Oil & Gas Loses a Great One: Richard C. Haas

Half his garage was ammo; the other half was tequila. That was the first thing I noticed when I pulled up to Richard’s house in Austin.

We were slated to ride to Lubbock, Texas to present at a local event, and he was driving. What I did not know at the time was that, because he had no use of his legs, Richard drove his Chevy Suburban entirely with his hands. This would be fine, except that he also talked on his phones (yes, plural), smoked repeatedly, and… wait, how many hands do you have again? Then he’d take a corner fast and guns would come sliding out from beneath the seats to greet your feet (it’s Texas, people).

This was our VP Operations of Vortex Tools: Richard C. Haas.

As a kid, Richard was diagnosed with polio, wore leg braces, and was then wheelchair-bound almost his entire life. The son of an oil man, he followed his father’s footsteps, but his approach required more grit and determination: Oil & gas rigs do not have disabled access. This meant that Richard would leave his wheelchair off to the side and slide around using his upper body strength. A rig can be a brutal environment when you’re standing on your feet and Richard would drag his body along to get the job done.

If there was an award, he received it (he was voted Aggie of the Year at Texas A&M twice). If there was a featured role—instructor, speaker, Club President, Chairman of the Board—he got it. He received two patents and wrote several articles and White Papers. After negotiating oil & gas deals around the world (in the U.S., Mexico, and the Gambia), Richard settled back in near Austin, Texas. In 2001, he helped found Border to Border Exploration. Under his drilling guidance, BBX turned a $2.4 million investment into a billion-dollar asset value—making them one of the top independents in the U.S.

In 2011, he joined Vortex Tools to explore innovative uses of our optimization tools. In drilling, he’d complete a well in less time and for less money than other companies in the area. As an operator, he’d get more production from his wells, and that was the kind of innovation we wanted in our company. Since Richard entered the industry when oil was a mere $20 a barrel and gas a bare 10 cents an MCF, he was always looking to, as he said, “get the last squeal out of the pig.”

As a company, we believe that, despite what you may think of the oil & gas industry, it’s the key resource we have right now, so we should make it as optimal and as clean as possible. Richard’s approach fit right into that viewpoint.

He also drank repeatedly brewed iced tea that had the consistency of motor oil. First time he offered me some, my boss shook his head. I took it anyway, drank down a couple of inches, and shook wide awake until 2 AM.

And in June, Richard suffered a stroke. Three months later, he passed.

He’s survived by his wife, six adult children, several grandkids, and many friends who can tell you more about his home life, but I’ll speak to our coworker: In an industry where everyone thinks they know everything, people listened to him. In an industry where there’s so much success, he was revered.

In short: The man was a notch above.

Here’s to our friend and coworker, Ricardo.

*     *     *

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

Advertisement

Al Gore: An Inconvenient Barrier to Environmentalism

SpiroFlo discusses “An Inconvenient Sequel” and how resistance to Al Gore correlates to resistance to environmental efforts.

*I’ll apologize in advance for the agonizing over-use of “inconvenient” in this article (lay-up title included).

When “An Inconvenient Truth” came out in 2006, it had buzz. I heard about it in environmental circles (with the hope that it would get more people involved with green thinking) and it was well received by from critics and moviegoers alike. This time around, however, the overall impact seems, well, less:

• While “An Inconvenient Truth” received a fresh 93% critics approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” earned 77%. Still positive, but less so.
• Likewise, “An Inconvenient Truth” received a fresh 78% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, “An Inconvenient Sequel” earned a rotten 43%.
• On Metacritic, the critic spread was 75 (out of 100) to 67, but the audience score spread (which, for some reason, switches to a 1 to 10 score) is 8.1 for the first movie, but a mere 5.8 for the second. More on that later.

Obviously, only being a couple of weeks into its theater-wide release means it’s too early to tell how well “An Inconvenient Sequel” will do long-term, but as of this writing, it’s nearing only $1.1 million at the box office. It is unlikely that it will surpass the $23.8 million the first one earned.

