<DrumBeat: February 7, 2009 The Oil Drum Depletion Thoughts #1 - Sunk Costs and the Endowment Effect>

70 comments on Offshore LNG Generation

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dohboi on February 6, 2009 - 4:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

The nighttime photos of the world really show the flaring quite prominently.

Presumably someone has decided that the economics don't justify the expense of harvesting this energy source. Perhaps such decisions shouldn't be left up to "the market"?

I have been wondering if the plateauing of atmospheric methane since about 2000 till a bit over a year ago was partly because many releases are now flared or harvested. I would appreciate if any one has info on this.

On the main point, isn't there a bottle neck in the US in that we have relatively few ports that are equipped to handle shipments of LNG? Has this changed?

Is there currently a bit of a glut in NG globally(even if some of it can't make it to market for reasons just touched on)?

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Gail the Actuary on February 6, 2009 - 4:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If someone can post a link to an image of the world, showing night-time flaring of LNG, I can add the image to the post.

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biophiliac on February 6, 2009 - 7:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/2007/11/flares.jpg

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Nate Hagens on February 6, 2009 - 7:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

how do they shut out all the rest of the light and just show the gas flaring??

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PaulS on February 6, 2009 - 10:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I might have thought they would use UV emission lines characteristic of flames, but even if some of those emissions pass through the atmosphere, it would take a specialized satellite. Instead, according to the huge PDF that is the "report" linked on the NGDC Earth Observation page, it looks like they use educated guesswork. To oversimplify, a gas flare is apparently a bright light that appears in a generally unexpected place such as over water, is steady for a period of time, but not too many years, is generally round in shape, and is identified with substantial effort by human analysts rather than by fully automatic means. So the map is probably laboriously produced, and pretty good but not perfect.

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TJ on February 6, 2009 - 4:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I have been wondering if the plateauing of atmospheric methane since about 2000 till a bit over a year ago was partly because many releases are now flared or harvested. I would appreciate if any one has info on this.

Flaring was always the most common thing to do.

Presumably someone has decided that the economics don't justify the expense of harvesting this energy source. Perhaps such decisions shouldn't be left up to "the market"?

It used to be that nobody could afford to let the ship stay put while it filled itself.

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70 comments on Offshore LNG Generation

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