Al Fin Energy

Hubbert's NatGas Forecasts vs. Actual Production

2012-02-14T06:56:00.000-08:00

“Hubbert was imaginative and innovative… [but he had] no concept of technological change, economics or how new resource plays evolve. It was a very static view of the world.”– Peter Rose, King Hubbert’s boss at the U.S. Geological Survey. [4] _SteveMaley

SteveMaley
King Hubbert's prediction of natural gas production in the US lower 48 turned out to be laughably wrong. Many of his other predictions were likewise absurd, in hindsight. His sole crowning success was his prediction for a crude oil peak in the US lower 48. But even there, his prediction of a most likely year for peak was wrong. And a closer look at the 1970 US crude oil peak reveals that it owed far more to the avalanche of federal and state regulations following the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, than to any restrictions of domestic supply.

It was easier for oil companies to go elsewhere to produce oil, rather than to fight an expensive battle against the seemingly unlimited resources of the US federal government.

But back to Hubbert's failed natgas predictions:

It was always known that some shale rock formations contain gas; the problem was getting the gas out in commercial quantities. Industry pioneer George Mitchell’s Mitchell Energy tried for years to find the key in a shale zone called the Barnett near Fort Worth, TX. Eventually they found that the combination of horizontal wells (wells drilled vertically from the surface, then turned horizontal in the target formation) combined with hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), produced economic results. In time, Mitchell’s Newark East Barnett Shale field became the nation’s #1 producing gas field. [5]

Strong natural gas prices starting in 2004 drove the search for other productive shales. When the technology was applied to other shale trends (notably the Haynesville of northwest Louisiana and the Marcellus of Pennsylvania, both of which typically produce at higher rates than the Barnett), shale gas development became today’s full-fledged boom. Shale plays tend to cover broad areas compared to conventional sandstone and carbonate gas reservoirs, so the impact on the estimate of the resource base is enormous. _SteveMaley

Estimates of economically recoverable reserves will grow over time, with experience, and better technology.

Humans have barely scratched the surface of the planet's hydrocarbon complement. Better tools of discovery and production will be developed and applied as needed.

Specific predictions of future production are bound to fail, and often badly. as Hubbert's ghost no doubt understands by now.

Half of Offshore Wind Farms Likely to be Destroyed by Storms

2012-02-14T06:40:00.000-08:00

Stephen Rose and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, modelled the risk hurricanes might pose to turbines at four proposed wind farm sites. They found that nearly half of the planned turbines are likely to be destroyed over the 20-year life of the farms. Turbines shut down in high winds, but hurricane-force winds can topple them. _NS

The marine environment is extremely harsh to mechanical and electrical systems. The minimum expense of placing and maintaining large offshore wind farms is exorbitant -- and will drive up the costs of electrical power for anyone who tries to depend upon them for vital power. A relentlessly chaotic rocking of waves combined with corrosive salt spray and water vapour, begin to work their destruction upon the giant but vulnerable turbines from the very first day in the water.

Million dollar gearboxes fail frequently, as do bearings and other moving parts. Turbines will be out of reach of maintenance crews for months out of the year due to storms and winds. A relatively large proportion of turbines should be expected to be out of service at any given time.

Now if you add the likelihood that entire wind farms will be destroyed by hurricanes and other strong storms on a regular basis, most reasonable persons would be forced to ask why any responsible government or entity would support the building of these expensive, unreliable, and ultimately doomed monstrosities and hazards to navigation.

China's Massive Shale Gas Wealth Free from Energy Starvation Ideology

2012-02-14T05:08:00.000-08:00

China cannot afford the "energy starvation affectation" which certain foppish leaders of western nations are displaying. No, China is in a life or death struggle for its survival as a nation. The leaders of the middle kingdom cannot afford to fool themselves in that way. They must face reality and shape it to their advantage, or they will become history.

GWPF

The Ministry of Land and Resources said Sunday that China will strengthen the survey and appraisal of shale gas in 2012 to expedite discovery and development of China shale deposits. The move comes after the recent approval of the State Council in the capital to list shale gas as an independent mineral resource. China is slowly moving towards producing shale gas.

Currently, the country does not have any shale natural gas production, adding to the country’s overall lack of natural gas in its energy matrix. China’s rough terrain and lack of technological know-how has kept it out of the shale gas biz. The country is largely beholden to coal to keep the lights on.

China’s Ministry of Land estimates the country holds around 31 trillion cubic meters of natural gas hidden under shale, equivalent to the total amount of conventional natural gas. If developed, the country’s shale gas output could exceed 100 billion cubic meters by 2020, Land Ministry’s second in command, Wang Min, told reporters during a national geological survey conference in Beijing this weekend.

China’s reserves are almost 50% greater than those of the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. _GWPF

Once China's shale gas resource hits China's economy -- particularly when transformed by GTL, ethane cracking, and other advanced technologies into far more valuable materials -- the global economy will be shaken to its foundations.

Walking Dead of Peak Oil: A Mindless Pursuit of Oblivion

2012-02-14T04:38:00.000-08:00

Peak oil cultists are compelled in their belief -- they no longer have a rational choice whether to "believe" or not. They lurch from one doom projection to another, compulsively feeding on a ghoulish doom that can never satisfy their ineffable hunger.

Opec reserves are often said to be overstated, without any firm evidence being given one way or the other. Opec countries do not help themselves with their lack of transparency on reserves...Yet the most authoritative evaluation, by the consultancy IHS Energy in 2007, saw the overstatement as minor (about 7 per cent) and more than offset by under-estimates elsewhere. As Russia with 20 years of reserves at current output rates keeps increasing production, Opec with a reserves/output ratio of more than 80 years can also do so.

The advent of shale oil and gas production has reversed declining US production, is now spreading globally, and can be commercial at an oil price of just US$30 a barrel.

This breakthrough seems completely to have passed by peak-oil advocates. They claim the end of "easy oil", without noting that technology continually makes unconventional oil into conventional. _National

Oil producers are deathly afraid of oversupply in the oil market -- an oil glut. Such a glut is happening in the North American natural gas market, shaking the energy globe from Russia to Iran to Venzuela. Since oil dictatorships derive their political power from energy sales, they cannot afford to tolerate an energy glut. Such a thing is far more a threat to them than contrived and ghoulishly elaborated rumours of "peak oil."

...with more than a century's worth of resources of both coal and natural gas, it does not matter whether reserves are somewhat overstated. The production of coal, in particular, is constrained by economics and environmental concerns, not by physical availability.

The final piece in the peak-oil puzzle is the idea that declining oil production must bring a halt to economic growth. But Michael Levi from the US-based Council on Foreign Relations notes in a comprehensive demolition of the Nature article that the American economy has persistently grown much faster than its oil consumption. _National

Economic difficulties are likely to occur from Europe to China to the US. But such problems are due to malignant political effects on economies, rather than to any shortages of fuels or energy. If peak oil zombies are fixated on a great bloody mess of their own mental creation, it is but the best that they can do -- in lieu of problem solving competencies.

The Dakotas Want to Include Nuclear Power in the Energy Boom

2012-02-13T08:02:00.000-08:00

North Dakota leads the new US growth in oil & gas production. But oil & gas are not perfect all-around energy sources. Large amounts of electricity are also needed to power the creation of wealth and abundance. At least a few thinkers in the Dakotas are beginning to think about integrating nuclear power into the overall energy mix.

The Dakotas are on the front lines of energy independence today, including oil, coal, natural gas, wind, solar, biofuels, hydropower and geothermal. However, nuclear energy is missing. South Dakota and North Dakota would be excellent locations for small modular reactors as well as the manufacturing and knowledge base that they require.

The first small modular reactors will be similar to the well-proven water-cooled technologies used by the U.S. Navy to power nuclear submarines. Air-cooled designs will not need to be near a body of water, which means they can be placed away from any flooding or earthquake zones.

All of them will have fewer pumps and valves with advanced safety features. They can be mass-produced, shipped in sections by rail and assembled on-site. The uniformity of the construction methods will enhance safety, reduce construction costs and make the supply chain more efficient.

...Nuclear energy is best-suited to providing the base-load while other sources such as natural gas and energy stored from renewables deliver peak power. Working together will be the most cost-effective option for simultaneously producing more energy while reducing emissions.

...We can manufacture the mechanical and electrical parts and components that are needed. Certification laboratories and consulting expertise for construction, safety, operations and power distribution for nuclear energy located here would have value for energy storage, energy efficiency and the development of other energy sources.

Together, the Dakotas might be able to deliver an all-of-the-above energy portfolio. How nuclear energy will fit into that mix has yet to be determined. _ArgusLeader

Nuclear reactors can help Dakotans to develop more of their rich hydrocarbon resources. The high quality process heat of gas cooled reactors would facilitate the conversion of cheap gas to high value liquids, chemicals, and fertilisers. The same process heat would also help convert cheap dirty coal into valuable clean liquids. In addition, nuclear reactor process heat could assist in cheaper enhanced recovery of oil and gas from tight rock deposits.

A well balanced portfolio of energy and power sources is to be preferred to the unbalanced dependency upon one, two, or three sources. But most of your energy production assets should be devoted to the most reliable and economic -- in the long term -- sources.

At this time, when the US government is borrowing over $1 trillion a year just for routine expenditures, there is no money to be wasted on unreliable and exorbitant big wind and big solar.

Gas to Liquids Comes to Scotland; More GTL News

2012-02-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

Gas2 has a well developed Syngas reactor design ready for testing and a liquid conversion (Fischer-Tropsch) reactor design at proof of concept stage. These technologies work at low pressure and high conversion rates which offer a lower cost solution through small highly efficient systems operating without the need for an expensive intermediate Syngas compression step. The process is inherently safer than other currently available GTL solutions in the market. _Gas-2.com

Scottish company Gas2 has acquired a further £5.5 million in funding to build a pilot plant to demonstrate its GTL technology.

Aberdeen-based Gas2 is working to develop the next generation of gas-to-liquids (GTL) technology, with an exclusive licence to build on research from the city’s Robert Gordon University.

The firm, which started work to commercialise the technology in 2008, will receive the funds from existing backers including the university and Lime Rock Partners, a private equity firm that initially pumped £10m into the business.

Gas2’s technology allows the conversion of natural gas to liquid more economically and cleanly than has previously been possible. Half of the world’s natural gas is contained in fields that make it either physically or economically unusable, but turning it into liquids could make much of it viable if it can be done cheaply enough. _Scotsman

Meanwhile, Carbon Sciences has filed two provisional patents on its technology to steam reform methane into syngas. The company is pursuing multiple gas to liquids (GTL) approaches, including dry reforming, which uses CO2 rather than steam.

Also, GTL pioneer and giant SASOL is progressing with its plans to enter the North American market. SASOL has plans to build a GTL plant in Louisiana. Shell Oil is also looking into building a GTL plant in the US.

In addition, the makers of "mini-GTL" plants, such as CompactGTL, GasTechno, and Oxford Catalysts/Velocys, continue to develop their technologies while also marketing their technologies to offshore producers and producers of stranded and flared gas.

A great deal depends upon the development of better and cheaper catalysts at all stages of reforming and synthesis. This is true for not only GTL, but for CTL and BTL. Of course, the higher the cost of crude oil, the more economical the substitutes become.

Russia's Gazprom Needs Giant New Arctic Gas Field

2012-02-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

The continued existence of Russia as a transcontinental power depends on its ability to leverage vast energy wealth into political stability and power. Without energy wealth, Russia begins to disintegrate. A giant new gas field north of the Arctic Circle provides some hope for Russia's future.

Gazprom’s mammoth tax payments bolster the Russian economy, allowing the Kremlin to dole out subsidies and keep a lid on popular discontent.

At the same time, Gazprom faces challenges that threaten not just its dominance of the world’s natural gas market, but also the stability of Russia itself. As pressure rapidly decreases in Gazprom’s existing wells, the emergence of U.S. shale gas and the rise of liquefied natural gas supertankers are transforming the global gas market, providing alternatives to Russian supply. The company’s close association with the Kremlin, historically an asset and a hindrance, may invite greater scrutiny as domestic opposition to Putin’s rule grows. European clients and parliaments are contesting Gazprom’s continental influence with greater solidarity than ever before. A recent Morgan Stanley (MS) report determined that these tests may “leave Gazprom running a very different business,” diminished in scale and profitability and less favored at home.

That’s why so much is riding on Bovanenkovo. Beneath two feet of permafrost on the distant Yamal Peninsula, 1,500 miles northeast of Moscow, Bovanenkovo holds nearly five trillion cubic meters of gas. The field will begin delivering gas in July and for the next 35 years could on its own produce enough to meet 25 percent of European demand. Bovanenkovo affords the Kremlin peace of mind, although the price tag for its development—upward of $100 billion—allows Gazprom little margin for error. _BW

The emergence of abundant tight gas reserves in North America, South America, China, the Levant, parts of Europe, and Southeast Asia suggests that in the not-too-distant future, reduced demand is likely to shake global gas markets even further. Russia will be forced to move to gas to liquids (GTL) production in order to convert its less valued gas into more valued liquids.

Gazprom performs many functions traditionally reserved for the state, including funding public works projects directly from its budget. It’s the only Russian company that is compelled to pay its tax bill monthly, since this revenue makes up the single largest portion of Russian gross domestic product (10 percent) and is critical to the basic workings of government. Gazprom is less a company than a public trust, one that enjoys special advantages in exchange for fulfilling official wishes.

...Europe’s dependence on Gazprom for natural gas gives the Kremlin power to leave millions in the cold should it choose to do so (as it did to Ukraine after pricing disputes in 2006 and 2009). A deep freeze in Russia this winter has increased domestic demand for fuel, producing a shortfall in natural gas supply to Europe. Over the last year, as European customers have been squeezed by surging gas prices (generating Gazprom’s record earnings), some of Gazprom’s Western clients have demanded arbitration. European Union antitrust investigators stormed Gazprom offices in Germany and the Czech Republic, seizing contracts. (Gazprom insists its contracts adhere to international law.) And officials in Brussels are debating the Third Energy Package, anti-monopoly legislation focused squarely on Gazprom’s ability both to transport and sell gas in the territory of the EU.

...Czarist-era geologists discovered gas on the Yamal Peninsula just before the 1917 Russian Revolution, though they didn’t possess the wherewithal to extract it. Through the years, the litany of upheaval that is Russia’s burden prevented the exploitation of such an asset. Engineers discovered the Bovanenkovo field in 1971, three years after the death of Vadim Bovanenko, a geophysicist who had served as the head of Yamal Oil and Gas Exploration, an arm of the gas ministry. But it was only under Putin that workers were finally able to began building infrastructure at Bovanenkovo in 2007. The date for initial gas delivery was postponed on several occasions, causing observers to wonder if the project would ever be realized. The startup date was then pushed up to July 2012, sparking a new round of questions. Did Gazprom foresee a spike in European demand? Were Nadym’s gas fields in far worse shape than anyone had imagined? It’s hard to know why Gazprom behaves the way it does. Company executives aren’t known for sharing information. Several Gazprom officials replied politely to my interview requests but provided little revelatory insight.

Sharing profits, however, is part of being a national champion. In the last year, Gazprom has slashed investments and more than doubled dividends, increasing the yield of the Russian stock market and padding state coffers. As Putin prepares to reassume the presidency for what could be another 12 years, his ruling United Russia party increasingly turns to Gazprom, less to wield power abroad than to shore up support at home. In October, Gazprom absorbed a selective doubling of the tax levied for the extraction of mineral resources, which will result in $10 billion of lost profits this year. This money will help balance the Russian budget and pay for popular social programs. _BW

Gazprom is a central pillar of Putin's power. But globally, the gas industry is changing, moving on to new technologies and new sources of natural gas. If Russia is unable to keep up, it will be left behind once again.

That would be dangerous for the wounded bear, currently struggling with low morale, capital flight, and demographic collapse. The potential conflict between China and Russia over the mineral wealth of Eastern Siberia looms larger in the distance with every weakening that Moscow experiences.

More on Inexpensive Catalyst Substitutes for Precious Metals

2012-02-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

Developing new catalysts derived from inexpensive minerals, instead of increasingly costly (and rare) precious metals, is an important area of research that involves several groups around the world. The next steps for the Cambridge researchers will be to investigate the activity of pyrite surfaces for strategically important industrial reactions, such as the manufacture of ammonia for fertilisers, the production of synthetic hydrocarbon fuels from renewable biomass, and the extraction of hydrogen for use in future fuel cell electric vehicles.

Dr [Marco] Sacchi added: "The necessity of finding reliable alternatives to overexploited catalytic materials - such as platinum, rhodium and gold - will soon become unavoidable. Experimental work is currently underway in our group, and we hope that our work will ultimately allow us to test the potential for catalytic application of a wide range of sulphidic and carbidic materials. In future, we aim to develop fruitful scientific collaborations with chemical engineering groups and with industrial partners." _Physorg

There is quite a long list of industrial and energy processes which are in need of cheaper and better catalysts.

The ability to cheaply and skillfully manipulate matter on the molecular scale is important to the transition to a more advanced and clean level of industrial operations. Catalysts are crude and early forms of nanoassemblers.

The goal of catalytic researchers - cum - nanotechnologists is to be able to use cheap and abundant inorganic materials to mimic the efficiency and selectivity of biological catalysts -- peptide enzymes. The inorganic mimics of peptide enzymes should be more robust, with a much wider range of temperature and pressure activities.

At this point, progress is extremely slow, since researchers are limited to a "trial and error" approach. As computational models improve, it is hoped that the process of developing cheap, efficient, and robust catalysts will become streaamlined.

Pennsylvania Opts for Abundant, Clean, Inexpensive Energy

2012-02-10T10:58:00.000-08:00

Obama's great green jobs initiative has fallen flat on its face. The only thing holding up Obama's shaky economy at this time is shale fracking -- a technology that Obama's energy starvationist regime has been trying to kill for years now (despite Obama's belated double-talk "in praise of" natural gas recently). What is it about energy suicide that Obama's regime in Washington DC finds so appealing?

Whatever it is, Pennsylvania legislators have rejected Obamaesque energy-starvationism, and are choosing the clean, abundant, inexpensive energy locked beneath their feet in shale and other rock formations. That was a smart choice. Particularly with elections coming up in November.

Green complaints about fracking reached a fever pitch over the past year, but Pennsylvania apparently wasn’t listening to them. The Wall Street Journal reports that the state legislature passed a bill on Wednesday that will make state laws more favorable to fracking, culminating a debate that has been raging ever since massive quantities of shale gas were discovered in the state in 2008.

The vote was close, and fell roughly along party lines. Republicans supported the bill because it promises cheaper energy and job creation in an economically depressed state; Democrats opposed it because of the potential for environmental damage and safety hazards.
Don’t doubt for a minute that legislators in other states in the region—many of which may also have shale gas deposits—are reading the tea leaves in this bill’s passage. The industrial states of the Rust Belt desperately need jobs, and judging by the rapid recovery of energy-rich states like North Dakota and Texas, fracking is beginning to look like their best bet for getting them. The historically warm relationship between the greens and local Democrats could grow downright chilly.

And the Big Chill may come sooner rather than later. With election season drawing near, the Rust Belt and its abundance of swing states will increasingly become the central battlefield of Red vs. Blue—and brown vs. green. _Walter Russell Mead

Evolution! Cheap New Catalysts to Replace Expensive Platinum

2012-02-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

Chang and his UC Berkeley colleagues worked with a common catalyst, molybdenite, that is less expensive than platinum and of increasing interest as a fuel cell catalyst. Composed of molybdenum and sulfur (MoS2), the material catalyzes reactions like the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen only at the edges, where triangles of molybdenum and two sulfur atoms stick out like pennants.

“These edge sites look like little MoSS triangles, and the triangular area does the business,” Chang said.

Using complex organic synthesis techniques, Chang said he and his colleagues created a small carbon framework to hold the MoSS triangle so that “every molecule has a discrete edge site that is a catalytically active unit.”

When lots of these single-molecule catalysts were dumped into acidic water and even seawater, they generated hydrogen for several days without letup.

In future research, Chang hopes to assemble billions of these molecules on a thin, ridged wafer, maximizing the number of catalytic sites for a given volume and boosting ultimate efficiency. _Berkeley

Substitution of less expensive materials and feedstocks in place of more expensive or scarce materials, is the way profits are made in industry and business. Human chemical engineers are reaching more deeply into the structure of molecules, becoming ever more deft at shaping matter in more useful and valued forms. To do this profitably, they need highly effective catalysts in very large quantities. Platinum is a very effective catalyst, but it is a precious metal -- extremely expensive, and hard on a profit line.

Chemists at UC Berkeley have achieved a breakthrough in the design of a new class of cheaper catalysts that promise to replace more expensive platinum.

Catalysts are materials ‑ typically metals ‑ that speed up chemical reactions and are widely used in the synthesis of chemicals and drugs. They also are employed in automobile catalytic converters to change combustion chemicals into less-polluting emissions and in fuel cells to convert water into hydrogen.

The problem with catalysts, however, is that chemical reactions occur only at edges of or defects in the material, while the bulk of the metal – often expensive platinum – is inactive and wasted.

In an article appearing this week in the journal Science, UC Berkeley chemists show how to construct a catalyst composed only of edges and demonstrate that it can catalyze the production of hydrogen from water as readily as the edges and defects in regular catalysts.

“This is a conceptual advance in the way we think about generating hydrogen, a clean burning fuel, from water, a sustainable source,” said Christopher Chang, associate professor of chemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at UC Berkeley. “Our new catalyst is just first generation, but the research gives us and the community a path forward to thinking about how to increase the density of functional active sites so that molecules and materials can be more effective catalysts.”

At the moment, creating these catalysts in the lab is not cheaper than using traditional catalysts, but efforts by Chang and others to simplify the process and create materials with billions of active sites on a ridged wafer much like a Ruffles potato chip could allow cheaper, commercially viable fuel cell catalysts. _Berkeley

The scientists in the link above discuss producing hydrogen from water, using sunlight and advanced catalysts. Other, perhaps more common uses for new types of catalysts probably include use in conversion of natural gas, coal, and biomass into liquid hydrocarbons and industrial chemicals.

The "clean green" meme has taken over much of politics, academia, and the media, but those who must actually work for a living and get the things done that allow society to continue functioning, understand that "clean green" is just a feel-good meme. For societies to prosper, they must utilise dense forms of energy such as hydrocarbons, nuclear, and pre-densified biomass.

The popular green delusion is destroying Germany and other parts of Europe at this time, and if the Obama energy starvationist regime gets its way, it will try to destroy the US as well. This would be a good time for US and European voters to wake up.

Widespread Dependence on Big Wind Will Bring Frostbite and Death

2012-02-09T05:06:00.000-08:00

People are waking up to the ludicrous logic underlying the big wind development schemes that have been foisted upon Europe and North America.

Russia's main gas-company, Gazprom, was unable to meet demand last weekend as blizzards swept across Europe, and over three hundred people died. Did anyone even think of deploying our wind turbines to make good the energy shortfall from Russia?

Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure, and the EU would have suffered an economic body blow to match that of Japan's tsunami a year ago. No electricity means no water, no trams, no trains, no airports, no traffic lights, no phone systems, no sewerage, no factories, no service stations, no office lifts, no central heating and even no hospitals, once their generators run out of fuel.

Modern cities are incredibly fragile organisms, which tremble on the edge of disaster the entire time. During a severe blizzard, it is electricity alone that prevents a midwinter urban holocaust. We saw what adverse weather can do, when 15,000 people died in the heatwave that hit France in August 2003. But those deaths were spread over a month. Last weekend's weather, without energy, could have caused many tens of thousands of deaths over a couple of days.

Why does the entire green spectrum, which now incorporates most conventional parties across Europe, deny the most obvious of truths? To play lethal games with our energy systems in order to honour the whimsical god of climate change is as intelligent and scientific as the Aztec sacrifice of their young. Actually, it is far more frivolous, because at least the Aztecs knew how many people they were sacrificing: no one has the least idea of the loss of life that might result from the EU embracing "green" energy policies.

Frau Merkel has announced that Germany is going to phase out nuclear power, simply because of the Japanese tsunami. Well, that is like basing water-collection policies in Rhineland-Westphalia on the monsoon cycle of Borneo. As I was saying last week, the Germans have a powerfully emotional attachment to everything that is "green", and an energy policy based on renewables will usually win German hearts. But it will not protect the owners of those hearts from frostbite and death due to exposure, for wind can often be not so much a Renewable as an Unusable, and also an Unpredictable, an Unstorable, and -- normally when it's very cold -- an Unmovable. _Independent.ie

Wind energy is not dispatchable -- in other words, society cannot rely upon it. And yet lefty-Luddite greens ensconced in governments across the western world continue forcing societies to depend upon the undependable. Reliable energy and power is a life or death matter. Somehow the reality of that situation should be impressed upon these green activists who have wormed their way into positions of control.

It may be that they are merely pursuing the fastest route to the "great human dieoff," an issue dear to the hearts of large numbers of green activists and philanthropists. But those of us who actually wish to live our lives, must get in the habit of telling them: "You first!"

Big Wind Shown In a Very Bad Light on the Big Screen

2012-02-08T08:27:00.000-08:00

A new documentary is out, which exposes the unhappy impact of a big wind project on a small, placid community in New York state. Sometimes, a simple factual narrative can hit with a much stronger impact than any number of numbers and facts.

Master Resource blog takes a look at three reviews of the new documentary. And it seems as if even lifelong media leftists may be vulnerable to the simple, factual narrative of "Windfall". We can only hope. Read more:

Three major reviews on WINDFALL–a 1 hour 22 minute expose that I previously reviewed at MasterResource–is another important development in the growing grassroot pushback against industrial wind parks. Such is a welcome advance from the photo-shopped image of wind as a benign, costless form of modern energy.

Here is Robert Ebert’s review of Windfall (February 1, 2012).
Driving from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, you pass through a desert terrain in which a new species has taken hold…. This wind farm is a good thing, yes? I’ve always assumed so, and driven on without much thought.

A documentary named “Windfall” has taken the wind out of my sails. Assuming it can be trusted (and many of its claims seem self-evident), wind turbines are a blight upon the land and yet another device by which energy corporations and Wall Street, led by the always reliable Goldman Sachs, are picking the pockets of those who can least afford it. There is even some question whether wind energy uses more power than it generates.

Director Laura Israel’s film is set almost entirely in Meredith, N.Y., a farming area of some 2,000 people in a beautiful Catskills landscape. A few dairy and beef farms still survive, but many of the residents are now retired people who have come here with their dreams. Most of them were once “of course” in favor of wind power, which offered the hope of clean, cheap energy. When an Irish corporation named Airtricity came around offering land owners $5,000, neighbors $500 apiece and the town a 2 percent cut of the revenue, that was a win-win, right?

So it appeared. But some residents, including a former editor for an encyclopedia and the final photo editor of Life magazine, began doing some research. The town board set up an energy advisory panel, and after a year of study, it recommended the town refuse the Airtricity offer. The town board rejected the panel’s finding. One of them reclused himself because of his personal holdings in energy. The others saw no conflict.

This generated a furor in Meredith, and we meet people who were best friends for years and now were no longer on speaking terms. We watch board meetings and meet lots of locals; the film bypasses the usual expert talking heads and relies on the personal experiences of these individuals.