You can blame several factors. Maybe it’s that sequels are usually worse (shhh, “Aliens” and “The Empire Strikes Back,” we’re not talking about you). Maybe it’s that modern Hollywood seems insistent on releasing sequels long after people have lost interest. Or maybe it’s that “An Inconvenient Sequel” is on a limited release, but, given the success of the first, they should have led with more marketing and a wide release, and sequels (while typically being worse) usually make more money.

But more than anything, I blame the backlash on Al Gore.

Frankly, there’s no shortage of clueless celebrities to grill for the hypocrisy of calling for a greener approach to living while lavishly ignoring that advice for themselves:

• See Leonardo DiCaprio:
  • taking his private jet to collect an environmentalist award; and
  • encouraging people to reduce their carbon footprint while renting the world’s fifth largest yacht (looks about the size of the Titanic).
• See also U2’s Bono (who also advocates environmentalism) paying $1,500 to fly a forgotten hat first class to his concert in Italy.

This isn’t to say all green advocate celebrities are automatically fake. People consider Ed Begley Jr. a nut for all the environmental innovations (and life limitations) he’ll take on himself, but he walks the walk when it comes to green living. But Al Gore? Al Gore’s been easy to criticize for a long time. I believe his interest in environmental issues comes from a genuine place (starting in the mid-1970s) and he had a level of interest in promoting those values throughout his political career. However, many people believe that Gore’s interest in green issues only took off when he lost the 2000 Presidential election. That may be true, but I don’t fault anyone for pursuing a different existing passion once their current career doorway slams shut.

I also don’t think it’s completely fair to criticize Gore for making money off “An Inconvenient Truth.” Few knew that it’d be the popular, financial success it was. The pro-environmental landscape wasn’t nearly as set in 2006, and, if anything, “An Inconvenient Truth” helped cement it. The key thing is that the majority of Al Gore’s wealth came from, A) his membership on the Apple Board; and B) the sale of his Current TV network. While the former may seem like a prized position, it’s the latter move that hollowed out Gore’s environmentalist character.

While I commented on this at the start of 2013, here’s the basics:

(A)s of January 2nd, 2013, Current was sold to Al Jazeera for $500 million.

Yeah, the Al Jazeera that, up until 2011, was owned by the government of Qatar—a large oil player. Al Jazeera has also had its fair share of worldwide criticism and controversies, as well as having to deal with attacks and censorship.

Gore’s take of the Current sale was $100 million (before taxes), bringing his personal fortune up to $300 million.

Criticism of Gore, even from Current TV staff, was extensive, as it was seen as wrong to sell a network with a greener slant to a large oil player. However, others noted that Current TV was always subsidized, now it’d just be subsidized by the government of Qatar while paying off the guy at the top. Gore spent some of his earnings on, you guessed it, Apple stock, and was largely able to escape mainstream scathing in public interviews.

Fast-forward a decade and it seems “An Inconvenient Sequel” will flop at the box office. At least part of the problem is that “An Inconvenient Sequel” doesn’t do a great job of explaining the predictions that “An Inconvenient Truth” got wrong. (Catastrophically rising sea levels, the arctic melting, and polar bears going extinct were the most commonly cited examples.) While the rebuttal should simply be, “That was 2006; we’ve learned a lot since then and we can’t exactly go back and put in updated footnotes on a movie,” climate change proponents put themselves in a corner by asserting that the science is settled on global warming. Thus, any acknowledgement that past assertions were wrong shreds that hardline stance (but that’s a whole ‘nother blog).

