<DrumBeat: October 29, 2006The Oil DrumDrumBeat: October 30, 2006>

99 comments on Impressions of ASPO-USA

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Dave Cohen on October 29, 2006 - 12:02pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks for your comment in so far as it gives me an opportunity to discuss an important issue. ASPO-USA attendees are all over the map but there are two polar, often incompatible, opposite views. On the one hand, there are the fossil fuels producers -- mostly oil & natural gas because nobody thinks we're running out of coal yet -- and on the other hand there are the renewable energy/alternative lifestyles people.

I am not ambivalent about wind farms -- I support them. About LNG recieving facilities, I am of two minds reflecting the above. Here in the US, we certainly need the natural gas, this is supported by the declining production trends data. But, I can't support putting these terminals in heavily populated areas like Boston. When you say "unmitigated ecological disaster", you must support that position with impact statements and the like. We are in the usual trade-off situation. If you like heating your home and generating electricity, then we need the natural gas. If you believe the externality costs of putting the facilities in outweighs that concern (and the alternative for gas, which is coal), then you will support the other position. If we don't have the natural gas, we will definitely burn more pulverized coal. There are huge environmental costs associated with doing that, including, of course, climate change due to CO2 emissions. The same applies to coal-to-liquids technology, which was also discussed at the conference.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. What I believe personally is really not the issue -- although my articles here tell you a lot about the way I think about things. By and large, I see my job as bringing these problems into clear public focus. In other words, when the bullets are flying, I'm sometimes going to duck and get out of the way. But not always.

I'll give you one more example. On the bus at Logan Airport, a guy who runs a huge water processing operation told me he needs timely dispatch of electricity (he was at the conference). He asked me about nuclear. I said I was agnostic on that issue right now. He was not satisfied with my position. He needs the power not only now but in the future. What to do?

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
NeverLNG on October 29, 2006 - 12:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks for the reply.  Agreed, it is a complex issue, and I suppose it has to be worked out in the grand "marketplace" of power politics and economics.

For the record, I said "unmitigatable", not "unmitigated" -- the LNG proponents will surely propose "mitigations" to their schemes.

Also, I am not "opposed" to LNG-- after all, like nuclear power, warfare, and even cancer, it exsists, so it is logically incoherent and silly to oppose a fact.  I am opposed to some of the schemes to use that substance -- and the one I know best about is here in the Columbia River.

Clearly, this is not the place to provide all the documentation that supporting my position would require.  My point in the initial comment was only that neither the industry nor the Government are having the dialog necessary to weigh the cost-benefit analysis you have suggested in your reply to me, and the only defense in that situation is to adopt the "sound bite" style of communication that passes for American political and social discourse -- hence NIMBY.  I don't like it, I would prefer a more reasoned debate.  But I am not getting it.  And I am sure it is because the LNG interests would be on the losing side of a truly free debate.  At least here on the North Oregon coast.

So what are the alternatives?  Well, lots of them.  And that is why I read the OilDrum; it is the best source of what appears to be real data either on the Internet or in paper publications.  

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Dave Cohen on October 29, 2006 - 12:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Sorry about misquoting you.

You understand all the issues and complexity, I see. If the Columbia River location sucks, then it sucks. Put the LNG receiving somewhere else. Another point that was raised (by Hughes and others) -- this is important -- proposed LNG facilities in the US Lower 48 come & go weekly according to FERC like "shadow bands" before and after a solar eclipse. God only knows what will happen but Hughes & others were pessimistic on many counts. Even if we had the receiving terminals, would we be able to outbid Spain or Japan for the spot cargoes? Natural gas price volatility is discouraging long-term contracts. There are many issues.

best --

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Halfin on October 29, 2006 - 12:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I wish there were some way to address NIMBYs by somehow compensating the locals for the impacts they bear for the benefit of the larger society. When we put in an LNG terminal, or a wind farm, or an oil refinery, the local environment and population are harmed in both real and intangible ways. And everyone else benefits. Hopefully, the total benefits outweigh the harm or else the project doesn't make sense in the larger picture.

Given that that is the case, in principle each local person who is harmed by the new facility could receive compensation for his harm, paid for out of the benefits of the project for society, and everyone would come out ahead. This would address (most of) the objections of NIMBYs and allow projects to proceed that give benefits to all of society.

Now, obviously there are enormously difficult details to work out here. Each person's judgement of how much he is harmed may vary, and if he's going to receive payment according to the degree of harm you can bet he is not going to underestimate the damage. In practice a good system might be to give local municipalities veto power over such projects, and the companies involved could negotiate with the community and provide benefits in the form of jobs, parks and other new local construction that will improve the community and compensate for the harm of the project. I know that does happen in some cases but not always.

Seems like developers prefer to work at the state or national level and try to get them to override local control so as to avoid having to pay for all of the local costs that their projects will impose. I would suggest that this is a mistake in terms of the basic economics. NIMBYs have a point and it's not fair for them to suffer just so the rest of us can enjoy the benefits of these projects that cause so much local harm.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Jon Kutz on October 29, 2006 - 5:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It seems to me that some time ago I remember reading that the Federal Government had taken absolute control of the site locations for LNG terminals and that State and locals would have no point of refusal if the Feds said it was going in any particular place. Does anyone else remember seeing that and does anyone know what the current status is of siting authority?
0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Charles Mackay on October 29, 2006 - 6:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That's basically correct, but it still up to local governments and/or energy companies to build the facilities - which they can not be forced to do.
0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Down under on October 29, 2006 - 10:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Dave,
      There is an answer to the problem of delivering LNG to heavy populated areas. Bring it ashore by underwater pipeline. Such a proposal is before the Californian Government right now by Woodside Petroleum of Australia.