I learned that wind turbines are unimaginably larger than I thought. It’s not a matter of having a cute little windmill in your backyard. A turbine is 400 feet tall, weighs 600,000 pounds, and is rooted in tons and tons of poured concrete. If one is nearby (and given the necessary density, one is always nearby), it generates a relentless low-frequency thrum-thrum-thrum that seems to emanate from the very walls of your home. The dark revolving shadows of its blades are cast for miles, and cause a rhythmic light-and-shade pulsing inside and outside your house. Living in an area with all that going, many people have developed headaches, nausea, depression and hypertension.

The effect on property values is devastating…. Nor do other living things like wind turbines. Their blades, revolving at 150 miles an hour, slice birds into pieces and create low-pressure areas that cause the lungs of bats to explode.

For the loss of its peace of mind, a community’s cut of the profits may be enough to pay for a pickup truck. Tax revenue drops because many of those (who can afford to) flee. Turbines sometimes topple over or catch fire (all firemen can do is stand and watch). And of course the local taxing agencies have been required to take advantage of sweetheart state and federal tax cuts, promoted by the industry’s lobbyists.

“Windfall” left me disheartened. I thought wind energy was something I could believe in. This film suggests it’s just another corporate flim-flam game. Of course, the documentary could be mistaken, and there are no doubt platoons of lawyers, lobbyists and publicists to say so. How many of them live on wind farms?
Andy Webster wrote in his New York Times review of Windfall, Turbines in the Backyard: The Sound and the Strobes (February 2, 2012):
We can all agree that energy independence is a worthy objective, right? Alternative energy sources like solar power can help free the United States from fossil fuels and the grip of unstable Persian Gulf states. And wind power — wait, not so fast, says “Windfall,” Laura Israel’s urgent, informative and artfully assembled documentary.

An account of rural Meredith, in upstate New York, when wind turbines came to town, the film depicts the perils of a booming industry and the bitter rancor it sowed among a citizenry.

In 2004 residents of this once-flourishing dairy center were approached by companies offering to pay a nominal fee to erect turbines on their property while insisting on confidentiality agreements (to keep competitors ignorant of costs). Economically beset, some people, like Ron and Sue Bailey, jumped at first. But others, like Keitha Capouya, now the town supervisor, dug into the research and sounded an alarm.

Turbines are huge: some are 40 stories tall, with 130-foot blades weighing seven tons and spinning at 150 miles an hour. They can fall over or send parts flying; struck by lightning, say, they can catch fire. Their 24/7 rotation emits nerve-racking low frequencies (like a pulsing disco) amplified by rain and moisture, and can generate a disorienting strobe effect in sunlight. Giant flickering shadows can tarnish a sunset’s glow on a landscape.

People in Lowville, N.Y., farther north, express despair on camera at having caved to the wind companies’ entreaties; Bovina, N.Y., banned turbines entirely. Meredith is riven by the issue, which pits the Planning Board against the Town Board and neighbor against neighbor. Former city dwellers escaping urban anxieties are surprised to see themselves as activists. Concerns like setback (the distance of turbines from a property line) are debated….

But the film’s implications are clear: The quest for energy independence comes with caveats. Developers’ motives must be weighed, as should the risks Americans are willing to take in their own backyard. Despite BP’s three-month blanketing of Gulf of Mexico beaches in crude oil; the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan; and the possible impact of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on the water table, energy companies remain eager to plunder nature’s bounty in pursuit of profit.
Andrew O’Hehir in Salon takes a second look at industrial wind.

In telling the story of a small-town political fight over wind power, Laura Israel’s fascinating documentary “Windfall” at first seems like another entry in the long laundry list of post-”Inconvenient Truth” doomsayer environmental films.

Indeed, “Windfall” has some of the rural, homespun feeling of Josh Fox’s Oscar-nominated “Gasland” which helped ignite a national debate over the natural-gas extraction method known as fracking. Israel’s film also offers a direct riposte to Bill Haney’s “The Last Mountain,” in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is seen promoting wind power as a clean alternative to the dirty and destructive combination of mountaintop-removal coal mining and coal-generated electricity.

Viewed through a long lens, “Windfall” is about much more than the hidden costs and unexpected side effects of wind-power generation, or about a citizens’ uprising in the tiny town of Meredith, N.Y., in the Catskill region 150 or so miles northwest of Manhattan. (Mind you, both are gripping stories.) It’s about the American tendency — and very likely the human tendency — to look for magic-bullet solutions to complicated social and economic problems, where none are available….

… people in Meredith and numerous other communities in the wind-friendly rural Northeast and Great Lakes region have discovered, living anywhere near those gargantuan wind-harnessing engines is quite a different matter. These days, the typical industrial wind turbine is around 400 feet high — the height of a 40-story building, or twice the length of a jumbo jet. The blades alone can weigh upward of 35 tons, and the entire assembly anywhere from 150 to 400 tons (resting on a platform of concrete and rebar, which itself may be 30 feet deep and weigh several hundred tons).

It’s an enormous construction site, culminating in a high-voltage electrical device, that emits a 24/7 whoppa-whoppa-whoppa noise and incessant low-frequency vibration, and is topped with a brilliant flashing light. By daylight, there’s the nightmarish strobe effect — the vast rotating shadow that falls across an entire neighborhood when the turbine is between you and the sun. (While the question of whether it’s actually unhealthful to live near a turbine is unresolved, it’s definitely unpleasant.) If your neighbor put one up in her backyard without asking permission, how would you feel? ….

People on both sides of the issue in Meredith assumed at first that the anti-turbine forces were an elitist minority, partly because the town board had always been dominated by the same landowning families, and partly because wind-power companies had signed people up to secret agreements that forbade them from discussing anything about the relationship.

What ensued was a fascinating lesson in democracy (and a version of the same lesson the Tea Party and its supporters may learn later this year). After 826 people — more than half of Meredith’s total population — signed a petition opposing the town board’s pro-development policy on wind turbines, it turned out that the people who thought of themselves as the “real” residents were in the minority, and the jig was up for the wind industry in this one tiny corner of America.

Yet as one newly elected board member reflects at the end of the film, nobody came out of this fight feeling good. A formerly harmonious community is now bitterly divided, and the Mitt Romney-style venture capitalists of wind power will just move on to the next town and sell their pseudo-green poisoned chalice to somebody else.

The heavy environmental footprint of industrial wind is now entering the mainstream. There will be pushback from the American Wind Energy Association and Big Wind as a result of Windfall. But the debate is now joined. _MasterResource

More reviews and press coverage of Windfall

Peak Oil Scare Fades with Coming Energy Glut

2012-02-07T09:53:00.000-08:00

20 Years Ago, They Said There Were Only 20 Years of Oil Left

When Daniel Lacalle, in his early 20s, took a job with Spanish oil company Repsol YPF SA in 1991, friends chided him for entering a field with no future. "They all said, 'Why do you want to do that? Don't you know only 20 years of oil is left in the whole world?'" he recalls.

Two decades and four energy crises later, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that more than 2 trillion barrels of untouched crude is still locked in the ground, enough to last more than 70 years at current rates of consumption. Technological advances enable companies to image, drill and shatter subterranean rocks with precision never dreamed of in decades past. Trillions of barrels of petroleum previously thought unreachable or nonexistent have been identified, mapped and in many cases bought and sold during the past half decade, from the boggy wastes of northern Alberta, to the arid mountain valleys of Patagonia, to Africa's Rift Valley.

"Betting against human ingenuity has been a mistake," says Lacalle, who today helps oversee $1.3 billion as a portfolio manager at Ecofin Ltd. in London. "The resource base is absolutely enormous, so much so that we will not run out of oil in my lifetime, your lifetime, our children's lifetimes or our grandchildren's lifetimes." _Bloomberg

Peak oil fears have been around for over 150 years, since the early days of modern oil discovery and production. Peak oil apocalyptics received a shot in the arm by King Hubbert in 1956, when he "discovered" a mathematical means of predicting how long it would take for oil fields to decline. Doom disciples glommed onto Hubbert like buzz flies on excrement, and peak energy doom has been just around the corner ever since.

It is true that oil prices have shot upward over the past decade or so, but that had far less to do with supply problems -- and far more to do with a huge jump in demand from emerging overpopulated nations like India and China -- than doomers are willing to admit. The high prices, of course, are stimulating a wide range of activities meant to meet the inflated demand.

As the shale oil & gas revolution has swept across North America, so is it due to sweep across China, parts of Europe, South America, the Levant, and scattered areas of Asia. With China possessing almost twice as much shale gas as the US, the clock is ticking for the middle kingdom to substitute domestic fuels for imported fuels -- slowly but surely.

China's future demand for fuels is anything but guaranteed. Beginning tomorrow, China will increase domestic prices for diesel and gasoline. And as China's leaders belatedly face the prospects of having to reform state banks and other state owned enterprises in the face of a collapsing construction bubble and dropping real estate values, slowing growth in the celestial kingdom will be reflected in reduced demand for imports of a wide assortment of commodities -- including fuels.

In Europe, the debt and demography debacles are slowly coming to a head. More reduced demand. In the US, the ongoing Obama war against the private sector of the economy in general, and energy producers in particular, will result in continued damping of opportunity in the world's largest economy -- and only military superpower. More reduced demand.

Global energy traders and speculators want to maintain high energy prices. Russia, Iran, and Venezuela are desperate to maintain high energy prices, with their very regimes' existence at threat. In fact, in order to drive oil prices up, Russia is willing to push Iran into global conflict. Why not? Russia's oil will sell for a premium in such a situation, while the rest of the world is forced to pay more. In addition, China gets to buy oil from Iran at bargain basement prices as long as the spigot remains open, which helps explain China's role in the slow motion disaster.

But here is the rub: High oil prices are high oil prices, for whatever reason. Such high prices spur the technological drive for alternative sources of oil, and for substitute forms of fuels and energy. High prices also spur the development of alternative feedstocks for oil-dependent industries such as plastics, lubricants, and industrial chemicals.

While it takes time to build the infrastructure for producing substitutes and alternatives, the process is already underway, and far beyond the early planning stages. The only thing that could shut down these alternatives is if OPEC opened the spigots wide, and flooded markets with cheap oil. But that is no longer possible, for political reasons, and reasons of regime survival across a wide array of oil dictatorships and quasi-dictatorships.

Very interesting times in energy markets.

Growing Global Grassroots Groundswell Against Big Wind

2012-02-06T08:12:00.000-08:00

Throughout the UK — indeed, all over the world — fights against large-scale wind-energy projects are raging. The European Platform against Windfarms lists 518 signatory organizations from 23 countries. The UK alone now has about 285 anti-wind groups. Last May, some 1,500 protesters descended on the Welsh assembly, the Senedd, demanding that a massive wind project planned for central Wales be stopped.

Although environmental groups like Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace claim that wind energy is the answer when it comes to slowing the rate of growth in carbon dioxide emissions, policymakers from Ontario to Australia are responding to angry landowners who don’t want 100-meter-high wind turbines built near their homes. _NYP Robert Bryce

In the article excerpted above and below, Robert Bryce discusses a new video documentary which exposes the growing conflict between real homeowners on the ground, and the heavily subsidised crony capitalism of big wind energy. As big wind projects impinge upon farmlands and residential areas, more people are beginning to learn that big wind and a quality life are not compatible -- at least when in close proximity.

Last September, CBC News reported that Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment has logged “hundreds of health complaints” about the thumping noise generated by the province’s growing fleet of wind turbines. In December, government officials in the Australian state of New South Wales issued guidelines that give residents living within two kilometers of a proposed wind project the right to delay, or even stop, the project’s development.

Back here in the States, many communities are passing ordinances that prohibit large-scale wind energy development. On Nov. 8, for instance, residents of Brooksville, Maine, voted by more than 2 to 1 in favor of a measure that bans all wind turbines with towers exceeding 100 feet in height. _Robert Bryce NYP

Warren Buffett will not be forced to live near the big wind projects he is helping to finance -- courtesy of hefty government subsidies and guarantees. Neither will the other wealthy, connected, and crony backers of big wind farms be forced to suffer the hazards and tortures of living close to monster wind turbines.

Small wind turbines -- meant to power rural pumps and off-grid households -- are fine as long as the owners and operators know what they are doing. But as big wind works its way deeper and deeper into a society's power structure, bad things are certain to happen. Not the least of which will be skyrocketing power costs to utility customers.

It is time for the people to revolt against the great green empire of lefty-Luddite dieoff faux environmentalists and crony capitalists. Time to take your lives back.

Big Wind: For Dummies, Chumps, and Greens

2012-02-05T07:52:00.001-08:00

...in periods of intense cold, when coal- and gas-fired power stations are relied upon the most, analysis of the weather has shown little to no wind available to generate power....even on “normal windy days” in the Netherlands use of wind turbines actually increased fossil fuel consumption and therefore increased CO2 emissions. _Hidden Costs of Wind

In order to produce any serious amount of electrical energy from wind plants, the turbines need to be spread out over a large area. Also, the turbines cannot just be placed close to each other because each of the turbines needs a significant amount of space to work properly due to turbulence factors. Multiple acres of land must therefore be bought along with the turbines and all other necessary equipments. As one can imagine, this would not only cost money, but would also require large amounts of free land in order to expand, which is why it is quite hard to expand them without destroying entire forests. The wind power projects would still be somewhat feasible if they had the potential to produce enough power to compensate for the costs associated with setting them up, unfortunately that is seldom the case because of the inconsistent nature of wind itself.

...Wind turbine towers are tall, slender constructions that are particularly susceptible to lightning, and since windy places often experience thunderstorms accompanied by lightning, the result could be very expensive. What this means is that not only will it require frequent investments in order to repair or change the damaged parts, but money must also be spent in order to safely dispose of the invalid machineries in an environmentally friendly way. This would be another reason as to why wind energy plants turn out to be too expensive, even in the long run. _Disadvantages of Big Wind

January 2012 Civitas Report: Electricity Costs: The Folly of Wind Power (PDF)

Destructive Effects of Big Wind on Economies

Basic Primer on Wind Power Basics and Shortcomings

Al Fin was once an advocate of big wind energy. But once an honest and intelligent person opens himself to the facts, it becomes very difficult to support big wind power on any basis whatsoever. Unless, of course, you are a big developer or investor in government subsidised wind farms. In that case, there are $billions to be made, without the need to provide any useful power to the public, whatsoever. A neat scam, if you can live with yourself. Just ask Warren Buffett.

Update: 7Feb12_ More on this topic in a long and informative article from Watts Up With That?!?!?

Leftist Greens Have Little to Offer But Oft-Falsified Predictions

2012-02-03T10:03:00.000-08:00

... in the name of averting global economic disaster, concerned greens have been pushing the very policies most likely to cause it. Driving up energy prices, discouraging consumption, increasing regulation, rationing resources: these are not, I think we can all agree, methods traditionally associated with getting an economy out of a depression.

...‘The world has produced about one trillion barrels of oil since the start of industry in the 19th century. Currently, it is thought that there are at least five trillion barrels of petroleum resources, of which 1.4 trillion is sufficiently developed and technically and economically accessible to count as proved.’

And that’s just oil. We haven’t got on to the miracle of shale gas yet, found in such abundance in the US that energy costs have plummeted... _Spectator

Instead of global warming, more scientists are beginning to see signs of a coming cooling trend. In the face of colder winters, green platitudes about lower consumption and less carbon use are less than cold comfort -- they are a deadly hazard to society in general, when adopted by politicians and intellectual celebrities at the highest levels.

Bild reports that in Rome, Italy, school was called off today because of the intense cold and the city expects 15 cm of snow overnight.

In Serbia, over 6 feet of snow have fallen over the last few weeks. In Turkey heavy snows have have blanketed much of the country, with 50cm falling in Istanbul on Wednesday.

At Atatürk-Flughafen in Istanbul 180 flights were cancelled.

According to the BBC: “In Italy, weather experts say it is the coldest week for 27 years.”

In the Urals and Siberia, the temperature fell to -40C while in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, a forecaster told Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency the wind-chill factor meant the real temperature was down to -52C, even though the air temperature was -35C.”

Gas and electricitry supply have collapsed in some areas, leaving many to shiver.

Bild reported Thursday that a new cold record had been set in Finland: minus 39°C was recorded in Northern Finland.

In Eastern Germany, temperatures are forecast to plummet to minus 20°C in the days ahead. According to Helmut Malewski of the German Weather Service: “No warm-up is in sight for the coming 8 days.” _NoTricks

In an era of global cooling, prohibitions against the use of oil, gas, coal, and nuclear power make very little sense -- although they make a great deal of sense to green leftists of the dieoff persuasion.

Here are some historical predictions of peak energy, to consider:

Here’s what Lord Kelvin had to say on the subject of another scarce resource, back in 1902: ‘The enormous amount of coal required to run our great ocean steamships, our leviathans of the deep, and the innumerable factories of our cities is making such inroads upon the available store that nature cannot forever supply the demand. When all the coal of the earth is used, what then?’

Twenty years later, the situation had grown more dire still. US president Warren Harding’s Coal Commission, having consulted 500 experts, concluded: ‘Already the output of [natural] gas has begun to wane. Production of oil cannot long maintain its present rate.’ Then in 1956, another renowned expert called M. King Hubbert declared that oil reserves were far more limited than was generally recognised; in the US supplies would peak between 1965 and 1970. Sure enough US oil production did indeed peak in 1970. Woah! How spookily prescient was that?

Actually, not very. Last year, for the first time since the 1940s, the US became a net exporter of oil — helped by such discoveries as the Bakken shale beneath North Dakota, which is reckoned to have between 4 billion and 24 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Around the world, despite a drilling rate of around 93 million barrels of oil a day, the quantity of known reserves at the end of each year is increasing, not decreasing.
_Spectator

Predictions of catastrophe are flexible. One can use peak resources, peak energy, peak oil . . . One can conjure doom from global warming, global cooling, pollution, overpopulation . . . Yes, very flexible. Eventually, if one were more intelligent, he might actually start looking a bit deeper.

Below the Radar: The Race to Bring Gas to Liquids to the Well Head

2012-02-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

With record lows in the natural gas markets, companies are offering natural gas assets at very attractive pricing. "We want to demonstrate the enormous potential in stranded North American gas reserves; that will only be possible when industry understands the market potential in converting those reserves to liquids at the surface. Currently the industry focus is finding and developing natural gas liquids below ground, but few really understand the financial potential unlocked by small scale conversion of existing gas to liquids with GasTechno above ground," says Walter Breidenstein, [Gas Technologies] CEO. "Our industry studies have been completed and all the economic and technical models are developed. Our goal in the Early Adopter Program is to open up our expertise and demonstrate what we have proven over the last several years in this growing sector." _Marketwatch

A third mini-GTL maker is moving into the "early adoption" phase. Gas Technologies is bringing its "Gas Techno" mini-GTL to 7 preferred customers for early adoption and trial. Gas Technologies joins Oxford Catalysts / Velocys, and CompactGTL in the race to bring miniature gas to liquids to currently undervalued stranded gas resources.

GasTechno's focus is the conversion and monetization of flared or stranded natural gas. The company is also evaluating and developing processes for methanol-to-diesel (MTD), methanol-to-gasoline (MTG), methanol-to-jet fuel, methanol-to-olefins (MTO), glycols, amines, fertilizers and other bolt-on processes that provide exceptional ROIs and high profit margins. Securing a "flare to fuels" partner with similar interests is a high priority for the program. Operators with gas resources at landfills and biodigesters are also targeted.

...Deploying a GasTechno plant on stranded reserves converts stranded gas to liquid product that sells at market prices trending well above pipeline prices. By converting and marketing stranded reserves at improved pricing, this strategy has the potential to improve asset valuations at more than 5 to 10 times by exploiting provisions in the modernized SEC oil and gas reporting requirements that permit the use of "alternative product pricing" to value proven reserves.
_Marketwatch

This general technology is also applicable in part to biomass to liquids (BTL) and coal to liquids (CTL). In other words, scalable production of high value liquid fuels and chemicals from inexpensive feedstocks, is rapidly coming within reach of more and more enterprises.

Consider what the global energy marketplace will look like, when even small communities can afford to own and operate their own small-scale fuels and chemicals refinery, using whatever abundant feedstock is closest or more affordable?

Fast Nuclear Reactor Technology Still Alive in UK

2012-02-02T09:21:00.001-08:00

Nuclear Street
Despite rumours to the contrary, Britain has not rejected the fast reactor concept as presented by GE Hitachi (PRISM). Talks will continue for at least 6 months, according to Nuclear Decommissioning Authority officials.

Britain's large stockpile of nuclear waste includes more than 100 tonnes of plutonium and 35,000 tonnes of depleted uranium. The plutonium in particular presents a security risk as a potential target for terrorists and will cost billions to dispose of safely...The engineering firm GE Hitachi has submitted [a] ... proposal based on their Prism fast reactor, which could consume the plutonium as fuel while generating electricity.

"It's a very elegant idea that we should try and use [the waste] as efficiently as possible. I definitely find it an attractive idea", said Prof David MacKay, Decc's chief scientific adviser.

Recent news reports have suggested this proposal has been rejected by the government and Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) on the grounds of being too far from commercial viability.

However, the Guardian has confirmed that talks between GE Hitachi, Decc and the NDA are continuing. MacKay told the Guardian: "My position as chief scientific adviser at Decc is that I think Prism is an interesting design and I'd like to see [details about its credibility] worked out." A spokesperson for the NDA said: "The statement that the NDA has rejected the GE Hitachi Prism reactor is completely without foundation." He added that the current round of discussions "might last about six months". _Guardian

Current commercial nuclear reactors generate large amounts of so-called nuclear waste, which is actually extremely valuable nuclear fuel. Advanced generations of nuclear reactors will be able to burn this "waste" as an integral part of their fuel.

If the material we have seen until now as waste is instead seen as fuel, it has the potential to solve three problems at once: the UK's contribution to climate change, possible future energy shortfalls and a significant component of the massive bill - and massive headache - associated with cleaning up the current nuclear mess.

The technology with the potential to solve these problems is the fast reactor, ideally the integral fast reactor (IFR), which I wrote about in December. It exploits the fact that conventional nuclear power plants use just 0.6% of the energy contained in the uranium that fuels them. IFRs, once loaded with nuclear waste, can, in principle, keep recycling it until only a small fraction remains, producing energy as they do so.

The remaining waste is both unusable for anyone who might hope to make a weapon from it and presents much less of a long-term management problem, as its components have half-lives of tens, not millions, of years. An IFR plant could melt down only by breaking the laws of physics: if the fuel pins begin to overheat, they expand, stopping the fission reaction.

GE Hitachi has offered to build a fast reactor to consume the plutonium stockpile at Sellafield, though not yet the whole kit (the integral fast reactor). It has offered to do it within five years, and to carry the cost if it doesn't work out. This is the proposal the government is now considering. I would like to see it go further and examine the case for the full works: an integral fast reactor (incorporating a reprocessing plant) that generates much more energy from the waste pile. _G.Monbiot

Monbiot is a curious example of the growing number of leftist greens who have adopted advanced nuclear energy as a viable path forward for human civilisations. While still believing in the orthodoxy of carbon hysteria, such pro-nuclear greens have seemingly rejected the "dieoff.orgiasm" of their brother and sister greens.

As for the integral fast reactor which Monbiot mentions, it is an idea that needs to be developed and put into commercial use as soon as safely possible. A well-planned and phased move from light water reactors to integral fast reactors, molten salt thorium reactors, and gas cooled reactors -- at all scales from the MW to the GW ranges -- would provide a safe and solid energy foundation under future societies and civilisations.

Wikipedia Integral Fast Reactor

IFRs Q&A

Massive Iraqi Oil Reserves Due to Come Online In 7 Years

2012-02-02T00:06:00.000-08:00

Production has rebounded from just over 1 million barrels per day after the invasion to nearly 3 million today. Baghdad's 11 international oil contracts promise to deliver a total of more than 13 million barrels per day within seven years -- a figure that would make Iraq the largest oil producer, ever. _FP

By some reckonings, Iraq has the world's largest oil reserves, with massive oil fields that have barely been touched. And since Iraq -- like so much of the Persian Gulf region -- has been so under-explored in comparison with North America, other giant oil fields could lie waiting to be discovered.

But is the world ready for another 10 million barrels of oil per day, every day? Probably not.

In October 2009, Shahristani signed a deal -- without parliamentary approval -- with oil giant BP to rehabilitate the Rumaila oil field. Then came ExxonMobil, with a contract for the 8.7 billion-barrel West Qurna Phase 1 field. Those two fields hold more proven oil reserves than the entire United States has, and if the terms of just those massive contracts are met, Iraq will reach more than half of Saudi Arabia's current production before the end of this decade.

...if Iraq's fields were to increase production any further right now, the oil would have nowhere to go. There aren't enough pipelines, storage tanks, refineries, and export terminals. Iraq is building many of these facilities, but probably not fast enough for the production rates that the state is now contractually obliged to support.

Nor is it clear whether world markets could stand so much new supply. If Iraq were actually able to increase production to the unprecedented height of 13 million barrels per day within seven years, the price of oil would likely drop just as steeply. _FP

Demand for oil in the developed world has been declining for years now. Demand for oil in emerging markets has been artificially boosted by subsidies and ill-conceived stimulus programs -- particularly in China. It is unclear how much longer such artificial demand can be sustained.

If you somehow pump out another 10 mmbd onto the market, some very bad things could happen to profits for oil producers such as Russia and OPEC. Perhaps that is why wealthy factions inside Saudi Arabia have been helping to finance Sunni Muslim terrorists to disrupt oil production in Iraq and elsewhere in Shia and non-Sunni Arab dominated areas. Too much oil production can be bad for an oil dictator's profits.

Gas to Petrochemicals Puts Downward Pressure on Oil Demand

2012-02-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

Image Source
Crude oil is used for a wide range of purposes. As economical substitutes are found to replace crude oil in its various uses, demand for oil tends to decrease. This is exactly what is beginning to happen for the industrial uses of oil, including the huge global petrochemicals and plastics industry.

In the US, ethane taken from "wet gas" will soon be "cracked" to the lucrative plastics precursor ethylene. Both Aither and Shell are racing to build expensive new ethane crackers in the US natural gas regions.

An ethane cracker converts natural gas into the bedrock elements of plastic, such as ethane, ethylene and polyethylene, and opens two doors to a global market: selling ethane-related products to existing plastic manufacturers, and attracting ethane-based manufacturers.

"Look at any (ethane) cracker in the world and you'll see at least one plastic manufacturing plant next to it," said Paul Badger, professor of chemistry at Robert Morris University.
The world of plastic is an intriguing market to enter.

"Ethylene is the No. 1 petrochemical in the world and is in fairly high demand ... The market fluctuates at times, but the demand for plastic will always be there," Badger said. _TimesOnline

In the Persian Gulf region, gas-rich Qatar is increasing its petrochemical production from natural gas to take advantage of new demands and improved technologies.

Qatar can capitalise on a number of competitive advantages in the chemicals sector, most importantly the availability of the world's third-largest gas reserves, which provide low-cost domestic energy and feedstock, as well as smaller, but significant, crude oil resources.

