DrumBeat: November 15, 2006
Posted by threadbot on November 15, 2006 - 9:26am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Shale offers U.S. rock-hard fuel prospects
OTTAWA — We should now be confidently able to push back "peak oil" by a few hundred years. In three western states alone, the United States has more than eight trillion barrels of hard-to-pump shale oil, which is roughly eight times the entire consumption of crude oil in human history. This oil has been commercially irrelevant because it is hard as rock and you can't put a furnace in every car. Now, though, the Los Alamos National Laboratory is on the job. This is the once-clandestine lab in New Mexico that delivered the world's first nuclear bomb. It is one of the world's great institutions of advanced scientific inquiry. Can shale be a tougher task than the Manhattan Project?You can't know for certain, but it's a good bet that, within a decade or two, the rock that burns will flow through pipelines in quantities large enough to make the United States self-sufficient in energy for a very long time.
Turkey can cut risks for Europe
On the issue of Europe's sense of vulnerability to the risk of interruptions in the supply of energy, based on a spike in hydrocarbon prices or a prolonged period of weakness vis-a-vis major energy suppliers, the report explains, "This is partly a function of higher global prices for hydrocarbons, fears over supply-chain weaknesses, increasing geopolitical competition for resources and growing debate over 'peak oil.'
Clean energy takes center stage
Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, spoke passionately about climate changes and his vision of a nation no longer reliant on fossil fuels.
U.K.: Polluting cars face charge rise
Vehicles causing the most pollution in central London are to face huge increases in the congestion charge, mayor Ken Livingstone has announced.
ANALYSIS: President-Elect Ortega Faces Daunting Energy Crisis
One of the main challenges facing Nicaragua's president-elect and former revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega is the country's energy crisis, which has caused daily outages in what is one of the western hemisphere's poorest countries.
Andes Strikes Deal, Ends Tarapoa Protests
Chinese oil consortium Andes Petroleum has struck a deal with residents from Ecuador's Sucumbíos province who occupied installations on the company's Tarapoa block last week, a hydrocarbons ministry spokesperson told BNamericas, confirming a Reuters story.
Unplugging Thailand, Myanmar energy deals
BANGKOK - Thai Energy Minister Piyasvasti Amranand says he intends to scrap the previous government's controversial multi-billion dollar plans to ramp up imports of hydroelectric power and natural gas from neighboring military-run Myanmar, signaling a potentially significant shift in which direction the region's energy flows and a possible new era of bilateral antagonism between the historical rivals.
Senegal’s Wade wants fairer oil share
DAKAR — Oil companies operating in Africa must plough part of their oil profits into fighting poverty there or risk being expelled from the continent by unrest and turmoil fuelled by inequality, Senegal’s president, Abdoulaye Wade, said.Wade said it was "indecent, immoral" that oil majors should be raking in multi-billion dollar profits from higher oil prices while poor, oil-importing African states saw their energy bills increase by tens of millions of dollars.
Ministry displeased with Sakhalin Energy ecological steps
Congressional peak oil caucus responds to CERA study
More green energy use could cut costs, study finds
Switching the U.S. economy to run more on renewable energy sources rather than traditional fossil fuels could save money and reduce pollution, and the benefits could be seen within a decade, a think tank said Monday.
OLF: Hunt for Oil Now Linked to Idle Assets Not High Price
A strong historical link between high oil prices and abundant exploration has disappeared, but attempts to increase circulation of idle acreage could begin to reverse the de-coupling and boost the search for oil, the managing director of Norway's Oil Industry Association, or OLF, said Tuesday.
Tap U.S. soil, seas for oil, gas; stop buying foreign energy
The public interest in lessening America's reliance on imported fuels requires that we adopt a more rational policy toward production of oil and natural gas on federal land and in coastal waters.
Vote on oil bill promised this year
WASHINGTON -- Republican leaders in the House of Representatives agreed Monday to take up legislation during a post-election lame-duck session that would expand offshore oil and gas drilling and provide the first meaningful sharing of federal royalty payments with Louisiana and other producing states, Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner, said.Jindal said the GOP House leaders for the first time expressed a willingness to pass a Senate measure with more limited drilling options and less revenue sharing, at least for the near future, if no compromise can be reached with Senate leaders on a House version.
OPEC increases estimate of world oil demand in 2006
VIENNA (AFP) - OPEC has slightly increased its estimate of worldwide demand for oil in 2006 -- now expected to average 84.3 million barrels per day (bdp).The estimate is an upwards revision of 100,000 barrels per day from a previous forecast of 84.2 million bpd, the powerful cartel said Wednesday.
