Letting Off Steam over Leaky Pipes

Being skeptical of the natural gas boom and, in particular, Dominion-Cove Point's ability to operate for very long, if at all, due to a diminishing reserve of natural gas to export, working to prevent this from happening has not been high on my agenda. However, if tonight's Maryland Public Service Commission hearing in my town was of any help in slowing the runaway train of this plant's start-up, I will be pleased.

I addressed the commission tonight with regard to the changes sought by Dominion alleviating the limits on how much volatile organic compounds (VOCs) could be discharged from leaky pipes and valves. My major points pertained to the need for the commission to not make a rushed decision and to consider amending or rewriting the procedures for leak monitoring and repair.

It would surprise me if the Commission takes action on these recommendations, but I enjoyed having the opportunity to address the public with some cogent observations. If my recommendations were adopted, I could see the ultimate result being impacts to Dominion's bottom line, since it would require more attention to stopping large leaks promptly instead of at the convenience of the plant's shutdown schedule.

If the Commission accepts Dominion's proposed changes as is, then I could see the result being major health hazards occasionally realized, impacting vulnerable members of the community who live in the area where plumes drift outside the plant boundaries.

All-in-all, I think the liquefaction plant's over 2 Megatons of annual greenhouse gas emissions is the main problem, rather than the 20 tons or so of annual VOC's. Nevertheless, I managed to pull off my best public speech ever and hope there will be more opportunities to exercise a talent that has heretofore felt to be wanting.

A Million Joans

On Friday, as the new President was preparing to brandish his clenched fists to the meager crowds
on the national mall, a smallish group of dissenters gathered in Malcolm X Park not far away to listen to speakers, singers, and Native American chants, preparing ourselves for a march downtown and years of resistance to follow. Behind us stood a statue of Jeanne d'Arc on horseback and she was draped in a blood red ribbon that read "Resist!" The lovely spiritual chanting below her statue appears to have beckoned forth her spirit because, by the following day, Washington, D.C. and cities all over the globe were swarmed with women filled with that spirit of resistance.

For a quick refresher, Joan of Arc was a young lady in pre-renaissance France who left her home in the South at the behest of heaven-sent voices instructing her how to lead her countrymen against the British invaders. With great determination and courage she rallied French defenders and saved her country from a lasting defeat. She was eventually captured by the British and burned at the stake. Perhaps her wandering spirit has found our current dilemma to be suitable circumstances in which to complete her unfinished business. It wouldn't be the first time the French have pulled our nuts out of the fire.

The particular nuts currently at risk are those that contain our freedom and democracy. Fascists now hold the two highest positions in our government. Since most of Congress are complicit with the corporatocracy, they aren't about to object to this momentous shift in rulership. The only way left to eliminate this threat is to multiply the power of the people. Without a change to more democratic leadership, our country will be locked into a state of depravity and remorse for the remainder of the century.  Anne Applebaum in today's Washington Post writes:

Indeed, it is likely the Trump administration will be remembered around the world as the tipping point, the moment when U.S. influence, which always had a base in ideas and morality as well as economic and military power, finally went into steep and irreversible decline.

"Tipping point," in this context, would also correspond to the climax of our fourth turning crisis, a  key catalyst to the tipping point being the ideological split between the administration and the polity. TRump is ignoring the clear signs of popular dissent. Our best hope would be that Congress would do its job and side with the people, curb executive power, and divorce themselves from industry special interests. What do you want to bet on that happening?

We cannot afford eight years of institutionalized fascism, even as an expedient to defeating Islamic terror, because it will indelibly debase our national character. The resolution to our crisis will probably necessitate a radical realignment of government under a new constitution. The Green Party has made a great start to shaping such a constitution with their ten key values and democratically generated party platform. On the other end of the spectrum is the likelihood that fascism runs its course and our Constitution is repeatedly sullied by the President, lawmakers, and the courts, to the point that it becomes a dead letter. In that case, the crisis resolution could be ushered in by a new, far less democratic constitution replacing the tattered ideals of our founding fathers. I choose to defend the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies by resisting the fascist threats posed by our leadership and their enablers.