This time around, people aren’t even watching “An Inconvenient Sequel” to criticize it (if the low user ratings to low box office numbers ratio is to be believed—a week ago, the Metacritic user rating was a dire 3.6 out of 10 [up to 5.8 since then]). Instead, it’s Al Gore that’s got the target on his back. The arguments aren’t even new: I’ve seen this story again—Al Gore’s home consumes 34 times more energy than the average American!—but the same story made the rounds in 2007 (it was only 21 times more energy then). While Snopes views the claim as a mixed bag, it notes, “the basic gist of the claim — that the Gores’ Nashville residence consumed a larger proportion of energy than the average American home — was true.” I first heard that story a decade back when “An Inconvenient Truth” was still popular. You know why I didn’t see it often from 2008 to 2016? Because “An Inconvenient Sequel” didn’t release until 2017. Now that Al Gore is back in the spotlight, his criticism is back there, too.

It’s simple: You devalue the spokesman and you devalue the message, and frankly, Al Gore is an easy enough target that he’s doing damage to environmentalism messaging by proxy. While it may be inconvenient to Al Gore, for green messaging to get stronger, the easy criticism targets need to be set aside.

*     *     *

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

President Trump Green Lights Keystone XL and Dakota Access Oil Pipelines

Last week I noted that much of the oil & gas industry is waiting to see what President Trump will do. While consensus was that he would likely scale back regulations, the question was how fast and how consistent he’ll be. Today—essentially the second work day of the Trump administration—gave the initial answer, as President Trump signed executive actions to advance Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. While this does not provide the permits required to build these pipelines, it essentially paves their way for approval.

Keystone Pipeline Route

If you aren’t familiar with the Keystone pipeline system, it allows for the transportation of oil & gas production between Alberta, Canada to several refineries and distribution centers in the U.S. (including Illinois, Oklahoma, and Texas). Despite protests over the XL phase of the Keystone system, many people don’t know is that the first three phases of this pipeline are already in place (phase one since 2010). The proposed XL phase of the system—which essentially duplicates the first three phases with shorter routes, while adding in oil & gas production from Montana/North Dakota—became a battleground over climate change and the value of fossil fuels in today’s world. Given the way politics works, it also became a dividing issue between democrats and republicans. Former President Obama rejected the Keystone XL phase in 2015 while President Trump, when campaigning in 2016, insisted he would approve it.

While many in the oil & gas industry view Keystone XL as key to growing U.S. prominence in the market while reducing dependency on foreign oil, the big complaint over the Keystone XL pipeline was in the environmental danger of routing over the Sandhills in Nebraska:

Boiling sands are areas where sandy soil is so thin that groundwater can bubble up through it to the surface. In Nebraska, they are found in the Sand Hills, an ecologically sensitive region of grass-covered dunes underlain by a giant freshwater aquifer, called the Ogallala, that sustains agricultural production down the centre of America.

In addition to the unforeseen environmental consequences, others argue that the route threatens the water supply of the nearby Standing Rock Sioux tribe.

The Dakota Access pipeline—an 1,172-mile-long, underground pipeline beginning in the rich Bakken oilfields of North Dakota and ending near Patoka, Illinois—has also seen protests and push-back. Although mostly completed, the current route does not have approval. Given today’s executive orders, both the Dakota Access pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline are closer to approval than they’ve been in years.

President Trump insisted on that both projects are “subject to terms and conditions to be negotiated by us.” While it is uncertain what this means regarding environmental impact, President Trump has already given some insight about what this means for U.S. jobs, believing that U.S. pipeline should be constructed in the U.S., thereby “putting a lot of steel workers back to work.” He also believes Keystone XL will add 28,000 construction jobs. There is expected push-back from democrats and environmentalists, but without current political maneuverability, those roadblocks may be a thing of the past.

EDIT: Revised White House stance on U.S. steel: http://www.ogj.com/articles/2017/03/white-house-keystone-xl-will-not-use-us-produced-steel.html

*     *     *

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

Turning Off the Hold Button

So I’ve been quiet for a wee while. Call it 10 months of quiet?