These have led to the development of the petrochemicals and fertiliser industries in particular. When natural gas is processed, it generally produces around 90% methane and 10% ethane. Methane is used in the production of ammonia and urea fertilisers, while ethane is a feedstock for many petrochemicals. _Zawya

In fact, Qatar is spending roughly $25 billion to expand its petrochemical production.

We should also mention here that Qatar's operating Pearl gas to liquids (GTL) plant, financed and operated by Shell, is on track to generate $6 billion in profits per year, from the production of diesel from gas, lng, and other petrochemicals.

The Earth's complement of natural gas has barely been tapped. And once safe and economical means of tapping into the enormous gas hydrate resource have been developed, we will see an even more rapid global rush into GTL and petrochemicals from gas.

The substitution of alternative fuels and feedstocks in place of crude oil has just begun. And the economics of $100 a barrel oil -- despite the rapid devaluation of the Obama dollar -- favours an accelerated upward curve in new substitution technologies and applications. This can only put a downward pressure on demand for crude oil.

"Imminent Peak Oil Orthodoxy" Under Threat in the Age of Fracking

2012-02-01T06:36:00.000-08:00

Fracking and horizontal drilling are revolutionising the global tight gas industry. Global gas markets are beginning to quake as a result. Could the same revolutionary technologies that are shaking the gas dictatorships soon present the same threat to the oil dictatorships, and their friend and ally, the peak oil orthodoxy?

The U.S. oil market could be on the verge of its own fracking revolution, similar to what the natural-gas market is already experiencing. As a result, domestic production is now projected to rise significantly over the coming decades, reducing the relative share of imports in U.S. oil consumption.

...The same controversial technologies used to recover natural gas from deep-rock formations are now increasingly being used to extract oil. Oil is already being produced from shale at several locations throughout the U.S., most notably the Bakken shale in North Dakota.
As Jim Mulva, the chief executive officer of ConocoPhillips, recently said, “The revolution has spread to domestic oil production. And it may track the path it followed with natural gas. We just don’t know yet. But it looks promising.” _BloombergSo far, the US and Canada have been the main beneficiaries of the fracking revolution. But huge tight oil & gas deposits lie undeveloped from China to Argentina to Israel to Poland. In fact, no one knows where large tight oil & gas deposits will be discovered next. The geology of these deposits is somewhat different from conventional oil & gas geology. There is still a lot to learn for both discovery and production.

In 2010, oil companies produced 5.5 million barrels per day of domestic crude. The Energy Information Administration estimates that figure will rise to 6.7 million barrels per day by 2020, mostly because of “continued development of tight oil, in combination with the ongoing development of offshore resources in the Gulf of Mexico.” The U.S. has not produced as much as 6.7 million barrels per day since 1994.

The mirror image of this projected increase in U.S. production of oil and natural gas is a decline in reliance on imports. In 2005 and 2006, about 60 percent of the liquid fuel used in the U.S. was imported. By 2010, that share fell to 50 percent, and it continues to decline. The Energy Information Agency expects it to drop to 37 percent by 2035.

Other analysts believe that even this projection is too conservative because tight-oil production could rise faster than expected. Every time projections are revised, the numbers seem to move higher.

So, will this push oil prices down overall, as shale gas has done to natural-gas prices? For years, analysts have worried that known oil reserves have peaked, so that prices will keep rising. Tight oil could change that dynamic. As the energy analyst Seth Kleinman, a colleague of mine at Citigroup Inc., argues, the price effects of the shift to tight oil “may be more immediate and subtle than the supply-and-demand balances hint at.”

The year ahead, he says, “could really see the death of the peak-oil hypothesis, something that has been underpinning a lot of the structural bullishness on oil.” _Bloomberg

Of course, Russia feels most threatened by these revolutionary developments, followed closely by Iran and Venezuela. As energy customers of these vicious and kleptocratic energy dictatorships discover their own energy resources which can be developed domestically, the upper hand will shift to the customer, away from the extortionate energy dictatorship.

President Obama and much of the worldwide big-money green enterprise are marching in lock-step with Russia and the energy dictatorships, in an effort to kill the fracking revolution. They are joined by much of the "imminent peak oil orthodoxy," which is likewise threatened by the promise of a massive gush of new oil resources. It is a political war, being fought over the prospects of "political peak oil," the only kind of peak oil you will ever see.

As a postscript, it has been interesting to see President Obama attempt to claim credit for the fracking revolution, in the name of big government. Here are the facts of the matter, which reveal Mr. Obama once again as being somewhat loose with the truth.

Oil Dictatorships Require High Oil Prices: Can They Hold?

2012-01-31T09:05:00.000-08:00

Oil dictatorships from Saudi Arabia to Iran to Venezuela to Russia have grown dependent upon $100 a barrel oil, in order to placate their people with handouts, social welfare programs, and Potemkin Village styles of "prosperity and power." But there is a very real question as to whether these heretofore "masters of the oil universe" will be able to hold the line on oil prices over the long term.

Only three years ago, it was thought that Saudi Arabia – the largest oil exporter and second largest producer in the world – could generate large budget surpluses with oil at $70/barrel. In recent weeks, new estimates state that the country would need oil at $75/barrel just to balance the budget – never mind trying to post a budget surplus. The country’s oil minister has stated that the nation would work to stabilize prices at the $100/barrel level – which is a first. Saudi Arabia has traditionally held the role of OPEC moderate while Iran and Venezuela have been hawks who favor higher oil prices. Saudi Arabia has always balanced its need for oil revenues with the knowledge that if left unchecked, high oil prices have tended to precede recessions.

The reason for this change in policy would most likely be due to the country’s response to the uprisings across the Middle East last year. Fearing unrest, the government of Saudi Arabia has unveiled a huge increase to public spending that totals almost $130 billion. The Saudi commitment to stabilizing oil in the $100/barrel range should serve as a wakeup call for consumers and investors alike.

...it is not just Saudi Arabia that needs high oil prices to meet its spending commitments. Russia needs prices of over $100/barrel to balance its budget. Together, Saudi Arabia and Russia account for a little over 20% of the world’s oil production. It would be hard to argue therefore that these two major oil producers would be willing to bring down prices. _Financial Post

Of course, the higher the oil price, the more incentive for wildcatters and other entrepreneurs to come up with new sources of crude, and new substitutes for crude oil in all of its wide and various application markets.

One of the sources for new oil is shale oil -- a source with massive potential for new oil supply. Another source is the arctic.

“The race is on for positions in the new oil provinces.” That starting-gun quote was fired last week by Tim Dodson, executive vice-president of the Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil. The ‘new oil provinces’ are in the Arctic, which brims with untapped resources amounting to 90 billion barrels of oil, up to 50 trillion cubic metres of natural gas and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to a 2008 estimate by the US Geological Survey. That’s about 13% of the world’s technically recoverable oil, and up to 30% of its gas — and most of it is offshore.

...On 17 January, Moe awarded 26 production licences for developed offshore oil areas in the Norwegian and Barents Sea to companies including Statoil, Total, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. And the settlement in 2010 of a long-running row between Norway and Russia over their Arctic maritime boundary will allow more exploration in formerly disputed parts of the Barents Sea (see ‘Frozen fuels’). “There’s an ocean of new opportunities that we will grasp with both hands,” says Moe. _Nature

Of course, no matter how much oil & gas the USGS thinks is in the Arctic, there is certain to be much more. As long as prospectors are looking mainly "under the streetlights," they will find only a small portion of the world's oil.

Of course the oil and gas resource shrinks in relative magnitude next to the massive global methane hydrate resource, which is merely waiting for smart and wise humans to find safe and efficient ways to scoop it up.

More on the desperate need of oil dictatorships to maintain high oil prices.

It is quite easy for peak oil doomers to misapprehend the reasons for high oil prices and "stalled" oil production levels. That is because their brains can only hold one idea: peak oil doom. To consider the dozens of other more important factors involved, would entail a massive and intolerable cognitive dissonance, which must be avoided at all costs.

Can Canada Leverage Its Hydrocarbon Wealth to Create An Abundant Future Based Upon Advanced Energy Sources?

2012-01-30T12:07:00.000-08:00

Canadians are understandably upset at the US in general, and at US President Obama in particular. Obama's abrupt and corrupt killing of the Keystone XL pipeline sent an unfriendly message of contempt and disregard to the US' neighbors to the north.

While the US Republican Congressional members are attempting to devise a way to approve the Keystone XL pipeline's completion and border crossing, Canadians are forced to contemplate other markets for their increasingly valuable oil sands product. After all, oil sands production has been ramped up in anticipation of cheap & ready pipeline transport to the south, all the way to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. With the destruction of that rational plan by the congenitally feckless Obama, China is forced to look to China and India as alternative markets:

While the media fixates on the political spin around the Obama government's rejection of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, there's another, more important element to this story that has been grossly underplayed:... in Asia...demand for energy of all kinds will continue to soar, according to BP's 20-year forecast....

``By 2030 China and India will be the world's largest and third-largest economies and energy consumers, jointly accounting for about 35 per cent of global population, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and energy demand,'' the report says.

``Rapid economic development means industrialisation, urbanisation, and motorisation. Over the next 20 years China and India combined (will) account for all the net increase in global coal demand, 94 per cent of net oil demand growth, 30 per cent of gas and 48 per cent of the net growth in non-fossil fuels.''

No, that's not a typo. Let me repeat that: over the next 20 years, BP says China and India will account for 94 per cent of the net worldwide increase in oil demand. _Canada.com

The author goes on to warn of Canada's dependency on the US as an export market, at a time when US consumption of imported oil continues to decline.

Canada itself needs to also think about what kind of energy infrastructure it wishes to build for itself, using the oilsands wealth as a springboard. In the medium and long-term, advanced nuclear fission (and later, fusion) technologies make the most sense. Canada has rich ore resources for production of nuclear fuels, and with rational recycling and breeding technologies, the resource could last almost indefinitely, in practical terms.

Wisely, Canadian utilities are beginning to look toward building their nuclear infrastructure:

Utilities in Canada are expressing interest in the Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized waterreactor (PWR) and the Westinghouse Small Modular Reactor, a 200 MWe class integral PWR currently under development that is suited for smaller electrical grids, distributed generation, and process heat requirements. _Power-Eng

In an attempt to create a more sustainable oil sands industry, engineers are looking for ways to substitute geothermal heat in place of natural gas, for the production of oil sands. The key factor is industrial heat, which can be provided in multiple ways.

Al Fin energy analysts prefer the use of gas-cooled nuclear reactors for long term in situ production of oil sands, oil shales, heavy oils, and for even more unconventional fuels such as coal to liquids (CTL) and gas to liquids (GTL). Canada is rich in several hydrocarbon resources which could be economically converted to high quality fuels and high value chemicals, using process heat from gas cooled nuclear reactors.

All of these projects will require significant capital, which can be at least partially provided from export profits derived from sales of oil sands. The key issue is to convert a modern-day source of export wealth into a long term foundation for energy abundance, industrial sustainability, and commercial viability.

Neither large-scale wind power nor big solar power are rational foundations for a prosperous Canadian future, as both of these green approaches are inherently unreliable, expensive, intermittent, difficult to manage, and lead to exponential increases in customer energy bills.

Small Modular Reactors and Obama's Kiss of Death

2012-01-29T09:22:00.000-08:00

The Obama administration’s next move in boosting energy techonlogy will be nearly $500 million in support of small modular reactors. Individually, these nuclear reactors would produce less energy than traditional reactors, but could be used more flexibly and operate more efficiently. _PopularMechanics

President Obama's promotion of big wind and big solar has been a huge bust, and the US President is widely becoming known as the enemy of reliable forms of energy for his administration's attacks on hydrocarbon and nuclear power -- including his recent killing of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Mr. Obama is seem more commonly as an ideological extremist rather than as someone who wants the best of America and for Americans. In order to change that perception before the November 2012 general elections, Obama's speechwriters included some words of praise and promise for nuclear power in the president's latest State of the Union address. The promise is for $500 million in support from the Department of Energy, for development of small nuclear reactors. But the important thing is what happens behind the scenes, when the cameras are off. Americans have very little reason to be hopeful, based on the actions of this president.

Regardless, here is a brief look at the small nuclear reactor technologies which will be considered by the DOE for support:

An SMR would generate one-tenth to one-third the energy of a conventional reactor. Rather than producing 1000 megawatts of electricity, for example, an SMR might produce 300Mw or less. For example, the company NuScale Power is developing a 45Mw SMR that would be able to supply electricity to 45,000 American homes for a year, making it well suited for smaller towns and cities where a conventional reactor would be overkill. And because SMRs are modular, they’re scalable. The power plant can install additional SMRs as electricity demand grows.

There are three main varieties of SMR in development.

Light-Water SMRs

These are basically a scaled-down version of the light-water reactors already working in the United States. Inside a light-water reactor, heat from the uranium core turns water into steam, which spins turbines that generate electricity. The same thing happens in a light-water SMR, with a few modifications.

Unlike traditional reactors, which position the generators outside the reactor, some SMRs, such as the Babcock & Wilcox 125Mw "mPower" reactor, locate the generators inside the reactor. John Kelly, the energy department’s deputy assistant secretary for nuclear reactor technologies, says this makes manufacturing easier and eliminates the piping between reactors and generator, which is a safety liability. (If a pipe breaks, it becomes difficult to deliver coolant back to the hot core.)

Some light-water SMRs also incorporate what engineers call passive safety features—in an emergency, they could cool a reactor core even if the power goes out. At Fukushima Daiichi in Japan, the site of last year’s post-tsunami nuclear disaster, the plant relied on electrically driven pumps to deliver water to the hot core and cool it down. When the power went out and diesel backups failed, operators had to resort to desperate measures to prevent total catastrophe.

By contrast, small reactors such as the Westinghouse SMR would rely on gravity and thermodynamics to circulate coolants. As the radioactive core heats the water surrounding it, that hot water becomes less dense and flows upward toward the heat exchangers that turn the heat into electricity. As the water loses heat to the exchangers, it cools, becomes more dense, and falls back toward the core—no electricity required.

"The new plans are elegant in their simplicity," Genoa says. "Passive features allow reactors to go without operator interaction, and without pumps to move water around." To further improve on safety, several SMRs are meant to be installed and operated underground.

The light-water SMRs in development have been slightly less efficient than normal reactors, meaning less of the uranium’s potential energy is turned into electricity. But small light-water reactors may eventually deliver electricity that is less expensive than what larger reactors can produce simply because construction and installation costs would be lower. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects to approve the first light-water SMR power plants in the early 2020s.

Gas-Cooled SMRs

The idea behind gas-cooled reactors, Genoa says, is to rule out even the possibility of a meltdown. "It is physically impossible for the reactor to get hot enough to damage the fuel," he says. That’s because rather than using water as a coolant, gas-cooled SMRs would use helium.

As water boils it can build up pressure inside a reactor. Under extreme heat it can also react with zirconium alloys in the core. At Fukushima Daiichi, water-zirconium reactions caused a hydrogen explosion that blew the roofs off several reactors.

But unlike water, helium doesn’t boil or react. This allows the gas-cooled reactor to operate safely at temperatures up to 1000 degrees C, which increases the reactor’s efficiency. While a light-water reactor typically extracts roughly 34 percent of its core’s potential energy, a gas-cooled reactor would operate at more than 40 percent efficiency. A gas-cooled reactor developed by the Japanese Atomic Energy Research Institute has achieved 45 percent efficiency, and General Atomics’ Modular Helium Reactor achieves up to 47 percent.

To accommodate the high heat needed to achieve such high efficiencies, engineers must modify other elements of the gas-cooled reactor. The fuel requires a heat-tolerant carbon coating, for example, and metal parts of the reactor are replaced with ceramics, Genoa says. Because gas-cooled reactors require these new technologies, the Nuclear Regulatory Council estimates they won’t come on line until the mid-2020s.

Fast Reactors

Normal nuclear reactors use what are called moderators to slow down neutrons and control the chain reactions that happen during fission. That’s because the "fast neutrons" created when uranium splits are less likely to cause fission in the neighborhood—and keep the chain reaction going—than slightly slower neutrons are.

Fast reactors, though, are optimized for fast neutrons, which allows them to extract 60 times more energy from uranium than a typical light-water reactor can. That also means that fast reactors can digest the nuclear waste of other reactors, reducing the waste’s radiotoxicity while extracting energy in the process.

Fast reactors already in development include Argonne National Lab’s 175Mw reactor, Advanced Reactor Concept’s sodium-cooled ARC-100, and the 25Mw Hyperion Power Module. But because uranium is still in abundant supply, and because fast reactors can be used to breed weapons-grade plutonium, these SMRs are not economical (or legal) at this point. _Popular Mechanics

The gas cooled reactors and the fast reactors are the more advanced types of reactors -- and are thus less likely to receive significant federal support.

Light water reactors will probably receive the bulk of any of the promised funds which are actually delivered. Any companies working on SMRs which also have close ties to the Obama campaign will be first in line for any disbursed funding.

As Brian Westenhaus explained in a recent article, this promised funding to come from the DOE is no indication that a different federal agency -- the NRC -- will actually work in good faith to get the SMR designs licensed and the actual facilities built.

In fact this entire episode is dressed up more like a campaign promise and brush-off than as a genuine effort to promote a critically important set of technologies. In Obama's mind, if he has said something in a speech, then he deserves credit from voters for having already done the thing in reality.

Most perceptive people understand that although Mr. Obama talks a lot, he does very little, except to promote himself and his pet causes -- which have nothing to do with reliable energy or with a smoothly functioning and prosperous private sector economy. In other words, the smart bet is that very little of worth will come from Obama's promises for funding of small modular reactors. Perhaps one or two of the dozen or so companies working on SMR projects will ever receive any funds -- the company or companies best placed in the ranks of political supporters for the president, perhaps.

Which means that if this critical accomplishment is to ever get done, it will have to get done despite false promises from this president and despite the energy obstructionism from Obama's Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the dozens of other bureaucracies of mediocrity that have grown and proliferated under this pro-big government, anti private sector president.

A Contrarian Take on Peak Oil Doom and Peak Everything Doom

2012-01-29T00:02:00.000-08:00

In 1971, the Limits to Growth team forecast that the world’s supply would run out 10 years from today. And yet according to renowned oil analyst Daniel Yergin, technology advances and new discoveries have allowed oil reserves worldwide to keep growing. For every barrel of oil produced in the world from 2007 to 2009, 1.6 barrels of new reserves were added. The World Energy Council reports that global proven recoverable reserves of natural gas liquids and crude oil amounted to 1.2 trillion barrels in 2010. That’s enough to last another 38 years at current usage. Add in shale oil, and that’s an additional 4.8 trillion barrels, or a century and a half’s worth of supply at present usage rates. Tar sands, including some huge Canadian deposits, add perhaps 6 trillion barrels more.

We’re awash in more than oil. One British study from the 1930s predicted an acute global shortage of copper “within a generation.” Not so much. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates global land-based copper resources to be 3 billion tons or more—the equivalent of 185,000 years at current production. That’s almost double the estimate of resources from 11 years ago, which means the number may have further to climb. And when we do finally run out of land-based supplies, there are still the undersea sources to use up.

The long-term picture for phosphate, vital for fertilizer production, is also reassuring, despite a price spike in 2008: Estimated global phosphate reserves climbed from 11 million tons in 1995 to 65 million tons in 2010—equal to 369 years of current production. The list goes on: Current resource estimates suggest it will take 347 years to run out of helium, 890 for beryllium, centuries for chromium, more than a millennium for lithium and strontium. And for those Americans worried about the price of makeup, resources of talc in the U.S. alone are enough to provide more than 1,000 years of supplies at current rates of domestic production.

...There are still plenty of good reasons to conserve the world’s mineral resources—just as there are very good reasons to avoid another war in the Middle East. But fear that the resources will run out isn’t one of them. _BW

While Al Fin energy analysts do not consider themselves cornucopians, neither do they consider themselves doomers. While they understand that the true complement of energy and minerals inside the Earth is certain to be far higher than the most optimistic estimates, these resources will not necessarily be easy to extract -- particularly with the types of lefty-Luddite green dieoff.orgy political leadership that more and more populations are choosing to lead them these days.

If your governments are sabotaging your society's best efforts to create an abundant future, you need to stop electing that kind of government! If you can't learn to stop hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, you probably have bigger problems than "peak oil doom" or "carbon hysteria." Think about it.

Are Arguments for Peak Oil Doom Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel?

2012-01-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

Are Arguments for Peak Oil Doom Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel? That's what CFR Fellow Michael Levi says in a recent blog post. Levi addresses a recent editorial in Nature claiming that peak oil production has already passed, and that peak oil is already upon us.

Levi demonstrates outright mistakes, mischaracterisations, and shifty reasoning on the part of the peak oilers, and says that the Nature piece is a good example of How Not to Argue that We're Running Out of Oil. One thing that makes Levi's piece interesting is that he himself is a true believer in the carbon hysteria orthodoxy, and agrees with many of the solutions proposed by the authors of the piece which he has set about contradicting. Keep in mind that it is all about the ideas that can be falsified. Everything else is opinion and speculation.

Another interesting response to the Nature editorial comes from North Dakota:

World production of oil peaked in 2008, argue James Murray of University of Washington and David King of Oxford University, in the Nature commentary. It has flattened or declined ever since, as North Dakota and Canadian crude fail to offset production drops elsewhere.

And “if oil production can’t grow, the implication is that the economy can’t grow either,” Murray and King write.

“This is such a frightening prospect that many have simply avoided considering it.”

But, for one thing, the claim that world production peaked in 2008 is arguable. “Oil company BP found in its most recent analysis that oil production was actually more than 82 million barrels per day in 2010, higher than the proposed plateau of 75 million,” a Scientific American analysis reports.

Furthermore, “adjusted for inflation, today’s $100 per barrel is roughly equivalent to prices in 1981,” the Scientific American story continues.

And “in the past 20 years, enough oil has been found to satisfy the demands of two new consumers — China and India — nations that now import more oil than is consumed by Germany and Japan.”

Given that gigantic surge, the fact that inflation-adjusted oil prices match those of 1981 is the market’s way of saying, “Don’t worry.” Because supply is keeping up perfectly well with demand.

And there’s another reason to believe Murray and King are too pessimistic. It’s clear during even a casual visit to Williston, N.D.

As North Dakotans know, Williston and the rest of western North Dakota have been utterly transformed. This transformation is almost entirely due to fracking.

And fracking, of course, is just the latest in a series of innovations that energy explorers have unleashed. These innovations have proven skeptics wrong time and again, from the whale-oil suppliers of 1869 (who mocked the “rock oil” drillers of Pennsylvania), to the 1970s claims of resource depletion and global collapse, to today.

Has that innovating stopped? Where fossil fuels are concerned, have all of the technological breakthroughs been found?

Of course not. As the Bakken boom shows, the greatest resource of all is the one that is in truly inexhaustible supply. The late economist Julian Simon identified it a generation ago: It’s the innovative power of the human mind. _Tom Dennis: There Will Be Oil

Tom Dennis is arguing from the facts on the ground. And he is also pointing out factual errors in the Nature editorial itself, just as Levi does in the CFR blog piece.

What seems clear is that a lot of academics, politicians, intellectuals, assorted opportunists, and media personalities simply hate oil -- or are willing to pretend to to make a buck. They are also willing to bend the facts, or make up entirely new facts out of the air, to support their desired narrative.

Such flimsy arguments have their parallel within the vastly larger and more powerful carbon hysteria orthodoxy, led by the IPCC and abetted by politicians throughout the developed world. But with the coming of Climate Gate, the carbon hysteria orthodoxy is now coming under attack from more legitimate thinkers and scientists.

The same situation is likely to arise if the "peak oil doom" establishment ever grows out of its clownish past and present.

How Obama Could Help US Energy: Get Government Out of the Way!

2012-01-27T02:29:00.001-08:00

Without his nose growing visibly, the President claimed the government was behind the technological advances that led to the current shale gas boom, and even suggested that he might take credit for the rise in domestic oil production. In fact, Mr. Obama's administration has hampered and castigated oil companies at every turn. In the light of the hysterical grandstanding over the BP Gulf spill (whose impact proved to be greatly exaggerated), it was ironic indeed to hear the President now declare a great opening up of offshore exploration.

The industry has responded to attacks by becoming more innovative and productive. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, between 2007 and 2010, U.S. oil production grew from 5.1 million barrels a day (mbd) to 5.5 mbd. The agency predicts domestic production will hit 6.7 mbd by 2020, helping take imports down to 36% of domestic usage in 2035 from 60% in 2005. So much for peak oil. Meanwhile, the EIA also predicts that by 2016, thanks to the shale boom, the U.S. will be a natural gas exporter. _NatPost

In other words, the US oil & gas sector has grown and prospered despite Obama's agenda of energy starvation. Imagine how much healthier US energy and US industry would be without vicious governmental harassment and regulatory handicapping.

After taking credit for prosperity that has occurred despite everything he could do to shut it down, Mr. Obama goes on to promote the green energy scams which are helping to kill Europe, and which will certainly destroy any economy foolish enough to depend upon them.

One wonders if the President has the slightest clue about the flagging state of the wind and solar industries in Germany, or that what is boosting China's alternatives industry is government subsidies ... from other countries.

The President announced a plan to devote huge swathes of public land to the development of clean energy to power "three million homes." He also apparently committed the Navy to buying a chunk of this power, as if it weren't expensive enough to guard the Strait of Hormuz.

Mercantilist alternative energy strategies represent - as Jimmy Carter famously suggested - the "moral equivalent of war." The problem is that it is war on one's own economy. At least, with his partial ceasefire against the oil industry, President Obama is now only shooting himself in one policy foot rather than both. _NatPost

Obama says he is promoting clean oil technologies, and takes credit for the economic success of technologies which he has tried to kill, but more intelligent people can see through his endless crap. Obama's ongoing (although publicly undeclared) war against coal, oil sands, oil shale kerogens, shale oil & gas, advanced nuclear power, arctic oil, offshore oil, etc. etc. amounts to a total policy of energy starvation -- relentlessly pursued by the EPA, NRC, Interior Department, and a score of other agencies and politically controlled bureaucratic entities.

Warren Meyer: Obama Deserves No Credit for US Oil & Gas Boom

Master Resource: Did the Government Invent the Shale Gas Revolution?

US President Obama Misrepresents His Own Record on Oil & Gas in Televised Speech

Advanced Biomass Feedstocks for High Value Chemicals & Fuels

2012-01-26T09:31:00.000-08:00

Energy analysts cannot allow themselves to get stuck on one form of energy or fuel. In fact, the best energy analysts familiarise themselves with parallel industries and processes which overlap with or complement the energy and fuel processes on which they most closely focus.

So while cheap natural gas has temporarily postponed the economical development of many types of advanced biofuels and renewable chemical feedstocks, in the long run natural gas will be used to facilitate the production of chemicals and fuels from renewable biomass feedstocks.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin led by Dr. Jim Dumesic report the conversion of the hemicellulose fraction of lignocellulosic biomass to furfural and levulinic acid using biphasic reactors with alkylphenol solvents in a new paper in the journal ChemSusChem. The furfural and levulinic acid products are valuable compounds for a variety of chemical applications, and they serve as precursors for the synthesis of liquid transportation fuels.
The conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into fuels and chemicals requires effective utilization of the C5 and C6 sugars present in hemicellulose and cellulose, respectively, by either processing these fractions together or separating and processing them separately. While simultaneous processing, such as in gasification or pyrolysis, offers the potential for simplicity of operation, the fractionation of hemicellulose and cellulose allows the processing of each fraction to be tailored to take advantage of the different chemical and physical properties of these fractions, and provides increased flexibility of operation.

