We're
scraping millions of tons of coal from the ground in Wyoming and Montana.
But
new oil and gas developments are shifting the energy landscape – and sparking
debate on U.S. fuel and climate policy.
Photos and text by Gary Braasch, The Daily Climate
GILLETTE, Wyo. – Coal is still king in eastern Wyoming in the Powder River Basin, here shown at Alpha Coal's Eagle Butte Mine outside of Gillette. But oil and gas are starting to make a play.
Coal mines have torn into vast areas
of the rolling hills, eating up grazing land and putting pressure on ranchers.
But natural gas extraction – both from conventional drilling and coal bed
methane – and oil drilling are fast expanding across the region.
Forty percent of American coal comes
from this region of Wyoming and southern Montana, centered on Gillette, and
almost all of it is burned to generate electricity.
On the left, a giant coal truck
hauls a load while coal shovels work the pit in Wyoming's Powder River Basin
near Gillette. Eight years ago coal power created more than half of U.S.
electricity; now it is down to about 37 percent as utilities take advantage of
natural gas’s low prices and reduced CO2 emissions.
The face of the United States' booming natural gas and oil industry can be seen in Epping, N.D. What is now a bustling oil transfer station, below, was a field just three years ago.
Economic and regulatory pressure is
why giant coal companies are targeting Asian markets. They want to send
trainloads of coal to Northwest coast ports – a prospect that has ignited
political controversy and public protest in Oregon and Washington.
Thousands of gas wells
Meanwhile, the Powder River Basin,
the center of coal mining, now also leads Wyoming in oil production, according
to the Wyoming
Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The area is also punctured
by thousands of gas wells.
Three hundred miles northeast of the
Wyoming area, oil fracking has created a huge boom in the Bakken shale field
near Williston, N.D. Crude production in the region was over 847,000 barrels a
day in August – more than double the rate just two years ago. North
Dakota, which had just one oil well in the 1950s and jumped to several thousand
in the 1980s boom, now has more than 9,000 producing wells (and is adding up to
200 each month) [pdf].
Transporting that energy to market
has become a major political question, both on the West Coast and in
Washington, D.C.
Expanding rail facilities
The main way to get oil out of the
Bakken is via rail tank cars. Oil loading facilities there are rapidly
expanding.
Crestwood Midstream Partners' loading
facility in the center of the Bakken shale fields in Epping, N.D, shown here,
can load 120,000 barrels of oil per day, with an ability to handle trains with
up to 120 tank cars.
Epping is a tiny picturesque village
of fewer than 100 people with some restored buildings housing a museum and a
wheat elevator at the end of the street on the rail spur.
In 2010, the oil loading area was an
open field: The entire facility – rail spurs, three crude oil storage tanks,
and miles of 10-inch pipe – was built in this hamlet within the last three
years. It's already scheduled for expansion.
But there are many concerns about
the safety of rail transport. A fiery Alberta rail car crash earlier this month
raised the same questions posed in the weeks after July's fatal tanker disaster
in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.
The Keystone XL pipeline debate in Washington,
D.C. and protests over the development of coal terminals in the northwest and
increased coal traffic across the west are part of the larger debate over
future U.S. fuel and climate policy.
Gary Braasch is an Oregon-based
photographer. His long term project on climate change has documented science
and effects in 28 nations on all continents. The book "Earth Under
Fire," published by University of California Press, is one result; another
is a current exhibition at the Boston
Museum of Science. See more of his work on Braasch's website.
The Daily Climate is an independent
news service covering energy, the environment and climate change. Find us
on Twitter @TheDailyClimate or email editor
Douglas Fischer at dfischer [at] DailyClimate.org