Some Watermen Quit After Massive Oyster Die-Off

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A massive die-off of oysters in the Chesapeake is placing livelihoods on the brink.
Alex DeMetrick reports some watermen are already calling it quits.
Every oyster season will turn up empty shells and dead oysters, but this year was worse than normal.
“Some of the bars were 100 percent dead. We didn’t find a live oyster at all,” said waterman Barry Sweitzer.
Watermen say the Chesapeake north of the bay has become an oyster graveyard. They blame the massive runoff from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, which brought debris and a flood of fresh water, which kills oysters.
“We can’t oyster through this. This has really hit us hard,” said waterman Richard Manly.
“The hurricane’s gone from most people’s memories but if you work the bay, you’re dealing with it every day,” said waterman Greg Jetton.
Sweitzer is dealing with it by getting out. He’ll place one of Maryland’s last working skipjacks for sale, a boat that’s supported his family for 64 years.
“I don’t have any other choice. Logistically, I can’t work the lower bay; it’s just too far away,” he said.
Because oysters reproduce best in saltier water, the northern bay will take years to recover.
“If you get a good spawn once every five years in the upper bay, you’re doing pretty good,” said Erik Zlokovitz, DNR Fisheries.
“The worst part for me with this boat, it’s not the money you make off of it, it’s the opportunity to go out there and watch the sun come up and actually do the job and that’s what’s heartbreaking to me. That breaks my heart,” Sweitzer said.
Although watermen believe tropical weather triggered the oyster die-off, state scientists have yet to determine an exact cause.

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Most solar manufacturers may vanish by 2015, Trina CEO says

Most of the biggest solar-equipment makers may disappear in the next few years as plunging prices erode margins and drive the weakest out of business, according to Trina Solar Ltd., the fifth-largest supplier of solar panels."This is the decade of mergers and acquisitions," Jifan Gao, chief executive officer of Changzhou, China-based Trina, said in an interview. "From now until 2015 is the first phase, when about two-thirds of the players will be shaken out."Three U.S. solar companies including Solyndra LLC have gone bankrupt this year and more, led by First Solar Inc. and Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., slashed sales and margin forecasts, reflecting slower growth in demand and stiffer competition. SunPower Corp. and Roth & Rau AG of Germany agreed to takeovers.Gao, who founded Trina in 1997, predicted that only about five companies may survive through 2020 in each of the three major manufacturing segments. He defined those as photovoltaic panels, ingots and wafers, and the raw material polysilicon."Globally, that would be stable and sustainable," Gao said last week at a conference in Singapore, without naming survivors or giving expectations for his own company.SunPower and First Solar, the largest U.S. solar-gear manufacturers, this month said they will reorganize after cutting their forecasts.Meyer Burger Technology Ltd., Europe’s biggest manufacturer of the factory equipment for making solar gear, today said it would delay the full takeover of Roth & Rau.The decision was made after the German competitor issued a profit warning yesterday that may cause Baar, Switzerland-based Meyer Burger to take impairments of as much as 60 million euros ($83 million), compared with its $376 million takeover price. Roth & Rau plunged 27 percent, the biggest decline since it began trading in 2006.Mergers have picked up this year as share prices have tumbled for producers of solar components and finished panels. Germany’s SolarWorld AG, the biggest maker of traditional photovoltaic panels based outside of China, fell 66 percent last quarter, the most since it began trading in 1999.Deals for solar companies worldwide total more than $3.3 billion this year, up from $2.5 billion last year and more than half the record $6.1 billion set in 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Trina ranks fifth by factory capacity among the world’s biggest makers of traditional panels from crystalline silicon. The leaders are China’s Suntech Power Holdings Co. and LDK Solar Co., followed by Ontario-based Canadian Solar Inc. and SolarWorld, according to Bloomberg industry data that lists Trina with a 1.2-gigawatt capacity at Dec. 31. Gao said Trina has since increased that to 1.9 gigawatts.Hemlock Semiconductor Corp., owned by Dow Corning Corp., is the top maker of polysilicon, followed by Wacker Chemie AG of Germany, OCI Co. Ltd. of South Korea and GCL Poly Energy Holdings Ltd. of China, according to Bloomberg industry data.Investors and project developers are increasingly looking at cash and survivability of manufacturers, executives said."Customers are flying to quality," seeking suppliers who are considered reliable enough for banks to lend on projects, Suntech CEO Zhengrong Shi said last week. The top six manufacturers took 55 percent of the panel market in the second quarter, up from 26 percent last year, he said.The Bloomberg Industry Global Leaders Large Solar Energy index has lost 59 percent this year, more than 10 times the 5.7 percent decline in the MSCI World Index. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index has gained 0.3 percent in the period.German solar-panel maker Q-Cells SE, whose 2012 convertible bond trading at a discount to face value of about 58 percent, has said it’s open to takeover bids. Orkla ASA said on Sept. 14 it’s looking for ways to exit from its 39.7 percent stake in Norwegian panel and polysilicon maker Renewable Energy Corp ASA.Survivors will need strong technology, economies of scale and the ability to innovate quickly, "but also very strong financial performance, very healthy balance sheets," Gao said.A ranking of 35 companies in the Bloomberg Global Leaders Large Solar Index shows Conergy AG, which makes panels in Germany, has the weakest balance sheet with a total debt exceeding total equity by more than tenfold, data compiled by Bloomberg show. LDK Solar and Canadian Solar also rank among the five most leveraged companies with short and long-term borrowings more than double shareholder equity.The Chinese companies have a "huge" cost advantage over their European, American and Japanese competitors because of better operational management and an ability to react faster to market conditions, Gao said.The spot price of solar panels has fallen about 40 percent this year as manufacturers particularly in China ramped up their production capacity, according to New Energy Finance. The 10 largest silicon panel manufacturers doubled their manufacturing capacity last year, the data show.Many solar-equipment companies are losing money at the operating level, as the average operating margin fell to 0.1 percent in the third quarter compared with 13.7 percent a year earlier, Bloomberg industry data show.At Trina, second-quarter panel shipments jumped 78 percent from the year-earlier period, while its operating margin shrunk to 5.7 percent from 22.5 percent.Prices will fall further, which will spur the market to expand many-fold by 2020 because solar power will become more affordable across the world, Fang Peng, chief executive of JA Solar Holdings Co., told a conference in Singapore this week.
"The industry has a very bright future even if right now we’re in winter," Peng said.