Russia to raise gas prices for CIS states
MOSCOW- The majority of the former Soviet countries are almost entirely dependent on energy supplies from Russia. Meanwhile, political realities and current trends on the global energy market do not make a fall in gas prices very likely.
California: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gas14nov14,1,1475055.story?coll=la-headlines-business
Meanwhile, a consumer group says only three automakers improved the fuel economy of their fleets since 1996.
Appliances to Face Tighter Energy Rules
New energy-efficiency standards for 22 appliances will be set over the next 4-1/2 years under an agreement settling a lawsuit brought against the Energy Department by the Natural Resources Defense Council, consumer groups and 15 states.
It heats. It powers. Is it the future of home energy?
Down in Bernard Malin's basement is a softly thrumming metal box that turns natural gas into hot water and generates $600 to $800 worth of electricity a year - a bonus byproduct of heating his home."It's like printing money," says Mr. Malin, the first person in Massachusetts - perhaps in the nation - to own a residential "micro combined-heat-and-power" system, also known as micro-CHP.
Annan: Cheaper to cut emissions now
Scientists: More research needed to balance food, energy needs
DES MOINES — A non-profit consortium of scientists says there is an urgent need to step up research on ethanol production to balance energy needs with climbing corn prices and pressure on food and feed supplies.
There should be no doubt that the United States has waged two Gulf wars largely, if not solely, for oil. To ensure that the Iraq war is the last Gulf war, the administration and the Democratic majority in the new Congress must work together to enact an energy-independence bill to address the root-causes of these wars and free America from the shackles of foreign oil.
Bulgarian nuclear shutdown worries Balkans
Gjergj Bojaxhi, Albania’s deputy energy minister, suffers from back pain that gets worse when he sits. He walks around the office, hunching and wincing, absorbing the twinges as he speaks. But one word makes him stand up straight – Kozloduy.
Head of Russian Oil Fund Shot Dead in Moscow
The head of a Russian fund that says it promotes the development of small oil and gas producers was shot dead on Tuesday in southwest Moscow, the Reuters news agency reports.Zelimkhan Magomedov, 50, general director of the National Oil Institute Fund, was shot twice in the head.
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=32&ContentID=13175
'And then there was Iraq. There is much to say about America's most disastrous folly since Vietnam, but in some ways the most telling indictment is the response of ordinary Iraqis. As Richardson explains:
They find the claims that the United States is occupying Iraq to defend New York and deploying an army to import democracy to be so implausible that they do not believe them. Instead, they believe the claims of those who say the US Army is a self-interested army of occupation interested only in dominating the region and exploiting its oil wealth.
"In effect," she concludes, "they find al-Qaeda's propaganda more credible than ours."'
From the end of a review at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19657
A thought I have long held on the issue of energy security for the US: US miltary budget is just shy of $500 billion per annum, a large part of which appears to be for sustaining a sufficiently powerful military to protect US energy interests in the Middle East.
What would the impact on the price of oil be if the US were to reallocate 10% of that annual budget to the deployment of renewable energy schemes? $50 billion would build a lot of wind and solar farms and could also be used to fund wave and tidal projects that private equity will not touch for a host of reasons (technological uncertainty, long payback periods, planning concerns, etc), as well as providing a huge source of R&D funding for new technologies. By virtue of the fact that the funding would come from re-allocated federal budgets it would not be necessary to demonstrate private equity style rates of return. In theory it would not be necessary to show a demonstrable "return" at all.
It is estimated that there is in the region of 50,000 MW of tidal and wave resource on the west coast of North America, enough to provide for pretty much all current power consumption west of the Rockies. An example of the type of project that could be contemplated can be found at http://www.tidalelectric.com/ (although I personally do not believe that this would be the most economically efficient way to harness tidal power, it has the benefit of being sufficiently low-tech to be demonstrably workable)
Clearly such projects would not be like-for-like replacements for the majority of petroleum-based product consumption, but they would provide a huge future resource base for electricity-based replacements to the existing FF-based transport infrastructure.
Prioritization as it relates to DOD spending versus DOE spending is a topic I have touched on numerous occasion but keep in mind that Peak Oil is a Liquid Transportation Fuels crisis, not an electrical one.
Here's the tongue in cheek Oreo Cookie example I use: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-YzPuCGShI8
Luckily, I'll have the chance to address the above in Washington next year.
This is a bit misleading IMO. If for example we replace enough natural gas from electricity generation, it can be easily used directly to fuel the cars. The technology is there and can be applied to existing vehicles (at the cost of some 1-2000$, likely to drop with mass production).
