All posts by Roger Straw

Editor, owner, publisher of The Benicia Independent
Coronavirus, Covid 19, Solano County CA, Test positivity rates

Solano County needs to publish COVID-19 “test positivity rates”

Percent Positive Test Rates

Increasingly, national, state and county medical reports are focusing on percent positive test rates.

Five Bay Area counties report daily on their seven-day average percent positive test rate, but Solano County does not.

This information is immediately important, as positive test rates in California and other southwestern states are increasing.

I wrote and asked Dr. Matyas on June 24 to supply information as to Solano County’s “percent positive test rate.”  He replied next day with thanks and wrote, “We are actively working to include these values on our County dashboard.  I hope we can begin to report on them sometime next week.”

That was nearly 2 weeks ago.  This important information needs to be made public immediately.  It will be important that the percent positive rate is tracked over time, and displayed as a 7-day chart, so that trends are visible and easily understood.

For comparison purposes…

Without any data from Solano, it’s impossible to compare as yet, but here are 7-day test positivity rates from California and other locations across the U.S. (as of July 7, Vallejo Times-Herald):

  • California 7.5%, 18th among all 50 states
  • Arizona 25.3%
  • Florida 18.7%
  • U.S. national rate was below 5% three weeks ago, now 7.8%
  • IMPORTANT: the World Health Organization has said positivity rates should remain at 5% or below for 14 days before beginning to reopen. Currently, only 23 states meet that metric, according to Johns Hopkins University and the COVID Tracking Project.
California, Coronavirus, Covid 19, San Francisco Bay Area, Test positivity rates

COVID-19 “test positivity rates” in California, U.S.

Coronavirus: California continues troubling trend upward in COVID-19 metrics

With the weekend delays accounted for, the 7-day average of new cases climbed to its highest point of the pandemic
Vallejo Times-Herald, by Evan Webeck, July 7, 2020

The seven-day average of new coronavirus cases in California soared as Los Angeles County reported three days’ worth of test results Monday.

The raw number of cases reported around the state Monday obliterated the previous record but comes with an enormous caveat: a number of counties, including L.A., which itself accounts for nearly half the state’s confirmed cases, had backlogs of test results of up to three days because of the long holiday weekend. In total, the statewide case count grew by 16,637, including 8,903 in Los Angeles, to 271,889, according to data compiled by this news organization. Another 109 Californians succumbed to the virus — 81 in Los Angeles — raising the death toll to 6,446.

With the weekend delays accounted for, the average number of new cases reported around the state each day for the past week climbed to its highest point of the pandemic. For the first time, California is adding more 7,000 new cases per day — 7,041, 28.6% more than a week ago — while the average daily death count reached its highest level in more than a month: 67 lives taken by the virus each day over the past week.

Hospitalizations and test-positivity rate, two metrics frequently cited by Gov. Gavin Newsom and local health officials, also continued to slope upward. There were 5,790 patients hospitalized statewide Sunday, including 504 in the Bay Area. In the past two weeks, the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital beds has doubled in the Bay Area while rising 56% statewide.

Even as some counties near capacity, there remain plenty of open hospital and ICU beds around the state. Riverside County’s ICUs were 94% full Sunday — down from 99% last week, though more were COVID-19 patients (9.5% of ICU beds on June 27; 13.9% on July 5) — while hospitals in the Bay Area are accepting transfers from other counties. Statewide, COVID-19 patients continue to take up about 8% of the state’s hospital beds.

The percentage of tests to come back positive over the past seven days also crossed the 7% threshold for the first time since the end of April. In two weeks, it has risen from 4.9% to 7.5% even as the state conducts more tests. Labs around the state reported 25% more positive tests in the past week than the one before (6,826 per day vs. 5,499), despite conducting 12.5% more tests (104,523 per day vs. 92,848).

Newsom has previously said “each decimal point is profoundly impactful” when it comes to positivity rate. But California’s still lags many other states, despite recording among the most cases. Its 7.5% rate ranks 18th among all 50 states, well behind Arizona (25.3%) and Florida (18.7%). The country’s rate has seen a similar spike: below the 5% threshold three weeks ago, to 7.8% now.

The World Health Organization has said positivity rates should remain at 5% or below for 14 days before beginning to reopen. Currently, only 23 states meet that metric, according to Johns Hopkins University and the COVID Tracking Project.

Bakken Crude, Bakken Pipeline, Bakken Shale, Dakota Access, Keeping Watch on Earth News

Hard times ahead for Bakken oil industry – maybe the end?

Why The Bakken May Not Come Back

OilPrice.com, by Nick Cunningham, Jul 07, 2020

The Bakken shale is already declining because of financial struggles and the oil market downturn, but the potential shuttering of the Dakota Access pipeline could close off the possibility of a rebound.

The 570,000-barrel-per-day oil pipeline carries Bakken oil to the Midwest. On Monday, a federal judge ordered the pipeline to shut down within 30 days after vacating authorization for the project. Energy Transfer immediately appealed for a “provisional stay,” but on Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg shot down that request.

Energy Transfer will still file a conventional appeal to stay the judge’s order, and surely the company will follow through on that as quick as possible. But it’s not clear how quickly the judge will respond to that; meanwhile he ordered Dakota Access to be drained by August 5.

Even if a stay is granted, the pause could be “short-lived,” ClearView Energy Partners wrote in a note to clients. The firm cited a separate case involving an electric transmission line that resulted in the Army Corps of Engineers being forced to undertake an environmental impact statement after the project was completed.

“Put another way, even conservative jurists can back a court ruling that finds agency environmental reviews flawed and should be suspended while redone,” ClearView Energy Partners wrote. “[T]he horizon for Dakota Access may be darkening,” the firm added.