Mild, but important, methods of struggle include the mentality that Charles Eisenstein promoted in his speech on Friday: "Don't owe, won't pay." Another, more comprehensive, theme of lifestyle change is captured in the meme, "Turn off, tune in, drop out." The result of a massive movement to wage a boycott against the fossil fuel economy would be to provoke an economic crisis rather than a political crisis that appears unwinnable. Yet, too many Americans are far more inclined to be happy idiots, struggling for the legal tender. Instead of tuning in, they've tuned out from democracy, and voted their pocketbooks for a carnival barker who offers boundless prosperity. In any case, economic detachment is not enough to bring about the revolution we need.

In our resistance march on Inauguration Day, a much repeated cadence was, "What do we want? Justice! If we don't get it? Shut. It. Down!" To me, that translates to a call to class conflict of the 99% against the privileged few. "Progress" that serves the interests of the 1%, and not that of the majority of citizens must be opposed, disrupted, and halted. Institutions that support the status quo by benefiting top executives and the system, but degrade the environment, abuse or exploit workers, or aggravate other societal ills must be vanquished or reformed. The costs of stranded assets should not be counted, especially as the benefits are immaterial to most of society.

Many who see the clear and present danger of fascism have turned to more direct means of fighting for the environment and against industrial growth. Water protectors have placed themselves in harm's way, most notably at Standing Rock. There are more uprisings being prepared, one on the Klamath River in northern California. After the Women's Marches yesterday that woke up the people, we need to give all of these activists, and many others who will join, activities to continue with. We also need to steer them away from identity politics and into the common causes of our earth, democracy, and freedom from tyranny.

Conveniently for me, there is the Cove Point LNG plant a couple of miles from my house. It may not matter that natural gas reserves are probably grossly overestimated and that the plant may never ship any liquefied natural gas. What may matter more is that resistance to this and other harmful projects is visible, ubiquitous, and vocal so that the people will keep waking up and not go back to sleep until we have shut it down and rearranged the social contract with government in order to preserve our democracy and life itself.

Caveat Empty: The National Flood Insurance Well is Dry

One reason not much gets done about climate change and sea level rise is that government has coddled communities affected by climate-driven storm surges. Understanding that there are numerous cases which have been left to wallow and others compensated meagerly, it appears that some are nonetheless satisfied, shifting the burden onto their fellow taxpayers for their risky decision to perch themselves on the edge of a sea containing melting ice cubes.

Photo by Richard

A coddling case in point is the nearby Cove Point neighborhood, Calvert County's most flood-prone community, which is receiving federal grants to allow homeowners to elevate their homes. The same community is also up in arms over the (ill conceived) efforts to make the Cove Point LNG plant export-capable. Their NIMBY campaign stems from concerns for their safety, but the Cove Point plant has been there for some forty years, handling LNG imports, why weren't they protesting then? They bought their homes with full awareness of the plant's and sea's presence, but now they expect to be protected from both. An inflated sense of entitlement and lack of responsibility for personal decisions seems common to both grievances.

The moral hazard of rewarding recklessness has brought the National Flood Insurance Program to be $23 billion in debt, with more possibly coming in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. As claims go unpaid, or as more debt is incurred, FEMA will be loath to give money away to communities like Cove Point who choose to ignore the obvious risks.

Exposing the Exposers

We are at the point that concerned citizens must hold the cold feet of anyone whose responsibility it is to uphold environmental laws close to the fire. +Albert Bates says that this is a civic duty brought to the fore by the revolutionary mandates of the Paris Agreement, as the preeminent example. The fate of humankind hangs in the balance.

Though easily jaded, I am not ready to begin my civic action efforts with civil disobedience, though there may come a time when roaring becomes my M.O.  A lot of leftist literature seems to be written by fanatical, poor-men's Donald Trumps, to borrow from The Flaming Lips. Less hostile steps may win the day in some cases, though escalation may ultimately lead to destructive behavior.

A template for reasonable objections to offending parties dealing with watershed protection regulations is provided by Community & Environmental Defense Services, offering an actionable alternative to raising hell. I noticed one glaring case in my community where Dominion Corp's contractor, IHI/Kiewit, has piled up excavated soil from the Cove Point LNG plant expansion and does not seem to protect it well from erosion.

One side (not pictured) is mostly covered with new turf, but the remainder does not seem to get the attention it should. The simple principle that Exposed Soil = Pollution makes this small mountain of dirt a likely pollution problem. The silt fence cannot be expected to catch more than half of the soil that reaches it, with the rest eventually settling in streams and ponds in the Gray's Creek subwatershed, and, ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.