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Delaware could be deciding vote on natural gas drilling

Our comment: It appears Delaware Governor Jack Markell may cast the deciding vote on whether more natural gas will become available to Delaware citizens. Over time, this increased supply would naturally result in lower prices. Environmentalists are alarmed because their carefully laid plans are being destroyed. They are driving energy prices higher to force the rest of us to change our habits against our will. This strategy is being disrupted by new, safe technologies that are bringing massive new quantities of natural gas and oil to Americans from our own country, rather than foreign lands.It will be an interesting test for Governor Markell. Will he stand with the economically stressed citizens of Delaware, or will a handful of elite environmentalists, mostly from out of state, get their way? So far, to the best of our knowledge, he has stood 100% on the side of higher cost energy.Will he reach a hand out to the four young men I saw walking down Rt. 113 last week with no destination in sight? One of them wore only a worn dress shirt against a biting wind and cold temperatures. How about the underweight young man I recently observed trying to buy lunch for $1.69 who had his credit card declined?With real unemployment standing near 20% for several years, many of our citizens are in desperate financial condition. They can't afford an extra dime for energy but over and over their need has been ignored by Delaware's government.As the saying goes, however, every day can be a new beginning. There can always be positive change and if Governor Markel decides in favor of the people this time, we'll praise him to the rafters for it.



