Boom In Production Research Articles

Flows, floods, floodplains and river restoration

Returning water to rivers as environmental flows is now a major tool for restoration. Many plans for environmental flows have been modelled and devised but few have been delivered, at least in Australia. Nevertheless, as planned in the latest version of the Murray‐Darling Basin Authority’s (2011) Draft Basin Plan, water recovery for environmental flows is firmly advocated. In environmental flow planning, a key component to restore is periodic (seasonal) floods. Thus, in upland rivers that have been dammed, below-dam floods are seen as vital to reshape channels, to remove unnaturally high levels of sediments accumulated since dams were built and to improve water quality. An example of this is the restoration of the Snowy River below Jindabyne Dam (NSW Office of Water 2010). Environmental flows are released to lift base flow and to introduce variability that mimics pre-dam levels and the seasonal snow-melt flood. The flood is not of the magnitude of the pre-dam flows, but is designed to improve the river by remoulding the channel, removing accumulated sediments and detritus, improving water quality and rebuilding habitats typical of an upland river. In general, restoring floods in constrained upland rivers aims to improve channel conditions. Lowland rivers are usually floodplain rivers, which, in their intact state, regularly (seasonally) flood their floodplains. When the floodplains were flooded, as still occurs in the few remaining unregulated rivers (e.g. Ovens River, Victoria), there is a boom of primary production (bacteria, phytoplankton, macrophytes, tree growth) followed by a pulse of secondary production both of aquatic (zooplankton, macroinvertebrates, fish) and terrestrial fauna (e.g. birds, amphibians, reptiles). The high primary production is fuelled by nutrients coming in with the flood but also by nutrients and organic carbon released from the floodplain (Baldwin & Mitchell 2000). Flooded, intact floodplains are one of the most productive types of ecosystems in the world. The loss of that ecological production arising from river regulation and floodplain alienation in dammed lowland rivers is known, but its size and value are seldom acknowledged in developing outcomes for managed flows. Floods in upland rivers are pulse (sometimes intense) disturbances, whereas in floodplain rivers, floods are regenerative or restorative disturbances, notwithstanding some disruptions of the terrestrial biota (Lake et al. 2006). The ongoing viability of the biota of floodplain ecosystems lies in their capacity to capitalize on floods and to survive the dry periods between floods. To maintain the ecological integrity of floodplains, regular flooding covering the floodplain is essential.

Life-Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Shale Gas, Natural Gas, Coal, and Petroleum

The technologies and practices that have enabled the recent boom in shale gas production have also brought attention to the environmental impacts of its use. It has been debated whether the fugitive methane emissions during natural gas production and transmission outweigh the lower carbon dioxide emissions during combustion when compared to coal and petroleum. Using the current state of knowledge of methane emissions from shale gas, conventional natural gas, coal, and petroleum, we estimated up-to-date life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, we developed distribution functions for key parameters in each pathway to examine uncertainty and identify data gaps such as methane emissions from shale gas well completions and conventional natural gas liquid unloadings that need to be further addressed. Our base case results show that shale gas life-cycle emissions are 6% lower than conventional natural gas, 23% lower than gasoline, and 33% lower than coal. However, the range in values for shale and conventional gas overlap, so there is a statistical uncertainty whether shale gas emissions are indeed lower than conventional gas. Moreover, this life-cycle analysis, among other work in this area, provides insight on critical stages that the natural gas industry and government agencies can work together on to reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas.

The Changing Regulatory Scheme in Northeast British Columbia

The Northeast British Columbia (NEBC) oil patch is undergoing a boom in land tenure sales, exploration, and production. This comes at a time of increasing public concern over the use of hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), an unconventional technology that ushered in a new era of production in NEBC, along with several new contentious issues. Recently, four significant regulatory changes have been enacted or planned for the immediate future. The first, likely in response to public concern over fracking, occurred in October 2010 with an overhaul of the decades-old Petroleum and Natural Gas Act and the coming into force of the bulk of the provisions in the Oil and Gas Activities Act. The changes primarily affect production and environmental management, and several new provisions have a direct impact on fracking. The second change under development is the creation of a long-awaited groundwater licencing regime, marking a stronger environmental presence in the NEBC, and possibly abrogating pre-existing extraction rights. The third change arises from the expiry of Crown-First Nation Consultation Process Agreements (CPAs). Recent jurisprudence continues to point to the need for improved consultation and accommodation, but current negotiations may or may not succeed in arriving at a more comprehensive successor to the expired CPAs. Finally, under British Columbia’s contaminated sites regime, new measures expand the liability exposure of oil patch operators for contaminated sites in both civil actions and government enforcement proceedings.

