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“Old-world” energy in vogue
Emily Heffter, Seattle Times
In coming years, new technology might make home heating cheaper. But for now, to the dismay of environmentalists, old technology is.
Fossil fuels are one way consumers, government agencies and energy companies are looking to the past for cheaper ways to heat. It’s not just nostalgia. Producers say they can’t make enough renewable energy — wind and solar power, for example — to meet demand.
As costs escalate for other home-heating fuels, utilities are buying more coal. One agency is pursuing a coal-to-fuel plant in Southwest Washington.
Soaring heating bills, especially for oil and natural gas, are driving even urban homeowners to reconsider their wood-burning fireplaces as sources of heat.
(27 November 2005)
Related stories:
Wood thieves worry officials (Bend Bulletin).
Heating costs make wood look good (Portland Oregonian).
Fuel costs change entrenched habits, quality of life (Tacoma News Tribune)
Abandoned SoCal oil wells being returned to service
Associated Press via SF Chronicle
Rising petroleum demand and new technologies are prompting companies to press abandoned Southern California oil wells back into service, according to industry experts.
In recent months, “we’ve had companies putting 45-year-old wells back into production,” said Rock Zierman, spokesman for the California Independent Petroleum Association.
Southern California has about 4,000 active oil wells, down from a peak of 33,000. About 3,000 wells are abandoned statewide but that number could drop to zero, predicted Iraj Ershagi, director of the petroleum engineering program at the University of Southern California.
Many of the wells were abandoned too soon, he said.
“In L.A., we’ve shut down many wells after only 20 percent to 25 percent of the oil is extracted. That’s ridiculous,” Ershagi said. Using current technology, about 50 percent of a reserve can be drained before a well is plugged, he said.
(28 November 2005)
For a skeptical view, see Mobjectivist: Box full of nothing.
Kentucky’s oil, gas boom spurring concerns
James Bruggers, The Courier-Journal
REDFOX, Ky. – Walking between a ramshackle home and barn on 300 acres owned by her family since 1935, Patty Amburgey recalled how her mother and aunts once blocked coal trucks by lighting fires on a road winding into a Knott County hollow.
It was the 1960s, and the so-called “campfire girls” were trying to protect their land from what they viewed as a threat, said Amburgey, who today is fighting what some view as a new environmental threat — drilling for natural gas.
A West Virginia company’s plan to put in a gas well and a new road leading to it would scar a ridgetop on her family’s land. “They are taking away my birthright,” she said. “I want to protect the land.”
That is becoming a growing refrain in Kentucky, as the state experiences a gas and oil drilling boom.
(27 November 2005)
Long article.
If winter is bitter, brace for a natural-gas crunch
Mark Clayton, The Christian Science Monitor
From Maine to Florida, from Virginia to Missouri, as much as half the United States confronts the possibility that harshly cold weather will lead to restrictions of natural-gas supplies. In some places – areas heavily dependent on natural gas to produce electricity – the prospect of “rolling blackouts,” or controlled power outages, is much higher than in previous winters.
Any natural-gas cutoffs would primarily affect electric-power plants and factories fueled by gas, not homes, and be most likely in the Northeast.
If cold deepens for prolonged periods, the likelihood of interrupted natural-gas supplies rises to 30 percent in the Northeast and to 10 percent as far south as Florida and as far west as Missouri, according to a recent report by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), a trade association representing gas pipeline companies. In a “worst-case” scenario, chances of interrupted gas rise to 40 percent for the Northeast and 25 percent across the eastern seaboard.
(29 November 2005)
Pipeline Shortages Boost Liquefied Natural Gas Prices, Help BP
Nesa Subrahmaniyan and Meeyoung Song; Bloomberg
Rising fuel demand in Asia, Europe and the U.S. and a shortage of pipelines are pushing liquefied natural gas prices to records, benefiting producers such as BP Plc and hurting industrial companies from Spain to South Korea.
(28 November 2005)
LNG terminals: Doing our part for energy supplies or inviting disaster? (Opposing Viewpoints)
Nevill Eschen, Portland Tribune
Four sites along the Columbia River are under consideration for industrial facilities that would serve as terminals for storing liquefied natural gas and then transforming that into regular natural gas for shipping to U.S. markets.
Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is of growing interest because it’s more efficient to transport in that form than in its usual gaseous state. The gas is cooled to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celsius), compressing its volume to 1/600th the space it normally fills.
Four companies have proposals to build LNG terminals … The four proposals are in the very early stages. Only Northern Star Natural Gas LLC, a Houston-based company, has filed any forms with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It’s not clear if regulators would approve just one, if any, or if they would allow all to be built. The rules on decision-making changed under the new energy law, and it’s not clear if Oregon’s Department of Energy will have a say in the decision.
One percent of the energy that the United States uses is LNG. The gas is expected to make up 3 percent of the nation’s energy resources by 2008.
Against: Hazards should scuttle this idea by Karen Cressa
For: Nation needs gas, places to store it by Dan Kirschner
(25 November 2005)
N Sea Crude: ’05 To See Biggest Output Drop
Dow Jones
North Sea oil production will face its biggest ever decline in ’05, say analysts at Raymond James.
Despite increased capital spending “this region’s decline rate is actually accelerating” and ’05 will see a decline of 7%, the steepest since production began in the 1970s. This is because finding and development costs are creeping higher, while availability of offshore rigs is tightening, so integrated majors have little incentive to explore. But even if they did spend it wouldn’t be able to offset depletion at the maturing fields – “now that the North Sea has peaked, it has peaked for good,” analysts say.
(28 November 2005
Haiti: Petroleum Greases the Deforestation Process
Humberto Márquez, IPS News
In Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, rising oil prices have forced households and small businesses that used natural gas or kerosene for cooking to instead use charcoal or firewood, a mortal blow to a country that has almost no trees left.
With help from the World Bank, “we developed a programme to introduce more and better gas stoves, to alleviate pressure on the forests that provide firewood and charcoal, and to prepare food in a more clean and efficient way,” Haiti’s environment minister, Yves-AndrĂ© Wainright, explained in a TierramĂ©rica interview.
But with prices hovering around 60 dollars a barrel on the international petroleum market, “it is very difficult for people to believe that gas is more beneficial, and so they return to firewood, and especially charcoal,” lamented the minister.
(17 November 2005)
If we are living within the carrying capacity of an area, and practicing selective forestry, then firewood is a more sustainable fuel than gas. A local NGO called Floresta are involved in reforestation efforts in Haiti, and are critical of the natural gas solution. Brazilian permaculturists have also been active in Haiti, see this BBC report. -AF
Global LNG Crunch Forcing US Into Bidding War
Spencer Jakab, Dow Jones via Yahoo!
At a time when about 7% of U.S. natural gas production remains idled due to hurricane damage, the burgeoning liquefied natural gas market should be a key source of alternate supply.
But a series of unrelated events have left U.S. LNG receiving terminals, which rely heavily on the global spot market for cargoes and can now supply about 5% of U.S. needs, sorely underutilized in recent months. Shipments to the U.S. fell by 23% in the third quarter versus a year ago despite expanded receiving capacity. As the northern hemisphere enters the peak winter demand period, analysts fear that the U.S. is being pitted against other buyers in the Atlantic basin for precious cargoes of the supercooled fuel, even with spot cargoes breaking price records.
“What you could get into is a bidding war for Atlantic LNG cargoes,” warned James Jensen, a leading consultant for the global LNG industry. “I think you’re looking at tremendous uncertainties on both sides of the Atlantic.”
The root causes of the potentially worsening shortfall are logistical, meteorological, geological and political. For example, the world’s largest LNG exporter, Indonesia, was forced to purchase spot cargoes from the Middle East to supply Asian customers when faltering supply from domestic fields and homegrown political pressure to divert more gas to domestic industries cut its own shipments.
…
Aside from isolated supply woes, there is certainly no shortage of natural gas around the globe. The bottleneck comes in the expensive facilities needed to supercool the gas, enabling it to be shipped around the world.
“There’s a ton of stranded gas, but it’s not as simple as just pulling it out of the ground,” said Stacy Nieuwoudt, an analyst at Houston investment bank Pickering Energy Partners. “LNG, more than anything, has to be a full chain and liquefaction is the most complicated part of the chain.”
(23 November 2005)