Delaware has landed at the center of a political and environmental battle over natural gas locked deep underground far north of the state's border, with Gov. Jack Markell's administration seen as a potential swing vote on well-drilling regulations set to go before a regional commission next Monday.
A coalition of environmental groups emphasized the state's role in the natural gas "fracking" dispute late Monday, calling on Markell to oppose new rules during a news conference and presentation at the University of Delaware's Trabant Center.
"I really don't know where Delaware stands," said Maya van Rossum, who directs the regional Delaware Riverkeeper Network. "I think that they're a big question mark, and they could be the deciding vote."
Markell holds one of five seats on the Delaware River Basin Commission, a group considering new rules to protect surface and groundwater during extraction of natural gas trapped in shale deposits below northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New York. The commission's proposals would also regulate the amount of water used for wells and the injection of water and other chemicals into the ground to break up stone and release gas.
Supporters argue that drilling methods are safe and the region and nation need the energy and economic boost new wellfields will bring. Opponents say the rock fracturing, or fracking, process will damage aquifers, pollute groundwater and eventually taint the Delaware River.
They also claim that the public has been shut out of the latest rulemaking effort.
"The administration has heard from a number of people on this issue and is still reviewing the proposals before next week's vote," Brian Selander, Markell's spokesman, said Monday afternoon. "The significant majority of contacts made with our office have been from out of state, and the majority of those have been from those opposed."
Monday evening, fracking opponents directed more comments Markell's way, after calling on him throughout the day to attend the UD program. Administration officials said Markell's schedule Monday night did not include activities at Trabant Center, however. Similar rallies were held in Harrisburg, Trenton, N.J., Philadelphia and New York. The governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York also direct the commission, along with a representative of the Army Corps of Engineers' Philadelphia district office. Any three could approve the new regulations. Markell was expected to designate Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Secretary Collin O'Mara to represent him on Nov. 21, Selander said. Tom Shepstone, a northeastern Pennsylvania landowner and representative of Energy In Depth, a gas and oil industry coalition, said Monday that approval is long overdue. The Susquehanna River Basin Commission approved rules targeting shale gas wells in late 2008, and has continued to update the program. Pennsylvania has issued thousands of well-drilling permits this year for land outside the Delaware River watershed, and officials in that state have reported that shale gas wells now produce more natural gas than the state needs. "Why we were treated differently than the SRBC obviously was a political thing. It shouldn't have taken anywhere near this long," said Shepstone, who described the gas industry as an economic lifeline. "We desperately need something in our area of Pennsylvania to revive things. We're going nowhere. This is extremely important." Bentek Energy, a Colorado-based industry analysis company, reported recently that shale gas discoveries will likely lead to a doubling of pipeline capacity by 2013, with major expansions in the Northeast. The Energy Department has separately predicted that shale gas production -- a tiny fraction of national output just 10 years ago, could grow to 46 percent of the nation's natural gas output in 25 years, with proven reserves doubling in just one year. The Marcellus shale in the Northeast is the largest continuous formation of its type in the world, Bentek pointed out last year, and because of its location under and near major metropolitan areas, is a potential boon to suppliers and users. The New Jersey Sierra Club club countered Monday that the environmental price for extracting the gas is too high, while delivering more than 71,000 letters from citizens and lawmakers opposing the DRBC's draft rules to Gov. Chris Christie. "The rules were weak and now they have made them worse without public scrutiny," Jeff Tittel, the New Jersey Sierra Club's director said. Fracking opponents have argued that drilling produces huge amounts of water laced with chemicals difficult to treat or remove before discharge to public rivers and streams. The Environmental Protection Agency has largely left the job of regulating those discharges to the states and programs unprepared to deal with the challenge, according to critics. Claims have surfaced that well-drilling operations have altered groundwater quality, spilled toxic wastewater into soils, caused erosion and air pollution and fouled wells, in some cases sending methane gas into home wells. One company, Cabot Oil & Gas, was required to provide replacement water supplies to several households northwest of Scranton, Pa., after tests found methane and other chemicals in wells after drilling began nearby. Company officials denied that their operation tainted the wells. The EPA recently announced plans to study the effects of fracking on drinking water, and said it would develop national wastewater management standards for the industry. Shepstone said the opposition has focused on "hysteria" surrounding unproven incidents of groundwater and well contamination.Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said her group was encouraged by the move toward regulations allowing well development, but added that industry has questions of its own. "We ... have concerns given what we don't know about these proposed regulations, particularly regarding what exactly the Natural Gas Development Plans may, or may not, require," Klaber said. The Delaware Riverkeeper's van Rossum dismissed the DRBC's proposals as inadequate and not sufficiently protective. "We are at one of the defining moments of our time and for our region," van Rossum said. "Will we trade the water, air, food and health of thousands of communities and millions of people to smash gas from the ancient rocks for a false promise of cheap energy?"