I may not be fanatical or even a radical, but after Dominion's callous treatment of concerned citizens during the hearings on the LNG plant construction, I'll be ready to take the gloves off this time.

It's NOT Alright Now - In fact it's a Gas

Pointing out that liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped overseas causes more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than domestically burning an equally energetic amount of coal omits the fact that, in Maryland's case, we are the second largest exporter of coal in the country. A case could be made that exporting LNG will be less carbon polluting than exporting coal if the coal shipments were set to decrease as LNG shipments increased. Since Arch Coal just filed for bankruptcy and President Obama has made the executive decision to ban coal extraction on federal lands, it's becoming more likely that the trend of decreasing coal exports will continue, lending support to this rationalization for LNG exports.

No more coal allowed out of 30% of U.S. ground

Obversely, while Maryland's endogenous electricity generation from natural gas amounts to only 5 to 15% of its total generating capacity, 44% of Maryland's electricity comes from outside the state. The U.S., as a whole, relies on natural gas for at least 27% of it's electricity generation.  As coal declines and natural gas prices slump, the amount of U.S. capacity for generating electricity from the former is likely to decline, raising the reliance on natural gas and exposing large sections of the country (including Maryland) to dramatic price swings in electricity. The reputation of natural gas (fracked gas, especially) is sullied each week by infrastructure failures that cause egregious violations of public health and safety. We should do our best to divest ourselves of gas power, while taking additional measures to prevent leaks like the catastrophe in California.

Home and Hearth

In a state that is one of the top three in home mortgage foreclosures and in a neighborhood that has greater than 10% vacancy, it's hard to justify investments in one's dwelling unless you are destined to remain in place regardless of the market. It becomes a speculative decision which includes factors of the local economy, energy prices, and climate-driven demographic shifts.

In our case, I believe these factors favor energy upgrades to our home only as a long-term investment or if the energy savings payoff begins within three years. I see our local economy continuing to be buoyed up by the national security apparatus, of which our portion is Naval Air Systems (NAVAIR). I see grid electricity becoming more scarce as the fracking bubble bursts and coal gets left in the ground. Finally, the climate-driven migration of westerners to the east will probably take a decade or so to begin.

The net result looks to me like the value of homes in Southern Maryland will not fall too heavily before they start to recover sometime around 2025. Our own lower tier neighborhood, the Chesapeake Ranch Estates (CRE), will fall harder and recover slower than most. Becoming a municipality would ameliorate CRE's decline, but that looks politically dubious. However, if the Board of County Commissioners realizes how badly they ignored our concerns over the Cove Point gas plant LNG expansion, they will approve our municipality petition as consolation.

There are a host of things you can do to save energy in your home. We have a dishwasher that costs us an estimated $35/year in excessive energy usage over the newer Energy Star models. It recently leaked slowly into our kitchen floor and through the basement ceiling, causing over $10,000 in damage. After twisting the stingy arms of HMS, our home warranty company, I expect this old dishwasher to be repaired, after which I plan to sell it and get a newer model (and fire HMS - they should have replaced it outright).

While solar power looks slightly uneconomical for us at this point, I would consider installing a solar water heater. Water heating consumes about 18% of a typical home's energy. Over three years, cutting my electric bill by 18% would total to about $1,000.  Perhaps a DIY installation of a solar water heater would make sense.

Before that, the project that looks most lucrative is to augment our electric heat pump with a wood-burning stove that could potentially shave a whopping 45% off our electric bill! So now we are looking at about $3,000 saved over three years. Rather than rely on pellet fuel, I will have to look into rocket stoves.  I produce lots of kindling in the process of making biochar. If it can make my home heating costs disappear, making more sticks would be no problem. I can picture us being warm all evening in the basement watching the glow of a real fire, then retiring upstairs with the risen heat to comfort us throughout the night. It's a picture that, in the end, makes mechanized heat less desireable than the more labor-intensive way.

Fuel Switching

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's prognosis for 2016 sees commodities, rather than banks, as the locus of the next Lehman moment.  Countries and corporations whose continuance depends on stability of certain commodities are at most risk.  The U.S. economy is probably diverse enough to ride out the effects of commodity price swings, but some states will suffer more than others.  Maryland's diverse economy is among the strongest, so we don't need to be concerned that coal will continue to fall in production from its peak of 5 million below the current 2 million tons/year across 60 mines, all located in the two westernmost counties.  (John Michael Greer's Cumberland is at risk, though.)

