Article: Peak Oilers Shut Up Forever Please

"Peak oil" was a Malthusian fad, just like the Club of Rome predictions about the stuff we would run out of by 2000, and Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb." [Other failed projections.]

Some people just off on doom, especially doom due to their (or their parents') evil ways.

Princeton University geologist Ken Deffeyes predicted that global oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day, 2005. In 2005, daily global oil production averaged 85 million barrels per day. Daily petroleum liquids production in July was 96 million barrels per day.

Linked article: OPEC just kicked oil into the $30s

Article: Saudi Arabia may go broke before the US oil industry buckles

This is a reminder that the US may not be as nimble as a dictatorship, but a free market economy always beats a centrally planned one in the long run.

An extended look at the US shale oil (and natural gas) revolution, its continued and rapid technological advances, and the economic and political ramifications to the Saudi Arabians.

While it may be too optimistic about the US oil industry and too pessimistic about the Saudis, a lot of it confirms what I am reading elsewhere, in one neat package.

And, at least partly, the bad news for the Saudis is good news for the US; they will have less money to spend on fundamentalist Islam.

Article: European Renewable Energy performance for 2014 falls far short of claims

By 2014 European Union countries had invested approximately €1 trillion, €1000,000,000,000, in large scale Renewable Energy installations. 

This has provided a nameplate electrical generating capacity of about 216 Gigawatts, nominally about ~22% of the total European generation needs of about 1000 Gigawatts.
The actual measured output by 2014 from data supplied by the Renewables Industry has been 38 Gigawatts or 3.8% of Europe’s electricity requirement, at a capacity factor of ~18% overall.

Contrast that with coal or gas power plants that can operate at close to 100% capacity.

Accounting for capacity factors the capital cost of these Renewable Energy installations has been about €29billion / Gigawatt.  That capital cost should be compared with conventional gas-fired electricity generation costing about €1billion / Gigawatt.

Renewables cost 29X as much to install as gas-fired plants.

The wealthy elite are gaga over renewables, but they can afford to spend a lot more for energy. Back when Al Gore was pushing his "documentary" it was revealed that his primary residence used more electricity in one month that the average American used in one year.

In spite of their [ed., "there"] being virtually no costs for fuel, Renewable Energy installations can still cost up to 1.5 – 2.5 times as much to operate and maintain as conventional Gas Fired plant.

And the effect is to increase the cost of renewables even more.

Accordingly German Renewable installations perform at only ~13% overall.  They are by far the least performant in Europe because of their heavy commitment to Solar Energy at Northern latitudes.  Germany is followed by Italy with a more Southerly position but still with a heavy commitment to Solar Power.

Low solar incidence angle and short days for 6 months of the year. Berlin, Germany is 52 degrees North. Northernmost Maine is 47 degrees North. How did any rational person think that solar energy was a good choice for Germany?

In France which already has the lowest CO2 emissions levels/head [ed., per capita] of population in the developed world (substantially less (~60%) than China) because of its commitment to Nuclear electrical generation, the installation of Renewable Energy (Wind Power and Solar) in France would seem to be particularly costly and pointless.

If governments want low CO2 emissions, they should go with nuclear.

If they want to kill poor people in the winter, so with renewables.

Conclusions 

To date about € trillion, (€1000,000,000,000), has been spent on the installation of Renewable Energy technologies for electricity generation in Europe.

By Government and EU diktat, this expenditure has been extracted by extra charges imposed on utility bills throughout Europe.  Viewed as taxation this is very regressive form:  it imposes more burdens on poorer people whilst leaving wealthier people who are able to pay less affected.  It is also invisible in Government accounts as a tax income at all, as it is an industry price imposition on consumers.

These regressive “Green taxes” have already lead to significant fuel poverty throughout Europe.

As I said, if they want to kill poor people in the winter, go with renewables.

The USA has made significant CO2 emissions reductions over the past few decades by replacing Coal Fired generation with Gas Fired electricity generation with the feedstock provided by the fracking revolution.  It is estimated that using natural gas for electricity generation as opposed coal burning saves about 30% of CO2 emissions.  

So the most environmentally sound, logical, rational, scientific, economic, compassionate choices are
1) Natural gas (and fracking).
2) Nuclear.

On the other hand renewables are the best choice for the elite because they offer
1) Smug moral superiority
2) Good opportunities for cronyism and graft.

It is also questionable whether these Renewable Energy industries, when viewed “from cradle to grave”, including manufacturing, site works, installation, connection and demolition costs, does in fact reduce CO2 emissions to any significant extent overall.  The CO2 saved may never exceed the CO2 emissions generated to erect the total installation.  

This is like the ethanol boondoggle in the US. Use lots of land and fossil fuels to grow and harvest corn, then lots of fossil fuels convert the corn to alcohol and purify it. Then claim that you are reducing CO2 emissions by using a "biofuel" from a renewable resource. All the while by driving up food (and fuel) costs by diverting corn (and land) from being a feedstock.