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Susquehanna dam’s sediment has officials fearing for the Chesapeake Bay

At the Conowingo Hydroelectric Dam in northeast Maryland, the barbarians are at the sluice gates.
Sediment, millions of tons of it, has flowed down the 440-mile Susquehanna River for more than 80 years and massed at the dam. And now a reservoir built to hold it is filling up.
The threat to the Chesapeake Bay came into sharp focus when Tropical Storm Lee produced record flows in the river in September, forcing officials to open the gates. Four million tons of sediment rushed through in about four days, equal to what the bay normally gets in four years. Half the bay’s blue-green waters appear as beige as coffee with cream in recent satellite images.
Worried state and federal officials are confronted with an obvious question. Could the next monster storm force even greater amounts of sediment into the bay? That could turn dirtied waters into periodic oxygen-depleted killing fields for species of marine life they are fighting to save.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and Col. David E. Anderson, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Baltimore District, recently launched a $1.4 million, three-year series of studies to examine how storms can undermine efforts to protect the bay from sediment and other pollution.
The District, Virginia, Maryland and four other states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are in the first stage of an ambitious federal bay-restoration program that will cost tens of billions of dollars before it is completed in 2025.
“Tropical Storm Lee provided a vivid demonstration of the need to take steps to head off what could be a catastrophic event causing . . . enormous damage to our restoration processes,” O’Malley said. “The time to address this threat is now.”
Sediment doesn’t threaten the walls of the dam. But when Lee’s relentless rain produced near-record river flows last month, the Conowingo couldn’t stand much more water pressure. Throwing open the gates resulted in a jailbreak for the sediment.
According to a U.S. Geological Survey estimate, more than 160 million tons of sediment floats behind the Conowingo, built near Darlington, Md., in 1928. About 3 million tons arrive there each year, and about a million tons of that sloshes over the gates, said Mike Langland, a USGS hydrologist.
Environmentalists say the sediment dump during the storm was so high that it could spawn another mammoth, oxygen-depleted “dead zone” like this past summer’s.
If the storage capacity is reached in about 20 years, as Langland predicted, at least 3 million tons of sediment would wash into the bay yearly, making matters far worse.
Mixed with the sediment are large amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen from farms and cities upstream. Those nutrients are enemies No. 1 and 2 of environmentalists hoping to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake, the nation’s largest estuary.
The Susquehanna starts at Cooperstown, N.Y., flowing at about 20 miles per day in summer through Pennsylvania until it reaches Havre de Grace, Md. There it pours 18 million gallons of water per minute into the Chesapeake. It’s the biggest freshwater flow into the bay by far, supplying as much as 60 percent of the Bay’s fresh water compared with the Potomac River’s 19 percent.
The flow of sediment into the bay from the Susquehanna would increase by at least 150 percent if the dam’s reservoir filled.
On top of that, phosphorus levels would increase by 40 percent and nitrogen by 2 percent.
Not all sediment is bad. Some is composed of gravelly material that helps support bay grasses that protect young fish from predators.
But a lot of it is granular stuff that blots out light and smothers grasses in the Chesapeake. Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus feed algae blooms that suck out oxygen, suffocating endangered bay oysters and other slow-moving shellfish.
“Anything that moves upstream eventually finds its way to the Conowingo,” said Mark Bryer, director of the Chesapeake Bay program for the Nature Conservancy. “Since we’ve been building dams, sediment has been a problem.”
The study is tasked with finding a way around the problem, getting sediment downriver in the least harmful way. “You don’t want it coming down in one big punch,” Bryer said.
Having a filter like the Conowingo helps, said Bruce Michael, director of resource assessment for Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources. “There’s a benefit to that dam being there” corraling it, Michael said. “We’re all trying to see how we can extend that trapping capacity behind the dam.”
Serena McClain, a director of river restoration for the conservation group American Rivers, had a different view. “Rivers move sediment. That’s their job,” she said. “When you put a dam in the river, that’s going to trap sediment. It’s only going to trap so much sediment before it goes over and is released.”
American Rivers advocates removing some dams, McClain said. The sediment the dams collect is often grit that pours through the orange mesh fencing of home builders or comes from mud loosened by bathing cattle. The Susquehanna is fed by 49,000 miles of rivers, streams, creeks, brooks and runs.
“There’s no obstruction to stop” it from being injected into the Susquehanna’s veins, McClain said.
With the help of the Nature Conservancy and other partners, state and federal officials will try to determine whether conservation measures such as cover crops, stream buffers and other methods can become an obstruction, soaking up rain before it can push sediment into waters, Michael said.
Some of those same measures are similar to what the federal Environmental Protection Agency calls for in its controversial “pollution diet” to reduce harmful sediment, phosphorus and nutrients that pour into the bay from cities and farms.
Environmentalists support stronger conservation measures, but farm lobbies and housing developers have fiercely contested these efforts, saying they’re expensive and extreme.
An American Farmers Association lawsuit against the EPA is making its way through a federal court in Pennsylvania, with support from home builders.
The federal government is putting up more than $1 million for the sediment study, according to the announcement. The remainder is being split by the Maryland departments of the Environment and Natural Resources, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission and the Nature Conservancy.
“We have to somehow defuse the impact of the time bomb that’s been waiting for the next big flow,” Bryer said.