Displaced coal can be liquified or maybe better - gasified with higher efficiency to be used the same way as NG.
The truth is that PO promises to be a crisis, because all of the fossil fuels seem to be reaching a logistic maximums for various reasons and to different extent. These maximums will likely convergate in time when various replacement processes start to be implemented. Another consequence is that the severity of PO will vary with the location, because coal and NG are not that fungible as oil. Coutries where coal or NG is still abundant or countries that rely on nuclear energy will be much better off.
It is very hard to build new gas docking terminal (NIMBYism and BANANA stuff)
BANANA is Build Absolutely Nothing Awfull Near Anyone.
Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything!
If you take ALL the natural gas that was used (in 2005) for electrical production and used it in place of gasoline, you would displace only 37.5% of all the gasoline used. Furthermore, I drive a NG car periodically. They burn NG or gasoline but not "both" so when you run out of NG (actually when the regulator cuts you off), unless you have some way to quick-connect a pressurized bottle of NG, you are stuck.
Our Hondas have a maximum fill pressure of 3200 psig. Our other larger vehicles have tanks pressures up to 3600 psig. Filling them is relatively simple with the quick connect system, but it is not fast. A near empty tank can take 20-40 minutes to fill to capacity with a large "fast" compressor station. Since you are compressing gas from a much lower "street pressure" to a much higher tank pressure, the compression causes the gas to heat. These compressors have a very large intercooler to drop the temperature back down to acceptable levels prior to filling the vehicle tank. Nonetheless, these tanks do get quite warm when filling. A "slow fill" system or systems with small intercoolers may take as long as eight hours to refill. Changes the experience of filling the tank to a "career."
Add to that the fact that electrical generation using natural gas primarily uses relatively new, high-efficiency simple cycle or combined cycle turbines that can only burn natural gas or distillate oil. So whatever gas you take away (and oil you save from automobiles) has to be made up by more oil use. These new simple-cycle CTs are much more efficient that just about any coal-plant except supercritical, double reheat EGUs with a nice cool lake for condenser water. And there aren't any coal-fired power plants that can match the current generation combined cycle CTs.
That's the principle behind IGCC...to gasify coal into a product that can be burned in a high-efficiency combined cycle CT that is more efficient than an equivalent coal-burner. You give up a substantial amount of the efficiency by using the coal's heating value to gasify it, but the operating at a net 40-45% efficiency compared to the more nominal 30-35% efficiency of a standard coal-plant may be worth the difference.
But the underlying point is that with 2% annual growth in various energy demands AND the need to change to a different distribution of fuels...well it's just not going to happen. Consider that without PO staring us in the face and we kept everything in it's current proportions (oil, gas, coal) that in 35 years we have to have the ability (and the infrastructure) to handle twice as much of EVERYTHING as we do now.
More over, the substitution of coal (or more clearly the liquifaction and gasification of coal) for other products we currently use won't be as much help as many think.
Thirty years ago, "we had" about 400 years of coal at the usage rate of the mid-1970s. Today we have between 250-275 years. Did we really use 125-150 years of coal in 35 years? Yes, mostly because we've doubled our rate of consumption and our estimates of the reserves (and their declining quality) have become more refined.
Currently, coal accounts for about 23% of our total energy use. With the combination of "normal growth" and susbstitution of coal products are we really likely to have enough coal for "hundreds of years?" Probably not.
Seamless transition between gas and gasoline is standard on the biogas cars sold in Sweden and its essentialy the same methane.
It would be a very good idea to build as manny nuclear powerplanst as you can and replace natural gas heating with heat pumps and any base load use of natural gas for electricity production.
Heat pumps only make sense for a portion of the US. Even with the higher COP that is possible with newer designs, they don't do well in cool moist winter environments. They spend too much time defrosting.
By seamless, do you mean that any vehicle is switchable between gasoline and methane? Do they have one injection system for gasoline and another for NG/methane?
The point I was making is that this is not a substitution. Robbing the NG from electric generation from high efficiency pre-mix NG turbines to burn in vehicles means that turbines must burn something else (distillate oil with diffusion combustion rather than pre-mix). Unless consumption is reduced, you end up with "no solution."
What about ground-exchange heat pumps?
"this is not a substitution. "
Any thoughts about substituting wind, and in the longer term solar, for coal and nat gas?
Only portions of the US have areas where wind is "reliable." It should be included in this mix, but you can't just turn the wind on. And as was demonstrated in CA this past summer and previously, heat waves tend to correspond with low wind just when you have the highest demand. CA's problems were also compounded by the NG compressor cooling issue.