Anticipation and tracking of pulsed resources drive population dynamics in eastern chipmunks

Pulsed systems are characterized by boom and bust cycles of resource production that are expected to cascade through multiple trophic levels. Many of the consumers within pulsed resource systems have specific adaptations to cope with these cycles that may serve to either amplify or dampen their community-wide consequences. We monitored a seed predator, the eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus), in an American beech (Fagus grandifolia) dominated forest, and used capture-mark-recapture analyses to estimate chipmunk vital rates and relate them to interannual variation in beech seed production. The summer activity and reproduction of adults anticipated autumn beech production, with high activity and intense reproduction occurring in summers prior to beech masts. Chipmunks also reproduced every spring following a beech mast. However, adult survival was independent of beech production. In contrast, juvenile survival was lower in years of mast failure than in years of mast production, but their activity was consistently high and independent of beech production. Population growth was strongly affected by the number of juveniles and therefore by beech seed production, which explains nearly 70% of variation in population growth. Our results suggest that a combination of resource-dependent reproduction and variable activity levels associated with anticipation and response to resource pulses allows consumers to buffer potential deleterious effects of low food abundance on their survival.

State Enforcement of Shale Gas Development Regulations, Including Hydraulic Fracturing

The United States is in the midst of a boom in natural gas and oil production, much of which has occurred in shale formations around the country. As shale development has expanded — largely as a result of new horizontal drilling and “slickwater” hydraulic fracturing (fracking, fracing, or hydofracking) techniques — questions have arisen regarding the environmental risks of drilling and fracturing in shales and how laws, policies, and regulations address these risks. To understand whether and how regulation addresses risks, one must know both the content of regulations and how they are applied through inspections of well sites, notations of violations, and/or enforcement. An accompanying paper by this author, entitled “Regulation of Shale Gas Development, Including Hydraulic Fracturing” addresses the content of federal, regional, state, and local regulations that apply to shale gas development; this paper explores, in a preliminary fashion, how these regulations are applied. It briefly surveys complaints about shale gas and tight sands development (both of which typically require fracturing) lodged by citizens with state agencies, states’ notation of environmental violations at shale gas and tight sands wells both in response to these complaints and as a result of independently-instigated site visits or self-reported violations, and states’ capacity to inspect sites and enforce violations noted. The objective of this “on-the-ground” review of shale gas development regulatory activities is to offer a preliminary picture of the environmental effects of shale gas development and how states address them through citations of violations and/or initiation of enforcement action. Regulations have little effect if they are rarely applied to regulated actors or only sporadically enforced. Looking to both the content of regulations, violations of the regulations, and enforcement therefore provides a more complete regulatory picture. The Energy Institute at the University of Texas funded the research for this paper.

Coca and conservation: cultivation, eradication, and trafficking in the Amazon borderlands

The cultivation and traffic of coca, Erythrolxylum coca, and coca derivatives remain understudied threats to the conservation of the Amazon rainforest. Currently the crop is transforming land use and livelihoods in the ecologically and culturally rich borderlands of Amazonian Peru. The isolated nature of this region characterized by indigenous populations (both settled and uncontacted), conservation units, resource concessions, and a lack of state presence provides fertile ground for the boom and bust cycle of coca production and facilitates the international transport of the product to neighboring Brazil. This paper explores the social and environmental impacts of coca production, eradication, and transport through an analysis of both spatial and ethnographic data on land use and livelihood strategies along the Ucayali and Purus Rivers. Results map out the regional distribution and recent history of commercial coca fields and transboundary transportation routes and identify threats to the conservation of indigenous landscapes and borderland forests.

Dutch natural gas strategy: historic perspective and challenges ahead

AbstractWe highlight a watershed in the natural gas legacy of the Netherlands: after 50 years of successful gas development, production output of conventional fields will decline from 2010 onwards. The projected decline in Dutch gas output will lead to a loss of future income for the State. In the past, E&P companies were prepared to compete for access to Dutch assets and lead in research as well as in the exploration for the development ofconventionalgas resources. Today, this cannot be assumed for the development of unconventional resources. It is not clear from our current state of knowledge whether the riskier unconventional gas resources in the Netherlands will be attractive for E&P companies. For example, are the financial risks for maturing potential unconventional resources into economic proved reserves acceptable to them? The US boom in unconventional gas production was preceded by government sponsored research programmes that stimulated the development of unconventional gas production technology. Decline in domestic gas production in the Netherlands therefore prompts for a dedicated upstream gas research programme. This will help to unlock future value from stranded conventional gas and unexplored unconventional gas resources. If such new gas resources can indeed be developed with the aid of research, undue loss of state income can be mitigated, which makes such a programme a compelling business case.

Heureka oder Phoenix aus der Asche?