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The Dark Side of the ‘Green’ City

THE struggle to slow global warming will be won or lost in cities, which emit 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. So “greening” the city is all the rage now. But if policy makers end up focusing only on those who can afford the low-carbon technologies associated with the new environmental conscientiousness, the movement for sustainability may end up exacerbating climate change rather than ameliorating it.
While cities like Portland, Seattle and San Francisco are lauded for sustainability, the challenges faced by Phoenix, a poster child of Sunbelt sprawl, are more typical and more revealing. In 2009, Mayor Phil Gordon announced plans to make Phoenix the “greenest city” in the United States. Eyebrows were raised, and rightly so. According to the state’s leading climatologist, central Arizona is in the “bull’s eye” of climate change, warming up and drying out faster than any other region in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southwest has been on a drought watch 12 years and counting, despite outsized runoff last winter to the upper Colorado River, a major water supply for the subdivisions of the Valley of the Sun.
Across that valley lies 1,000 square miles of low-density tract housing, where few signs of greening are evident. That’s no surprise, given the economic free fall of a region that had been wholly dependent on the homebuilding industry. Property values in parts of metro Phoenix have dropped by 80 percent, and some neighborhoods are close to being declared “beyond recovery.”
In the Arizona Legislature, talk of global warming is verboten and Republican lawmakers can be heard arguing for the positive qualities of greenhouse gases. Most politicians are still praying for another housing boom on the urban fringe; they have no Plan B, least of all a low-carbon one. Mr. Gordon, a Democrat who took office in 2004, has risen to the challenge. But the vast inequalities of the metro area could blunt the impact of his sustainability plans.
Those looking for ecotopia can find pockets of it in the prosperous upland enclaves of Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and North Phoenix. Hybrid vehicles, LEED-certified custom homes with solar roofs and xeriscaped yards, which do not require irrigation, are popular here, and voter support for the preservation of open space runs high. By contrast, South Phoenix is home to 40 percent of the city’s hazardous industrial emissions and America’s dirtiest ZIP code, while the inner-ring Phoenix suburbs, as a legacy of cold-war era industries, suffer from some of the worst groundwater contamination in the nation.
Whereas uptown populations are increasingly sequestered in green showpiece zones, residents in low-lying areas who cannot afford the low-carbon lifestyle are struggling to breathe fresh air or are even trapped in cancer clusters. You can find this pattern in many American cities. The problem is that the carbon savings to be gotten out of this upscale demographic — which represents one in five American adults and is known as Lohas, an acronym for “lifestyles of health and sustainability” — can’t outweigh the commercial neglect of the other 80 percent. If we are to moderate climate change, the green wave has to lift all vessels.
Solar chargers and energy-efficient appliances are fine, but unless technological fixes take into account the needs of low-income residents, they will end up as lifestyle add-ons for the affluent. Phoenix’s fledgling light-rail system should be expanded to serve more diverse neighborhoods, and green jobs should be created in the central city, not the sprawling suburbs. Arizona has some of the best solar exposure in the world, but it allows monopolistic utilities to impose a regressive surcharge on all customers to subsidize roof-panel installation by the well-heeled ones. Instead of green modifications to master-planned communities at the urban fringe, there should be concerted “infill” investment in central city areas now dotted with vacant lots.
In a desert metropolis, the choice between hoarding and sharing has consequences for all residents. Their predecessors — the Hohokam people, irrigation farmers who subsisted for over a thousand years around a vast canal network in the Phoenix Basin — faced a similar test, and ultimately failed. The remnants of Hohokam canals and pit houses are a potent reminder of ecological collapse; no other American city sits atop such an eloquent allegory.