As for solar, I think we are probably far enough along on higher efficiency PV cells that we should consider jumping forward with them. Solar thermal also has some promise in certain areas (e.g., Kramer Station in CA). A point worth considering about solar cells is that the higher efficiency cells require substantial initial energy input as well as fossil fuels. If we wait to long, solar will look like an alternative we wished we had taken and would then be tantilizingly "out of reach."
- An undersized geothermal heat pump (adequate for summer cooling load)
- A high efficiency condensing gas furnance (~94% AFUE but the c)
and3) A wood furnance with outside combustion air
as well as insulate & caulk/seal more.
She can "twitch between fuels". Currently a geothermal heat pump can probably supply all her heating down to 32-40F at the lowest cost (wood perhaps cheaper, but not dramatically). NG may be more expensive/BTU but not dramatically and the capital cost is much lower.
Wood is the emergency backup and potentially lowest cost but a hassle. Uneven heat as well w/o air circulation but when a blizzard hits, the grid goes down, it is good to have a pile of wood !
Alan
What went wrong? Were they unhappy overall - IOW, would they do it again?
The case for transitioning at least partially to gaseous fuels is not bad: we can obtain them from the ground, from coal, from biomass, we can even use electrolysis and mix the H2 in small proportions. The respective processes are much more efficient then turning them to liquids.
First a simple, high pressure quick connect would be possible for changing tanks, similar to how we currently fill these vehicles.
Second, a typical FRP tank (which is what our vehicles contain) take more vehicle volume than a gasoline tank. We can get about 200-250 miles per tankful. Even though methane is highly compressible (I mean that in the sense that it does not follow the ideal gas law), the combination of methane (at pressure) and tank weight required for a vehicle provides a limit to moving tanks around. You and I are not going to hoof one of these tanks around (even dividing the current single high pressure tank into two or three smaller tanks might make the individual tanks more manageable, though the total weight will increase and increases the number of connections required). Even an automatic "bottle replacement system" would require some sort of universal system for vehicles.
Third, bottle storage and inspection. It's one thing to have various LPG bottle redistribution points for gas grills and even for those systems that use a larger amount of LPG with larger truck transported replaceable bottles. But think of the footprint required for a typical "gas station" to store full, empty, and those bottles being refilled for the number vehicles served. Thats much different than underground storage tanks for liquid fuels.
Growth Rate Years Remaining
0% 90.4
2% 52.1
4% 39.0
VERY interesting for those that suppose that we can substitute (conversion losses like CTL up "consumption").
Renewables ARE needed !
Thanks,
Alan
At the end of the day, it will be easier and cheaper to convert one's F-150 to run on an EtOH blend with a smarter carb, then to try and change the entire motoring infrastructure.
And unlike the fossils, EtOH can be produced anywhere on the continent, from practically any carbonaceous material available.
Add conservation, electrification and other mitigation strategies to the mix and we should be able to keep up with a modest rate of decline.
Basic physics of moving mass does not change just because one changes fuel.
With infrastructure you might be able to produce EtOH anywherem but there are large swaths of the North American west that have low growth rate, limited biomass because they are high plains deserts. I just drove through the areas of Northern Colorado and across much of lower and middle Wyoming. There may be quite a number of gas and oil wells and much oil shale, but it's a fairly stark landscape most above 6,000 feet.
Down in Texas there's apparently 1000's of acres of mesquite that thrive in the low mositure environ and actually choke off the creation of natural water reservoirs.
There's been no way to harvest the mesquite until just recently as an outfit down there have created the first ever designated mesquite harvester.
The potential exists (and groups are working on it as we speak) to turn this unique and most unanticipated feedstock source into ethanol.
Good idea. When you gain control of the U.S. Congress, we should implement this plan.
I'd be careful with predictions. Personally the Democrats regaining the majority right now I think was a strategic mistake on their part. I don't think its a Republican conspiracy, but I can't help but think that the Dems may be walking into a trap set by fate. If the economy tanks into recession shortly after they take over in 2 months, and if they can't show progress on forcing the Republicans out of Iraq, or if Iraq improves due to Bush's plan, they could be setting themselves up for a nasty fall.
Not to mention, even in winning the democrats are acting like a pack of jackals, and some are calling for Dean to resign from the DNC because the Dems didn't capture "enough" seats. Gotta love it... win back a majority in both houses in a nation that is roughly 50/50 split, and its still not good enough.