Eureka or phoenix from the ashes? The developmental trajectory of offshore wind energy in Northwestern Germany. After the crisis in the shipbuilding industry the hopes for new regional developmental impulses are based upon the boom in offshore wind energy production. The paper examines whether there exist direct or indirect links between the new and the old regional industrial trajectory. The results indicate that these links are only of indirect nature. The core stimuli for the development were the ports in which seagoing vessels are able to land and a strong market pull effect. The crisis in contrast only generated an indirect push effect and the shipbuilding industry provided human capital and specialized infrastructure from which the new industry could benefit, but which could have been created elsewhere as well.

Reply – On maintaining high fluid pressures in older sedimentary basins

The creation of abnormal pressure, during the generation phase, involves a competition between the rate at which the pressure-generating mechanism creates a change in fluid pressure and the rate at which the fluids can flow into, or out of the area impacted by the generating mechanism. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the mechanism tends to create higher fluid pressures. If the surrounding material is sufficiently high in permeability there will be a small or negligible rise in fluid pressure. Conversely, if the permeability is relatively low, high pore pressures can be created. Once the pressure-generating mechanism ceases to operate, fluid pressures will tend to return to normal. The rate of the return depends, again, on the permeability of the surrounding material. As suggested in my article (Bredehoeft 2009), a geologic conundrum arises in older sedimentary basins where, as far as we know, no pressure-generating mechanism continues to operate, and yet, high abnormal pressures persist. One explanation is for the permeability of sediments that surround the area of high pressure to be effectively zero. Revil et al. (1998) and Cranganu & Deming (2000) suggested that capillary barriers were a possible mechanism to create very low, effectively zero permeability. They suggested that this could explain the zones of abnormally high pore pressure within the Anadarko Basin, as well as in other sedimentary basins. I made no reference or comment on this mechanism for creating low permeability, pro or con – it was not my intent. I made an entirely different suggestion. Recently, the oil and gas industry has focused on developing gas resources that are contained in situ within organic-rich shale. I was told by individuals at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) that the presence of the adsorbed gas in the shale was well known; the problem was how to extract it. Recent advances in the technology of both horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have made it commercially attractive to extract the gas from shale. This created a boom in leasing and drilling shale gas prospects throughout North America in the 21st Century. The gas production boom in shale demonstrated that all the organic-rich shale beds that are considered source beds for oil and gas are full of adsorbed natural gas – this is a new idea for most geologists. I pointed out that the quantities of adsorbed natural gas, even within Paleozoic age shale, is enormous. I suggested that none of the earlier models of mature-basin flow analysis explicitly included a source bed within which is absorbed an enormous quantity of natural gas. This gas will be desorbed as the fluid pressure in the basin declines. (It is analogous to coal-bed methane, except that the quantities of gas are much larger.) In other words, there is another major source of fluids in almost every sedimentary basin that most previous analyses have not accounted for. For example, a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that the volume of gas in the Anadarko Basin (at atmospheric pressure) is of the same order of magnitude as the pore water in the basin – it is not insignificant and cannot be ignored, although the gas is highly compressible. I hypothesized that explicitly including the shale gas will change our ideas of how low the permeability must be to maintain abnormal pressures for very long periods.

Australian cinema's dark sun: the boom in Australian horror film production

ABSTRACTThere has been a boom in Australian horror movie production in recent years. Daybreakers (2010), Wolf Creek (2005), Rogue (2007), Undead (2003), Black Water (2008), and Storm Warning (2006), among others, have all experienced varying degrees of popularity, mainstream visibility and cult success in worldwide horror markets. While Aussie horror's renaissance is widely acknowledged in industry literature, there is limited research into the extent of the boom and the dynamics of production. Consequently, there are few explanations for why and how this surge has occurred. This article argues that the recent growth in Australian horror films has been driven by intersecting international market forces, domestic financing factors and technological change. In so doing, it identifies two distinct tiers of Australian horror film production: ‘mainstream’ and ‘underground’ production, though overlap between these two tiers results in ‘high-end indie’ films capable of cinema release. Each tier represents the high and low ends of Australian horror film production, each with different financing, production and distribution models.

A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980

A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980

International Trade after the Burst of the Globalization Bubble (Der Internationale Handel Nach Dem Platzen Der Globalisierungsblase)

The paper analyses the impact of the US financial market bubble on world goods and commodity markets as well as the consequences of the world financial crisis for international trade. The paper shows that the close interdependence between financial and goods markets has led during the US subprime market boom to an intensified international partition of labour between centres of commodity, industrial and financial service production. Given the past excessive production and consumption boom, the burst of the financial market bubble will lead to a consolidation of world goods flows. Despite single tendencies of protectionism, competitive depreciations are regarded as more likely than a significant increase in the world tariff level.

