<DrumBeat: February 10, 2009 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: February 11, 2009>

88 comments on A Visit to Chevron's Kern River Heavy Oil Facility

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Luke H on February 10, 2009 - 6:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I wonder what the state of California will do if it finds a bankrupt owner in charge of Kern River, at the time it ceases operations.

Kern River might not be the most likely candidate for this wondering now but plenty of other currently producing resource extraction sites are. Those nasty little long term considerations economists used to sweep under what they called the 'social cost' rug. I've been away from formal schooling for a while, what is the term that is being used to hide these kind of future liabilities these days?

Thanks for the very enlightening post Gail. It would be interesting to compare what is done for cost control at a handy beat up old field near Bakersfield to what is done at a beat up bunch of remote ones in the Prudhoe area (I know it produces light crude but the cost conrols could be compared in some fashion). The old deferred maintenance model of cost cutting has proved problematic up there in the past.

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ROCKMAN on February 11, 2009 - 12:08am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Luke,

They're not sweep under the rug by economists for US public oil companies. Today those companies carry huge negative values on their balance sheets compared to the old days when they were ignored to a degree. This is especially true with offshore fields. But you don’t have to worry about a big offshore operator ducking that liability by selling to some smaller operator who later files bankruptcy. On Federal leases the property can change hands a dozen times and all those subsequent owners can file bankruptcy. But the liability always remains with the original lessor if no one else can pay. Exxon, Chevron et al can run but they can’t hide from those costs. Depending on water depths costs can run as high as $20 to $40 million. Two big liabilities with all fields are "NORM" and PCP's. Norm is naturally occurring radioactive material. In reality everyone else calls it dirt. I'm not kidding. But if there is any amount of NORM on oil field equipment and casing it has to be disposed of as per expensive regulations.

PCP was a common additive to lubricants for years. Like all lube some drips to the ground. After 20 or 30 years a significant amount can accumulate in the soil. And it takes major (and expensive) remediation remove it. For decades those Chevron pump jacks slowly leaked PCP onto the ground. Unless Chevron has already remediated the soil there are PCP levels in the ground that likely exceed reg standards by 10 fold or more. Just another reason to delay abandoning the field as long as possible.

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Luke H on February 11, 2009 - 2:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Rockman,

Thanks for the info, your up close and personal knowledge of oil operations is really a great plus. Thanks again. I wasn't aware the liability stayed with the original offshore lessor if all subsequent lessors failed. What happens if original lessor has ceased to exist before the field is finished and all subsequent lessors also go bellyup? A lot of what iffing I know.

I'm guessing carrying that huge negative value on the balance sheets (for reclaiming oil sites) carries a huge tax advantage in one or more areas, (taxable real property value?) but that is just a guess.

PCPs are to be taken seriously but I wouldn't doubt NORMs danger are somewhat overblown. Radioactivity gets a certain amount of irrational response added to its real threats in a lot of situations. One case that comes to mind was what actually occured at Point Hope AK when they were planning to nuke a harbor up there (Operation Chariot was the project's code name, it was to be a practice run for an H bomb excavated sea level Panama canal). Fortunately the harbor was never nuke excavated--that would have made an ugly long lasting mess. What was done in the prep work leading up to it was that a few pounds of soil gathered from the downwind area of a Nevada (or was it New Mexico) above ground nuke test were sprinkled on the tundra. I think they were trying to see what kind of migration patterns the soil had. The amount of radioactive material spread was miniscule compared to the area it was spread over. But by the time it was cleaned up, revisited and on and on the attention that little bit of radioactive soil gathered was gargantuan.

The scenario so many at this site envision (I don't envision a collapse without violent trauma that would leave plenty of floating and otherwise spilled oil myself, so keeping energy supplies up one way or the other seems a real good goal) would almost certainly leave the mess at the finish. What government would be there to force or manage any kind of cleanup?

What I do see as likely if the U.S. weakens substantially is that all environmental laws that make any critical resource more expensive will be gutted, the cleanups will mostly occur on paper. Proper management of campaign contributions would certainly seem a way to hasten such legislative change along.

'Social Costs' if memory serves me correctly encompassed all the expenses that were never picked up by the private sector. Polluted land and water and long term health and genetic damage have been addressed substantially in the last several decades, though the social cost of man induced climate change has only recently shown up on the radar. Those costs could well be incalculable with any degree of accuracy for some time to come.

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Engineer-Poet on February 14, 2009 - 2:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

PCP was a common additive to lubricants for years.

PCP is an illegal drug.  I assume you mean PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl).

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Luke H on February 15, 2009 - 3:13am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I was pretty sure that was what he meant also but I figured someone would catch it (couldn't entirely trust my memory of the proper initials), PCB has left some ugly transformer storage yards.

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88 comments on A Visit to Chevron's Kern River Heavy Oil Facility

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