For example, chemical processing methods can be employed to convert C5 sugars into fuels/chemicals in hemicellulose, while employing recent advances in biological conversions allows to convert the C6 sugars in cellulose into fuels and/or chemicals. One can also take advantage of the physical properties of cellulose for pulp and paper applications.

Herein, we show that the hemicellulose fraction of lignocellulosic biomass can be converted into furfural [FuAL] and levulinic acid [LA] by using biphasic reactors with alkylphenol solvents that selectively partition furanic compounds from acidic aqueous solutions. These furfural and levulinic acid products are valuable compounds for a variety of chemical applications, and they serve as precursors for the synthesis of liquid transportation fuels.

—Gürbüz et al.

...The basic steps of the process include:

Solid biomass is subjected to mild pretreatment in a dilute-acid, aqueous solution to solubilize the hemicellulose as xylose.

After filtering the solution from the solid cellulose and lignin, an organic solvent is added to the aqueous solution, and these liquids are heated in a biphasic reactor to achieve dehydration of xylose to FuAL.

FuAL can be distilled from the solvent and sold as a chemical or converted to LA by first hydrogenating FuAL to furfuryl alcohol (FuOH) over a metal-based catalyst (e.g. , copper) and then reacting the FuOH with water in a biphasic reactor to form LA.

Similar to FuAL, the LA product can be distilled from the organic solvent and sold as a chemical.

In the paper, they demonstrated three organic solvents—2-sec-butylphenol (SBP), 4-n-hexylphenol (NHP) and 4-propyl guaiacol (PG)—to be effective extracting agents for the production of FuAL and LA in these biphasic systems. These solvents (i) have high partition coefficients for extraction of FuAL, FuOH, and LA; (ii) do not extract significant amounts of mineral acids from aqueous solutions; (iii) have higher boiling points than the final product; and (iv) could potentially be synthesized directly from biomass (i.e., lignin), such that these solvents would not have to be transported to the site of the biomass conversion steps. _GCC
It will take time for biomass feedstocks to find their niches in the larger scheme of things. In the near future, cheap natural gas will overwhelm many markets and postpone many alternative fuels projects.

But as more and more uses are found for natural gas -- including lucrative gas to liquids (GTL) processes which are beginning to catch on -- methane is likely to become ubiquitous as a feedstock, reactant, and heat source in a wide range of new industrial processes, including the conversion of biomass to fuels and chemicals.

China Has Abundant Shale Gas, But North America Has the Expertise

2012-01-25T00:15:00.000-08:00

China in January approved shale gas as an independent mining resource, a legal status that may allow more Chinese firms to develop the unconventional energy source.

Foreign companies would not be able to participate in the tenders but could partner with the winning Chinese firms.

The world’s top energy user could hold shale gas reserves around 1,275 tcf, according to the EIA, exceeding those of the United States (862 tcf). _FinancialPost

China is the world's largest energy consumer. While China is heavily dependent upon coal power plants and is working to build up its nuclear power plant infrastructure, developing its massive reserves of shale gas would be a huge economic and energy boon to China. Therefore, the Chinese government is beginning to change the rules dealing with shale gas.

Shale gas, or natural gas trapped inside deposits of shale rock, has been a game changer in the United States, where its commercial-scale production has reduced the country's dependence on imported gas and lowered its energy expenses. China, which sits on even bigger shale gas reserves but has yet to tap them, now also hopes to give that fuel a role in its energy mix.

To do so, Beijing on Dec. 31 approved shale gas to be an independent mining resource, a step that opens up its exploration to more participants. The sector previously belonged only to government-controlled companies, but now also welcomes Chinese private firms.

This policy shift will create competition and therefore boost China's shale gas development. It may also help China reduce its greenhouse gas emissions because burning gas produces about half as much as the coal China depends upon for its primary energy source.

Although foreign companies are still not allowed to participate independently, they can gain more partnership opportunities as more Chinese players enter this business and will need their expertise in extracting the fuel from hard-to-access deposits locked in shale rock.

Besides encouraging more companies to produce shale gas, there is also a new incentive for companies to produce more of it. The Chinese government last month began reforming its pricing mechanism in two pilot provinces, for the first time allowing the market to decide wholesale prices for unconventional gas, including shale.

Unlike the government-controlled pricing mechanism, which made producing shale gas unprofitable, this new scheme will raise prices energy companies can charge for their output in China's fast-growing natural gas market, with annual consumption set to triple during the next decade. _eenews

As shale gas production continues to gear up across North America, and begins to pick up in China and other energy import markets, the impact of this huge new energy bonanza cannot be easily over-stated.

China's markets will require significant liberalisation in order to make best use of resources. Such market liberalisation is apt to be applied in very uneven fashion, due to the age-old Chinese fear of disorder and collapse of authority.

Carbon Sciences Inc. Aims for $150 Billion / Year Market

2012-01-24T09:57:00.000-08:00

Carbon Sciences Inc. is probably best known for its fledgling technology to "dry reform" methane into liquid fuels. But it will take some time to perfect that technology and scale it up. What can Carbon Sciences do in the meantime, in terms of maintaining a healthy cash flow? The company is aiming for the lucrative $150 billion/yr market in the steam reforming of methane to produce syngas -- primarily CO and H2. Carbon sciences believes that its proprietary catalysts provide it with an advantage over competing purveyors of catalytic systems for steam reforming methane. Here is the basic schema for H2 production via steam reforming of methane.

Azoclean

Carbon Sciences Inc. CABN -10.16% , the developer of a breakthrough technology to make transportation fuels and other valuable products from natural gas, today announced that it will add to its core technology by accelerating the development of a steam reforming version of its proprietary catalyst for use by existing synthetic gas (syngas) plants. There are more than 2,000 plants worldwide that use steam reforming of natural gas to make syngas for the production of large volume chemicals such as hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, solvents and detergent alcohols.

Byron Elton, CEO of Carbon Sciences, commented, "We are accelerating our development efforts to adapt our proprietary catalyst to meet the needs of this valuable market. By the end of 2012, we plan to demonstrate that our catalyst will deliver more output at a lower cost and will be an attractive drop-in replacement for existing steam reforming plants. The financial rewards are enormous. The current global hydrogen market exceeds $150 billion/year with methanol at more than $20 billion annually. The 2,000 existing steam reforming plants in the world usually replace their catalysts every 3-5 years. Many of these catalysts replacements cost as much as $5-$10MM." _MarketWatch

Carbon Sciences is not giving up on its primary long-term market -- the methane to liquid fuels market. Nor is the company giving up on its most prized long-term technology -- the dry reforming of methane, using CO2 instead of steam. But market realities have to dictate short and intermediate term actions, and the hydrogen (and methanol) markets are ready in the short and intermediate term, with little additional capital investment required by Carbon Sciences.

Uses of Hydrogen
There is a large global market for hydrogen in the production of distilled petroleum products, ammonia, methanol, and more. Methanol itself (from steam reforming of methane) is a lucrative worldwide market, which is used for a wide range of applications.

Another Use for Steam Reformed MethaneCarbon Sciences specialises in catalysts, and is hoping to be able to sell its catalytic system for steam reforming to as many distinct industries which use the process (for making H2, CH30H, syngas, etc) as possible. That is how startups often succeed -- by utilising pre-existing niches for a sub-part of their overall process. Cash flow is cash flow, as they say. Sometimes startups learn that the short-term markets-of-convenience work out better in the long run, than their initial long-term goals.

In a rapidly changing environment such as today's energy and petrochemicals markets -- where everyone is looking for more economical substitutes for crude oil -- smart entrepreneurs will learn to think on their feet.

Biogas Methane: Harvesting Renewable Hydrocarbons

2012-01-23T04:33:00.000-08:00

Methane can be readily produced by humans in much the same way it has been produced by under-the-seafloor micro-organisms for eons of geologic time. By using methanogenic microbes in anaerobic digesters, humans can convert a large outflow of garbage and waste into a renewable hydrocarbon product (plus heat) which can help to heat and power residencies, farms, businesses, and societies.

Methane within biogas can be concentrated via a biogas upgrader to the same standards as fossil natural gas(which itself has had to go through a cleaning process), and becomes biomethane. If the local gas network allows for this, the producer of the biogas may utilize the local gas distribution networks. Gas must be very clean to reach pipeline quality, and must be of the correct composition for the local distribution network to accept. Carbon dioxide, water, hydrogen sulfide and particulates must be removed if present. If concentrated and compressed it can also be used in vehicle transportation. Compressed biogas is becoming widely used in Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany. A biogas-powered train has been in service in Sweden since 2005. _Noenigma

Descriptions of single-stage and multi-stage anaerobic digestors

Big plans in the UK for the integral use of anaerobic digestion in the complete food processing cycle

Economical new approach for upgrading biogas to pure methane for integration into municipal natural gas distribution networks

Uses of the residual digestate left over from the anaerobic digestion process

Super Frackin' Gasolicious Extra Oiliosis!

2012-01-22T23:25:00.000-08:00

...oil services companies including Baker Hughes (BHI) and Schlumberger (SLB) are continuing their quest to devise ways to create longer, deeper cracks in the earth to release more oil and gas. These companies are no longer content to frack—they want to super frack.

High crude prices and newly accessible oil and gas embedded in shale rock in North America are driving the wave of innovation. The more thoroughly that petroleum-saturated rock is cracked, the more oil and gas is freed to flow from each well, raising the efficiency—and profit—of the expensive process. For example, the growing use of movable sleeves, a tubelike device with holes that fits inside a well bore, lets drillers target multiple spots to dislodge entrapped oil. This technique can reduce the $2.5 million startup cost of a fracking well near the Canadian border by up to two-thirds, according to a recent analysis by JPMorgan Chase (JPM). Multiply such savings by hundreds of wells added in that area each year, and you start to understand why the industry is so eager to hone the process. “I want to crack the rock across as much of the reservoir as I can,” says David A. Pursell, a former fracking engineer who’s now an analyst at Tudor Pickering Holt in Houston. “That’s the Holy Grail.” _BW

The combined technologies of horizontal drilling and advanced fracking have changed the global energy balance. If you have not noticed any difference yet, it is only because it takes time for some revolutions to set in and shift the action schemes and frames that make up the foundations of our world.

Of course the dieoff.orgiasts of the leftist Luddite Green coalition are not going to take all of this laying down. If they cannot come up with rational reasons why these technologies should not be used, they will take the underhanded pathway of government edict. While Obama is king, nothing must stand in the way of energy starvation and the economic crippling of the foci of Mr. Obama's grand strategy of adjusting the scales. Hence, Mr. Obama's EPA is working diligently to find ways to hamper fracking and shale gas & oil production -- perhaps the only bright economic spot in Mr. Obama's entire presidency.

Meanwhile, fracking -- and now super-fracking -- is likely to proceed with all due haste.

Three Faces of Super-Fracking

The “super fracking” as its becoming named is based on three basic improvements. The first is Schlumberger’s “HIWAY” idea that is an innovation in the material forced into the rock. (The linked page has a good animation to explain the process in detail.) The new idea is to add fibers to the mix of hard small grains used to hold open the cracks. The fiber is being seen as a major production improver. Much more flow for a longer period is the result.

...The second idea called “RapidFrac” comes from Halliburton with a set of highly developed specialized pipe fittings that go into a newly drill hole. (This page also has a high quality animated video, though quite a large file.) Much like valves, these sections of the pipe when activated open passages to the rock.

...The third idea is Baker Hughes has developed disintegrating frack balls (No company info yet.). This solves the need to have a drilling rig return to the well, and spend several days drilling and fishing out the perhaps a many as 20 or even 30 balls dropped in to do the frack in stages. _BrianWestenhaus

Halliburton (via NewEnergyandFuel)

Schlumberger (via NewEnergyandFuel)

Baker-Hughes PDF (via New Energy and Fuel)

Brian Wang has more

An Estimated 3 - 5 Trillion Barrels of Oil Equivalent in the Continental US -- Not Counting the 3 Trillion BOE in Oil Shales

2012-01-22T15:49:00.000-08:00

It is generally best to suppress our wilder instincts toward optimism, so as to prevent painful disappointments in the future. On the other hand, if we are not careful we are likely to vastly underestimate our possibilities, and live much smaller lives than was absolutely necessary. There are times when we need to go crazy-optimistic, in order to try to define the upper bounds of what is possible.

For oil & gas reserves in the continental US, new production capacities have already proven a lot of doomers wrong. I've got a feeling that -- if Americans can get rid of their current destructive leadership of energy starvation -- that US hydrocarbon has just gotten started.

California's Monterey Shale is estimated to contain 500 billion barrels of oil equivalent in place. Estimates for North Dakota's oil shales fall into a similar range (PDF) for oil equivalent in place. But the continental US is underlain with hydrocarbon-bearing shales at various depths and ages. Add the estimates all together, and you might just reach the trillions of barrels, in oil equivalent. Certainly current estimates of economical production below 50 billion barrels are almost certain to be proved wrong, in time.

My estimate of oil in place in the continental US is from about 3 trillion to 5 trillion barrels of oil not including the 3 trillion barrels of oil shale. See this shale play website for a partial list of Shale oil plays and basins in the US. I know this seems very high, but it was only a few short years ago that we were going to need to import huge amounts of liquefied natural gas to meet our demand for natural gas, and now we have a glut of natural gas in the market place because of all the shale natural gas.

We should be able to produce at least 150 billion barrels of oil to maybe 1.0 trillion barrels of oil if the majority of these plays can be water flooded and CO2 injected as in the Canadian Bakken. I used 5% for the low estimate of 3 trillion barrels and 20% of the high estimate 5 trillion barrels figuring they could do some water flood and CO2 tertiary treatment to a large part of this land. For this oil to be recovered, it will require that the oil price stays above $70 a barrel so the economics are in place to fully develop these areas. _SeekingAlpha

The truth is, there will be no need to develop even a fraction of these many barrels of oil equivalent in place, if the energy starvationists would simply get out of the way, and allow human ingenuity to devise safer and more advanced means of utilising non-combustion, nuclear energy technologies. For that to happen, the merry band of energy starvationists in the US White House will require jettisoning, in favour of a more rational group of government administrators.

H/T Brian Wang

A Basic Understanding of Oil

2012-01-22T00:53:00.000-08:00

The creation of oil, gas, coal, and kerogen is an ancient process, which has taken place over the eons ever since photosynthetic life first occurred in the oceans and seas. For example, did you know that the Alberta oil sands area was once part of a prehistoric sea?

Alberta's oilsands are in an area that was once part of a prehistoric sea and have yielded several important marine reptile fossils. _CBC.ca

Oil creation is a renewable process, but over quite a long time span. Gas is made more quickly and more ubiquitously under the seabed than oil, and is becoming so cheap and common as to be thought of as a nuisance in many locations.

But it is crude oil about which such a fuss has been made for the past 100 years or so. And a well educated person should know more about crude oil than he is likely to find in the media or on the doomer sites. This embedded book by oil insider Leonardo Maugeri is likely to fill a lot of holes in the oil education of most ordinary people.

The Age Of Oil

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"The Age of Oil" by Leonardo Maugeri is a basic-level primer on the various facets of the modern petroleum age, from past, to present, and to future. It is best to start with basic history and basic supportable facts. Then, if you wish to go out on a limb, at least you will have a solid foundation from where to start.

Where oil comes from, and a hint of where new oil may be found

Looking at changes in atmospheric concentrations of O2 and CO2 over time is another way of noting the underlying biological processes involved in making the plants and microbes that go into making fossil fuels.

Oil shale sediments were deposited on large lake beds in the US western states:

Lacustrine sediments of the Green River Formation were deposited in two large lakes that occupied 65,000 km2 in several sedimentary-structural basins in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah during early through middle Eocene time....The warm alkaline lake waters of the Eocene Green River lakes provided excellent conditions for the abundant growth of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) that are thought to be the major precursor of the organic matter in the oil shale. _geology.com

How old is the oldest oil? No one knows, since it hasn't yet been found. But some oil has reportedly been found in rock that was billions of years old. Photosynthetic life has been around almost 3 billion years, so that provides for a lot of oil creation in deep rock layers.

Geologists usually don't bother looking for oil in very ancient (Precambrian) rocks for two reasons:

Conventional wisdom insists that oil is derived almost exclusively from organic matter, and additional conventional wisdom assures us that life was exceedingly scarce on earth billions of years ago.

Any oil that was created billions of years ago would have surely been destroyed by intense pressures and high temperatures over the eons.

Yet, Precambrian oil in commercial quantities has been found in formations up to 2 billion years old (in Siberia, Australia, Michigan, for example). While some of this oil might have migrated in-to the Precambrian rocks from younger source rocks, some of it does seem indigenous and, therefore, ancient.

...Now, three Australian scientists (R. Buick, B. Rasmussen, B. Krapez) have discovered tiny nodules of bitumen (lumps of hydrocarbons) in sedimentary rocks up to 3.5 billion years old in Africa and Australia. These bitumen nodules were formed when natural hydrocarbons were irradiated by radioactive isotopes that coexisted in the ancient rocks. Futhermore, these African and Australian rock formations were never severely deformed or subjected to high temperatures. The possibility exists, therefore, that some of the earth's oldest rocks may contain substantial oil reserves. So far, no one has seriously looked for oil in Precambrian rocks because of the two preconceptions noted above. _Science-Frontiers

The planet has gone through a large number of cycles over the past few billion years. Unless you can go back through time and trace the large numbers of optimal areas for oil, gas, coal, kerogen, and bitumen formation which have come and gone, come and gone, come and gone -- and been hopelessly changed and disguised by ongoing geologic processes -- you may be easily persuaded that almost all the fossil fuels have already been found.

The "abiotic oil" concept is not discussed here because the concepts behind biotic oil are difficult enough for most people to understand. And most hydrocarbons produced in the mantle by abiotic processes are shorter chain hydrocarbons, as you might find in "wet gas." Biotic and abiotic hydrocarbons tend to mix in the crust and follow much the same routes of migration upward in many cases. But if you want a good example of quick renewable hydrocarbons, the abiotic variety might qualify.

Hot Plasma Makes Quick Work of Garbage -- And Generates Power Too!

2012-01-21T08:23:00.000-08:00

From the highway, one of the biggest landfills in the US doesn’t look at all like a dump. It’s more like a misplaced mesa. Only when you drive closer to the center of operations at the 700-acre Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, Oregon, does the function of this place become clear. Some 35,000 tons of mostly household trash arrive here weekly by train from Seattle and by truck from Portland....

On the southwest side of the landfill, bus-sized containers of gas connect to ribbons of piping, which run into a building that looks like an airplane hangar with a loading dock. Here, dump trucks also offload refuse. This trash, however, is destined for a special kind of treatment—one that could redefine how we think about trash.... _Wired

Here’s how it works: The household waste delivered into this hangar will get shredded, then travel via conveyer to the top of a large tank. From there it falls into a furnace that’s heated to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit and mixes with oxygen and steam. The resulting chemical reaction vaporizes 75 to 85 percent of the waste, transforming it into a blend of gases known as syngas (so called because they can be used to create synthetic natural gas). The syngas is piped out of the system and segregated. The remaining substances, still chemically intact, descend into a second vessel that’s roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

This cauldron makes the one above sound lukewarm by comparison. Inside, two electrodes aimed toward the middle of the vessel create an electric arc that, at 18,000 degrees, is almost as hot as lightning. This intense, sustained energy becomes so hot that it transforms materials into their constituent atomic elements. The reactions take place at more than 2,700 degrees, which means this isn’t incineration—this is emission-free molecular deconstruction. (The small amount of waste material that survives falls to the bottom of the chamber, where it’s trapped in molten glass that later hardens into inert blocks.)

The seemingly sci-fi transformation occurs because the trash is blasted apart by plasma—the forgotten-stepsister state of matter. Plasma is like gas in that you can’t grip or pour it. But because extreme heat ionizes some atoms (adding or subtracting electrons), causing conductivity, it behaves in ways that are distinct from gas. _Wired

Wired
Curiously, in Cleveland, Ohio, bug-witted politician Dennis Kucinich is leading the rabble in protest against the building of a similar garbage gasification plant. Is it that people Cleveland like trash too much to give it up, or is it that their trashy politicians enjoy stuffing the garbage down their throats too much to give it up?

Why Did Al Fin Change His Mind About Big Wind and Big Solar?

2012-01-21T06:34:00.000-08:00

Al Fin has changed his mind on many things over the years. But this is one topic that you can check for yourselves. Do a topic search on "Wind Energy". You can trace the progression of Fin's attitude toward big wind and big solar from "very favourable" all the way to "very unfavourable." What happened? No money changed hands to prompt the transformation. It was merely a question of looking at verifiable facts over time, and being compelled logically to change.

But in the larger world, big wind and big solar still have their champions -- from the US White House to the big money green activist groups to the EU bureaucratic apparatus to big money investors who benefit from government subsidies and tax breaks, such as Warren Buffett.

Now we are being told that "renewable energy" has surpassed nuclear power in terms of "energy generation." Does this mean that big wind and big solar are delivering on their promises? Well, no, not really. Look at the chart below, which breaks down the categories of "renewable energy."

RealClearEnergy

The recent reports that renewable energy has overtaken nuclear power as a source of primary energy for the nation have created the mistaken impression that all the windmill and solar panel construction is having a decisive impact. In fact, as the Energy Information Administration's December Monthly Report reveals, 80 percent of "renewable energy" is still supplied by hydroelectricity, wood and biofuels. Twelve percent comes from wind and 1.2 percent from solar. An additional 6 percent comes from burning waste - which not everyone regards as "renewable" - and 2.5 percent comes from geothermal energy.

...Under this set of definitions, the consumption of renewables actually exceeded nuclear power before 1987, until nuclear gained ground as more reactors were completed. Renewables declined after 2000 while nuclear continued to expand from improved performance by existing reactors, even though no new reactors have been built. The slight ascent in renewables over the last few years has come from the expansion of wood, biomass and wind. _RealClearEnergy

It is important to emphasise that no matter how much big wind "capacity" is built, that is not the same thing as power production. And just as important, one must point out that the wind tends not to blow at the time the power is needed. This is a fatal flaw in the big wind scheme. Not only must expensive backup power capacity be built and kept on constant standby to supply any wind deficits, but if wind power output should happen to be excessive in relation to demand, the utility must find a way to dump significant power. In the US Pacific northwest, federal judges have forced utilities to pay wind developers for power, even if the utility could not use it!

This moment-to-moment unreliability of wind generation has been likened to "throwing a live grenade into the power grid control booth." Wind farms are also harmful to the health of people living nearby, and to birds and bats -- for what that is worth to your tender hearts.

Big solar power has many of the same problems, except it is even more expensive than wind. Mr. Obama invested billions of dollars in US taxpayer dollars into already failed or soon-to-fail big wind and big solar projects. But since the backers of these projects were political backers of Mr. Obama, a few $billion wasted here or there doesn't amount to much.

The Obama administration -- for reasons of its own -- is rather slow at catching on to the ruinous effects of the mad pursuit of big wind and big solar, on the national power system and economy. But the governments of Spain and Japan have already been forced to drop their most of their generous government subsidies for these green wastrels, out of a return to basic economic common sense.

Sharp contraction ahead for solar power industry

Vestas Wind Systems shares lost 92% of value since 2008

General problems with wind power ... articles from Master Resource blog

This slideshare presentation on wind power started the shift in Al Fin's opinion of big wind power

It should be noted that Al Fin took a sabbatical from his day job a number of years ago, in order to get involved in one of his greatest enthusiasms -- renewable energy, esp. wind and solar power. He expanded his knowledge of power systems, electrical engineering, and residential, commercial, and industrial electricity, in order to be able to participate in the installation of renewable power systems. He had a great deal of fun in the process, and felt he was accomplishing some good things.

He had to return to his day job, but he retained his warm feeling toward wind and solar power. But along the way, Fin learned that there is a tremendous difference in justifiability between a small, off-grid wind or solar installation and a giant wind farm or solar plant. With a small installation, one keeps a close watch on his power usage, power generation, and battery storage state. With large wind or solar installations, there is no way to control for intermittency, unreliability, the huge cost of power standby, and many other problems.

And thus was a mind changed. And a voice that had once promoted big renewables changed to one that criticises them quite harshly.

Minds that are incapable of changing, are minds that have passed their due date -- regardless of the age of the individual. The most fruitful way of understanding a controversial field where the opponents are closely matched, is to study the arguments of those who have changed their minds. Sometimes the arguments justify the change, and sometimes not, but they are typically informative and educational both for what they include and for what they leave out.

Trillions of dollars are on the line in connection with the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming argument. If you want to study a high stakes disagreement, that would be an excellent place to start. BTW, Al Fin changed his mind on that topic as well.

This article was first published on Al Fin blog

Childhood Leukemia in France and Proximity to Nuclear Power Plants

2012-01-21T00:21:00.000-08:00

This PDF reprint of an article published in the International Journal of Cancer, provides a glimpse onto the epidemiological battlefield for those laymen who wish to grapple with the ideas directly.

Childhood leukemia (CL) is one of a number of the tragic cancers of childhood. The cause of CL is not known, but CL has been studied in association with maternal age, birth weight, maternal alcohol intake, and most recently proximity to nuclear power plants (NPP).

Most previous studies -- including studies by an author of the study -- did not find an association between NPP proximity and CL rates.

In the authors' previous multisite incidence studies 29; 30 no association between proximity to NPPs and AL was observed. This was in line with most multisite studies 1; 2; 8; 12 , and is also in line with the results of the authors' incidence analysis over the whole period, 1990-2007

...Overall, the estimated doses due to NPPs were very low compared to the doses due to natural radiation sources. Such doses are not expected to result in an observable excess risk on the basis of the available evidence 41 _Study PDF

The authors introduced a new measure -- DBGZ (Dose Based Geographic Zoning) -- in an attempt to more precisely estimate the likely radioactive exposure to subjects due to the regulated release of radioactive materials from NPPs. Although the authors considered their new DBGZ metric to be a success, they failed to show any significant association between CL rates and their DBGZ metrics.

Let's go through the study in relationship with Hill's Criteria of Causation:

1. Temporal Relationship:

Exposure always precedes the outcome. If factor "A" is believed to cause a disease, then it is clear that factor "A" must necessarily always precede the occurrence of the disease. This is the only absolutely essential criterion. This criterion negates the validity of all functional explanations used in the social sciences, including the functionalist explanations that dominated British social anthropology for so many years and the ecological functionalism that pervades much American cultural ecology.

AF: Since the authors were looking at childhood leukemias for children 5 years and under, it is assumed that the nuclear power plants existed before the children were conceived.