When all is said and done, the Democrats will have picked up roughly 30+ House seats, which is about equal to the greatest margin the GOP ever enjoyed during their 12-year reign. As for Howard Dean, the man is now vindicated! His controversial "50 state strategy" was a stroke of genius, whereas the Republicans and their president were spending money in the most unusual places (i.e. solid red) during the waning days of the campaign. Clearly, the man's efforts paid off handsomely for his party, and they are in a much better position to parlay their success in 2008.
For environmental advocates, the election results clearly were beneficial. Two of the most dastardly villains in Congress were removed from their powerful positions as chairmen of influencial committees. Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), chairman of the House Resources Committee and a sworn enemy of virtually every environmental law you could think of, lost his race. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, will be in the minority party come January, thus losing his chairmanship (this dinosaur mocked global warming as the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated upon the American people", and was among the most prominent roadblocks in Washington regarding this issue).
Having purged these two individuals from their committee chairmanships made the election results all the more satisfying. :)
I would go further....
The 2008 electoral map is VERY friendly to the Dems in the senate. It is going to be very difficult for them to avoid picking up a seat or two. In the house, even if they lose a fair number of seats, barring some sort of tidal wave, they'll still have the majority. For state houses and governorships, they have a solid majority now that will last until 2010 (4 year terms), which means they automatically get to do redistricting in 2010 throughout most of the country (30 states, roughly, with the majority of the country's population, and thus House seats).
This means that in 2010, they will pretty likely gerrymander the remaining blue state republicans straight out of existence. This is exactly what gave the republicans their current majority, lots of (in their case mid-decade) redistricting. The Dems get to redistrict now, and the results will probably not be pretty.
In addition, we have two more years of bush being a total ass.
I think in 2008 the Dems will actually gain seats in both houses, and the white house.
The Democrats certainly can hold the Congress and take the White House but I do not see that as automatically assured as you seem to think. Rather, the Democrats are going to have to moderate their socially liberal positions somewhat, and be more fiscally conservative than Democrats have ever been before. Moderating social positions happens all the time and measuring how "liberal" or "conservative" one is on social issues is a very subjective thing. But the budget is not very subjective at all, at least to the man in the street.
I believe that the last Democrat controlled Congress to pass a balanced budget was under Nixon. The balanced budgets passed under Clinton were all Republican held Congresses. I firmly believe the budget is a major issue, almost as large as Iraq. If the Democrats can successfully force the White House into a withdrawal from Iraq and balance the budget, they will have 2 huge feathers in their cap for 2008. If they can do neither of these, I expect many of them to be replaced yet again, either by other more conservative Democrats, by Republicans, or by independents.
The Democrats are in a strong position, no question. But it's not a guaranteed win. They will have to work to continue to hold the Congress and take the White House. Adopting sane policies on energy would be a good start and there are many Democrat affiliated groups that are putting forth good proposals now rather than smoke-and-mirrors over ethanol and such.
That seems a little misleading: technically Congress controls the budget, but these days the President usually sets the agenda. Think about Reagan and GWB's tax cuts/deficits. It seems clear to me that the last 2 Dem presidents, Carter and Clinton, were much better deficit wise than their successors.
I agree that Dems are in a bit of a trap. I think their best bet is energy: oddly enough, that presents a much better win/win than an Iraq withdrawal or deficit reduction, either of which could have big unintended consequences.
The democrats are just as much a part of the problem as the republicans. If you think they are going to do anything that will upset the capitalist growth engine, think again. They may try to make it a little softer on the edges, like raising minimum wage, but they aren't going to threaten the whole set up.
Check your dictionary and a good history book.
Byzantine means 'complex and deceitful'.
Libertarians would simplify, but some of the problems are by their nature complex.
For example Global Warming: an unpriced economic externality with disastrous consequences for all.
Overfishing falls into the same camp.
Then there is nuclear terrorism, the dependence of the US on foreign oil, global problems like AIDS and flu.
Saying the Democrats are the same as the Republicans is so hopelessly out of touch with reality that I almost don't know where to begin. It's like talking with a creationist, can we accept that the earth is round, or do we need to start with turtles all the way down?
OR
one votes for one of the 2 main parties, and tries to work within the system for change.
Something like Richard Pombo losing his seat in CA was a big win for the environment, everywhere, not just in the USA. Taking out James Inhofe is as likely as a blizzard in mid August in New York City, but would have similar benefits.
Another important thing to do is to learn the issues and become an advocate for them. The internet allows a lot of grass roots communication to take place-- odd though it may sound, there are lots of people who think global warming is a distant problem that scientists are in disagreement about.
Because of the internet, it is possible to access directly the scientific knowledge and debate, and understand how wrong that viewpoint is.