Article: Coal No Longer US's Most Popular Electricity Source For First Time Ever

For the first time ever, coal has been unseated as America’s largest source of fuel to generate electricity. As of April 2015, natural gas is now number 1. 

A report from SNL Energy shows that 31 percent of America’s electricity was now coming from natural gas. That’s up from just 22 percent in 2010. But even though natural gas has taken the lead, coal is still a formidable force, fulfilling 30 percent of the nation’s electrical energy needs.

 Fracking has increased the supply of natural gas, and (economics 101) driven down the price of it. In addition, EPA regulations (recently set aside by the Supreme Court) made coal less attractive.

Article: Fracking with propane proposed for Tioga County, NY

NY state bans hydraulic fracking because, among other reasons, it uses large amount of water.

NY state landowners contract with an energy company to frack on their land using gelled propane and sand instead.

It appears to be legal and meets currently existing environmental impact requirements.

I am not a constitutional scholar, but I wonder if a total ban of fracking would be illegal under the "illegal takings" clause of the 5th amendment. The landowners hold mineral rights, and a total ban on using them might be unconstitutional.

Feel-good article of the day

Article: Five Ways Liberals Ignore Science

Five major ways, and a host of minor ways, the left ignores science. And pushes an agenda behind that ignore-ance.

Article: Global natural gas boom alone won't slow climate change

But it also will not make it any worse.

Every silver lining needs a cloud.

Because natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, many people hoped the recent natural gas boom could help slow climate change -- and according to government analyses, natural gas did contribute partially to a decline in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions between 2007 and 2012. 

This is the silver lining.

If Obama's EPA gets its way, it will gradually regulate coal-fueled power plants out of existence. In theory, the trend will continue, for the US, until we no longer use coal to generate electricity.

Now for the cloud.

But, in the long run, according to this study, a global abundance of inexpensive natural gas would compete with all energy sources -- not just higher-emitting coal, but also lower-emitting nuclear and renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar. 

This is a "free-market" working normally. People want the cheapest energy, power companies in the US and governments of poor countries will do their best to supply it.

Inexpensive natural gas would also accelerate economic growth and expand overall energy use.

This is considered to be a negative effect of the switch to fracking and natural gas.

[Sarcasm alert: Economic growth, pulling people out of poverty, developing the full human potential in all countries of the world is a bad thing. It must be stopped by right-thinking people. Fracking must be opposed!]

Five groups of scientists ran their own computer models (called "integrated assessment models") in an attempt to see whether or not swapping coal for methane made any difference to overall global warming.

They found that it did not.

What I wonder about the research is something that they did not report on. Was the effect of the switch so small that it is actually negligible? Even before figuring in all the effects?

Or, putting it another way, before they threw in a bunch of other factors, what was the actual effect on global warming of making the switch?

It sounds as if there must be some effect, but it is not mentioned.

One of the big complaints about the Australian carbon pricing scheme was that the effect of it would be well below a 0.01% reduction in global warming over a 50 year period.

[The research shows that] the global energy system could experience unprecedented changes in the growth of natural gas production and significant changes to the types of energy used, but without much reduction to projected climate change… 

"Abundant gas may have a lot of benefits -- economic growth, local air pollution, energy security, and so on. There's been some hope that slowing climate change could also be one of its benefits, but that turns out not to be the case," said McJeon.

So the overall effect would be beneficial.

Article: America About to Dethrone Saudi Arabia as Liquid Petroleum King

These type of articles are turning up with increasing frequency. And fracking is the cause.

The US is using fracking directly to produce more oil, but the process also has an interesting side-effect. When the shale is fracked for natural gas, one of the by-products is "natural gas liquids." These include ethane and propane.

American oil output is expected to break 9 million barrels per day sometime this year, edging closer to Russia’s 10.1 million b/d and Saudi’s 9.7 million b/d. 

With productivity continuing to rise, the United States has a chance to become the single biggest producer of crude oil sometime in the near future. If you had said that a decade ago, you would’ve been laughed at and called a fool. What a difference fracking makes.

Ten years ago, there were discussions about whether or not we had reached "peak oil." We will eventually, and will eventually have to deal with a "post-oil" economy. However, that is not happening soon.

The fracking revolution will move to other counties. The UK has begun to develop the legal tools to start. China is trying to frack, but has not yet had much success.

Article: Weak wells not fracking caused US gas leaks into water

Hat tip. 

The researchers used noble gases to trace the path of methane as these inert chemicals are not affected by microbial activity or oxidation. 

By measuring the ratios of the noble materials to the methane they were able to accurately determine the distance to the likely source.

The scientists analysed content from 113 wells in the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and 20 in the Barnett shale in Texas. They found eight clusters of wells with problems.

"The mechanism of contamination looks to be well integrity," said one of the authors, Prof Robert Jackson from Stanford University.

"In about half the cases we believe the contamination came from poor cementing and in the other half it came from well casings that leaked."