2. Strength:

This is defined by the size of the association as measured by appropriate statistical tests. The stronger the association, the more likely it is that the relation of "A" to "B" is causal. For example, the more highly correlated hypertension is with a high sodium diet, the stronger is the relation between sodium and hypertension. Similarly, the higher the correlation between patrilocal residence and the practice of male circumcision, the stronger is the relation between the two social practices.

AF: The authors calculated an "odds ratio" of 1.9 and a "standardised incidence ratio" of 1.9, comparing the exposed to the non-exposed. This would be roughly interpreted as nearly double the risk of CL for children living within 5 km of a NPP. This association was only found for the 2002 through 2007 time span -- not for the full 1990 - 2007 period of the study.

It should be noted for comparison that the "odds ratio" for cigarettes and lung cancer has been calculated as close to 9 (PDF) in some studies, or a 9 X risk for smokers to get lung cancer as opposed to non-smokers.

3. Dose-Response Relationship:

An increasing amount of exposure increases the risk. If a dose-response relationship is present, it is strong evidence for a causal relationship. However, as with specificity (see below), the absence of a dose-response relationship does not rule out a causal relationship. A threshold may exist above which a relationship may develop. At the same time, if a specific factor is the cause of a disease, the incidence of the disease should decline when exposure to the factor is reduced or eliminated. An anthropological example of this would be the relationship between population growth and agricultural intensification. If population growth is a cause of agricultural intensification, then an increase in the size of a population within a given area should result in a commensurate increase in the amount of energy and resources invested in agricultural production. Conversely, when a population decrease occurs, we should see a commensurate reduction in the investment of energy and resources per acre. This is precisely what happened in Europe before and after the Black Plague. The same analogy can be applied to global temperatures. If increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere causes increasing global temperatures, then "other things being equal", we should see both a commensurate increase and a commensurate decrease in global temperatures following an increase or decrease respectively in CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

AF: The dose response measures used were either "distance from NPP" or "Dose Based Geographic Zone (DBGZ), a measure devised by the authors specifically for this study. This was an important failing of the study, since important information relating to "radiation dosing" related to distance was assumed and estimated, rather than carefully collected. Time period of exposure -- time at particular addresses etc. -- was likewise not collected, but rather estimated.

4. Consistency:

The association is consistent when results are replicated in studies in different settings using different methods. That is, if a relationship is causal, we would expect to find it consistently in different studies and among different populations. This is why numerous experiments have to be done before meaningful statements can be made about the causal relationship between two or more factors. For example, it required thousands of highly technical studies of the relationship between cigarette smoking and cancer before a definitive conclusion could be made that cigarette smoking increases the risk of (but does not cause) cancer. Similarly, it would require numerous studies of the difference between male and female performance of specific behaviors by a number of different researchers and under a variety of different circumstances before a conclusion could be made regarding whether a gender difference exists in the performance of such behaviors.

AF: As noted above, this study was inconsistent not only with similar studies by other authors, but also with previous studies by the same authors.

5. Plausibility:

The association agrees with currently accepted understanding of pathological processes. In other words, there needs to be some theoretical basis for positing an association between a vector and disease, or one social phenomenon and another. One may, by chance, discover a correlation between the price of bananas and the election of dog catchers in a particular community, but there is not likely to be any logical connection between the two phenomena. On the other hand, the discovery of a correlation between population growth and the incidence of warfare among Yanomamo villages would fit well with ecological theories of conflict under conditions of increasing competition over resources. At the same time, research that disagrees with established theory is not necessarily false; it may, in fact, force a reconsideration of accepted beliefs and principles.

AF: The authors admit that natural radiation exposures for subjects would almost certainly overwhelm any likely radiation exposures from proximity to the NPPs, according to known mechanisms of radiation exposure.

6. Consideration of Alternate Explanations:

In judging whether a reported association is causal, it is necessary to determine the extent to which researchers have taken other possible explanations into account and have effectively ruled out such alternate explanations. In other words, it is always necessary to consider multiple hypotheses before making conclusions about the causal relationship between any two items under investigation.

AF: The authors fail to provide alternate explanations for their findings.

7. Experiment:

The condition can be altered (prevented or ameliorated) by an appropriate experimental regimen.

AF: Experiments in this setting would be unethical. [More: A prohibition zone of 5 km around NPPs could be created, and subsequent rates of CL could be measured and compared with earlier rates. This would not be a valid experiment, but might satisfy a small subset of bureaucrats and/or activists.]

8. Specificity:

This is established when a single putative cause produces a specific effect. This is considered by some to be the weakest of all the criteria. The diseases attributed to cigarette smoking, for example, do not meet this criteria. When specificity of an association is found, it provides additional support for a causal relationship. However, absence of specificity in no way negates a causal relationship. Because outcomes (be they the spread of a disease, the incidence of a specific human social behavior or changes in global temperature) are likely to have multiple factors influencing them, it is highly unlikely that we will find a one-to-one cause-effect relationship between two phenomena. Causality is most often multiple. Therefore, it is necessary to examine specific causal relationships within a larger systemic perspective.

AF: Causes of acute childhood leukemias are poorly understood in general.

9. Coherence:

The association should be compatible with existing theory and knowledge. In other words, it is necessary to evaluate claims of causality within the context of the current state of knowledge within a given field and in related fields. What do we have to sacrifice about what we currently know in order to accept a particular claim of causality. What, for example, do we have to reject regarding our current knowledge in geography, physics, biology and anthropology in order to accept the Creationist claim that the world was created as described in the Bible a few thousand years ago? Similarly, how consistent are racist and sexist theories of intelligence with our current understanding of how genes work and how they are inherited from one generation to the next? However, as with the issue of plausibility, research that disagrees with established theory and knowledge are not automatically false. They may, in fact, force a reconsideration of accepted beliefs and principles. All currently accepted theories, including Evolution, Relativity and non-Malthusian population ecology, were at one time new ideas that challenged orthodoxy. Thomas Kuhn has referred to such changes in accepted theories as "Paradigm Shifts".

AF: The claimed association is not compatible with nor explainable by existing theory.

It should be pointed out that out of 2,753 cases of CL in France from 2002 to 2007, 14 cases were estimated to have occurred within 5 km of a NPP. Given the small number of cases in question, an odds ratio of 1.9 would need to be confirmed by testing over other time periods besides the 2002 to 2007 period. The fact that no association was found over the entire 1991 to 2007 time period suggests that the "significant" odds ratio for the 2002 to 2007 time period was due to chance.

Read the entire study (PDF) to answer any further questions you may have.

Al Fin epidemiologists were quite disappointed at the low quality of the media coverage offered so far.

As Energy Mix Changes, Dependency on Oil Will Decrease

2012-01-20T05:05:00.000-08:00

Oil is expected to be the slowest-growing fuel in terms of demand over the next 20 years as biofuels and other renewable energy sources take a larger role in meeting the world's additional energy needs, BP said Wednesday.

...Renewables on their own contribute more to world energy growth than oil, BP said, with the largest single fuel contribution coming from gas, which will meet about at third of the projected growth in global energy demand....Shale gas and coal bed methane will account for almost two thirds of US production by 2030 as the country looks at potential LNG exports. _Platts

BP Energy Outlook 2030
The North American shale oil bonanza will not only feed into the global LNG market, but also into the gas to liquids (GTL) market.

With North American natural gas reserves climbing to more than a century of production, developers are considering the once unthinkable alternative of converting North American natural gas to petroleum fuels and chemicals through Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Several projects are proposed to use gas from conventional and unconventional production. From the North Slope of Alaska to the marshes of Louisiana, developers are evaluating full-scale GTL. This meeting will review the projects as well as the dynamics behind this shift. _Zeus Houston 7 March 2012

And besides GTL and LNG, other markets will grow to utilise the unconventional gas windfall. Markets for ethylene, other high value chemicals, plastics, and more, exceed $400 billion a year in the US alone. When the price spread for natural gas is so favourable, one cannot expect big chemical companies to ignore potential savings.

All of the estimates displayed above tend to significantly underestimate GTL, and probably CTL as well. Whether biomass to liquids technologies shoot upward as quickly as they could do, depends upon the economics of competing feedstocks such as methane. If breakthrough technologies are developed for harvesting methane hydrates, advanced biofuels to liquids may well either be delayed, or will be combined with both CTL and GTL in a variety of combinations -- depending upon the end product desired.

As the greedy oil dictatorships of the world (Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc) see more substitution liquid fuels coming on to the market in greater volumes and with greater rapidity, they will discover a sudden need to reinvest in oil & gas field technologies AND the need to begin "playing nice" with international investors.

Brown Seaweed to Biofuels and Chemicals......Breakthrough?

2012-01-20T00:13:00.000-08:00

The key benefits of BAL technology are:
Single Platform. BAL converts seaweed carbohydrates into one renewable chemical intermediate that is affordable and scalable for both fuels and chemicals.

Commercial Focus. Leveraging the single platform, BAL will first commercialize high-value products to generate early cash flow that simultaneously paves the path for larger market opportunities.

First Mover Advantage. With over 60 patents or patents pending, BAL has carved a broad IP estate for the use of seaweed as a biomass for chemicals and fuels.

Products
BAL has developed a diverse product portfolio that provides large market opportunities at varying price points. Products include road transport fuels, green plastics, surfactants, agrochemicals, synthetic fibers and nutraceuticals. _BioArchitectureLab

BALWhat did the researchers at Bio Architecture Lab actually achieve?

Prospecting macroalgae (seaweeds) as feedstocks for bioconversion into biofuels and commodity chemical compounds is limited primarily by the availability of tractable microorganisms that can metabolize alginate polysaccharides. Here, we present the discovery of a 36–kilo–base pair DNA fragment from Vibrio splendidus encoding enzymes for alginate transport and metabolism. The genomic integration of this ensemble, together with an engineered system for extracellular alginate depolymerization, generated a microbial platform that can simultaneously degrade, uptake, and metabolize alginate. When further engineered for ethanol synthesis, this platform enables bioethanol production directly from macroalgae via a consolidated process, achieving a titer of 4.7% volume/volume and a yield of 0.281 weight ethanol/weight dry macroalgae (equivalent to ~80% of the maximum theoretical yield from the sugar composition in macroalgae). _Science Abstract

They increased the fermentation yield of ethanol from brown algae by genetic tweaking of their microbial fermentation platform.

Seaweed can be an ideal global feedstock for the commercial production of biofuels and renewable chemicals because in addition to its high sugar content it has no lignin, and it does not require arable land or freshwater to grow. Globally, if three percent of the coastal waters were used to produce seaweed than more than 60 billion gallons of fossil fuel could be produced. Today, in many parts of the world, seaweed is already grown at commercial scale. BAL currently operates four seaweed farms in Chile and has had great success in growing seaweed at economically viable production yields.

...“BAL's technology to ferment a seaweed feedstock to renewable fuels and chemicals has created an entirely new pathway for biofuels development, one that is no longer constrained to terrestrial sources,” says ARPA-E Program Director Dr. Jonathan Burbaum. “When fully developed and deployed, large scale seaweed cultivation combined with BAL’s technology promises to produce
renewable fuels and chemicals without forcing a tradeoff with conventional food crops such as corn or sugarcane.” _BAL (PDF)

It is far easier to grow large quantities of macro-algae in the sea, than microalgae. Macro-algae is much tougher and holds together in large masses for easier harvesting. Up to 4 crops a year can be grown, at very rapid biomass rates.

It should be clear that by adding roughly 70% of the earth's surface area to one's potential crop growing area, the limits to biomass growth have been expanded considerably.

H/T NextBigFuture

More from Green Car Congress

Limits? What Limits?

2012-01-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

How would an advanced galactic empire generate its power?

Some fraction of the radiation seething from the disk would be reflected and focused onto the power plants. Each power plant would transmit collected energy as a collimated microwave beam from a 100-mile diameter antenna. _Discovery

Discovery
A truly advanced civilisation on the Kardashev scale would harness the power of black holes to drive starships (PDF), power their industries, and gain control over both matter and time. We may have a few years to go before reaching that level.

A consortium of super-civilizations might pool resources to build a chain of power stations encircling the black hole. It would be the heart of a robust and fault-tolerant energy grid connecting numerous worlds like a fantasy scene out of the film "Tron."

However, I think it is more likely that a federation of expanding space colonies, spawned from a single mother civilization, would work together to maintain their viability. This wouldn't run into the thorny question of how two or more independent but similarly co-evolved species manage to contact each other and work out a practical energy infrastructure. _Discovery

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory believe that magnetic field lines extending a few million light years from galaxies into space may be the result of incredibly efficient energy-producing dynamos within black holes that are somewhat analogous to an electric motor....The energy in these huge magnetic fields is comparable to that released into space as light, X-rays and gamma rays. In other words, the black hole energy is being efficiently converted into magnetic fields.

Colgate and Los Alamos colleagues Vladimir Pariev and John Finn have developed a model to perhaps explain what is happening. They believe that the naturally magnetized accretion disk rotating around a black hole is punctured by clouds of stars in the vicinity of the black hole, like bullet holes in a flywheel. This, in turn, leads nonlinearly to a system similar to an electric generator that gives rise to a rotating, but invisible magnetic helix.
In this way, huge amounts of energy are carried out and away from the center of a galaxy as a set of twisted magnetic field lines that eventually appear via radio waves from luminous cloud formations on opposite sides of the galaxy. _SD

So you see, humans do not yet understand how black hole energy is converted into all the forms of energy that are propagated within and throughout the galaxy. But give us some time -- and a respite from all the energy starvationists hounding our steps -- and we just might take it to the next level.

Cross-posted from Al Fin blog

Green Energy: Popular Delusion, Deadly Diversion from Reality

2012-01-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels on their roofs collected more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but the electricity they generated made up only about 3 percent of the total power supply, and that at unpredictable times.

The distribution networks are not designed to allow tens of thousands of solar panel owners to switch at will between drawing electricity from the grid and feeding power into it. Because there are almost no storage options, the excess energy has to be destroyed at substantial cost. German consumers already complain about having to pay the second-highest electricity prices in Europe. _DerSpiegel

Der Spiegel
There is a strong sentimental appeal to getting one's electrical power from the wind and the sun. All natural, free for the taking! What could be better?

"The demand for subsidies is growing and growing," says RWI expert Manuel Frondel. If all commitments to pay subsidies so far are added together, Frondel adds, "we have already exceeded the €100 billion level."

The RWI also expects the green energy surcharge on electricity bills to go up again soon. It is currently 3.59 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, a number the German government had actually pledged to cap at 3.5 cents. But because of the most recent developments, RWI expert Frondel predicts that the surcharge will soon increase to 4.7 cents per kilowatt hour. For the average family, this would amount to an additional charge of about €200 a year, in addition to the actual cost of electricity. Solar energy has the potential to become the most expensive mistake in German environmental policy. _DerSpiegel

But no! Wind energy is destined to occupy that position, Mein Herr!

In fact, all German solar energy systems combined produce less electricity than two nuclear power plants. And even that number is sugarcoated, because solar energy in a relatively cloudy country like Germany has to be backed up with reserve power plants. This leads to a costly, and basically unnecessary, dual structure. Figures indicating the peak performance of solar energy systems are easily misunderstood, a report by the German Physical Society says. "Essentially," the report concludes, "solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants."

In Germany, solar is by far the most inefficient technology among renewable energy sources, and yet it receives the most subsidies. Some 56 percent of all green energy subsidies go to solar systems, which produce only 21 percent of subsidized energy. _DerSpiegel

Spain, of course, receives far more solar illumination than Germany, yet Spain has been forced to slash solar subisdies due to their ruinous drain on the treasury. And yet, we continue to read this kind of rah! rah! drivel about the golden prospects for the solar power industry.

Populations of the modern west are divided between the fashionable urbanistas who buy into "carbon hysteria" and damn all hydrocarbons and nuclear power -- and the more practical people who must actually do the work and get vital things done.

The deeper a society dives into the green energy dream and delusion, the more devastating the cost when reality finally sets in.

China has invested deeply in wind and solar energy production facilities. But that was mainly to meet demand that China saw arising in the west. For its own needs, China is building up its coal, nuclear, and unconventional gas infrastructures as quickly as it can.

In China's eyes, it is fine to let western nations bankrupt themselves with big wind and big solar. And if they buy the suicidal infrastructure of decline from China, all the better. China does not want to remain an exporting nation for the duration. China's leaders see a far greater destiny for the celestial kingdom.

So if Mr. Obama wants to prohibit Canadian oil sands, offshore oil, arctic oil, coal, nuclear power, oil shales, etc., and divert diminishing resources to his political backers who have invested in big wind and big solar -- who is to complain? Certainly not the US media, who have been "all in" for Obama from the early 2008 primaries.

Americans, Europeans, Japanese, Australians: If you want the energy that will allow you and your progeny to have a future, you must do something about the energy starvationists who have worked their way to the top of your society's decision structure. This deadly diversion from reality can have only one end, if allowed to proceed.

President Obama Declares Energy Starvation for America

2012-01-19T00:03:00.000-08:00

President Obama’s jobs council called Tuesday for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil-and-gas drilling as well as expediting energy projects like pipelines.

“[W]e should allow more access to oil, natural gas and coal opportunities on federal lands,” states the year-end report released Tuesday by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

The report does not specifically mention the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but it endorses moving forward quickly with projects that “deliver electricity and fuel,” including pipelines. _TheHill

Meanwhile, US President Obama defies the job council and rejects one of the greatest potential provider of US jobs and prosperity -- the Keystone pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Nat Jnl

In a decision sure to re-ignite a fierce energy debate, the Obama administration was announcing on Wednesday its rejection of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline...

... A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, decried the news. “President Obama is about to destroy tens of thousands of American jobs and sell American energy security to the Chinese,” said Brendan Buck. “The president won’t stand up to his political base even to create American jobs. This is not the end of this fight.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also jumped on the news. "The president's focused more on the next election than on the next generation."_NatJnl

The unutterably stupid decision by the former junior Senator from Illinois is in keeping with his overall policy agenda of "energy starvation." Mr. Obama's ruling clique has sandbagged offshore oil drilling, coal mining, safe new nuclear energy reactors, oil shales, arctic drilling, various reliable methods of electrical power generation, and is in the process of putting pressure on shale oil & gas -- the one bright spot in his entire economic reign.

Mr. Obama's championing of bankrupt and unreliable green energy -- such as big wind and big solar -- exposed him as an inept and incompetent venture capitalist who likes to play with taxpayer's money for the benefit of political cronies.

Advanced economies need a huge amount of reliable and affordable energy to prosper. Mr. Obama has chosen to choke off energy supplies and starve the US private sector of its vital needs, and to harry it with ruinous regulation, taxation, mandates, and competition from tax-funded cronies.

US voters had best wise up to this president's agenda before they are all collecting government relief checks, paid in increasingly worthless Obama dollars.

Previously posted on Al Fin blog

Angela Merkel: "I Should Have Chosen A Different Century to Give Up Nuclear Power!"

2012-01-18T14:21:00.000-08:00

German abandonment of nuclear energy in response to the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan could cost 1.7 trillion euros ($2.15 trillion) by 2030 if renewables replace much of the power, Michael Suess told Reuters Tuesday. That amounts to about two thirds of Germany’s 2011 GDP. If natural gas plants replaced much of the lost electrical generation, he said the estimate would be considerably lower, at 1.4 billion euros.

German legislators voted in May to eventually decommission all 17 of the Siemens-built reactors that once provided nearly a quarter of the country’s electricity. In response, Siemens announced in September that it would withdraw from the nuclear power industry. At the consumer level, the German Energy Agency (Dena) recently estimated the nuclear withdrawld could hike electric bills 20 percent by 2020. _NuclearStreet

Another take here

All of this is happening at a time when the World Bank is warning of a potential global economic doomsday, originating in Europe. As the economies of Europe are hit harder, in succession, Merkel is likely to rue her rash choice.

Here is the punchline: While the Siemens estimate of the transition costs to the German economy are higher than what greens and sycophants have been telling the German government, the estimate of over a $2 trillion penalty paid by Germany is almost certainly too low. Perhaps by an order of magnitude or larger. Why? Because Siemens is only looking at the capital costs involved in converting to a nominal equivalent power capacity in renewables. It is not looking at the details where the devil resides, details which largely derive from the destructive intermittency and unreliability of wind and solar, and the much shorter lifetimes of the resource-intensive machinery of big wind and big solar..

After Fukushima, the German government jumped away from nuclear like a hysterical girl jumping from a spider or a mouse -- reflexively, and without thinking it through. If the Germans persist in pursuing this perverse green policy, the butcher's bill will be well into the $trillions and tens of $trillions, over the years. And Merkel's will be a name damned by future generations of Germans -- not the forgotten names of the greens who drove the woman to promote such a fateful choice.

Huge Oil to Gas Price Spread Fueling New GTL Technologies

2012-01-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

Update 20 Jan 12:Petrobras has qualified and approved CompactGTL’s modular gas-to-liquid (GTL) technology following trials at its CENPES Research and Development Centre....The proprietary mini-channel SMR and FT reactors, operating in conjunction with new catalysts coated on metal substrates (combustion, reforming and FT) demonstrate a compact, low centre of gravity GTL process for the first time.

“The [Petrobras] test programme has produced some extremely positive results and has shown the plant can be robust, with the operational availability expected of large scale commercial facilities,” said Nicholas Gay, chief executive of CompactGTL.

“We can now progress our plans in conjunction with clients throughout the world to develop commercial scale modular gas to liquid plants,” added Gay. __Engineer....

A big price spread between natural gas and crude oil suddenly makes stranded natural gas much too valuable to flare -- if you have an economic alternative. Such alternatives are rapidly springing up -- as in the Oxford Catalyst : Velocys microchannel technology, and the CompactGTL technology discussed here:

CompactGTL offers a modular GTL solution for a variety of natural gas to liquids conversion needs -- including the offshore environment.

The solution converts the associated gas into syncrude for blending with the natural crude, eliminating the need for additional transportation infrastructure and storage infrastructure or access to market for the converted product.

The technology features proprietary catalysts and reactor designs derived from plate and fin heat exchanger manufacturing techniques. Modular plant design, incorporating multiple reactors in parallel, provides a flexible, operable solution to accommodate gas feed variation and decline over the life of the oilfield.

At the heart of the process are two banks of modular reactor blocks. Using an advanced derivative of plate and fin heat exchanger technology, these reactors allow the precise control of heat and gas flow over our proprietary metal-supported structured catalysts, located in a regular array of thousands of closely-spaced channels.

The first reactor uses Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) to convert natural gas into syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The syngas is fed into the second reactor where it is converted via the Fischer-Tropsch process into synthetic crude oil, water and a ‘tail gas’ composed of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and light hydrocarbon gases.

The close relationship between the two reactors in the CompactGTL process is a vital element in the efficient management of the overall system. The two reactions are tuned to work together to maximise efficiency and minimise waste streams depending upon the specific application and location of the plant. The water produced in the Fischer-Tropsch reaction can be treated to remove impurities and recycled back into the steam reforming process.

CompactGTL’s proprietary reactor technology enables the design of a highly self-contained plant operating a stable process that does not require an oxygen supply. The process involves only small volumes of fluids, which proofs the system against wave motion in the offshore environment. _CompactGTL

The huge price spread between equivalent energies of natural gas and crude oil is causing a growing interest in various GTL technologies -- as well as interest in conversion of gas to high value chemicals, and interest in LNG facility investments.

Is Obama the Venture Capitalist of Doom?

2012-01-17T07:03:00.000-08:00

CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES' subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.

Others are also struggling with potential problems. Nevada Geothermal -- a home state project personally endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- warns of multiple potential defaults in new SEC filings reviewed by CBS News. It was already having trouble paying the bills when it received $98.5 million in Energy Department loan guarantees. _CBS News

It is a matter of judgment. The marketplace will test your judgment like nothing else can do. If you have never been tested in the fires of competitive business venture, you will be at a loss when trying to select potential winners and losers. And if you are paying with hard-earned tax dollars in the middle of an extended recession -- sooner or later the spotlight is going to hit you in the eyes like a dart.

The Obama administration’s track record with taxpayer-funded, green-tech subsidies is severely flawed, and according to new documents obtained by CBS News, its failures were all too predictable. The Energy Department's $535-million loan guarantee to Solyndra is, at least publicly, its most illustrious investment blunder, as the company went bankrupt last year leaving taxpayers with a hefty bill and putting more than 1,000 employees out of work.

All in all, 12 green energy companies are in financial disorder after collectively receiving more than $6.5 billion in government assistance, five of which have already filed for bankruptcy, including Solyndra, Beacon Power, SpectraWatt, Evergreen Solar, and AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy. According to CBS News, these green-tech ventures were junk-bond-rated companies with red flags planted all over them.

...Other green-tech investments the Obama administration has championed are currently facing severe financial challenges. Nevada Geothermal, which develops "clean" electrical power from high temperature geothermal resources, displays warnings of multiple defaults in new SEC filings reviewed by CBS News. In fact, the company was already struggling to pay its bills when it harvested $98.5 million in federal loan guarantees.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), one of the Obama administration’s most trusted congressional assets, was instrumental in securing the Energy Department’s financing for Nevada Geothermal. "Mr. Reid has taken the nascent geothermal industry under his wing," the New York Times reported last October, "pressuring the Department of Interior to move more quickly on applications to build clean energy projects on federally owned land and urging other member of Congress to expand federal tax incentives to help build geothermal plants, benefits that Nevada Geothermal has taken advantage of."

The Times pointed out that Nevada Geothermal’s financial misfortunes are all too reminiscent of Solyndra’s collapse, and that such trends have debunked the myth that government can effectively prop up enterprises which private investors avoid altogether _NewAmerican

NASA's Joe Zawodny cites Widom Larsen Theory for LENR

2012-01-16T12:37:00.000-08:00

... I personally find sufficient demonstration that LENR effects warrant further investigation...The fact that Widom-Larsen Theory (WLT) was not explicitly mentioned in the video fit the intended audience. It is not an indication that I no longer believe WLT is likely the correct explanation behind LENR. I have been consistent in my professional briefings to indicate that I find WLT is likely correct. _Joe Zawodny.com_via_BrianWang

NASA's Zawodny on Video Discussing LENR (h/t NBF)

On his own blog, Dr. Zawodny writes...:
There have been many attempts to twist the release of this video into NASA’s support for LENR or as proof that Rossi’s e-cat really works. Many extraordinary claims have been made in 2010. In my scientific opinion, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I find a distinct absence of the latter. So let me be very clear here. While I personally find sufficient demonstration that LENR effects warrant further investigation, I remain skeptical. Furthermore, I am unaware of any clear and convincing demonstrations of any viable commercial device producing useful amounts of net energy.
_Forbes

The cautionary language used by Dr. Zawodny reflects the approach taken by Al Fin energy analysts when discussing LENR among themselves. While the phenomenon of excess energy production has been observed by many experimenters over the years, the ability to extract a practical or economical amount of commercial-scale energy has yet to be proven beyond a doubt.

Dr. Zawodny cites the Widom-Larsen Theory as being the most probable explanation of the LENR effect that has been observed by multiple scientists in their labs. Here is a video explanation of Widom-Larsen:

We will attempt to keep you updated on further scientific or commercial developments relating to LENRs.