‘Master of Concentrated Suspense’: horror, gender and fantasy in the critical reception of Fritz Lang during the 1940s

This article is an examination of the critical reception of Lang's career during the 1940s. Although many of his 1940s films are now understood as classics of film noir, this article demonstrates that they were often understood as horror films during the period. Not only does this illustrate that both the films and the term ‘horror’ had very different meanings during the 1940s from those that are common today, but also it gives an indication of the ways in which European cinemas and their directors were understood. In other words, although it is often claimed that noir came about due to the ways in which émigré directors imported ‘expressionist’ tendencies into Hollywood cinema, it may be more accurate to suggest that, in the midst of a boom in horror production during the 1940s, Hollywood turned to these directors because of its perception of European cinemas. Furthermore, the analysis presented by this article also suggests that the reason for Lang's declining fortunes during the decade was due to his failure to make the shift towards ‘realism’ that was pioneered by directors such as Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak, a shift that was also strongly associated with horror.

Agriculture, poverty and growth in Africa: linkages and policy challenges.

Abstract Agriculture in Africa has been neglected by African governments and donor institutions for the last two decades. In the last few years there has been a resurgence in official commitment to the agricultural sector. For the vast majority of countries in Africa, agriculture will continue to be the main engine driving overall economic growth and poverty reduction, as many country case studies demonstrate. However, one should not equate increases in agricultural production with improvements in indicators of well-being, such as poverty rates and nutritional status. Complementary interventions are needed to ensure that overall economic gains translate into improvements in the lives of the poor. Macroeconomic and trade policy reforms of the late 1980s and 1990s in Africa did not unleash a great boom in agricultural production, economic growth and poverty reduction. Even with a favourable policy environment, the efficiency of agricultural markets is constrained by a host of institutional and infrastructure factors. There is significant disagreement in the literature about the proper role of African governments in supporting agricultural markets. A substantial increase in resources devoted to agricultural research will help the sector realize its anticipated potential for productivity gains. The empirical analysis of individual country experiences with growth and poverty linkages in Africa is relatively new; future directions for research are identified.

Fuels: Corn Ethanol Goal Revives Dead Zone Concerns

Fuels: Corn Ethanol Goal Revives Dead Zone Concerns

Impact of Government Expenditure on Growth: The Case of Azerbaijan

This paper evaluates a fiscal scenario based on the assumption of a rapid scaling-up of expenditure to be followed by a rapid scaling-down in the context of Azerbaijan's current temporary oil production boom. To this end, it relies on a review of historical precedents and a neoclassical growth model. Based on both strands of analysis, the paper suggests that the evaluated fiscal scenario poses significant risks to growth sustainability.

Food vs Biofuel

Food vs Biofuel

Gendering the dormitory labor system: production, reproduction, and migrant labor in south China

This article discusses the dormitory labor system, a specific Chinese labor system through which the lives of Chinese women migrant workers are shaped by the international division of labor. This dormitory labor system is a gendered form of labor use that underlies the boom of export-oriented industrial production in China, which has been further boosted by China's accession to the World Trade Organization. Combining work and residence under the dormitory labor system, production and daily reproduction of labor are reconfigured for the sake of global production, with foreign-invested or privately owned companies controlling almost all daily reproduction of labor. Drawing upon the findings of a 2003 – 4 case study of an electronics factory in South China, this paper analyzes the operation of the dormitory labor system, detailing both its role in increasing output and profits and its role in supporting workers' resistance to their employers.

Peasants and plantations in the Sri Lankan tea sector: causes of the change in their relative viability*

In contrast to the increasing trend in farm size found in most agricultural sectors, the absolute number of producers and relative share of total production from small farms growing green leaf tea in Sri Lanka have increased significantly over time. The boom in peasant production and the corresponding decline in plantations are due to the same general drivers explaining the increase in farm size elsewhere. Government programs and price effects that reduced revenue uncertainty and relative costs of production have enhanced the competitive position of small farmers relative to large estates.

Policy Alternatives for the Future Biofuels Industry

US and state governments have subsidized ethanol since 1978, and the rationale for these subsidies has varied over time from supporting farm prices and income, to environmental quality, and more recently to energy security and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The recent boom in ethanol investment and production can be considered as an unintended consequence of an ethanol subsidy keyed to $20 crude oil and fixed at 51 cents per gallon combined with oil surging to $70/bbl. Thus, in the 2005-07 period, ethanol was extremely profitable inducing substantial new investment. For the future, different political action groups and political figures propose renewable fuels targets or standards ranging from 35 to 100 billion gallons per year. To achieve anything like these levels, it is likely that the current policy set will need to be reconsidered. In addition to the current policy, this paper considers using a subsidy tied to the energy security gains and greenhouse gas emission reductions provided by renewable fuels, subsidies targeted specifically at cellulose ethanol, and different versions of a renewable fuel standard such as the one passed by the US Senate. It is clear that we must develop a better understanding of the consequences of these alternative policy pathways.