The commodity that puts Calvert County's economy at risk is natural gas, though little is produced in Maryland. When Dominion Resources sought their approval for constructing the LNG export facility at Cove Point, our county commissioners acceded to deferring tax revenue from Dominion until the plant began to ship product.  That probably won't happen until 2018, if at all.

Initially, my doubts about the prospects of exporting natural gas were based on the high rates of depletion from fracking wells, leading to a precipitous drop in productivity.  While that alone may preclude exports a couple years from now, there are even more reasons to doubt now and they stem from economic causes.

Commodities volatility seems to favor exports from Cove Point, since fewer export facilities will likely be built in such an environment than the 18 originally envisioned.  Yet, the same volatility is causing mayhem among natural gas drillers.  As pointed out in my previous post, Chesapeake Energy, the second largest producer in the U.S., is headed for the junk pile.  Many others, whose business models were based on low-interest leverage and speculative land leases, will suffer the same fate.  With so many companies going under, the growth of fracked gas that has occurred over the past 5 years will level off and decline.  With coal being black-balled as a fuel due to its effect on the world's climate, it, too, will quickly decline in use.  This puts the onus on natural gas to fill some of the domestic demand.  Since 2000, the share of electricity produced by natural gas has risen 10%, replacing coal as the fuel.  The momentum of this fuel switching will be maintained, though farsighted power companies will opt for renewable sources instead, given the limits of natural gas reserves.

Just one-third of natural gas is used for electricity production.  The other uses are mainly for industrial and residential heating processes.  Something's got to give.  We don't have enough natural gas (especially if fracking is deemed environmentally untenable) to follow the current growth trend. Conservation will smooth our descent, but remember we also have lots of wood. It has an energy density about 1/3 of oil, but any able-bodied man with a sharp ax can get all he needs.

The Fracking Gamble

+Gail Tverberg 's theory about the deflationary spiral of oil prices (she thinks we are locked in to a price slide that will bottom out around $20/barrel) also applies to natural gas.  The fact that Chesapeake Energy (the U.S.'s second largest natural gas producer) is headed toward junk status supports this corollary.  A lot of Chesapeake's problem stems from land speculation with the intention of drilling and fracking.  These land deals were conducted with money from bright-eyed investors who never understood the economics of fracking and are now realizing how little real value most of the shale plays held.  Chesapeake's co-founder, Aubrey McClendon, seemed to know when to leave the party, as he departed the company in 2013.

He chose the name for the company out of a liking for the Chesapeake Bay area, despite the company's Oklahoma roots.  From Oklahoma, Chesapeake Energy's gas pipelines grew toward the Chesapeake Bay like a mycelium seeking humid climes to sprout its mushrooms.  After the fracking potential of the Marcellus Shale became known, the company surged further, to Pennsylvania. The pipeline assets were spun off years ago and now belong to Williams.

With the current demise of fracking due to the inability of the market to support the infrastructure and loss of investor interest, many natural gas companies will go under.  The price of natural gas should rise, however, once the markets have sloughed off the non-performing suppliers.  As coal is replaced by natural gas electricity generation, demand for gas should continue to grow.  The long-term damage to prices that Tverberg expects for oil may not apply to natural gas.

While the Chesapeake Bay region may have been the divining rod for Aubrey McClendon's vision of where Chesapeake Energy should go, it is there that he met the greatest opposition over the environmental repercussions of fracking.  Fracking has emboldened the U.S. to rescind laws against oil exporting and to build natural gas export facilities, such as the Cove Point Plant expansion underway a few miles from my home.  Aside from the public outcry against fracking, there are geological limits, climate considerations for which we are now internationally accountable, and the impending economic recession wrought largely by the same commercial ennui that brought about the energy price slump.  Fracking may never come back.  Cove Point may never export any liquefied natural gas.

Playing with Fire

I am proud to be a Marylander just for the simple fact that our state is a leader in the fight against climate change.  Maryland's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act (GGRA) rivals the plans of such progressive states as Switzerland in the rapidity envisioned for reducing emissions to fight global warming.  Since GGRA was enacted in 2009, Maryland has actually reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions faster than required by the plan, which calls for a 25% reduction of the 2006 level of emissions by 2020.  We are now at the point where an update to the plan is needed, as the Act must be reapproved in 2016.

