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193 comments on US Electricity Supply Vulnerabilities

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mdsolar on December 6, 2007 - 1:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi Gail,

Actually, reserve growth for natural gas is ahead of demand growth.

Chris

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nh3 on December 6, 2007 - 1:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Chris - can you clarify the point quantitatively?

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mdsolar on December 6, 2007 - 2:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Yes, new discoveries of gas reserves are growing more rapidly than demand is increasing. This means that future supply is assured so long as the reserves are put into production. I think that the recent problems with natural gas supply and higher prices have spurred new exploration. The proved reserves increased 3% in 2006 to over 211 trillion cubic feet.

Chris

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vtpeaknik on December 6, 2007 - 3:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It's not the size of the tank, it's the size of the tap. And the unconventional gas has EROI problems. Note the recent decline in NG E&P in Canada and the decline in production expected to come from that.

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nh3 on December 6, 2007 - 6:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

but isn't consumption about 2TCF a month? if so, then isn't the draw down about 10% p.a.? is the reserve increase after the 10% deducted?

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wkwillis on December 6, 2007 - 8:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Some reserves are technological but not financial reserves. Alaska natural gas is fairly cheap to develop but not cheap enough to ship south in a pipeline and compete with concentrating solar photovoltaic.

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nh3 on December 7, 2007 - 12:15am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

any reference data for this line of argument you can point to?

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wkwillis on December 7, 2007 - 4:44am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Yeah, they are asking for a subsidy for the pipeline and a guarantee that they will get a "reasonable" profit.
Sort of like the other energy industries, come to think of it. Solar is still using subsidies, and so is wind. Coal and nuclear are past the immediate subsidies and living on past subsidies, at least.
We have been building unsubsidised gas pipelines in the lower 48 for a long time, now. Unsubsidised railroads for coal, too. I note that the coal miners in Alaska aren't asking for a subsidised railroad, yet. Probably because it's cheaper to ship by sea.

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mdsolar on December 6, 2007 - 9:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Here are Q1 2007 imports and exports in Bcf along with changes from Q1 2006.

Canadian Imports
LNG Imports
Mexican Imports
Total Imports
Canadian Exports
Mexican Exports
LNG Exports (Japan)
Total Exports		 983.4
184.4
17.9
1185.8
128.3
60.0
14.6
202.9		 up 5.0%
up 65.5%
up 616.0%
up 12.9%
up 25.7%
down 7.7%
down 12.6%
up 10.4%

Looks like net import growth could explain some of it but presumably most use is from domestic production so reserve use would have to be subtracted in the growth figures. The dry natural gas is only about 30% of reserves so you are really seeing only 3% or so draw down I think.

Chris

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sorry on December 6, 2007 - 2:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Strangely production walks into the wrong direction (in your link).

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mdsolar on December 6, 2007 - 3:54pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If I recall, we were relying on mature fields when we began to notice a problem and prices began to rise. Presumably the production numbers reflect this. I don't know how all this will balance out with the planned LNG import facilities. Hopefully we'll be off of fossil fuels before much of this will go into production. At least we can say that there is no good reason to build a coal plant since domestic gas reserves are abundant.

Chris

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karlof1 on December 7, 2007 - 3:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

A very large point about NG demand is the great number of NG dependant industries that closed up and offshored, which alleviated the pressure on demand, which in turn caused prices to fall and E&P to be drastically cutback. Without that demand destruction today's situation would be very different.

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