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The Tyranny Of The Regulatory Regime

The manner in which environmentalists have exploited the web of regulations surrounding energy production in this country to sandbag and roadblock domestic energy production is nothing short of a travesty. Regulations exist to protect the public and the environment, not as a vehicle for implementing ideological agendas.
Ironically enough, one of the best examples of regulatory excess isn’t some attack on an oil drilling project or pipeline expansion but rather the opposition to a wind power project off the coast of New England. The Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound has been waylaid by opposition from a small, but well-monied and vocal, opponents for years. Not because the project poses any real regulatory of safety issues, but because the opponents don’t want their view of the ocean marred.

The Cape Wind experience also shows that it does not take much to gum up the regulatory gears for new projects of this sort. Opposition to Cape Wind has been driven by a few dozen families willing to invest their time and money to influence the regulatory process — and it’s worked. It does not matter whether a proposed project is popular with local residents, as a relatively small group of naysayers can exploit existing regulatory requirements to slow things down in the hope of eventually killing the project altogether. If other offshore wind projects are to succeed where Cape Wind has (thus far) failed, they will must prepare for similar opposition, and encourage regulatory reforms that will streamline wind project development and approval.

You can pretty much replace Cape Wind with, say, the Keystone Pipeline in this example and see that the problems are similar.
The government’s regulatory regime has become less about protecting citizens and ensuring responsible development and business practices than about pushing political agendas. In fact, this excessive power of regulation is at the heart of much of the corruption in government. It’s like a protection racket. The government’s regulatory regime is so all-powerful that those wanting to find their way through the maze must pay the proper tribute.

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Keystone XL pipeline protesters encircle White House

Thousands of protesters opposed to a controversial pipeline project surrounded the White House on Sunday.
Canadian company TransCanada is seeking permission to build the 1,600-mile (2,700km) Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf coast in Texas.
Environmentalists are opposed to the project because of the method used for extracting petroleum from Alberta's oil sands.
They are also concerned by the risk of pollution on the pipeline route.
The proposed pipeline would pass south from Alberta through the US states of Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma before ending up at refineries in Texas.
Environmental groups say that extracting oil from the sands would generate huge greenhouse gas emissions, and that any accident on the route could be disastrous. Risky decision
The protesters formed a human chain around the White House, with some carrying an inflatable replica of a pipeline on their shoulders.
Bill McKibben, one of the protest organisers, described the scene as either "a big O-shaped hug" or "a symbolic house arrest," according to the AP news agency.
"We have to leave the tar sands oil in the ground. That's the only solution if we are going to save the planet," protester Martin Springhetti told AP.
Canada's northern Alberta contains massive petroleum reserves
TransCanada said the protesters were ignoring the jobs the pipeline would create.
"What these millionaire actors and professional activists do not seem to understand is that saying no to Keystone means saying yes to more conflict oil from the Middle East and Venezuela filling American gas tanks," said TransCanada spokesman James Millar.
The US State Department is handling public consultations on the project as the pipeline would cross the border with Canada, but the White House has made clear President Obama will influence the final outcome.
The decision as to whether to allow the project is fraught with political risk for Mr Obama, reports the BBC's Zoe Conway in Washington.
If he rejects it, he could be accused of destroying jobs. But allowing it to go ahead could lose him the support of activists who helped propel him to the White House.
Some predict that the decision will be delayed until after next year's presidential election.
Last week the State Department indicated it might not reach a decision on whether to issue a permit for the pipeline by the end of 2011, as was originally planned.

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