Rocky Mountain Confederation: Leading the World in Energy Assets

2012-01-16T09:31:00.000-08:00

Rocky Mountain Confederacy
The "Rocky Mountain Confederacy" pictured above contains over a trillion barrels of bitumen oil equivalent from Alberta and Saskatchewan's oil sands; over a trillion barrels of kerogen oil equivalent from Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah; large deposits of shale oil in North Dakota, Montana, Alberta and Saskatchewan; huge crude oil deposits in the Arctic; large coal deposits throughout the region; and huge deposits of natural gas of both conventional and unconventional nature.

The Rocky Mountain Confederacy could easily become the largest energy exporting nation on the planet -- containing far more energy than Saudi Arabi, Iran, and Iraq combined, except for one thing -- it does not exist.

In order for such a nation to exist, something bad would have to happen to Canada and the US. Which means that something very, very bad will have happened to the rest of the world. Which means that the export market for all of that energy will not be very large.

You may consider that to be an extreme example of the "peak demand" theory, which states that demand for fossil fuels will collapse long before supplies are restricted enough to collapse the world economy. When the world economy collapses, it will be for other reasons than because all the affordable fossil fuels have been consumed.

When the fecal matter contacts the rotating blades does it really matter what caused it? Actually, it makes a great deal of difference in terms of re-starting a technological civilisation. If a re-born civilisation has both resources and blueprints available to jump-start technological infrastructure, the resumption of the path to beyond the stars will be that much easier.

In the meantime, should you ever wonder where the energy will come from, to transition to more advanced energy infrastructures, consider the many trillions of barrels residing within the Rocky Mountain Confederation. Should both of the governments in Washington and Ottawa ever descend into a full scale energy starvation at the same time, that may be one confederation of states and provinces which will choose to object.

Adapted from a previous Al Fin posting.

Future of Commodities: Light and Dark

2012-01-16T00:26:00.000-08:00

Commodities Now
No one holds a crystal ball which will give the commodities investor perfect advice for maximising his return on investment. So it is a good idea to consider a range of projections, and ponder the logic behind each prognostication most carefully. Here are excerpts from two recent projections, at somewhat different ends of the investment spectrum.

What will happen over the next 10 years? I believe the supercycle of growth across emerging markets will continue with rising urbanization and income rates. This bodes well for commodities, especially copper, coal, oil and gold, and we’ll continue to focus on companies that will benefit the most from these much-needed resources.

...10 years of tremendous income growth and little household debt, make China the “world’s best consumption story, for everything from instant noodles to luxury cars” in 2012.

According to December Chinese trade figures, month-over-month and year-over-year imports of aluminum and copper increased significantly. This may be a result of China restocking ahead of Chinese New Year, but M2 money supply growth rapidly rose in recent months, a sign the government is attempting to reaccelerate the economy. Also, the urban labor market has been robust over the past two years, with an annual change just below 5 percent—a record high over the past 15 years. _CommoditiesNow

Well, it is good to put a positive face on things if you can. The author of the piece excerpted below, takes a very jaundiced view of the coming world of commodities. When reading it, try to maintain a sense of perspective, and stay away from high places, loaded guns, and prescription drugs.

I'm interested in how both shadow and dark inventory phenomena pervert their respective markets, as well as the entire free market system as a whole, where everyone is supposed to have "full access to information". Something both dark and shadow inventories make impossible. Something the 99% general public are not aware of. At all.
If you are the accumulator of dark inventory, or privy to the flow, you are able to foresee the market rallies and position yourself accordingly. This is a profitable time.

Of course, in continually oversupplied markets you will begin to suffer the costs of hedging inventory, if you are bothering to hedge, (since forward curves may eventually flatten out) as well as the burden of balance sheet expansion. Eventually it will make sense to park that inventory off-balance sheet._Dark Inventory
...I certainly recommend reading Izabella's entire piece (like all other pieces I quote from). But even from the quote above alone, you can, even if you're not familiar with the topic, still get a genuinely queasy feeling. We're talking market manipulation here, a way to influence investment decisions without anyone ever knowing they’re being manipulated. And fully legal.

Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange, writes this about "dark oil inventory" at Naked Capitalism:
All is not as it appears in the global oil markets, which in my view have become entirely dysfunctional and no longer fit for its purpose. I believe that the market price is about to collapse as it did in 2008 and that this will mark the end of an era in which the market has been run by and on behalf of trading and financial intermediaries.

In this post I forecast the imminent death of the crude oil market [..] _Naked Oil
...In a nutshell: Cook argues that QE measures from the Fed and BOE have caused large investors to flee from dollars into commodities.

This in turn has led to a price bubble through contango (forward prices are higher than spot prices), for which they are all positioned, but this will down the line inevitably lead to the opposite - backwardation -, and the bubble must burst. Severely, says Cook: to as low as $45 a barrel. Given how conservative Cook is in the numbers he uses, even that may be a high estimate.

In yet another article at Naked Capitalism, Irish journalist Philip Pilkington summarizes Cook’s point so well it seems pointless to try and improve on it:
...if this is a bubble of fear and it bursts – the financial sector is going to see a huge wiping out of the profits they have been reaping from it. We have no way of knowing how much profitability is tied up in these dodgy markets – but my thinking is: a lot. _Fear and Loathing Bursting Bubbles
...while I think it's important for everyone to see and understand that, and how, manipulation sets market prices for commodities (and stocks, but that's another story) on a daily basis, and not some free market principle, I started out trying to figure out what connects dark oil inventory and shadow housing inventory.

Michael Olenick, founder and CEO of Legalprise, and creator of FindtheFraud, has - extensively- looked at the latter:
...if shadow inventory is large, housing prices have a good bit further to go before they hit bottom, which has dire consequences for communities, homeowners, and the broader economy. _Shadow Inventory in Housing
...I think perhaps the best way to make the connection between dark inventory in commodities and shadow inventory in real estate is to look at, no surprise, what pays for it. And that leads me to what I have long since coined "zombie money".

Zombie money is the money that seems, but only seems, to exist because of unrecognized losses. QE measures, for instance, basically serve to keep those losses unrecognized. That’s what they're for. To make markets, and ordinary people, believe that banks are still solvent when in reality they're not.

Funny thing is, even with all the accounting tricks that hide those losses, the entire system is still, and already, on the verge of collapse. And when it goes, the loser will be you, not the gamblers that lost fair and square. If dark inventory shows you anything, it’s that fair and square is a thing of some mythical fairy tale past. The reality for you and me is, and this is not the first time I put it like this: heads you lose, tails you die. _The Automatic Earth

Perhaps the truth is somewhat in between these two scenarios. But it is becoming more and more difficult to trust all the "happy talk" about China coming from those who stand to profit from your investments, one way or another.

The idea that markets are being manipulated behind the scenes may seem far-fetched. And yet, wherever there are profits to be made by any means, there are those who will take the risk. It is best to remember that.

Taken from an earlier article on abu al-fin

And don't forget this cautionary look at world commodities prices from our own Al Fin energy analysts.

Is Origin Oil Finally Beginning to Understand Algal Energy Timeline?

2012-01-15T08:30:00.000-08:00

Al Fin energy analysts have been telling algal fuels companies about the preferred and viable sequence of product production for some years now. Is it possible that top algal fuels company, Origin Oil, is finally beginning to listen? More on this possibility from a news release:

OriginOil’s planned Biocrude System™ will integrate its own harvesting system with state-of-the-art biomass processing technology being developed under the recently-announced research agreement with INL, to convert raw algae into barrels of renewable crude oil.

...Dr. Deborah T. Newby, Project Manager at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) commented, “We are excited to work with OriginOil on its Biocrude System and leverage its algae processing expertise and technology. Algae is a high energy biomass and can function as a force multiplier to blend in other biomass waste such as from forestry and agriculture into a uniform renewable crude oil substitute. This may well support the U.S. military’s strategic fuels diversification program.” _Origin Oil News Dept._via_GCC

It is not clear why it is taking leading algal fuels startups so long to understand the evolving economics of their own industry.

Origin Oil's algal oil technology is quite advanced and state-of-the-art, but it is not ready to produce barrels of oil in high volume -- more like beakers of oil. The shale gas revolution has likewise been very unkind to the prospects for pure algal oil fuels in the marketplace, anytime soon.

Clearly if algal fuels companies are to impact the fuels market -- as opposed to markets for omega 3 oils and vegetable oils -- they will need a fast and dirty approach. Something like algal biomass pyrolysis with integrated hydrodeoxygenation and hydrotreatment (IH2). Which is what Al Fin energy analysts have been pushing for years now.

Pyrolysis of algal biomass is more logical than gasification, since some of the existing lipid in the algae might be condensed from the pyrolysis gases. With gasification, by contrast, everything is broken down to H2, CO, and spare change -- forcing you to start from scratch in synthesising what you want.

Is Origin Oil beginning to wise up to short to medium-term economic exigencies? We hope so. With the US military backing algal fuels producers and expecting a return on investment, they had better get on the ball.

More on the global project to expand biomass production beyond what is traditionally thought possible

Methane Clathrate Exploratory Research in Alaska

2012-01-14T03:53:00.000-08:00

One intriguing idea for the simultaneous recovery of energy and sequestration of global warming gas is proposed by the transformation of methane hydrates to carbon dioxide hydrates with the injection of liquid CO2. Here we use molecular dynamics simulations to show that the replacement can take place without melting of the network of hydrogen-bonded water molecules. Depending on the distance to the interface between the liquid CO2 and solid clathrate hydrate, we find that the replacement occurs either via direct swapping of methane and CO2 or via a transient co-occupation of both methane and CO2 in one cavity. Our results suggest that, with a careful design of the operation condition, it is possible to replace methane from methane hydrates with CO2 in the solid phase without much change in the geological stability. _ACS Abstract

ACS
A team of American and Japanese researchers are in Alaska this month to test a new method of extracting methane hydrates from rich Arctic resources. They intend to inject CO2 into the hydrates in hopes that the waste gas will replace the more valuable methane in the ice cage, freeing up the methane for extraction and use.
This month, scientists will test a new way to extract methane from beneath the frozen soil of Alaska: they will use waste carbon dioxide from conventional wells to force out the desired natural gas.

...The test will use the Ignik Sikumi well, which was drilled on an ice platform in Prudhoe Bay last winter. Specialized equipment has been installed, including fibre-optic cables to measure the temperature down the well, and injection pipes for the CO2. “None of this is standard equipment; it had to be built to design,” says Boswell.

...During the test, the researchers will inject nitrogen gas into the hydrate deposit to try to push away any free water in the system, which would otherwise freeze into hydrates on exposure to CO2 and block up the well. The next phase is to pump in isotopically labelled CO2, and let it ‘soak’ for a week before seeing what comes back up. This will help to test whether the injected carbon is really swapping places with the carbon in the hydrates. Finally, the team will depressurize the well and attempt to suck up all the methane and carbon dioxide. This will also give them a chance to test extraction using depressurization — sucking liquids out of the hydrate deposits to reduce pressure in the well and coax the methane out of the water crystals. “We’ll continue to depressurize until we run out of time or money, and see how much methane we can get out that way,” says Boswell. _Nature

Methane, trapped in an icy cage of water molecules, occurs in permafrost and, in even greater quantities, beneath the ocean floor. It forms only under specific pressure and temperature conditions. These conditions are especially prevalent in the ocean along the continental shelves, as well as in the deeper waters of semi-enclosed seas (see graphic).

World reserves of the frozen gas are enormous. Geologists estimate that significantly more hydrocarbons are bound in the form of methane hydrate than in all known reserves of coal, natural gas and oil combined. "There is simply so much of it that it cannot be ignored," says leading expert Gerhard Bohrman of the Research Center for Ocean Margins... _DerSpiegel

As humans devise more and better ways to utilise methane in place of crude oil, it makes sense to learn how to extract the richest reserves of methane in the crust.

We do not yet know how much of the methane resource originates abiotically in the mantle -- and thus can be theoretically seen as "renewable methane." It is likely to be substantial. And thanks to the giant tectonic plate mechanism, with ongoing subduction of organics-rich oceanic crusts under continental crusts, biogenic methane is, to a large extent, renewable as well -- on an extended time scale, and on a continuous basis. Where do you think most of these methane hydrates came from in the first place? No matter. There are a lot more where those came from.

Downside Risk in Global Oil Markets -- How Likely?

2012-01-13T00:51:00.000-08:00

Recent articles on The Oil Drum and Financial Times are warning of the risk for an oil price decline within the next several months. Veteran energy blogger Brian Westenhaus and even one of our own energy analysts have also warned of the possibility for a near-term downward trend in oil pricing. Here's more:

...my forecast is that the crude oil price will fall dramatically during the first half of 2012, possibly as low as $45 to $55 per barrel...As the price collapses we will see producer nations generally and OPEC in particular once again going into panic mode, and genuinely cutting production. _More from Chris Cook in The Oil Drum

Here is a Financial Times blogpost looking at the effect of a downward plunge in global oil prices on oil producers that are dependent upon energy exports to finance national budgets:

A drop in oil prices from the current level of around $113 a barrel to, say, below $85 (Brent pricing) would likely shift policy-making in these countries in more unpredictable directions, both positive and negative, as governments would be forced to turn to other sources of revenue.

Markets are shifting their focus from this year’s decline in OPEC production due to the Libyan conflict – to increases in output as Libya comes back on stream and Iraqi production grows in 2012.

Countries including Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and most importantly, Saudi Arabia, have recently ratcheted up the oil price assumptions that are used in national budgets. The shift toward higher assumptions has been driven by recent high prices, but more importantly, by growing spending needs.
_Eurasia Group in Financial Post

If these higher-price assumptions prove faulty, Russia, Venezuela and Iran in particular will be hard-pressed to provide enough social spending to contain popular and political discontent.

Meanwhile, the shale oil & gas revolution is spreading to China, and will soon be pushing up production in a wide array of locations on multiple continents. Such a runup in hydrocarbon production in nations that are traditionally seen as consumers rather than producers, will shift the global energy picture noticeably -- and alarmingly, for many energy exporters who are playing it too close to the edge in terms of spending.

Trends in coal to liquids (CTL) and how CTL will help reduce demand for crude oil

Significant risk of economic downturn in China, reducing global demand for commodities including crude oil.

Managing Nuclear Waste thru Transmutation and More . . .

2012-01-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

Neutron Captures... Wikipedia

A first-of-a-kind reactor system has been set up in Belgium by coupling a subcritical assembly with a particle accelerator. The work is a major step in a program to research advanced waste management.

The equipment, known as Guinevere, is a demonstration model that supports the project for a larger version that will be called Myrrha (Multipurpose Hybrid Research Reactor for High-tech Applications). It was assembled by France's National Centre for Scientific Research and is managed by the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK-CEN) at Mol, about 50 kilometres east of Antwerp. The overall project is supported by 12 other European laboratories and the European Commission.

Nuclear terminology classifies an item of equipment as in a critical state if the chain fission reaction is self-sustaining and each reaction leads on average to one more. The term supercritical means the number of fissions is increasing, while subcritical means it is decreasing and will therefore dwindle to nothing. _World Nuclear News

Symmetry Magazine: Myrrha Reference Scheme
Dangerous radioactive isotopes with long half-lives can be transmuted to elements with much shorter half-lives, using spallation neutrons. Spallation neutrons are generated when a beam of protons is accelerated into a spallation target. Neutrons, lacking a charge, do not have to overcome the "coulomb barrier", and can be much more readily incorporated into atomic nuclei to transmute one isotope into another.

It should be noted that the initial neutron source will be Deuterium - Tritium collisions. As the project builds steam, it will incorporate the proton beam - spallation target approach to generating neutrons.

Myrrha will be able to produce radioisotopes and doped silicon, but its research functions would be particularly well suited to investigating transmutation. This is when certain radioactive isotopes with long half lives are made to 'catch' a neutron and thereby change into a different isotope that will decay more quickly to a stable form with no radioactivity. If achievable on an industrial scale, transmutation could greatly simplify the permanent geologic disposal of radioactive waste. Myrrha can also be used to test the feasibility of lead fast reactor technology and is seen as complimentary to the Jules Horowitz Reactor, a thermal spectrum reactor under construction in Cadarache, France.

The total cost of Myrrha has been put at €960 million ($1.2 billion), with 40% of this coming from the Belgian government. SCK-CEN is looking to set up an international consortium to ensure additional financing and has completed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese Academy of Sciences focusing on Myrrha. _World Nuclear News

DLR BLogs: Myrrha CutawayMore details on Myrrha from Science Insider

Several kinds of nuclear fuel cycles are implemented today: most countries chose the so-called once-through cycle which basically considers spent nuclear fuel as waste, whereas others like France, UK, Japan and soon China reprocess their spent fuel to recover the energetically-valuable material Pu (and partially U) to produce Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX) to be irradiated in a second cycle (a twice-through cycle). None of them allow a complete use of the natural resource; when discharged from reactor, 96% of spent nuclear fuel is still composed of U and Pu which can produce electricity and could be recycled.

Fast reactors

Although U-238 represents 99.2% of natural uranium, it is not fissile. It could be fertilised by neutron capture in order to produce Pu-239 which is fissile, and work with an implementation of Pu multi-recycling. This is however not possible in LWRs since neutron capture of U-238 is not efficient enough and the neutron capture of uneven isotopes of plutonium is high, leading to the formation of minor actinides. On the other hand, fast neutron spectra relatively increase the capture of neutrons by U-238, leading to the formation of plutonium isotopes which are all fissile in such conditions. For example, the ratio of the capture to fission cross sections of Pu-238, Pu-240 and Pu-242 are increased in fast spectra compared to thermal spectra by a factor of 22, 250 and 36 respectively. In conclusion, fast neutron spectra allow the effective consumption of U-238 to produce fissile plutonium isotopes which are subsequently fissioned to produce energy and electricity. Reactors using fast neutrons are hence potentially able to use more than 80% of the natural resources instead of < 1% for LWR. _ Much more including a look at transmutation nuclear waste management at WasteManagementWorld

Fuel recycling and nuclear waste management should be seen as integral to each other. Rather than wasting up to 99% of the energy in nuclear fuel as current LWRs can do, future generations of advanced reactors should be designed to utilise at least 80% of the energy -- thus extending the nuclear fuel supply of the planet by a factor of 80 or more.

Parenthetically, transmutation by the addition of a neutron is supposed to be behind the "cold fusion" or low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) efforts of a number of startup energy companies -- including Andrea Rossi's Leonardo Corporation, Defkalion of Greece, and Brillouin Energy. The methods being used by these startups for converting protons into neutrons is far from clear at this point.

In addition, sub-critical accelerator driven nuclear reactor designs have also been proposed for the use of thorium 232, an abundant fuel which is fertile rather than fissile -- it must be fed neutrons for conversion to fissile U 233, which spontaneously splits into smaller nuclei and more neutrons.

Parts of the above article were taken from an earlier article at Al Fin blog

Shale Oil & Gas: The Development That Changes Everything

2012-01-12T00:59:00.000-08:00

MIT News, a journal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reports on a new MIT study that confirms shale gas will make “a big difference” in energy prices in coming decades. Without shale gas, oil and gas prices would rise fivefold by 2050; with shale gas, they would only double. The study concludes that shale gas would moderate energy prices, provide “flexibility” in cutting carbon emissions, stimulate the U.S. economy – and “suppresses the development of renewable [energies].” The EIA, incidentally, says $4 (U.S.) worth of natural gas now buys as much energy as $25 worth of oil. (The MIT study concludes that the environmental risks in shale gas extraction have been “overstated.”) _Globe&Mail

John Deutch, MIT energy expert and chair of a U.S. Department of Energy panel studying the shale industry, says shale gas has created 750,000 jobs with many more to come – especially in Pennsylvania and Ohio, two states that will play a significant role in the 2012 president election. “Over the last couple of years,” Prof. Deutch said, “I’ve realized that what’s happening with unconventional natural gas [shale] is the biggest energy story … in the 40-plus years that I’ve watched energy development in this country.”

According to the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily newspaper, Poland’s state-controlled gas company expects to make its first deliveries of domestic shale gas in the second half of 2012. Up to 3,500 customers will be supplied with gas at a lower price than Poland now pays for the gas it imports from Russia. Poland regards shale gas production as a milestone in its quest for energy self-sufficiency.

...The Daily Telegraph reports that Total SA, France’s biggest oil and gas company, will pay $2.3-billion for a 25-per-cent stake in Chesapeake Energy’s shale deposit in Ohio; and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. (Sinopec), China’s largest (and state-owned) energy company, will invest $2.2-billion for an interest in five oil and natural gas fields under development by Devon Energy. The report says U.S., European, Chinese and Indian energy companies are “scrambling” to gain access to vast U.S. shale gas deposits.

This was a good day’s work. Good days of this kind are occurring more and more often. In the first two weeks of January, huge fossil fuel discoveries have been confirmed around the world – including in Brazil, India and Cyprus (where Houston-based Noble Energy confirmed a fifth large gas discovery). Cyprus declared that these finds would, by themselves, “make a substantial contribution to energy security in the EU.” With every good day’s work, the world moves a little closer to energy independence – for almost everyone. _Globe&Mail

Huge tight gas fields have been discovered from China to India to Europe to South America to the Eastern Mediterranean. The vast volumes of gas discovered will overturn conventional markets and force oil & gas dictatorships such as Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc. to rethink their global and domestic political strategies, as income from hydrocarbon sales begins to decline.

National Instruments' Stefano Concezzi Talks About Fusion

2012-01-11T21:43:00.000-08:00

Energy from Fusion Video from NIWeek 2011 Featuring Stefano Concezzi
Physicist Stefano Concezzi, of National Instruments' "Big Physics," is a big promoter of energy from fusion. In a short news release from November 2011, Concezzi explains how National Instruments aids innovators. The newsrelease also makes mention of Andrea Rossi's company, the Leonardo Corporation, and its intent to use National Instruments' controllers in its E-Cat LENR reactor product.

“For more than 35 years, National Instruments has provided innovators with the tools they need to address the world’s biggest engineering challenges,” said Stefano Concezzi, director of the science and big physics segment at National Instruments. “We are excited about the many ways we are helping customers streamline the development of advanced physics and energy projects.”

Innovators throughout the world are using the NI graphical system design approach to efficiently address the world’s grand engineering challenges in medical technology, urban infrastructure, alternative energy and other critical applications. In physics specifically, NI has contributed product solutions to some of the most advanced projects including the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and tokamak fusion device control systems. Additionally, the Leonardo Corporation has intentions to incorporate NI tools in its control system. _NI Newsrelease

Concezzi also expressed some supportive sentiment regarding Andrea Rossi, to Stirling Allan of Pure Energy Systems:Stefano Concezzi, who serves as NI's Director of Science and Big Physics Segment, told me that NI does not comment on contracts made with customers, unless the customer requests a press release; but he could confirm that Andrea Rossi is a customer.

"I would love for him to be right.

"We support every kind of research for the betterment of human kind. Whoever is interested in doing that, we would be happy to support."

So at this time, I would gather that their contract should not be construed as a validation or confirmation of the E-Cat science, but a signal of NI's willingness to help Rossi develop the technology into an even more robust embodiment, to help increase its operational stability, reliability, safety; while lowering its price point. _PESN

Frank Acland of E-Catworld.com, feels that the involvement of National Instruments with Rossi's E-Cat project should be seen as a verification of the E-Cat's validity:Another strong piece of evidence for the E-Cat being what Rossi claims is the involvement of National Instruments. Rossi has said that the contribution that NI has made to the development of his invention has been tremendous. He said that future E-Cat models will operate using control mechanisms created by NI.

...National Instruments is a leading creator of hardware and software products used in all kinds of engineering projects around the world. The fact that they are collaborating with Leonardo Corporation in the development and production of the E-Cat seems to be a significant piece of evidence in favor of the E-Cat’s validity. _E-CatWorld.com

E-Catworld.com also has information from Rossi regarding Leonardo Corp.'s plans to build a robotic factory for mass-producing the E-Cat LENR reactor.

For those who are hoping that the E-Cat reactor proves to be everything Rossi claims for it and more, this information may provide a bit of hope in the midst of a dearth of hard information regarding actual E-Cat and LENR progress.

But there is nothing here on which one can hang his hat. Perhaps that is the way that Mr. Rossi wishes to play out his hand -- keeping everyone guessing until the end.

We at Al Fin Energy will attempt to keep you up to date on any real news in LENR science and engineering which can be discovered. In the meantime, we will try to help readers to separate real news from rumours and red herrings.

Fast Catalytic Pyrolysis Conversion of Wood to High Value Chemicals

2012-01-11T12:45:00.000-08:00

Huber says his research team can take wood, grasses or other renewable biomass and create five of the six petrochemicals that serve as the building blocks for the chemical industry. They are benzene, toluene, and xylene, which are aromatics, and ethylene and propylene, which are olefins. Methanol is the only one of those six key petrochemicals not produced in that same single-step reaction. _Newswise

The research engineers are developing more efficient and economical methods for entering the $400 billion petrochemicals market, using renewable biomass such as wood as feedstock. By targeting the high-value chemicals market, companies that convert biomass to chemicals can jump-start profits, while continuing to improve efficiencies and economies. The long-term goal is to devise competitive ways of producing hydrocarbon fuels from biomass, such as kerosene, diesel, and gasoline.

Chemical engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, using a catalytic fast pyrolysis process that transforms renewable non-food biomass into petrochemicals, have developed a new catalyst that boosts the yield for five key “building blocks of the chemical industry” by 40 percent compared to previous methods. This sustainable production process, which holds the promise of being competitive and compatible with the current petroleum refinery infrastructure, has been tested and proven in a laboratory reactor, using wood as the feedstock, the research team says.

“We think that today we can be economically competitive with crude oil production,” says research team leader George Huber, an associate professor of chemical engineering at UMass Amherst and one of the country’s leading experts on catalytic pyrolysis.

...The new process was outlined in a paper published in the Dec. 23, 2011 edition of the German Chemical Society’s journal Angewandte Chemie. It was written by Huber, Wei Fan, assistant professor of chemical engineering, and graduate students Yu-Ting Cheng, Jungho Jae and Jian Shi.
“The whole name of the game is yield,” says Huber. “The question is what amount of aromatics and olefins can be made from a given amount of biomass. Our paper demonstrates that with this new gallium-zeolite catalyst we can increase the yield of those products by 40 percent. This gets us much closer to the goal of catalytic fast pyrolysis being economically viable. And we can do it all in a renewable way.”

The new production process has the potential to reduce or eliminate industry’s reliance on fossil fuels to make industrial chemicals worth an estimated $400 billion annually, Huber says. _Newswise

The thermochemical approaches to fuels and chemicals from biomass, are likely to achieve profitability more quickly than the microbial methods being attempted by Craig Venter and Jay Keasling. And yet, in the long run, the low temperature microbial approaches are likely to win out, due to the ability of microbes to reproduce themselves and to create their own catalysts.

Of course, once high quality process heat from gas cooled nuclear reactors comes along, all bets are off as to which approach will generate the higher profits in the long run.

Smart Energy: Clean Efficient Use of Cheap, Dirty Coal

2012-01-11T06:28:00.000-08:00

Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power production is a highly clean and efficient way to utilise relatively cheap and dirty coal, while removing the pollution. GE technology has been selected by Korea Western Power Co. for a integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) power plant to be built in South Korea and one of the first in Asia.