Part of it is that little has changed in the industries I work in:

Oil & Gas   

Every commodity has its ups and downs, but oil & gas has swirled around its latest downturn since June 2014. It’s the same old story: Ask a dozen talking heads why this happened and you’ll get a dozen different answers (bonus points if the speaker gives contradictory views of OPEC in the same hypothesis). Despite that, there are reasons to be hopeful, including rig counts increasing most weeks. While some of that is because exploration had stalled for long enough that eventually you can’t go anywhere but up, more rigs equals more new drilling, and new production—whether it should be or not—is the accepted indicator of oil & gas health in the U.S.

Despite these hopeful signs, as of early 2017, the industry is still largely on hold. Normally this happens in January each year because companies are still waiting for approved annual budgets to proceed with anything. In lean times, annual budgets can sometimes be held back until February or March. However, this year, everyone is waiting to see what President Trump will do. Whether individuals may have a favorable or negative view of Donald Trump, the oil & gas companies overall believe his policies will be favorable to the industry. How many regulations will be scaled back and how consistent he’ll be has yet to be seen, but in every meeting, every phone call, and every email, the same hold line comes up: “Let’s see what President Trump will do.”

Water

I’ll make this one short: People still don’t care about water.

There’s a belief that we will care about water someday soon, but it’s the same belief accompanied with the same inaction year after year. Even environmentalists don’t care that much about water. It still takes a backseat to solar power and wind power.

I met with a guy this week who talked about his company’s testing water standards 15-20 years ago. At the end of their filtration, they’d have some of the water off to the side, and place a catfish in there. If you killed that bottom feeder, then you knew you messed up. While standards have gotten more objective than seeing if you can keep from killing a bacteria loving vacuum-fish, they aren’t universal. Every industry needs regulation; the goal is to have good regulation—promoting safety for people and the environment while allowing businesses to pursue success—but it’s easy to get the pendulum swinging in the wrong direction.

Since I mentioned wind power and solar energy:

• There are still (inaccurate) stories about too many birds getting diced by wind power turbines. What I don’t hear is that the wind power design you’re most likely to see are some of the least efficient. Making lighter blades, using lighter material—none of this changes the limitations of the design. Most of the better designs—that appear more static, but are better at generating energy off each vibration—don’t make it to market, but that’s any industry: the best design rarely gets the market share (or even a viable business).
• Solar still has issues with sourcing the right metals. This metal needs to be A) affordable; and B) have consistent high conductivity. The issue is that it’s still hard to find both. If the metal is affordable, it’s often not in the U.S., but making sure you get what you paid for is harder when you’re thousands of miles away. Then, if the metal is of the right quality, it’s harder to get affordably and consistently. Thus any innovation of the solar power industry is still limited by basic sourcing issues.

Okay, so things are kind of stuck, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned is that anger does little to build anything meaningful. As Sam Rayburn said, “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.” Whatever the future of water and oil & gas hold, I want to be a part of building it well.

Let’s get pushing.

*     *     *

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

The Water Required to Grow Nuts is Nuts

SpiroFlo covers how much water it takes to grow various crops.

I’ve long since raged on the U.S.’ agricultural use of water, especially since we grow most of our food in the desert (California)—a plan that would cause you to lose in “Sim City.” But I recently stumbled across this infographic from Business Insider:

Okay, once I got over the water vacuum horror of oranges, I thought about how teeny one little nut is and how many there are in a bag (call it 16 ounces):

Take walnuts: You get 7 walnuts per ounce (14 if you’re going with halves, because I can do elementary math). That’s 112 walnuts per bag, so nearly 550 gallons of water is needed to grow the crops for one bag of walnuts.

Then look at almonds: Sure, they’re less than 20% of the water used to make walnuts, but they’re much smaller. You get 23 almonds per ounce—so 368 almonds per bag, making for nearly 405 gallons of water needed to grow the crops for one bag of almonds.

Good for maybe a small handful of walnuts…

With droughts continuing (California is in year four of their current stretch by the way, and even a wetter El Niño season won’t reverse the dry trend), am I the only one who seriously questions how we continue to grow food?

*     *     *

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

Flint’s Crisis Brings the Urgency of Available, Clean Water to U.S.