Insofar as the real importance of Maryland's plan is not in drawing down emissions, but in showing other states how it is possible to do so while growing the economy, the GGRA is laudable. I do, however, have my reservations as to motives and the ultimate outcome.  It's not that Maryland is just so small as to have little bearing on global warming, it's that, at this point in the game (and more so in 2020, when other states might begin catching on), we cannot reduce atmospheric CO2 enough, fast enough to avoid catastrophe unless we immediately abandon business as usual (and/or put all our hopes in a "hail Mary" geo-engineering program).  By "business as usual," I include the reliance on economic growth for sustainment of the economy.  A major result of capitalistic, exponential growth is that it drives us deeper into fossil fuel dependence, while these limited resources become ever more expensive and environmentally harmful to extract.

Case in point: the Cove Point LNG export facility.  One of the most frequent concerns raised in public hearings held by the Maryland Climate Change Commission was the amount of GHG that would be induced by the facility's operations. Calculations show that this total would negate more than half of the GHG reduction progress made throughout the state since 2006 when the final results of the GGRA are tallied after 2020.  This effect was not included in the GGRA Plan Update, in spite of public input.  Even if it had, much of the effect would be masked by the fact that a good portion of those emissions are "off-shored," either to other states where the gas is shipped from, or to the end users overseas.

To be fair, it seems that Maryland is not in the least in control of whether the Cove Point expansion takes place. The climate commission considered it to be too much of a hot potato to even address it, and even climate-friendly Governor O'Malley wouldn't challenge it during his term.  This gives me little hope that the District Court of Appeals in Columbia, MD will rule favorably toward the environmental petitioners in their suit to require the FERC to re-evaluate their decision to allow the Cove Point expansion.

It's not that the powers that be really care whether Maryland's economy grows under business-as-usual, it's that they want to continue the bubble economy at the national level as long as possible, at least until it becomes apparent that we have no hope to avoid human extinction other than a "hail Mary" play.

Terror Starts at Home

The heightened level of "security" brought on by the most recent global terrorist attacks and threats will likely be evident in several ways to all Americans right where they live.  One local organization that is primed to play in this game is the Calvert County Sheriff's Department.  They have been itching to take on any would-be disruptors of our sedate rural existence, so much so that they zero in on whatever appears alien.  Out of state license plates are one clue.  Visiting for the purpose of protest is another.

A situation like the one recently at Bank of America stadium involving repellers with a banner protesting the Cove Point Plant expansion was resurrected recently when charges and counter-charges were filed over the treatment of protesters who had been arrested following the crane climbing incident early this year at Dominion's staging site on the Patuxent River.  It is not at all surprising that the Sheriff's Department would put a stop to such a stunt.  Their main concern, however, appeared to have been avoiding prolonged embarrassment from any perceived inability to control a one-off situation (rather than concern for the safety of those involved).  Hence, the degree of paranoia necessary to assertively respond to the latest scare is endemic to our county's law enforcers. In the crane incident, it will be difficult to tell whether the counter-charges by the Sheriff's Department against one of the protesters for making false statements to an officer is legitimate (unless an audio recording was made), since it will be probably be a case of several officers' words against one interloper.

I'm not into conducting acrobatic stunts for public attention, so it's a bit hard to empathize with the crane climbers (though easy to believe their rendering of the bungled "rescue" by Sheriff's deputies), but reading about a more recent incident that involved out-and-out harassment reminds one of the infamous reputation of Baltimore's cops wrought from Freddy Gray's killing and reflected on the TV series, "The Wire."  The targeted group in this case was not the urban, drug-dealing set, but the socially conscious, anti-fracking set.  It seems our Sheriff's Department is intolerable of either of those extremes and feels it is their duty to violate individuals' safety and constitutional liberties to protect Calvert County (and their own personal benefactors) from any intrusion on the speedy execution of a project voted down by local opinion.

While I think the Cove Point expansion is a white elephant and economics, rather than activism, will kill it, the picture these incidents paint of our Sheriffs make me very leery of the more permissible homeland security rules-of-engagement they will operate under going forward.  It wouldn't take much on your part to wind up under a jackboot that you once thought was your protection.