The coal is gasified to syngas, which is used to power a gas turbine to generate electrical power. Heat is recovered from the gas turbine exhaust and used to create steam, which is then used to drive a steam turbine. By using both a gas turbine cycle and a steam turbine cycle, an IGCC power plant converts more of the energy from the coal into electrical power.
Specifically designed for IGCC applications, GE's 7F Syngas Turbine operates on cleaner burning syngas fuel produced from coal. For the Taean plant, the turbine will operate on syngas produced from the gasification of low BTU coal. Key equipment for the project will be shipped during the first half of 2014, with the plant's commercial operation to start in late 2015.

GE is a pioneer in the development of syngas turbine technology and has provided syngas-capable gas turbines for several milestone IGCC projects, including the pilot Coolwater IGCC plant in Barstow, Calif., and Tampa Electric's 250-MW Polk Power Station in Florida.

Turbines for the South Korea plant use the same technology as the turbines to be used in one of the largest IGCC plants in the world, which is slated to be commissioned in 2012.

To date, GE's Heavy Duty Gas Turbines have accumulated more than 1.3 million operating hours on syngas, including 400,000 operating hours on F-class gas turbines. GE's syngas turbines are an enabling technology for IGCC, which allows for the efficient production of electricity via the conversion of coal to gas, in a process that removes pollutants from the gas. _Powergrid
Additional heat retrieval can be utilised in an IGCC plant, to provide hot water for space heating and industrial use, if that feature is desired and designed into the plant.

Coal gasification is a cleaner way of using coal -- even cheap and dirty coal. IGCC plants can also utilise a mixture of coal and torrefied biomass -- also known as "green coal."

Coal is a particularly abundant resource globally, and should be utilised wherever it is possible to do so cleanly and efficiently, to assist in the transition from a hydrocarbon economy to a post-combustion economy which relies largely on electricity from nuclear power -- which is likely to take a number of decades to achieve.

North Dakota Oil Production Continues Up Past 500K BPD

2012-01-11T00:38:00.000-08:00

Both Mark Perry and Brian Wang have pointed out that North Dakota oil production is now above a half million barrels per day, and rising. This is something that none of the archbishops of peak oil prognostication predicted, for all of their amazing foresight.

CarpeDiem

1. The number of wells producing oil in the state increased to 6,060, which sets a new record, and exceeds 6,000 wells for the first time ever.

2. The amount of oil produced per well also reached a record high of 84 barrels per day in November, which is 50% higher than the 55 barrels per day two years ago, and probably reflects both increasing productivity from fracking technology and drilling in more productive areas.

3. The combination of a record number of wells producing oil at record-setting productivity levels has put North Dakota on a trajectory to surpass both California (539,000 barrels per day) and Alaska (555,000 bpd) this year to become the No. 2 oil-producing state in the U.S. At the current pace of record-setting monthly gains, North Dakota's oil production is currently on track to break the 600,000 barrels per day level by next March, break the 700,000 level by next August, and exceed 800,000 barrels per day by the end of this year. At that point, North Dakota oil could be enough to displace either Venezuela's or Nigeria's imports.

4. North Dakota's oil production has now surpassed OPEC-member Ecuador's daily production _CarpeDiem

NextBigFuture

North Dakota had another oil production record for November, 2011 with 509,754 barrels of oil per day which was 22,000 barrels of oil per day more than the previous month. It was almost 170,000 barrels of oil per day more than the beginning of the 2011. If December had a comparable increase then North Dakota will have increased oil production by about 50%. _Brian Wang

PDF report with more information

146 pp PDF report with extensive county level detail (h/t NBF)

No one knows when North Dakota will hit its production peak, or how high it will go. As badly as President Obama would like to shut down all shale oil & gas out of a strong desire for energy starvation, even he understands that the US economy -- and his own political future -- are only hanging on by a thread. Obama must grit his teeth, make his excuses to his faux environmentalist backers, and allow at least some parts of the US to experience a bit of prosperity.

Two New Approaches to a Better Biodiesel

2012-01-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

Munich researchers have developed a more efficient method of converting vegetable oils into alkane hydrocarbons, at relatively low temperatures.
Plant oils are promising starting materials for the production of biofuels. Microalgae are attractive feedstock resources in that context, as they feature high triglyceride contents (up to 60 wt %); rapid growth rates that are 10–200 times faster than terrestrial oil crops such as soybean and rapeseed; and do not compete directly with edible food/oil production. There are currently three approaches used for microalgae oil refining, Lercher and his team note:

Transesterification of triglycerides and alcohol into fatty acid alkyl esters (FAAEs) and glycerol—i.e., first-generation biodiesel. Such esters, however, have a relatively high oxygen content and poor flow property at low temperatures, limiting their application as high-grade fuels.

Conventional hydrotreating catalysts such as sulfided NiMo and CoMo, for upgrading. However, these sulfide catalysts contaminate products through sulfur leaching, and deactivate because of its removal from the surface.

Supported noble and base metal catalysts for decarboxylation and decarbonylation of carboxylic acids to alkanes at 300–330 °. These catalysts, however, show low activities and selectivities for C15–C18 alkanes. Contributions addressing microalgae oil upgrading using sulfur-free catalysts have not been reported, according to the team.

Herein, we report for the first time a novel and scalable catalyst, that is, Ni supported on and in zeolite HBeta, to quantitatively convert crude microalgae oil under mild conditions (260 °C, 40 bar H2) to diesel-range alkanes as high-grade second-generation transportation biofuels.

—Peng et al.
The microalgae oil in the study comprised unsaturated C18 fatty acids (88.4 wt %), saturated C18 fatty acids (4.4 wt %), as well as some other C14, C16, C20, C22, and C24 fatty acids (7.1 wt %) in total.

The researchers directly hydrotreated the microalgae oil in batch mode with 10 wt % Ni/HBeta (Si/Al = 180) at 260 °C and 40 bar H2; after 8 hours, they obtained 78 wt % yield of liquid alkanes containing 60 wt % yield of C18 octadecane)—very close to the theoretical maximum liquid hydrocarbon yield of 84 wt %. Propane (3.6 wt %) and methane (0.6 wt %) were the main products in the vapor phase.

Analysis of the reaction mechanism showed that this is a cascade reaction. First the double bonds of the unsaturated fatty acid chains of the triglycerides are saturated by hydrogen. Then, the now-saturated fatty acids take up hydrogen and are split from their glycerin component, which reacts to form propane. In the final step, the acid groups in the fatty acids are reduced stepwise to the corresponding alkane. _GCC
As a cascade reaction, the complexity of the reaction apparatus is much simplified, and the expense of building and scaling the refiners presumably decreased.

A second new approach to creating a better biodiesel is being developed by researchers at Berkeley's JBEI labs. They are programming E. Coli to produce a novel type of diesel substitute -- bisabolane.
This past fall, JBEI researchers identified bisabolane as a potential new advanced biofuel that could replace D2 diesel. Using the tools of synthetic biology, the researchers engineered strains of bacteria and yeast to produce bisabolene from simple sugars, which was then hydrogenated into bisabolane. While showing much promise, the yields of bisabolene have to be improved for microbial-based production of bisabolane fuel to be commercially viable.

The inefficient terpene synthase enzyme is one of the bottlenecks in the metabolic pathway used by the engineered microbes. Knowing the AgBIS crystal structure will guide us in engineering it for improved catalytic efficiency and stability, which should bring our bisabolene yields closer to economic competitiveness.

—Pamela Peralta-Yahya
Peralta-Yahya and her colleagues determined that the AgBIS enzyme consists of three helical domains, the first three-domain structure ever found in a synthase of sesquiterpenes—terpene compounds that contain 15 carbon atoms. The discovery of this unique structure holds importance on several fronts, according to co-lead author of the Structure paper McAndrew.

That we found the structure of AgBIS to be more similar to diterpene (two carbon terpene compounds) synthases not only provides us with insight into the function of these less well characterized enzymes, it also provides us with clues to the evolutionary heritage as the archetypal three-domain terpenoid synthases became two-domain sesquiterpene synthases in plants.

Furthering our knowledge of the structures and functions of terpenoid synthases may prove to have abundant practical applications aside from advanced biofuels because these enzymes produce a wide variety of specialized chemicals.

—Ryan McAndrew

Solving the three-dimensional crystal structure of AgBIS was made possible by the protein crystallography capabilities of Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), a DOE Office of Science national user facility for synchrotron radiation, and the first of the world’s third generation light sources. For this work, the JBEI team used three of the five protein crystallography beamlines operated by the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB): beamlines 8.2.1, 8.2.2, and 5.0.3. _GCC
I understand that to most people, solving the 3-D crystal structure of an enzyme protein is as exciting as watching paint dry. But from such seemingly dull discoveries eventually emerge earth-shaking breakthroughs.

Most energy analysts have been far too ready to write off "biofuels," perhaps because they associate the concept too closely to maize ethanol. While it is true that biological processes create energy sources with relatively low energy densities, it is also true that biological processes can create a huge amount of these energy sources. It will be up to humans to devise ways of densifying nature's energy bounty -- either via synthetic biology methods, or in the post-biological stage.

Here is a sad tale about the state of European government energy policy, reflecting a general decline in thinking on the continent. Europe can truly not afford this type of ruinous diversion.

Speculators Banking on Higher Commodities Prices...Just Like in 2008

2012-01-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

Money managers expanded their combined net-long positions across 18 U.S. futures and options by 25 percent to 671,915 contracts (.MMLOSH) in the week ended Jan. 3, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. Bullish bets on cotton rose the most since April 2009 and those on coffee doubled. Crude-oil holdings reached a three-week high. _Bloomberg

They are betting your pension and 401K money, university endowments, municipal holdings and more -- just as they did in 2008.

Commodities to be Volatile this Year
The recent history of commodity prices has not been so good, overall, and if recent unfavourable developments in China and Europe continue on their downward course, commodities prices could be subject to further significant drops.
Prices of raw materials have plunged this year. The prices of copper, coffee, aluminum, cotton, nickel, natural gas, wheat and silver are all down more than 20% since the end of April, according to Bloomberg. Gold, widely viewed as a barometer of inflation, has fallen 11% since its September high of $1,900 an ounce.

Inventories of commodities have gotten so high that metals dealers have had to buy extra warehouse space for them.

In November, copper warehouses in New Orleans were 98% full, and aluminum inventories in the U.S. are at an all-time peak, according to FastMarkets.com. _USAToday

The prices of commodities futures depend upon anticipated demand from the big consumers of commodities. That would be China, the US, and Europe. But with a turbulent decline in Chinese real estate and stock markets, and a Eurozone crisis of confidence still building, what could be boosting the confidence of hedge funders and institutional investors?

Bloomberg attributes this aggressiveness by fund money managers to recent favourable economic news from the US government, such as improved job numbers. But these job numbers have already been shown to be unreliable at best and uniformly misleading at worst. Are money managers so easily manipulated by fudged numbers?

Many funds managers are particularly excited by the prospects of a huge runup in oil prices, just as they were in 2008. Looking at current prices of oil in dollars, prices do seem to be trending upward. But look at the chart below, showing the price of oil in gold:

Source
Another aspect to consider when looking at historical price trends, is the inflation of the US dollar. One cannot compare today's prices of commodities such as oil with historical prices, unless one first adjusts for inflation.

Here is a table that shows the inflation adjusted price of oil beside the historical price of oil.

A handy US dollar inflation calculator

It is not possible to predict future prices of commodities with any great precision. But by understanding the bases of commodities demand, there are benchmarks which one can monitor.

Economic data from governments is apt to be fudged. Always confirm and corroborate.

12 Jan 2011: More: Please consider the information in this article in the context of the information presented by Chris Cook in the article "Naked Oil" on global oil markets. (via Brian Westenhaus)

There is always more going on under the surface than most observers will ever know.

Coming Boom in Coal to Liquids (CTL) and Gas to Liquids (GTL)

2012-01-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

Gas TechnoStanford Research Institute's (SRI) clean, new approach to coal-to-liquids (CTL) utilises methane gas as a hydrogen source. This makes the SRI process something of a hybrid CTL and GTL approach. More from MIT's Technology Review:

SRI claims its process addresses three liabilities that have slowed the commercialization of the technology. By blending some natural gas into the conventional coal-to-liquids (CTL) process, the private research lab, based in Menlo Park, California, claims to have eliminated CTL's carbon footprint, slashed water consumption by over 70 percent, and more than halved its capital cost.

...In SRI's process, methane preheated to 600 °C displaces much of the water required, thus reducing the unwanted reaction with the coal. The methane also reduces the amount of heat absorbed by the gasification process, eliminating the need for oxygen and combustion to maintain the 1,400 to 1,500 °C temperatures the process requires. As a result SRI says it can eliminate the use of oxygen-fired combustion that the process requires, making do with zero-carbon renewable or nuclear power instead.

Skipping oxygen not only eliminates a source of carbon dioxide, but contributes substantial cost savings by eliminating the need for an oxygen plant. Further savings are achieved through more efficient fuel synthesis.

...SRI estimates that its zero-carbon process will generate jet fuel for $2.82 per gallon, which is under DARPA's $3 target. SRI's projected capital cost for a 100,000 barrel/day plant—$3.2 billion—is well below the $6 billion cost of a CTL plant, but still well above DARPA's $1.5 billion target. _TechnologyReview

Alaska is thinking about using its considerable coal and natural gas resources to produce synthetic liquid fuels for US military bases in the Pacific basin:

A GTL (or CTL) plant in Alaska, while utilizing conventional transportation and storage within the state, could also fulfill military desires throughout the Pacific Basin.

Alaska, with its vast quantities of coal and natural gas should enter this field, both to service domestic needs, but also to support the nation’s military mission in the Pacific Basin. As the state and industry continue to ponder a natural gas line to the Lower 48 and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is pushed, both into questionable competitive markets, Alaskans continue to suffer under extremely high petroleum fuel prices.

Strategically located Alaska has the potential of delivering completed fuel at a shorter distance, and more secure routes, than any other domestic region; and far more reliable and safe than from foreign sources. For example vessels traveling from Alaska to a forward base at Guam can be shadowed and protected by the U.S. Navy and land based aircraft. _AlaskaJournal

South African energy giant Sasol is pushing ahead with its Fischer-Tropsch based GTL technology in both the US and Canada.

The company is a world leader in GTL and CTL production. Upstream production of coal, oil and gas is either sold on the open markets or used a feedstock for Sasol's synthetic fuels production. The final leg of the company's revenue sources is chemical production and sales.

...In June 2011, Sasol Limited closed a deal for 50 percent ownership of the Montney gas basin assets of Talisman Energy (TLM) for approximately $1 billion. Plans for the shale gas production site include the construction of a GTL plant, which would have a capacity of 50,000 or 100,000 barrels per day of synthetic fuels. A GTL plant has the potential to turn low value natural gas production into high value synthetic fuels. _NM

Sasol is also considering putting a GTL plant in Louisiana.

Shell's Pearl GTL plant in Qatar is ramping up production, and looks to generate profits of $6 billion per year, on total capital costs of around $20 billion.

GTL and CTL are capital intensive enterprises, requiring very high up-front investment. At the same time, more scalable approaches to GTL are being developed by Oxford Catalysts, Carbon Sciences, Gas Techno, and others.

The key to efficient GTL and CTL will be the eventual mass availability of cheap, abundant, high quality process heat from gas cooled nuclear reactors (750 C to 1000 C). Using nuclear reactor process heat to substitute for fossil fuel heating, GTL and CTL suddenly become a lot more profitable -- and well able to moderate hysterical market tendencies which might otherwise further over-inflate oil costs based upon fleeting rumours.

Natural gas and coal can be as easily converted to high value chemicals as to diesel or gasoline. This allows producers a great deal of versatility in dealing with changing markets and prices. They will also offer fierce competition to crude oil suppliers in multiple markets, further helping to contain the highly volatile fluctuations of the petroleum market.

Russia, Qatar, KSA, and Iran Will Be Forced into GTL Production

2012-01-06T01:47:00.000-08:00

Gas to liquids (GTL) is a capital intensive process of converting natural gas to either diesel (FT) or gasoline (MTG). The countries of the world with the largest reserves of conventional natural gas are Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan.

These countries prospered from selling their gas resource to global markets, but something big is happening to change that -- the shale gas revolution! Some of their biggest customers have discovered abundant reserves of shale gas within their own borders. Once these resources are developed, global prices for natural gas are likely to take a nosedive. Conventional gas suppliers will soon have to scramble to convert their formerly valuable natural gas into liquid form, or their economies will be in big, big trouble.
"The global energy chessboard is changing, and markets will be realigned. Countries that have never had so much available energy will become self-sufficient, and perhaps even exporters," Luis Alberto Terrero, head of the Venezuelan Gas Processors Association (AVPG), told IPS.

...Global proven reserves of conventional gas total 6,608 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), according to statistics from British-based oil giant BP, and the largest deposits are in Russia (1,580 Tcf), Irán (1,045 Tcf), Qatar (894 Tcf) and Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan (283 Tcf each).

An EIA study published in April 2011 found practically the same volume (6,620 Tcf) of shale gas deemed recoverable in just 32 countries, and the reserves are differently distributed, with China possessing 1,275 Tcf, the United States 862, Argentina 774, Mexico 681, South Africa 485 and Australia 396 Tcf.

Furthermore, some countries long dependent on foreign suppliers would have a huge resource base compared with their consumption: for example France and Poland, which import 98 and 64 percent, respectively, of the gas they consume, are in possession of shale gas reserves estimated at over 180 Tcf each.

In South America, giant oil producer Venezuela is estimated to have only 11 Tcf of shale gas, barely one-twentieth of its conventional gas reserves, while Brazil and Chile, which currently import about half the gas they consume, possess estimated shale gas deposits of 226 and 64 Tcf, respectively.

Paraguay has an estimated 62 Tcf of shale gas, nearly three times the conventional gas reserves of Bolivia, the top exporter of natural gas in South America. Uruguay, which imports all of its oil and gas as it lacks both, has at least 21 Tcf of shale gas.

"So far this century, this is the biggest innovation in energy, in terms of scale and impact," according to U.S. analyst Daniel Yergin, author of a classic history of the oil industry, "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power", who emphasised that one-third of all the gas produced in the United States is already extracted from shale gas reserves. _ipsnews
Environmental groups have pulled out all the stops to try to slow the spread of the shale gas revolution. It would be nice to be able to follow the money to see whose cats' paws these faux environmental goonies have become. But no matter. The economic revolution portended by developments in the shale energy sector will rip through global hydrocarbon markets, and take no prisoners -- faux greens or no faux greens.

And state energy companies such as Russia's Gazprom and Iran's gas infrastructure will all feel the heat from loss of customer demand. When that happens, these conventional gas giants will be forced to scramble for alternative markets in order to balance their budgets and prevent all-out insurrection by their citizens.

Gas to liquids is the logical choice for gas-rich nations who suffer a rapidly declining demand for natural gas. With oil prices staying above $100 for extended periods of time, the potential profits to be made from synthetic diesel and gasoline from methane are quite large.

As noted, GTL is quite capital intensive, requiring investments well into the $billions and tens of $billions. Corrupt, double-dealing nations such as Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and Bolivia may find it difficult to get investors willing to risk that much. Too bad for them.

The potential profits to be made in GTL will tempt even the most jaded and suspicious international investor, however. It will be fascinating to see who decides to commit.

It will also be fascinating to see what floods of GTL diesel and gasoline do to already price-inflated crude oil markets.

Working Toward a Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

2012-01-05T09:29:00.000-08:00

Lab scientists have taken a crucial step toward describing thermonuclear reactions from first principles.

Over the past decade, progress has been made in understanding the static properties of light nuclei based on realistic interactions among protons and neutrons. But ab initio calculations of nuclear scattering and reactions have been mostly confined to systems of four nucleons or less. _LLNL

LawrenceLivermoreNationalLabs

Starting from a quantum mechanical system of five point-like nucleons and their mutual interactions, Petr Navrátil of the Nuclear Theory & Modeling Group (presently at TRIUMF in Canada) and Sofia Quaglioni of the Computational Nuclear Physics Group in the Physics Division, for the first time calculated within an ab initio framework, the cross sections for the deuterium-tritium and deuterium-3He fusion reactions.

The researchers found an enhancement in the measured cross sections of both investigated reactions at very low energy, due to the screening effects of electrons bound to the tritium and, particularly 3He, targets (usually neutral atoms or molecules). This work paves the way for improved evaluation of less known important cross sections for fusion energy generation and nuclear plasma diagnostics.

Navrátril and Quaglioni used a new approach for bound and scattering states of light nuclei developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), thanks in part to a Laboratory Directed Research and Development grant. The calculations required for this effort were carried out under the LLNL Computing Grand Challenge program.

The research will appear in Physical Review Letters. _rdmag

These enhanced measurements are not breakthroughs, as such. They are merely incremental improvements in an ongoing project to achieve something that is incredibly difficult -- controlled thermonuclear fusion.

Finding ways of achieving fusion at lower energies should make it easier to design reactors and accessory equipment such as lasers, particle beams, super-conducting magnet designs, and so on. Anything that will reduce the cost of entry into thermonuclear fusion would be a plus.

Expanding Earth's Usable Biomass Production

2012-01-05T08:06:00.000-08:00

There are several ways that the Earth's industrial production from biomass could be expanded significantly:

Grow biomass in places currently thought unsuitable for growing
Grow more useful biomass crops per year on the same surface area
Achieve higher yield from each crop that is grown
Improve the quality of biomass feedstocks

And so on. DuPont's investment in new hybrid varieties of sorghum aims to make improvements in all four areas above. By investing in hybrid sorghum that produces both sugar and higher yield biomass, can be planted on dry marginal pasture land, and has a short growing season suitable for crop rotation -- all of these point to perhaps 100 billion gallons of additional US biofuels without using valuable cropland or significant water resources.
DuPont and NexSteppe have entered into a collaboration to develop advanced feedstocks for biofuels, biopower and biobased products. The collaboration will focus on the development of new sweet sorghum and high biomass sorghum hybrids which will create additional feedstock options for these industries.

...Sorghum is naturally drought- and heat-tolerant and has the ability to grow in marginal rainfall areas with high temperatures where it is difficult to grow other crops. It has a relatively short growing season and is suitable for crop rotation systems. Sorghum is increasingly grown as a source of feedstock for industrial value chains.

Sweet sorghum can be used as a complement to sugarcane in existing Brazilian sugar to ethanol mills, and as a feedstock for advanced biofuels and other biobased products produced from sugars. High Biomass Sorghum is a high-yielding crop that can be used as a feedstock for biopower and cellulosic biofuels. DuPont, through its Industrial Biosciences business, operates and develops industrial processes that use sugar as a feedstock. _GCC

This represents a relatively modest increase in potential for biofuels and industrial biomass on the scale of the US economy, but in terms of regional benefits and downward pressure on fuel and food costs, it could lead to significant incremental benefit.

Of course the truly huge potential for boosting planet Earth's biomass output will lie in the oceans, coastal and tidal areas, saline soils, and deserts. Planet Earth is the only biological planet that we know of. Life grows wild high in the atmosphere, at the bottoms of the seas, deep inside the rocky crust of the planet. Even on the most isolated mid-sea islands, no sooner does a new volcanic lava cool, than new outposts of living matter spring up -- from the microscopic to the macroscopic.

One of the greatest limitations to the growth of biomass on the planet is the quite low concentration of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere -- compared to earlier levels when most life evolved. Perhaps we will need to find more efficient ways of generating CO2 and releasing it into the atmosphere, so that we can grow as much biomass as we may need?

How Humans Cause (and Prevent) Earthquakes

2012-01-04T11:51:00.000-08:00

The best-known case is the earthquake caused by the Zipingpu Dam, in China’s Sichuan province, in 2008. Zipingpu held 42.3 billion cubic feet of water, the weight of which precipitated what Klose says is the largest human-triggered earthquake to date: a 7.9-magnitude quake that killed nearly 80,000 people. Klose estimates that Zipingpu, with nearly 320 million tons of water pressing down on a fault line, contributed enough stress to trigger the quake through a process called impoundment. “If you push your finger on top of a paper plate, the plate will bend,” he says. “That same effect works on all the tectonic plates on the Earth’s crust.” The quake occurred two years after the dam’s completion, and its epicenter was a mere three miles from the structure.

Authorities in Basel, Switzerland, shut down the city’s geothermal plant after a 3.4 quake in 2006. Tapping geothermal energy involves boring into rock miles beneath the Earth’s crust in search of steam as a source of energy. Engineers in areas without much water, such as Basel, sometimes create boreholes by way of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which involves forcefully injecting water to create fissures. Fracking can generate small tremors, but the real damage may happen as excess liquid pools in the cracks between rocks, making them less stable. Although dams have caused some 76 earthquakes, mining is responsible for at least 137 earthquakes, over half the number of man-made quakes to date.

In 1989 a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit Newcastle, Australia, the direct result of coal mining. Extracting millions of tons of coal added stress to the fault lines, but the real danger resulted from the water that was extracted during mining. For each ton of coal produced, Klose estimates, 4.3 times as much water was pumped out of the ground, a necessary step to prevent flooding inside the mine. But removing so much water dramatically altered the stability of the earth surrounding the mine. Klose says the earthquake caused $3.5 billion in damage—an amount that nearly equaled the profit of all the coal produced by the mine over its 200-year history. _PopSci

More here

Other human-caused micro-quakes have occurred via deep well injection of fluids, and by experimental deep hydraulic fracturing into crystalline rock (such as granite) near faults. It should be noted that shale fracturing -- such as is done for oil & gas production -- has not produced a causal link to earthquakes.

The recent small quakes in the Youngstown, Ohio area are associated with deep well injection of waste fluids -- a completely different process from shale fracturing.

Unfortunately, a large part of the news media has reported the quakes as having been caused by shale fracturing -- which is not the case. This type of skanky behaviour by news media is nothing new, but one has to wonder whether it is caused by ignorance or by willful deception.

We expect the faux environmental and green sites to misreport such events -- out of both ignorance and willful deception, depending upon the outlet. But in the case of the Ohio micro-quakes, normally careful sites such as oilprice.com, slate.com, and other mainstream outlets produced news copy that was not fit for a third grade newsletter, due to the inaccuracies. This is a troubling trend that should be watched very carefully.

It has been shown for decades that deep fluid injection into the crust can induce micro-quakes, if it takes place near known and discovered faults. And of all energy-related drilling, the type most closely associated with inducing micro-quakes is geothermal -- both enhanced and the geyser type. Deep CO2 injection is likewise liable to induce micro-quakes. Shale fracturing is probably the least likely cause of micro-quakes due to the more shallow nature and due to the type of rock involved.

But if one wishes to be absolutely sure that one is not performing shale fracturing near a fault zone, a thorough seismic survey (for about $10 million) can be done prior to any drilling. Clearly a less expensive method of reassuring the panicky public, skankstream media, and less than honest environmental media is needed.

Scientific research is the best antidote to the type of superstitions being purveyed by the modern skankstream.