      They plan to ship LNG to a point 20 miles off shore from LAX international airport via underwater pipeline to join the normal gas distribution system near there. The LNG tanker can bring the LNG to a floating bouy and convert the LNG on board to normal gas. It is then piped via flexible hoses to the underwater pipeline and sent ashore.

      When the gas cargo has been discharged, the bouy is dropped to 60 metres below sea level and well clear of shipping. This application known as the Oceanway Proposal, was made on the 18th of August to the various US authorities and is now awaiting approval.

      There is no reason this could not be done on other US coastlines. Woodside Petroleum has delivered over 2000 LNG cargoes to Asia over the last 25 years without mishap. On the subject of WIND there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about this subject.

      IT CAN NOT BE INTERGRATED SUCCESFULLY in to large power grids because of the physical nature of electricity and there is plenty of evidence of this published by electrical power engineers. I intend to offer a post on this subject shortly as well as nuclear reactors.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
expat on October 30, 2006 - 4:04am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
'On the subject of WIND there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about this subject.

  IT CAN NOT BE INTERGRATED SUCCESFULLY in to large power grids because of the physical nature of electricity and there is plenty of evidence of this published by electrical power engineers.'

Well, glad to hear that what the Danes and Germans have been doing (with admitted challenges) is simply illusory, according to the evidence published by electrical power engineers. And some statistics published by German power companies 'proving' how ineffective wind actually is seem at times to prove just how stubborn some people cling to their own perspective of what is in their own interests - even though the power companies pass on the increased cost of the wind power they must buy, they would prefer to own the entire system, as proven by the sham that is German energy market 'opening.'

The challenges of wind should not be denied, but they are just that, challenges. The same way that using natural gas fired turbines was quite conceivable in 1935, except for such challenges as the materials engineering for the blades, the delivery of natural gas through a pipeline to the power plant, and so on.

And at least the Germans (and French) already have a partial solution in place for some of those challenges. There are various 'storage' reserviors which are pumped with excess (nuclear generated) electricity off peak, and which are then available when peak power is required. Ironically, these reserviors were built to handle the proven fact that turning nuclear generation facilities on and off to match demand makes nuclear power too expensive to be effective in the way that a coal, oil, or natural gas fired plant is.

Somehow, though, that challenge was met - in part, through expensive investment in fairly massive dams.

Wind will never be a 'replacement' in the sense of becoming another style of power plant. It will be a replacement in the sense of providing electricity. The same applies to solar. We are unlikely to have that many choices, especially in a short time frame.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
pomona96 on October 30, 2006 - 8:57am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Wind energy can integrate  well with high storage capacity for the produced wind electricity in the form of dispatchable hydro.  The Northern European wind energy integrates beautifully with the abundant hydro in particularly Sweden but other Scandinavian states.  

I exploited a`June 2006 conference dealing with solid waste and energy in Gallivare Sweden, well above the Arctic circle, to sightsee in the Swedish Arctic

Intercontinental Landfill Research Symposium
June 14th to 16th, 2006
North of the Artic circle in Gällivare, Sweden
http://lst.sb.luth.se/iclrs/web/symposia.html

I drove extensively (with my Peruvian family member for company) in the Swedish Arctic and marveled at the abundance of lakes and hydro dams.

(Roads, balmy warm weather, reindeer (bambis and bullwinkles ambling down the center of the Swedish roads, blocking traffic ad lib and evident grid transmission capacity were all first rate.  

As was artwork on some dams, fully painted as if by Navaho Picassos) )  

But that's digression.  At any rate:  

The Scandinavians and Europeans built with foresight.  They linked abundant high latitude, remote hydro storage capacity via a high transmission capacity grid to the demand (in southern Sweden, Denmark, Germany, etc) That lets the Scandinavians integrate very high fractions of windpower in their electric resources.  It also helps that Scandinavian per capita energy use is lower and poplation is lower tens of millions vs hundreds.  

 Unfortunately the US is both grid transmission constrained and hydro storage constrained and thus cannot effectively use wind electricity to anything like the fraction the Scandinavians enjoy.  

Don Augenstein

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Engineer-Poet on October 30, 2006 - 9:02am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thus the need to start adding DSM for electric appliances, EVs and PHEVs (with DSM for charging), and so forth.
0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
expat on October 30, 2006 - 10:04am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Your points are all valid, and there isn't really any 'buts'to my reply, except to note that the dams I have seen in Germany and France, which were expressly built to store water that was pumped into them, is somthing which could certainly be built in very massive terms at least along much of the East Coast and the Pacific Northwest.

As a morbid joke, it would likely be simple to already use the leftovers from mountaintops in West Virginia to create incredibly large amounts of storage in such a scenario. The thing is, such investment would require not only another way of looking at the future, it would require a number of people with the necessary skills to construct and maintain such fairly large scale projects - a few million unemployed real estate agents and mortgage brokers are not likely to have the necessary skills.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Starvid on November 1, 2006 - 10:51am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A tiny comment. Scandinavian energy use is high. For example, Swedish cars use 20 % more fuel on average compared to the EU average, and the power consumption is an astounding 18 MWh per capita. It's even higher in Norway.

Now this has much to do with cold winters, electrical heating and especially electricity intensive industry.

Still Sweden (together with Norway, Switzerland and France) have the lowest CO2 emissions per capita of any industrialised country, at 6 tons per capita and year. Germans emit 9 tons and so do Danes, in spite of 20 % wind power and a vastly lower per capita power consumption (Americans emit 19 tons).

How can this be? Hydro dams and lots of nuclear reactors. That is building with foresight.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.