Assuming that Dakota Access goes offline and undergoes an environmental assessment, which could take the better part of a year, the process will drag on into a potential Joe Biden administration. At that point, the Army Corps, under a new direction, may change its stance, killing off the pipeline.

Time will tell, but in the interim, the temporary closure is an enormous victory for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “This pipeline should have never been built here. We told them that from the beginning,” the Tribe’s Chairperson Mike Faith said.Related: China Inks Military Deal With Iran Under Secretive 25-Year Plan

If Dakota Access is forced to shut down for good, it could head off any hopes on the part of the oil industry to revive production in the Bakken. Without the pipeline, a large portion of Bakken production would need to return to the practice of moving large volumes by rail.

“I think everybody is forming their game plan now, and if they have tank cars, they’re probably thanking their lucky stars,” one source familiar with Bakken rail operations told Reuters.

However, a sudden rush of shipping oil-by-rail will increase the risk of derailments and explosions. Early on in the Bakken shale boom, it was all too common for oil trains to derail and explode, earning them the nickname of “bomb trains.” A return of oil train shipments would increase safety risks.

Meanwhile, because putting oil on rail is more costly, Bakken crude would need to be discounted for the process to make sense.

Already, the region is seeing a larger discount. Shortly after the court decision ordering Dakota Access to shut down, the price of Bakken oil at the hub of Clearbrook, Minnesota declined. Relative to WTI, the discount widened from $1.15 per barrel to $2.75 per barrel, according to Bloomberg, which was the largest markdown since May.Related: The Death Of The $2 Trillion Auto Industry Will Come Sooner Than Expected

The Bakken was already slowing down before the pandemic. Years of red ink from shale drillers soured investors on the whole fracking enterprise, but that is particularly true in the Bakken. For example, Continental Resources, which has a prominent presence in the Bakken, saw its stock price fall in half between late 2018 and late 2019.

Bakken production hit a peak in October and November of last year at just over 1.5 million barrels per day (mb/d), before declining to 1.43 mb/d in February, just before the global pandemic rocked the market.

Because the North Dakota region has much less storage capacity than Texas and Oklahoma, Bakken drillers were immediately squeezed when the market went into a tailspin, forcing them to shut in thousands of wells. The EIA expects production from the Bakken to dip below 1 mb/d in July.

A source at one unnamed Bakken oil producer said that the region’s total production will need to decline to 950,000 bpd in August if Dakota Access shuts down. At the start of this week, Continental’s share price is off by more than 15 percent, a reflection of the negative impact of the DAPL shutdown.

“Production of crude oil is going to be landlocked in North Dakota,” Sandy Fielden, director of oil and products research at Morningstar, told Reuters. “It’s going to be congested and that’s going to cause discounts in the price of Bakken crude to WTI.”

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

Dakota Access, Environmental Impacts, Keeping Watch on Earth News, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Pipeline transport, Standing Rock Sioux, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Dakota pipeline shutdown: temporary victory for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe

Court Orders Dakota Access Pipeline To Shut Down Pending Environmental Review

Forbes, by Elana Lyn Gross, Jul 6, 2020
Native Nations Rise Portland Protest Against DAPL
Ow Hi of the Warm Springs tribe takes part in a protest showing solidarity with the “Native Nations … [+] GETTY IMAGES

TOPLINE

Three years after the Dakota Access pipeline first started carrying oil, a federal judge ordered Monday that the pipeline must be shut down during a court-ordered environmental review that is necessary because the U.S. government violated federal environmental law, in a decision seen as a victory for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a defeat for the oil industry and President Donald Trump, who backed it in 2017.

KEY FACTS

  • In 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux, Cheyenne River Sioux and other American Indian tribes sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for approving the Dakota Access pipeline, saying it put tribal water supplies and cultural resources at risk.
  • The Obama administration paused the project in 2016 after thousands of pipeline opponents protested, but Trump put it back on track after taking office in 2017.
  • U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote that the court found that the U.S. Amy Corps of Engineers violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it granted an easement to Dakota Access to create a segment of the crude-oil pipeline without writing the required Environmental Impact Statement.
  • Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of the Dakota Access pipeline, argued that the project could lose as much as $643 million in 2020 and $1.4 billion in 2021 and that the shutdown would have serious consequences for the North Dakota oil industry and the entire state of North Dakota because its economy is largely dependent on revenue from oil and gas taxes; the tribes argued that the projections were “wildly exaggerated” because a collapse in oil prices, demand and production had already caused production to plummet.
  • The court noted the “serious effects” the shutdown would have for many states, companies and workers but wrote that, “given the seriousness of the Corps’ … error, the impossibility of a simple fix, the fact that Dakota Access did assume much of its economic risk knowingly, and the potential harm each day the pipeline operates, the Court is forced to conclude that the flow of oil must cease.”
  • Energy Transfer told Bloomberg Law it plans to immediately ask Boasberg to freeze the decision and will head to the U.S. Court of Appeals if the request is denied.

CRUCIAL QUOTE

“Today is a historic day for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the many people who have supported us in the fight against the pipeline,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Mike Faith said in a statement provided to Bloomberg Law. “This pipeline should have never been built here. We told them that from the beginning.”

KEY CONTEXT

The decision states that the pipeline must be shut down within 30 days and can not re-open until the report is created. The court expects it will take 13 months.

TANGENT

Hollywood celebrities including Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck spoke out against the pipeline and Shailene Woodley was arrested at a protest.

FURTHER READING

Dakota Access Oil Line To Be Shut By Court In Blow For Trump (Bloomberg)

Shailene Woodley: The Truth About My Arrest (TIME)

Hollywood A-Listers Join Protests Against Controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (Fox News)