Calvert's Dirty Little Secrets

A worst-case scenario of a fire at the aforementioned Cove Point LNG plant is that a major leak could ignite and carry a fireball along the surface of the Chesapeake Bay up to 5 miles.  That is not the scenario that prompted the expenditure of $31 million at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant for a fifth layer of emergency back-up gear to avert a repeat of the disaster at Fukashima, Japan. A reciprocal scenario is the possibility of a large aircraft crashing into the nuclear plant resulting in an explosion that gets compounded by more explosions from the LNG plant.  Let's hope Murphy's Law doesn't evince itself by demonstrating the unintended linkage between these two contiguous facilities.

More likely, Calvert Cliffs will, like hundreds of other nuclear power plants, prove to be a financial mistake because of the cost of decommissioning and disposal.  Nuclear power is costly in so many ways that the U.S. has been practically in a nuclear plant construction moratorium for the past few decades.  Not as well known is that adding nuclear power is a poor solution to global warming since a great deal of greenhouse gasses are released in the process of mining uranium fuel.  Other forms of nuclear power, fusion in particular, are gaining substantial interest among deep-pocketed investors as a possible remedy to these issues.

In spite of all of that, I am interested in seeking employment at Calvert Cliffs.  I am nuclear-trained and experienced, the money is good, and someone's got to do it - at least until it becomes manifestly too expensive.

We're Not Your Dumb Minions

It's disconcerting how energy issues have a way of intruding on stuff that's important to us.  In my own life, energy has come to the fore so often that I could count myself as a professional in some ways.  My naval career pulled me reluctantly through the nuclear power pipeline in both military, and later, civilian capacities.  Soon thereafter, I worked for Puget Sound Energy.  My next job involved power to the Internet, but that ended quickly after Enron's shenanigans were exposed.  My year in Iraq once again thrust me into the energy arena as part of the Energy Fusion Cell in Baghdad.

Even when energy isn't our unintended profession, it can get in our face.  So it was last night for viewers of the NFL Monday Night Football match in Charlotte, NC.  Right in the middle of their most important pastime, hundreds of thousands of fans had to stop and take notice of a couple of anti-fracking activists with a giant banner repelling down from the roof of the stadium.  Like the Wizard of Oz desperately urging his audience to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the NFL soon tweeted that such a stunt was probably the most bizarre thing you will ever see at an NFL game.  The NFL shouldn't worry about their fans, though, because the protesters were cunningly seeking a much larger audience, not really the type of people who devote a major portion of their free time to watching a ball being squeezed out of opposing steroidal masses.

This is another instance of an energy issue being in my face, or close enough that I see it everyday that I drive out of my large residential development.  After you pass the gaggle of lofty crane booms half hidden behind a wall of trees on Cove Point Road in Southern Maryland, you soon find yourself looking at the Chesapeake Bay where an assortment of about 90 homes are arranged on a sandy flat near the water level. You are in the tiny, quiet Cove Point community which is spearheading this campaign, all out of proportion to their size, to shut down work on the Dominion Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export facility.  Note that this LNG facility has been in place for decades, but adding exporting capability will take two more years of construction and cost up to $4 Billion..., which takes us back to those protesters.

Their banner said Dump Dominion, and is aimed at Charlotte's darling Bank of America for their financing of the project. Investors should pay heed.  I have suspected since two years ago, when I spoke out publicly against the project to the Calvert County Board of Commissioners, that this whole effort is a shell game that is a part of the larger fracking Ponzi scheme.  We may have punished a few of the perpetrators of the Enron episode, but where did all the rest of the willing beneficiaries end up? Many, I assume, are still trying to squeeze money out of the ground.

My main reason for considering this particular project to be poorly conceived is that fracking has not proven to be nearly as productive over the long run as advertised.  Wells peter out quicker than Piccolo Pete on the 4th of July.  The $4 Billion will have been spent on standing up a white elephant in our remote part of Maryland when the company comes out with the news that, "Oh my, there is not enough natural gas, especially at these fallen prices, that will justify all of our sunk cost.  Government subsidies are the only way we will be able to carry it out and maintain good relations with our Japanese and Indian trading partners."

Originally a NIMBY campaign, the anti-expansion activists have begun to see the same issues just mentioned.  They have much more factual support for this view on the Dump Dominion page. In addition, just because it is natural gas, don't count on it being better for the environment. Methane is 25 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, so leaks are a big risk. When you add in the energy to transport, compress, and deliver the gas, it ends up being worse than burning coal.