SpiroFlo summarizes the (to date) two-year saga of Flint’s water crisis and the need for clean water technologies.

LeeAnne Walters displays tap water samples at a public meeting in January 2015. Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press/ZUMA

If you’ve heard of one water story in 2016 it’s the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan. If you aren’t familiar, here are the highlights:

• In April 2014, Flint changes its water source from Detroit Water (which is treated from Lake Huron and the Detroit River) to the Flint River in an effort to cut costs. Although residents complain about the water—its appearance, odor, and flavor—they are assured by city officials that the water is fine (a trend that will continue in the months following). These issues will later be tied to Flint River water being highly corrosive to the aging pipes, leaching unsafe levels of lead into the tap water supply.

• By August 2014, coliform bacteria (which indicates disease-causing organisms in water) are detected in Flint tap water, prompting city officials to issue a boil advisory. A couple of months later, a General Motors plant ceases using Flint’s municipal water, saying it corrodes their car parts.

• In January 2015, Detroit Water essentially acknowledges the problem when they offer to switch the city of Flint back without the $4 million reconnection fee. However, Flint’s state appointed emergency manager, Jerry Ambrose, declines the offer and, again, state officials downplay the problem.

• In February 2015, a Flint resident, LeeAnne Walters, conducts a home water test prompted by her children experiencing hair loss, rashes, and stunted growth. Results show 104 parts per billion of lead in the drinking water and, despite there being no safe level for lead in water, the EPA requires action at lead levels of 15 parts per billion, as elevated of levels of lead in blood can lead to permanent brain damage.

• In the months following, consultants and state officials insist Flint’s water meets state and federal standards. Meanwhile, the EPA keeps finding high lead levels in Flint water. In August 2015, the Department of Environmental Quality tells Flint to optimize corrosion control (while still denying conclusions drawn by water experts on the harm caused by Flint’s water).

• In October 2015, Flint city officials begin acknowledging the depth of the problem, urging residents to stop drinking their water. They expand recommendations, distribution of filters, and testing of both the water and people’s blood. The same month, Dan Wyant, the Director of the Department of Environmental Quality, reports that his staff mistakenly used water testing steps for a city half the size of Flint, prompting independent review.

• In December 2015, Flint declares a state of emergency. President Obama does the same in January 2016, providing the National Guard (to hand out bottled water, filters, and testing kits in the worst-hit neighborhoods) and up to $5+ million in aid. However, Flint officials will later state that the cost of fixing this could be up to $1.5 billion.

Since that time, it’s all been criticisms and finger-pointing. Outside of an apology and an urging for the state to spend $28 million on fixes, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has been quiet on what he knew, but protesters have marched outside his home and called for his resignation and arrest. Some believe Flint’s failures are exacerbated by an ongoing disinterest in this largely poor, majority-black city (and poor areas as a whole). There are class action lawsuits and potential manslaughter charges. There are celebrity concerns, with Beyoncé, Cher, the Detroit Lions, the Game, Mark Wahlberg, Pearl Jam, P. Diddy and others sending donations and water bottles to Flint.

And yes, even the ultimate gauge of social awareness, our Twitter feed (@useh2o), has been largely focused on the Flint water crisis these last chunk of months.

However, others note that this water crisis goes far deeper: Environmental activist, Erin Brockovich believes Flint’s water issue could be a national problem. Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore put up a letter on his website, noting that people cannot help undo the damage caused to these children, their parents, and life in Flint as a result. Instead of sending bottled water—which will take 20.4 million 16 oz. bottles per day for the next two years (that’s 14,892,000,000 bottles of water for those of you counting along at home)—he recommends revolt.

