wrote for Ocala.com 11 December 2013 about a meeting
in Dunnellon, Florida,
At open house, Sabal Trail presents plans for natural gas pipeline,
About 50 people attended an open house meeting held by Sabal Trail Transmission LLC, the energy firm that will construct the roughly 465-mile line for two of America’s biggest energy companies. The line will go through Alachua and Marion counties, among others….
John Peconom, project manager for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which will have final approval over the pipeline, described Sabal Trails efforts at this point as “shaking the bushes.”
The company, he said, is attempting to identify — and mitigate, if necessary — as many issues as possible before filing its application with the government, which should come in about a year.
Peconom told me in Moultrie, GA 27 January 2014 that that last was FERC’s role. I wonder why Continue reading FERC: regulatory agency or marketing firm for pipeline companies?
$5.5 trillion or $800 for each human on this Earth has been dumped into the fossil fuel money pit. Will most of that money never come back out, now that solar stocks are skyrocketing and foundations are banding together to dump fossil fuel stocks? Why should we let Spectra Energy and NextEra gouge a methane pipeline through our lands for their bad investment?
Kumi Naidoo wrote for EcoWatch 31 January 2014, Dirty Fuels is a Bad Idea,
By keeping their money in coal and oil companies, investors are betting a vast amount of wealth, including the pensions and savings of millions of people, on high future demand for dirty fuels. The investment has enabled fossil fuel companies to massively raise their spending on expanding extractable reserves, with oil and gas companies alone (state-owned ones included) spending the combined GDP of Netherlands and Belgium a year, in belief that there will be demand for ever more dirty fuel.
This assumption is being challenged by recent developments, which is good news for climate but bad news for anyone who thought investing in fossil fuel industries was a safe bet. Frantic growth in coal consumption seems to be coming to an end much sooner than predicted just a few years ago, with China’s aggressive clean air policies, rapidly dropping coal consumption in the U.S. and upcoming closures of many coal plants in Europe. At the same time the oil industry is also facing slowing demand growth and the financial and share performance of oil majors is disappointing for shareholders.
Nevertheless, even faced with weakening demand prospects, outdated investment patterns are driving fossil fuel companies to waste trillions of dollars in developing reserves and infrastructure that will be stranded as the world moves beyond 20th century energy.
The article is mostly about coal and oil, but it applies equally well to fracked “natural” methane gas: Continue reading Stranded fossil fuel assets: money goes in, but does it come out?
FERC filing 20131230-4002 from a landowner in southeast Gilchrist County, Florida. -jsq
Note to: FERC Docket No. PF14-1-000 Note from: John Peconom, Environmental Project Manager Date: December 30, 2013 Subject: Comments of Ms. Jane Hatker I received the following comments regarding the Sabal Trail Project on December 26, 2013. Ms. Hatker’s address and phone number have been ommitted.
From: Jane Hatker [mailto:jhatker@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2013 4:29 PM
To: John.Peconom@ferc.gov
Cc: merrilleeart@aol.com
Subject: Sable Trail Pipeline ConcernsDear Mr. Peconom,
I met you and we spoke at length at Bell High School on December 5th
at the open house regarding the proposed Sabal Trail Transmission pipeline route. To refresh your memory, I gave you a Google map showing our small pecan orchard that backed up to property where a 35 foot and quite deep sink hole formed. I also included pictures of the sink hole and proof that this was located no more than 2300 feet from the proposed pipeline route. This entire area is at high risk for rapid sink hole formations and it makes no sense to put a pipeline right through such an area simply to serve the interests of FPL.
At 62, I have lived in Florida for almost all of my adult life and have observed an enormous change in the amount and quality of our water Continue reading We can survive without gas, but not without water. –Jane Hatker
Filed with FERC 15 January 2014:
Dante Acevedo, quitman, GA.
I am a resident of Brooks county in southern Georgia. My property is being intruded upon by Sabal Trail, a subsidiary of Spectra Energy. Since the pipeline is “open-access,” it will encourage industrial development, including natural gas extraction, which will drastically alter the rural character of the community where I have lived for nearly twenty years and my grandmother for nearly 50 years. As no one else can represent my interests in this matter, I am filing this motion to intervene. This is a tremendously dangerous endeavor since it is going through a rural area with many homes and livelihoods. The thought of such a monstrous pipeline with the potential to create massive destruction and death outside ones door is more than one can be compensated for.
Furthermore, this pipeline proposal seems to dismiss Continue reading Monstrous pipeline more than one can be compensated for –Dante Acevedo to FERC
In the same coastal plain that contains the Floridan Aquifer with our drinking water, a commission just rejected a natural gas pipeline that would have gone through a pine fire forest with blueberries and bobcats much like ours. FERC should reject the Sabal Trail pipeline.
Wayne Parry wrote for AP 10 January 2014, Natural gas pipeline for N.J. Pinelands rejected,
Pemberton Township, N.J. — A New Jersey agency tasked with protecting the ecologically fragile Pinelands region narrowly defeated a proposal Friday to run a 22-mile natural gas pipeline through it….
“This is a great victory for the Pinelands and the environment of the region,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “Today the commissioners said the Pinelands are not for sale.”
“The Pinelands is host Continue reading Methane pipeline rejected in New Jersey
Filed with FERC 31 December 2013:
Sandra Y Jones, Moultrie, GA.
They state this gas line will produce enough power for 4 million homes. They state their Gulfstream line, which they own with Williams Company, delivers 1.26 billion Bcf/day to Florida and that is enough to produce electricity for 4.5 million homes.
Florida Gas Transmission sends nearly 3 billion Bcf/day. This line produces enough energy to power 13.5 million homes. This amount of natural gas would collectively produce enough power for twenty-two million homes according to Spectra’s information.
The total population for Florida is 19.32 million and 2.58 persons live in each household. According to the US Census 2012 repost, there are 9,031,051 households in the entire state. Also of interest is that presently only 60% of the power produced in Florida is produced by natural gas.
There is no need for this new pipeline. Sabal Trails is misrepresenting the truth. In a state where there are only 9,031,051 households why Continue reading Stop this rape of the “stakeholders” homes, farms, and lands –Sandra Y Jones to FERC
Filed with FERC 17 December 2013 and on the Ichetucknee Alliance facebook group:
Lucinda F Merritt, Fort White, FL.
The Ichetucknee Alliance (http://ichetuckneealliance.org) opposes placement of any new natural gas pipelines under, over or through the 5.5-mile long Ichetucknee River, including the area of Ichetucknee Springs State Park, the area of Columbia County that is included in the historic riverbed (the Ichetucknee Trace), and any part of the Ichetucknee Springshed.
The Alliance opposes any new pipelines in these areas for the following reasons.
The river and springs, including Ichetucknee Springs State Park, are Continue reading The Alliance opposes any new pipelines in these areas –Ichetucknee Alliance to FERC
Spectra’s Sabal Trail pipeline wants to cross either the Ichetucknee River
or the Santa Fe River in Florida, and a landowners association where
those two rivers meet doesn’t want that.
Morgan Watkins wrote for Gainesville.com 24 October 2013, Contracts for natural gas pipeline through Florida get initial OK,
Ichetucknee River Estates in Branford is one of the neighborhoods through which the pipeline is slated to run. Darryl Marshall, a neighborhood resident, is helping circulate a petition that opposes routing the pipeline through the residential community. The petition has around 25 signatures and he expects to have 70 or 80 by early November.
Marshall, a retired police officer, is worried about the impact on local wildlife as well as on the community as a whole.
“When I retired, I wanted to go Continue reading Ichetucknee River Estates Landowners Association against the Sabal Trail pipeline
