The Texas Tribune-Agribusinesses polluting waters

How corporate agribusinesses are fouling our waters

By Hayden Hamilton

When most people think of water pollution, they think of pipes dumping toxic chemicals. But a new report quantifies another threat to our water quality: factory farms.

The study from Environment Texas Research & Policy Center shows that big agribusinesses are among the state’s largest water polluters, with Tyson leading the way in the nation.

Using data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the report documents the “pollution footprint” of Tyson and four other major agribusinesses, making up an estimated 44 percent of the chicken, beef and pork produced in the United States.

By concentrating thousands of animals on factory farms and slaughtering animals by the millions in big processing plants, corporate agribusinesses create industrial-scale pollution with disastrous consequences for waterways here in Texas and across the country.

In fact, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, agriculture is the probable cause for making more than 690 miles of rivers and streams across the state too polluted for swimming, fishing, drinking or maintaining healthy wildlife.

To continue reading follow link below:

https://www.tribtalk.org/2016/07/18/how-corporate-agribusinesses-are-fouling-our-waters/

LNG Economics- The Brownsville Herald

LNG Market's future cloudy; what could it mean for the port, region?

BY STEVE CLARK | STAFF WRITER

The three liquefied natural gas companies that say they intend to build LNG export terminals at the Port of Brownsville took a gamble when they submitted their “pre-filing” applications to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the major preliminary step toward filing full-fledged FERC applications.

The pre-filing process alone costs millions of dollars, but there is potentially considerably more money to be made if Annova LNG, Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG win FERC approval, secure long-term customer contracts, sign up investors, build the multi-billion-dollar plants and start liquefying and shipping natural gas to foreign nations.

Rio Grande and Texas LNG expect to go online in 2020. Annova aims to commence operations in late 2021. While conceding that construction of the terminals isn’t a done deal, the companies publicly express confidence that the market will roar back to life in a so-called “second wave” of LNG demand.

Annova spokesman Bill Harris likes to say the process of developing their plant is “a marathon, not a sprint.”

Texas LNG thinks the relatively small size of its facility gives it a niche and thus an edge.

To read the full story follow link below:

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/business/article_31a153c2-3fb8-11e6-b0b9-cbebeaedad05.html

The Monitor- LNG Article

Supporters and opponents have their own spin on plants

• BY LISA SEISER

PORT OF BROWNSVILLE — “They are not like belching-smoke-kinds-of facilities, so you don’t see anything. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t emissions.”

Liquefied natural gas expert Susan Sakmar has traveled around the world visiting LNG plants all in an effort to research the topic she found so interesting several years ago. Since that time, she has put together what she calls an unbiased book about LNG called “Energy for the 21st Century.”

Sakmar, an Andrews Kurth Energy Law Scholar who is a visiting professor at the University of Houston Law Center, has a general belief about the impacts of all facets of LNG exporting.

“It can’t be that black and white,” she says about the environmental effects of LNG. “Otherwise, people wouldn’t spend years arguing. Then, when we get into the research, it isn’t black and white. You have to dig deep and it depends on sensitivities, too.”

The U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory reports the greenhouse gas emissions of the LNG process, from natural gas extraction through usage, contributes emissions of mainly carbon dioxide and methane.

About one-tenth of that is directly related to the liquefaction process. Another 5 percent is from the tanker transportation and regasification. About 75 percent of the emissions are from the power plant operations at the end of the process in which the gas goes to homes and is used.

The emissions for the life cycle of LNG are about half that of coal power.

“Are there emissions? Yes,” she said about liquefaction plants like those being proposed at the Port of Brownsville.

To read the full story follow the link below:

http://www.themonitor.com/premium/supporters-and-opponents-have-their-own-spin-on-plants/article_b06bca5c-3c1b-11e6-925a-1facf2a1e010.html