What I will say is that this tragedy may finally—finally—get Americans to care about water issues. Although current concerns are rightfully on the health of Flint’s residents, the environmental impact will go far beyond potentially 14.9 trillion plastic water bottles. Since 2006. SpiroFlo has worked to reduce the amount of water used and to improve the quality of what’s left in various industries. Water is one of earth’s finest resources and a cornerstone for our survival. Once tainted, we see the ramifications, and once it’s gone it’s gone. Yet even in clean tech circles, there has been little interest in saving and purifying water. While seemingly everything else—wind, solar, nanotechnology, and for some reason, even healthcare software—has had its turn as the environmental buzzword, the importance of clean, available water now has an unfortunate unavoidable example right here in the USA.

Here’s to this awareness prompting change for the good of the world’s water supply and our health.

*     *     *

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

 

Can Fat Guys Be Environmentalists?

SpiroFlo looks at how environmental issues and personal health issues became linked.

Last week, I met with a company interested in partnering with SpiroFlo as part of their “energy oasis”—essentially redesigning how cities are built to make them more energy efficient. For SpiroFlo, we have two main applications in residential water:

• Reducing water consumption and improving the quality of what is used (both for drinking water and shower quality); and
• Reducing pressures required on water pumps, saving energy and reducing wear.

As we connected, the owner of this energy oasis company mentioned that he was midway through dropping 50+ pounds. At least part of the reason for this weight loss is because he works in clean tech and, in his words, “Environmentalists don’t like fat guys.”

Well, then…

Thank you, “Animal Obesity” section of Wikimedia Commons; I couldn’t have written this article without you.

I wouldn’t say environmentalists specifically dislike overweight people, but I’ve acknowledged this connection before—that environmental and personal health issues are tied. Yet when I think about why this is the case, the logic doesn’t work. You could hypothecate that someone who doesn’t care about their own health won’t care about the health of the planet, but it’s just that—a theory. Besides, if your stance on the health of the earth can be tied to your personal health, why not make meaningful assumptions based off the health of a person’s car (how often they wash it, change their oil, etc.) or the health of their home (how often they clean, etc.). Granted, homes and cars aren’t living, but to connect personal and environmental “health,” you do have to stretch the term.

Yet the perceived connection between environmentalism and personal health is still there, regardless of whether I can logically separate the two. So I set out to see if there was a credible connection between physical health and environmental health.

As far as I can tell, there isn’t.

This then brings us back to one major explanation: Bias.

We all have bias, and the more accepted ones bubble to the surface.

There’s a theory that says fat and/or bald people can’t win the U.S. presidency in this visual era. That makes sense, as we all know a politician like Winston Churchill made great decisions because of his Adonis physique and flowing Fabio hair. But he’s a Brit, so bad example anyway.

Maybe we can turn to art to help point out these foolish fallacies. No wait, that won’t work. Last time we got “Shallow Hal.” If you’re fortunate enough to not remember “Shallow Hal,” well, your luck has run out. It was a 2001 romantic comedy where a fat guy named Hal (played by Jack Black) is only attracted to gorgeous women until real-life, big-toothed, self-help Guru Tony Robbins hypnotizes him into viewing women’s physical appearances based on the goodness of their hearts. (Yup, Tony Robbins hypnotizing people to see inner beauty… this is the actual plot line.) What you got next was Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit, so that she could play both the skinny inner beauty version of her character and the actual version of her character that was overweight, because skinny is automatically beautiful and fat is automatically ugly, see?

Also, according to this movie, everyone who is physically unattractive has a fat heart of gold. No pandering there, and it totally doesn’t sound hollow after making a slew of stereotypical fat jokes. Really, you can find far deeper criticism of “Shallow Hal,” but the biggest offense is that for all the social faux pas it offered, it was still a crap flick. You can get away with a whole lot more if you’re actually funny.

Regardless, the tie between how you take care of your own body and how you take care of the earth is there, even if it shouldn’t be. Thus you’ve got one more reason to make your New Year’s resolution to get to the gym. It’s not like having a sustainable, green technology will get you taken seriously by the clean tech crowd. Mother Nature cares about those abs.

*     *     *

Have a great New Year. We’ll see you in 2016.