It is a shame that this has to be published in the UK. Apparently, US outlets will not touch good news about fracking.

"These results appear to rule out the possibility that methane has migrated up into drinking water aquifers because of horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing, as some people feared," said Prof Avner Vengosh, from Duke University.

Fears that environmentalists, who are not scientists, have played on.

"You need strong rules and regulations on well integrity," said Prof Jackson.

And they need to be enforced.

Pennsylvania has the longest history of fossil fuel well-digging in the world. And fracking is not a new process. Its success in extracting natural gas is a new development. Regulations in PA have existed for years about the need for well integrity. It is one of the reasons that the current governor of PA took so long to issue new regs. The State wanted to update their existing rules.

Article: Residual hydraulic fracturing water not a risk to groundwater

The injected water does not move from its injection site. It gets absorbed by the rock. Some of the water displaces the natural gas that then gets pumped to the surface. The water does not travel at all, let alone travel the thousands of feet, against gravity and through impermeable rock layers, to get to the aquifers people use for water.

Hydraulic fracturing -- fracking or hydrofracturing -- raises many concerns about potential environmental impacts, especially water contamination. Currently, data show that the majority of water injected into wells stays underground, triggering fears that it might find its way into groundwater. 

Injected water that remains underground is sequestered in the rock formation and therefore does not pose a serious risk to water supplies.

US energy boom

Article: There's A U.S. Energy Boom, No Thanks To Obama

Alternative title: US energy boom, doomsayers and environmentalists hardest hit. 

Much good news. And increasing oil/natural gas means lower prices for consumers, which helps the poorest among us.

Facts:

1) [A ]...35% increase in America's oil and natural gas production since President Obama took office.
2) Since Obama took office, oil and gas production... on federal lands has dropped sharply due to a cutback in leasing of deepwater areas for energy development.
3) U.S. dependence on imported petroleum products has fallen from more than 60% in 2005 to less than 33% in 2013. It's expected to drop to 22% in 2015....
4) U.S. natural gas production has been an equally remarkable success story. The shale-gas revolution has transformed the U.S. into the world's No. 1 gas producer.

Global Warming Links #4

Article: Replacing coal, oil with natural gas will not help fight global warming, expert argues

By Dr. Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology, and an advocate of eliminating all fossil fuels as energy sources.

His specialty is nutrient cycles, which includes studying traces gases in the atmosphere.

Sometimes, I know enough about the claims made in an article, or can follow the reasoning well enough, to judge whether or not the claims are valid. There are things that seem "off" about this article, but I would like to see an expert discuss this. There are some things that I have noted.

This is a review article. It reviews his original publication (from April 2011) and concludes he was right the first time. (ok, a little snarky; but why did the journal commission a review article to review the author? It is like saying that actors and directors should be the people who do reviews of their own movies.)

"While emissions of carbon dioxide are less from natural gas than from coal and oil, methane emissions are far greater. Methane is such a potent greenhouse gas that these emissions make natural gas a dangerous fuel from the standpoint of global warming over the next several decades," said Dr. Howarth. "Society should wean ourselves from all fossil fuels and not rely on the myth that natural gas is an acceptable bridge fuel to a sustainable future."

Another example of having the conclusions and then finding data to fit them.

Even if Dr. Howarth is correct, would not better control of the wells and their emissions decrease the leakage? Rather than just using this research to justify ending fracking? Or ending the use of fossil fuels? But to ask that question is to answer it.

He already has his conclusions. The data must fit them.

Dr. Howarth at the end of his article:

Society needs to wean itself from the addiction to fossil fuels as quickly as possible. But to replace some fossil fuels (coal, oil) with another (natural gas) will not suffice as an approach to take on global warming. Rather, we should embrace the technologies of the 21st Century, and convert our energy systems to ones that rely on wind, solar, and water power. 

First, no mention of nuclear energy. It is the least polluting energy source currently available. It releases virtually no carbon dioxide or methane. So why no mention?

Second, we are not going to increase reliance on water energy. Dams are environmentally incorrect. They are opposed everywhere. He is supposed to be an expert of rivers (as per his posted curriculum vita). Yet, he advocates water power?

Third, wind and solar are currently not economically viable. To be viable,energy prices would have to rise considerably, at the detriment to the poorest and the lower middle class. Wealthy people, or even upper middle class like Dr Howarth, would be less hurt. 

Odd note: He has lent his voice to accusations that Google helps the gas lobby support fracking. Google is rather left-wing, so this is a little far-fetched.

Article: The bend in the Appalachian mountain chain is finally explained

Summary:

The 1500 mile Appalachian mountain chain runs along a nearly straight line from Alabama to Newfoundland -- except for a curious bend in Pennsylvania and New York State. Researchers now know what caused that bend -- a dense, underground block of rigid, volcanic rock forced the chain to shift eastward as it was forming millions of years ago.

The article does not talk about the origin of the "dense, volcanic rock" that caused the bend.

The article does mention the possible application of the research to fracking or "hydrofracking" as they call it.