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

Colorado Business: Oil and Gas Out, Marijuana In

SpiroFlo and Vortex Tools comment on changes in Colorado—both in the recession of oil & gas and the rise of the marijuana industry.

Despite being the VP Marketing for multiple companies, it’s rare I do a crossover blog where I represent more than one company at a time, as the marketing reality that most people only care about stories that impact their industry or scratch their interest (duh). However, since the business landscape in Colorado has shifted over the last year, we’ve seen changes that affect different industries, so here we go. Firstly:

Oil and Gas Has Scaled Back Out of Colorado

Overall, it’s been a brutal year for oil and gas. The top four global companies scaled back 10% of their work force… and that was just the beginning. The cuts have continued and spread to smaller companies. Companies have scaled back to their core assets, selling off the rest, and for most, those core assets aren’t in Colorado. Blame asset valuations, blame stricter regulations, but week after week, formerly prominent oil and gas companies are leaving Colorado,* or filing for bankruptcy, or, at the very least, not spending money on anything.

*Usually right about here I’d link up a few stories of this happening, but there are so, so many. Right now you can Google “Denver oil and gas company” every week and pop up a negative story, but hey, gasoline prices are low, so many don’t care.

Most analysts now believe oil and gas prices will not recover until 2017. Prices have dipped again in October and November this year due to refinery maintenance season (during times of cheap oil, they’re at high capacity, so any time one goes down for a period of time, it hurts an already stressed market). In addition, many wells are currently shut in, so when prices do inch up a bit, everyone’s going to rush to take advantage of that gain, flood the market with production glut, and, you got it,  tank the price again.

This means it should be a time of improving existing production—lowering operation costs, recovering more production/valuable liquids (condensates and natural gas liquids), and avoiding environmental fines (easiest way: by not polluting)—the kinds of applications Vortex Tools enable, but many of the employees who are left are just keeping their heads down and trying not to get laid off. This should also be a time of asset expansion for smart investors (the adage of “buy low, sell high” still applies), but for many oil and gas companies, they’re not doing much of anything save staving off going out of business.

At the same time:

Marijuana is Booming in Colorado

As one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, a whirlwind of industry has set up around this venture, but it’s still a complicated (and energy intensive) market. Energy companies call pot one of the most energy intensive ventures. In one Colorado service area, retail marijuana makes up for ~1% of retail electricity use. Increased electricity use was one of the ways (illegal) pot growers used to get caught—turns out when your electricity bills spike several times over what they used to be, people take notice, and the assumption is you aren’t just plugging in a slew of outlet air fresheners.

In addition to high electricity use, the marijuana industry uses a lot of water, and currently, what’s going down the drain untreated shouldn’t be (lots of nitrates, fertilizers, chemicals, etc.). Most everyone involved in the industry is surprised that the law hasn’t changed yet and that it’s a matter of time until it does. However, there’s a misconception that the marijuana industry has a lot of money, but most players do not. Once laws change to get more stringent, a lot of smaller operations that hopped into this growing industry will burn out. In addition, the marijuana industry has also been sold a lot of snake oil already, so there’s a lot of skepticism for even valid solutions.

That’s where SpiroFlo comes in. With no moving parts and no additional energy source required, there are two main applications we work in: 1) Reducing the amount of water used and improving the water quality/oxygen content of what’s left: Basically improved hydroponics—growing better plants faster with fewer resources. 2) Removing contaminants from water drainage: Most people expect the laws to change on this within the next 12 months, so spinning out contaminants from water used for marijuana will become important (and will be a determining factor in which companies go out of business). Given that we’ve done similar applications in other markets, we’ve got both credibility and low operating expenses covered.

As a company, SpiroFlo sat down and discussed the moral side of it, as marijuana is in a strange place: It’s legal in certain states, but not nationally, which causes issues with banking and credit. Then investors want to play games, too. They recognize there’s money to be made here, but they don’t want the negative association. Currently the general rule is: If you touch the plant, investors can’t fund you. However, if you help the people who do touch the plant, then they can fund you.

Yeah…

Anyway, we sat down as a company and had the moral conversation on marijuana and the conclusion we came to is this: When it comes to industries you can’t work with for moral reasons, where do you draw the line? What issues are more important than others? Even in Vortex Tools’ work in oil and gas, there are people who don’t like the industry enough to acknowledge the value in our tools reducing pollution, energy, and operational costs while increasing the efficiency and revenue generators from the oil and gas production. Regardless, some issues are gimmes to avoid (hint: you don’t have to discuss them as an organization, or if you do, you’ll be doing so in prison), marijuana isn’t. Not anymore. So we looked at our company goal as SpiroFlo, which is to reduce water use and improve the quality of the water left. Regardless of what different employees thought of the marijuana industry, we agreed that while it’s here, we should do what we can to improve water use.

Colorado Business is Going to Look Different

So overall, what this means is that oil and gas in Colorado will be replaced by the marijuana industry. However, that’s not the only business sector being replaced; it’s happening all over. There is little warehouse/retail space left to lease and what is left over is high above market value. Due to the population influx, residential rents are above what they should be, too. Yet all of this could bend as laws become more stringent or more states legalize marijuana. For now, this is a common sentiment from many Coloradoans:

*     *     *

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

What You Need to Know: Volkswagen’s Emissions Scandal

Vortex Tools looks at the recent Volkswagen emissions scandal. 

It’s a new week, which means it’s time for another story featuring environmental failure.

Admittedly, that’s the reality of most news. If it doesn’t fall under tragedy, villainy, or novelty, it doesn’t get much play, so in the environmental world, you often get stuck reviewing stories of the impending global warming apocalypse, eco-villains circumventing environmental regulations, or novelty technologies that are more entertaining that sustainable (I’m looking at you, anything that begins with “Give me your trash…”).

This week, it was door #2—eco-villains circumventing environmental regulations—with Volkswagen admitting to skirting EPA car emissions. If you haven’t been following the story, here’s what you need to know:

• More cars on the road leads to increased carbon emissions. We’ve sought to taper this down via technology (improving the fuel source and vehicular design) and regulation (EPA emissions standards). Plenty of people have disputed the approach of both. Some say we should have left gasoline behind long ago; others argue that the efficiency of unleaded gasoline isn’t worth the slim environmental benefits it brings.
• Here’s what you can’t do: You can’t design your car to get around regulations. That’s what Volkswagen did in their 2009-2015 model diesel engine cars (and those sold under the Audi brand) in the United States. Basically the car software detects when it’s being tested for NO_x emissions then enables controls to automatically pass the test. Easy A, right?
• So now, while your sweet ride’s engine performed better with improved gas mileage, pollution limits are believed to be 40 times above the legal limit. If you were to put that in drinking terms, this is equivalent to the kind of drunk that has you waking up in a different state without pants or memory of the last 12 hours. Except in this case, it’s not a body or a car taking the damage, it’s a planet. The current count on these modified vehicles recalled is 11,000.
• In the wake of the scandal, Volkswagen stock prices and consumer ratings have plummeted. Although he states he was unaware of the software modifications, Volkswagen’s Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn stepped down on September 23rd. They’re now looking at legal consequences and losses which are expected to equate to billions.
• Volkswagen has since hired the same law firm (Kirkland & Ellis) that defended BP after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. While I imagine that doesn’t inspire trust in the Volkswagen consumer, BP still turned a profit the year of that oil spill. With Volkswagen being the second largest automobile maker in the world, they’ll be looking for a similar “successful” result.

However, the big thing in all this is that I’ll forever cringe when I see a picture of a hippie next to an old slug bug.

Found on activerain.com

*     *     *

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

Everyone is a Fire Hazard

A year old, but still good (photo credit):

*     *     *

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

–SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home), industrial water purification (biofilm removal), and reduced water pumping costs.

–Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

–Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for coal, biosolids, sugar beets, dairy waste, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).