Some European experience:The data generally support the view that injection in sedimentary rocks tends to be less seismogenic than in crystalline rocks. In both cases, the presence of faults near the wells that allow pressures to penetrate significant distances vertically and laterally can be expected to increase the risk of producing felt events. All cases of injection into crystalline rocks produce seismic events, albeit usually of non-damaging magnitudes, and all crystalline rock masses were found to be critically stressed, regardless of the strength of their seismogenic responses to injection. Thus, these data suggest that criticality of stress, whilst a necessary condition for producing earthquakes that would disturb (or be felt by) the local population, is not a sufficient condition. The data considered here are not fully consistent with the concept that injection into deeper crystalline formations tends to produce larger magnitude events. The data are too few to evaluate the combined effect of depth and injected fluid volume on the size of the largest events. Injection at sites with low natural seismicity, defined by the expectation that the local peak ground acceleration has less than a 10% chance of exceeding 0.07 g in 50 years, has not produced felt events. _Geothermics

Enhanced geothermal drilling is a far greater micro-earthquake hazard than is any drilling or fracturing in porous shale for oil & gas. But even so, it is best to avoid overreacting to the risk, but rather to plan deep drilling and hydraulic fracturing of crystalline rock very carefully, to minimise risks.
The risk of overreaction to the risks inherent in deep geothermal projects is very real. The establishment of an overly harsh regulatory framework would penalize the geothermal industry in comparison to other energy sectors that carry a recognized risk of inducing seismicity, such as gas extraction or coal mining.

From their outset, EGS projects need to be thought of both as pilot projects with scientific unknowns and as commercial ventures with technological and financial risks. Companies need to have allocated enough of their budget to scientific investigations not directly related to the exploitation of heat. Local authorities need to avoid being enticed by the promises of alternative energy, and to remember to ask the right questions. Risk evaluations need to be done before — not after — these projects begin. _Nature
In such cases where the risks are small but clear, appropriate care must be used in conjunction with any deep geothermal drilling, or deep well injections -- particularly near fault zones.

But the risks of shale drilling and fracturing are completely different -- and orders of magnitude smaller -- than the risks of drilling and fracturing crystalline rock such as granite. If regulatory agencies rush in to ban economically important procedures which have been demonstrated to be safe over decades of experience and geological testing, they will be doing a grave disservice to their constituents.

How to Power the Coming Micro-Robot Explorers of the Solar System

2012-01-04T09:45:00.000-08:00

Images via robhogg.com
Micro-robot explorers will be cheaper and easier to mass produce and deliver to the various planetary bodies of the solar system -- all the way to Pluto and beyond.

It is not yet clear how to best power these tiny robots -- so far from Earth and the sun. But one idea is to use microbial fuel cells. That approach would work best, of course, if the microbes were able to find a native source of food on the planetary body. More:

RobHogg

Microrobotic explorers, powered by microbial fuel cells, could represent an efficient and reliable energy source on a planet without human intervention.

Microbial fuel cells harness the metabolic processes of bacteria, sending harvested electrons through an anode-cathode-resistor circuit to generate electricity. The advantages are that bacteria can be squashed into a battery with high energy density compared to traditional lithium-ion power sources, and the ability of microorganisms to reproduce acts like a natural battery charger.

Scott reckons that a portion of the microbial energy would be used to maintain onboard electronics and control systems, while the rest would be directed toward slowly charging a battery or capacitor. Once enough energy is stored, the autonomous robot would be able to use a more power intensive scientific instrument or to propel itself forward.

His research will focus on a pure culture anaerobic bacterium, such as Geobacter sulfurreducens, and look at ways to increase the energy produced by MFCs, and eliminate the existing bulk associated with the battery infrastructure, such as large, power intensive pump systems.

"As we move forward in the utilisation of MFCs as an energy generation method, this research begins to lay the groundwork for low powered electronics with a long-term potential for space and robotic applications," says Scott. Microbial fuel cells coupled with extremely low-power electronics and a low energy requirement for mobility addresses gaps in power technology applicable to all robotic systems, especially planetary robotics." _Wired.co.uk

Microbial Fuel Cell.org

Wikipedia: Microbial Fuel Cell

The Wired.co.uk article above did not explain specifically where the bacteria were to get their food. If bacterial fuel cells are eventually used to power micro-robotic space explorers, they will need to be fashioned specifically for the type of food resource available on the targeted space body.

Of course, what we actually want to send to the planetary bodies of the solar system are micro- and nano-robotic systems that are able to self-power, self-reproduce, and work together as swarm intelligences. They should function not only as exploratory probes, but as preparatory builders of infrastructure -- preparing habitats and resources for later human occupants.

It is not clear whether bacterial fuel cells can provide enough power for that more difficult secondary mission. But they should be kept in mind as one power source among many possibilities, including nuclear power packs and charging stations.

Corrupt Russia, Iran, Venezuela Frighten Foreign Investors

2012-01-03T13:58:00.000-08:00

National oil companies in Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Bolivia etc. are beginning to reap what they have sown. Their oil & gas infrastructures are beginning to show the wear and decline of underinvestment. The governments of these countries all seized many billions of dollars worth of assets from private multi-national oilcos that had developed difficult oil & gas fields, then allowed the seized assets to decline from lack of maintenance and upkeep.

Is it any surprise that foreign investors are reluctant to go back into these treacherous countries and Mafia states to help bring their petroleum infrastructures back up to basic standards?
Venezuela's oil industry is hampered by a lack of foreign investment, and the country will be keen to see prices high this year while output can be maintained....Iran finds it more difficult to get access to modern technology to rejuvenate its ailing production infrastructure, output is forecast to drop. The International Energy Agency says Iran's oil production could be cut by as much as 890,000 bpd to just under 3 million bpd by 2016...Russia's economy would suffer greatly from a meltdown of the European economy, losing out on both exports and investment flows. This would exacerbate a potential revenue loss from oil production, which could go into decline if investment is not stepped up sufficiently, says the International Energy Agency (IEA). _National

Oil dictatorships in Asia, MENA, SS Africa, and Latin America, are little better than organised criminal gangs -- which do not hesitate to seize valuable assets of any foreigners trusting enough to invest inside their countries.

If the energy starvationist regime of US President Obama is ever removed from office, far more North American energy assets should become available for development. Significant opportunities for multi-national oilcos would then open up in the Arctic, offshore in multiple US continental shelf areas, in coal resources, bitumen resources, kerogen resources, and eventually methane hydrate resources.

Getting rid of Obama should also allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin licensing safe new reactor designs. This would benefit the hydrocarbon markets in multiple ways besides the reliable provision of electrical power -- prolonging supplies of gas and coal for many decades. One of the most fascinating impacts on hydrocarbon markets by advanced nuclear power would be the use of nuclear process heat to develop several trillion barrels of oil equivalent liquids from coal, gas, bitumens, kerogens, methane hydrates, and biomass. That is nothing to sneeze at.

While Russia continues to bang its head against the wall trying to develop rich Arctic reserves in the face of a global cooling trend and increased Arctic sea ice, the countries of North America, Oceania, and Europe could be developing alternative and unconventional sources of liquid fuels at a price below today's inflated oil prices.

Adapted from an earlier article at abu al-fin

Cheap Cellulosic Sugars Re-Shape Future Fuels and Chemicals

2012-01-03T07:23:00.000-08:00

Industrial sugars are important renewable resources for the chemical industry and can be used, for example, to produce biofuels or basic chemical products and intermediates by fermentative processes.The availability of industrial sugars in sufficient quantities and at favorable cost is therefore important for the competitiveness of the products. With this patented process, BASF notes, industrial sugar can be produced from lignocellulosic biomass (wood, cane trash or straw) in large quantities and at competitive cost from non-edible plant mass._GCC

Cheap industrial grade sugars from a wide range of biomass sources will re-write the economic equations for the production of biofuels, plastics, and chemicals from renewable sources.

Much of the "peak oil doom" angst arises from society's dependency on petroleum for the production of strategic chemicals, plastics, materials, and fuels. As chemists and plant geneticists become more clever about turning new, rapid-growth biomass into high value products, much of this angst -- at least in the more intelligent and informed community -- should subside.
There are three general approaches to breaking down biomass for use in renewable fuels and chemicals in the market today: enzymatic hydrolysis, acid hydrolysis, and gasification. Renmatix’ represents a new, fourth approach. Basic stages of the Plantrose process include:

Biomass—composed primarily of hemicellulose (C5 sugars), cellulose (C6 sugars), and lignin—which has undergone size reduction as necessary is mixed with water to form a slurry and pumped into a fractionation reactor.

In fractionation, less severe conditions first solubilize hemicellulose into a C5 sugar stream in a matter of minutes; the cellulose and lignin remain as solid particles.

A simple solid/liquid separation removes the remaining cellulose and lignin from the C5 sugar stream. The C5 stream is collected in one vessel and the solids are sent to cellulose hydrolysis.

In cellulose hydrolysis, more severe conditions solubilize the cellulose into a C6 sugar stream in a small number of seconds. The lignin remains as a solid particle. Renmatix says that the relative ease of hydrolysis of the hemicelluloses compared to the recalcitrant cellulose necessitates this two-step process in order to preserve the C5 sugars that would be rapidly destroyed under the more severe conditions necessary for cellulose dissolution.

A simple solid/liquid separation removes the remaining lignin solid form the C6 sugar stream. The C6 stream is collected in one vessel and the lignin in another.

Where necessary, the separate C5 and C6 soluble oligomer streams are easily transformed to monomers through a catalytic process, Renmatix says. The company also has developed processes to concentrate sugars as necessary to meet specifications of different partners.

The Plantrose process is biomass agnostic. While the initial production facilities will use wood products as inputs, the initial step in Renmatix’s Plantrose Process can be modified to incorporate alternate inputs such as corn cobs and stover, miscanthus, switch grass, and bagasse. _GCC
This process would clearly benefit from cheap nuclear reactor process heat.

Cheap natural gas could facilitate this process, but since methane is an important feedstock for many of the same chemical and fuels-producing pathways, it makes far less sense to use natural gas as a heat source here. Methane might very well serve as a hydrogen source.

Wired.co.uk Tries to Drum Up Excitement Over Cold Fusion

2012-01-02T00:15:00.000-08:00

It has been over 2 months since Andrea Rossi's disputed demonstration of his 1 MW E-Cat reactor in Bologna. Since that time he has been taking orders and putting people on waiting lists for the 1 MW hot water reactor, and making plans for smaller hot water reactors -- even for a future electricity generating version of the E-Cat.

UK Wired recently published a story about the rumoured upcoming business competition between Andrea Rossi's old Greek partner Defkalion, and Rossi's own company.
Cold fusion, otherwise known as "low energy nuclear reaction" (LENR) technology has yet to gain any scientific respectability. This hasn't stopped Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies launching its own range of cold fusion power plants, rivals to Rossi's E-Cat. In a press release (.pdf), the company announced they would be selling a range of units under the name Hyperion, from small domestic boilers to industrial power plants.

They have a detailed specification document for its product (.pdf) and say the launch is due early 2012. Unlike Rossi, it invites independent third parties to test its products and report the findings "under agreed protocol." Its customers will not be bound by non-disclosure agreements, whereas Rossi's dealings have been highly secretive.

Defkalion used to have a close working relationship with Rossi. Originally the company was to produce thousands of E-Cats a year from a factory on Xanthi using Rossi's design under licence. The relationship broke up in August, for reasons which have never been fully disclosed. The company has persevered with a cold fusion device of its own, which it insists has been developed independently and also that Hyperion is more stable than Rossi's E-Cat.

Like the E-Cat, Hyperion will initially be used for producing heat only, with electricity generation following. The first will be a one-megawatt device, the same scale as the one in Rossi's demonstration in October.

Curiously, Rossi does not accuse Defkalion of stealing intellectual property. Instead, he insists that it has never known the details how the E-Cat works. He says it cannot make its device operate without his secret catalyst, which it was hoping to acquire. "There are clowns saying they have a technology copied from us, actually they have just a moke up (sic), waiting for the piece of info they need to make a real copy," Rossi wrote in his Journal of Nuclear Physics blog, congratulating himself for outwitting them.

However, Defkalion spokesman Alexandros Xanthoulis told Swedish science magazine NyTeknik that they know exactly what the catalyst is. In a piece of subterfuge, a spectroscopic examination was carried out on an E-Cat being while it was being tested without Rossi's knowledge. However, to maintain "fair play", Defkalion's scientists say they developed their technology without using this information.

The lack of a patent means that (if this is not a hoax) the secret is potentially worth billions. Hence Rossi does not want anyone to repeat his results or see the kernel of the E-Cat. So long as he has paying customers he is happy for the rest of the world to dismiss the technology as not worth investigating. _Wired.co.uk
If you want to put your name on a waiting list to purchase an E-Cat from Rossi, go to ECAT.com, and fill out the online form.

The website for competitor Defkalion is defkalion-energy.com. It does not appear as if the Greek company is ready to take orders, as of yet.

The dark horse competition for LENR / Cold Fusion is Brillouin Energy Corp. Brillouin has not announced any upcoming demonstrations or finished products. The company is aiming to license its product technology to individual manufacturers by region.

Rossi does not seem to be making any friends or many admirers with his shadowy and unorthodox approach to business, testing, marketing, and manufacturing. He appears to be in serious need of assistance from professionals, if his technology offers as much promise as he claims.

More -- I almost forgot the recent Forbes article: 2012 The Year of cold Fusion. In that article, Mark Gibbs links to a sceptical blog article by an astrophysicist: The Physics of why the e-Cat's Cold Fusion Claims Collapse. In that blog article, physicist Ethan Siegel demonstrates why Nickel cannot be converted to Copper by the addition of a proton. But Brillouin, at least, is claiming to convert protons to neutrons by the catalytic addition of an electron. It is the resulting neutron which they say is added to the Nickel atoms.

Brillouin’s proprietary electronic pulse generator promotes proton-electron capture reactions. The pulses change some of the protons in metal to neutrons, and surrounding nuclei subsequently captures these produced neutrons. The subsequent neutron capture reactions generate heat, and because the pulses are controlled the thermal output from Brillouin’s proprietary technology safely provides clean heat on demand. _Brillouin

Presumably the secret catalyst which both Rossi and Defkalion claim to be using, does something similar.

Finally, there is the dark-dark horse of unconventional proton reactions: Blacklight Power. In the Blacklight approach, protons are converted to "hydrinos" rather than neutrons, causing release of heat energy (or alternatively electricity). But Blacklight aims to totally re-write basic theories of chemistry and physics, which is a greater ambition than even Andrea Rossi appears to be shooting for.

Meanwhile, a number of academic researchers continue to study the chemistry and physics of what is called either "lattice assisted reactions," "low energy nuclear reactions," or "cold fusion." Several researchers have reported observing both anomalous heat and transmutation isotopes, so until these results can be explained, total scepticism would seem to be uncalled for.

Can Humans Get Over Their Fears of Small Earthquakes?

2012-01-01T08:13:00.000-08:00

Scientists are continuously thinking of ways to try and reduce earthquake power. Some are trying to lessen the friction between colliding plates. They poured water down a fault where two plates were grinding together. The water “lubricated” the fault, letting one piece jerk free with a number of little earthquakes and preventing a large tremor. _EarthquakePrevention

If humans can get over their fears of small earthquakes, they could reap the bounty of huge amounts of energy beneath their feet, of multiple types.

Geothermal energy from EGS represents a large, indigenous resource that can provide base-load electric power and heat at a level that can have a major impact on the United States, while incurring minimal environmental impacts. With a reasonable investment in R&D, EGS could provide 100 GWe or more of cost-competitive generating capacity in the next 50 years. Further, EGS provides a secure source of power for the long term that would help protect America against economic instabilities resulting from fuel price fluctuations or supply disruptions. Most of the key technical requirements to make EGS work economically over a wide area of the country are in effect, with remaining goals easily within reach. _MIT Report 14 MB PDF
100 GWe is roughly the amount of power generated by 100 large nuclear reactors -- or several hundred small modular reactors. Geothermal power is available 24 hours a day, as baseload ... load following ... or peaking power. It is the ultimate non-nuclear, non-carbon power source -- if humans could only get over their fears of small earthquakes.

Small earthquakes can be frightening to children and those who have not grown accustomed to them. But the right succession of small earthquakes can relieve enough stress on crustal faults to prevent, delay, or mitigate the effect, of larger quakes that were destined to occur. Earthquake prevention is a difficult science due to the multiple interlocking crustal faults at varying depth -- many of which have not yet been discovered.

The fear of triggering small earthquakes has become a tremendous obstacle -- both to the development of rich new energy resources, and to the exciting new field of seismic exploratory activity aimed at eventually preventing large quakes. Energy starvationists of the green lefty-luddite dieoff.orgiast persuasion in particular, have been quick to seize on the common primal fear of small earthquakes, in order to shut down promising, reliable new sources of energy.

Geothermal energy can be tapped in multiple ways:The Geysers Field north of San Francisco is home to more than a dozen large power plants that have been tapping naturally occurring steam reservoirs to produce electricity for more than 40 years.

However, newer technologies and drilling methods can now be used to develop resources in a wider range of geologic conditions, allowing reliable production of clean energy at temperatures as low as 100C (212F) - and in regions not previously considered suitable for geothermal energy production.

Preliminary data released from the SMU study in October 2010 revealed the existence of a geothermal resource under the state of West Virginia equivalent to the state's existing (primarily coal-based) power supply.

...Three recent technological developments already have sparked geothermal development in areas with little or no tectonic activity or volcanism:

1. Low Temperature Hydrothermal - Energy is produced from areas with naturally occurring high fluid volumes at temperatures ranging from less than boiling to 150C (300F). This application is currently producing energy in Alaska, Oregon, Idaho and Utah.

2. Geopressure and Coproduced Fluids Geothermal - Oil and/or natural gas are produced together with electricity generated from hot geothermal fluids drawn from the same well. Systems are installed or being installed in Wyoming, North Dakota, Utah, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

3. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) - Areas with low fluid content, but high temperatures of more than 150C (300F), are "enhanced" with injection of fluid and other reservoir engineering techniques. EGS resources are typically deeper than hydrothermal and represent the largest share of total geothermal resources capable of supporting larger capacity power plants. _Geothermal Promise
More information at this helpful Google enhanced geothermal website, including videos and links to information on some of the latest research and technologies.

Geothermal power at the Geysers in Lake County, California, has been associated with thousands of tiny earthquakes above magnitude 1 since 1975 when the resource was tapped. But earthquakes are triggered by a number of different things, including the construction of hydroelectric dams.

Depth of the reservoir is the most important factor, but the volume of water also plays a significant role in triggering earthquakes.
RIS [Reservoir Induced Seismicity] can be immediately noticed during filling periods of reservoirs.
RIS can happen immediately after the filling of a reservoir or after a certain time lag.

It would be best for humans to invest in the best accelerated research possible to clearly and unequivocally define the risks and benefits of small scale induced seismicity. One of the best ways of doing this would be for seismic scientists to work closely with deep drilling enterprises which also involve the deep injection of fluids into the earth's crust. By piggy-backing onto economic activity which is already being done, seismologists can increase the detail of their seismic maps, and can also collect abundant data on the impact of deep crustal fluid injection into different fault configurations.

Making Up for the Incompetence and Corruption of National Oil Companies

2011-12-30T13:33:00.000-08:00

Most of the world's oil reserves fall under the control of national oil companies. Most of these national oilcos are corrupt and incompetent, with failing and underinvested infrastructures, and a chronic lack of basic upkeep and maintenance. Given this basic condition -- plus the chronic ongoing devaluation of the US dollar -- it is no wonder that global oil markets are seeing a long-term edging up of oil prices in dollars.

The more competent multi-national oilcos have often been largely excluded from the world's largest and most promising oil fields. Consequently these oilcos are forced to drill relatively risky wells many thousands of feet below the sea, and anywhere else they are allowed access by corrupt governments and national oilcos.

But recently, multiple new ways of by-passing the restrictions and treacherous double-dealing of corrupt third world governments are presenting themselves to private oil concerns:

1. Tight oil & gas
...a new oil age is emerging....Tight oil, a catch-all for oil trapped in shale, carbonate or sand formations recoverable with the type of drilling methods that revolutionized the natural-gas side of the business, is reviving the oil sector on a scale that only a couple of years ago would have been unthinkable.

“It turns out there are a lot of big piles of oil in North America,” said Denver-based John Schopp, vice-president for the North Rockies and new ventures at Encana Corp., one of the companies in a hurry to turn it into new revenue.

Calgary-based Encana, a pure natural-gas producer that is feeling the pinch of low gas prices, hopes its new oil thrust will make it a more balanced gas/oil producer.

“With shale gas it took a few years to get it to work for everybody,” Mr. Schopp said. “With oil, obviously we are in an earlier inning than we are with gas, but the rate of change is quicker because of all the tricks that we have learned.”

The full potential of tight oil is not yet known. What is known is that the sector is repositioning itself to make the most of it, encouraged by the performance of fields such as the Bakken straddling North Dakota and Saskatchewan, one of the continent’s most significant sources of oil. If new plays such as the Niobrara in Colorado, the Eagle Ford in Texas, the Cardium in Alberta or the Viking in Saskatchewan have similar encores, and if the same pattern is repeated around the world, oil could be with us for a long time yet.

“We are finding oil in a lot of places that frankly, we knew it was there, we just didn’t know how to get it out,” said John Richels, president and CEO of Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp. “Taking this new technology … and applying it to many of these areas is opening some new doors. In a world scene where we are producing 86 million barrels a day, it probably doesn’t have the same kind of impact as it did in the natural gas business, which was more of a North American market, but it certainly has some big potential in the right areas.” Devon, previously a natural gas focused company, directed 90% of its capital to oil and natural-gas liquids targets in 2011. _NatPost
The big multi-nationals are now trying to find ways to get in on this new technology -- and hoping to be able to transfer it to huge tight oil & gas finds in several other parts of the globe besides North America.

2. Gas to liquids (GTL)

Qatar has a head start in the coming global GTL bonanza, but it should not be long before nations with abundant tight gas supplies begin to utilise GTL technologies at all scales -- from the "shoebox" GTL microchannel approach of Oxford Catalysts, all the way up to the multi-billion dollar approach taken by Shell in Qatar and Malaysia.

3. Coal to liquids (CTL)

SRI's CTL approach is notable for its extremely low production of CO2 and very low use of water. The massive reserves of coal in North America would reasonably put that region in the best postion to take advantage of this huge potential source of liquid hydrocarbons.

4. Bitumens to liquids (oil sands and heavy oils)

Canada has a big head start in both surface mining of oil sands and in situ extraction of oil sands. But Venezuela's huge bitumen deposits will wait a long time for a more rational leadership of the nation's government, to replace the current clown regime.

5. Kerogens to liquids (PDF) (oil shales kerogen)

Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah possess significant deposits of kerogen rock. The most viable and economic approach to extraction at this point is by way of nuclear process heat in situ extraction. Several more years of development will be needed to make the appropriate on site small modular reactors available, and to perfect environmentally benign methods of extraction.

6. Methane hydrates This is the largest hydrocarbon resource in the planet's crust, and is also being constantly replenished from multiple sources -- both biogenic and abiogenic.

Considering that high quality liquid hydrocarbon can be obtained from CTL, GTL, oil sands, and (soon) oil shales at costs of around $30 to $40 a barrel, the production of such "synthetic fuels" would seem to be viable for as long as third world national oilcos remain corrupt and incompetent -- which is likely to be quite some time.

These technologies are either already here, or hot on your heels. The largest impediment to unconventional hydrocarbon production on a large scale, is governmental restriction, prohibition, regulation, and corruption -- political peak oil.

The question of EROEI in the production of unconventionals will eventually be made irrelevant by the abundant, high-value process heat from gas-cooled nuclear reactors -- particularly of the small modular type.

Without political corruption, duplicity, and incompetence, we would not be having this conversation. But since corruption, duplicity, and incompetence are such a commonplace ingredient of third world oil dictatorships such as Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc etc, the creation of workarounds is just one of the costs of doing business.

A World Bathed in the Glow of Bacterial Light

2011-12-29T09:58:00.000-08:00

Scientists are becoming more clever at manipulating microbes to perform basic tasks. In this story, bacteria were taught to glow in synchrony, with the aim of creating microbial sensors to detect toxic gases. Similar technologies will soon be used to tweak microbes into producing valuable chemicals and fuels, and much more.

UCSD scientists have trained E. Coli bacteria to glow in synchrony, like a light chorus. The synchrony arises when colonies of bacteria on microfluidic chips communicate via gas channels. More:Their achievement, detailed in this week’s advance online issue of the journal Nature, involved attaching a fluorescent protein to the biological clocks of the bacteria, synchronizing the clocks of the thousands of bacteria within a colony, then synchronizing thousands of the blinking bacterial colonies to glow on and off in unison.

...Using the same method to create the flashing signs, the researchers engineered a simple bacterial sensor capable of detecting low levels of arsenic. In this biological sensor, decreases in the frequency of the oscillations of the cells’ blinking pattern indicate the presence and amount of the arsenic poison.

Because bacteria are sensitive to many kinds of environmental pollutants and organisms, the scientists believe this approach could be also used to design low cost bacterial biosensors capable of detecting an array of heavy metal pollutants and disease-causing organisms. And because the senor is composed of living organisms, it can respond to changes in the presence or amount of the toxins over time unlike many chemical sensors.

...Hasty said he believes that within five years, a small hand-held sensor could be developed that would take readings of the oscillations from the bacteria on disposable microfluidic chips to determine the presence and concentrations of various toxic substances and disease-causing organisms in the field. _UCSD
"This development illustrates how basic, quantitative knowledge of cellular circuitry can be applied to the new discipline of synthetic biology," said James Anderson at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences, in a university statement.

The new chips can be used for the production of biochemicals, tissue engineering, and biosensors that continually monitor the environment, rather than offer a one-off test that must be replaced every time new readings are needed. Besides the obvious practical uses, the sensors offer good aesthetics: The new "biopixels" come in beautiful shades of blue. _FastCoexist
Imagine if all the microbes in the world were to glow in the dark. Should that happen, humans might begin to comprehend the real inhabitants of Earth, in terms of number and mass. At that point, these slightly advanced apes might begin to understand the promise of bio-technologies.

Oil Shale Kerogen Prospects in Morroco

2011-12-28T14:08:00.000-08:00

Massive deposits of oil shale kerogens exist in the US, Jordan, Israel, and several other nations. Morocco is beginning to take a look at ways that it can capitalise on its own deposits of oil shale kerogens.

TheDominion Moroccan Oil Shale
Morocco, like Jordan and Israel, is moving towards using the most carbon intensive fuel base on earth. This move is supported by present, and projected, oil prices that make synthetic crude from oil shale profitable on a near permanent basis. Technology has become cheaper while the price of oil has gone up dramatically. Recent industry estimates indicate that oil can now be extracted from shale for approximately US$40 per barrel, while the average price at an American pump is US$94 per barrel.

With global oil demand slated to grow, Morocco is set to become an unconventional oil producer through mining oil shale and converting it to mock crude oil in a fashion similar to Canadian tar sands development, but borrowing on shale technology from Brazil. Morocco also has contracts to use Estonian technology to mine and burn oil shale directly for domestic electricity.

Estonia is one of a few countries in the world that has ongoing oil shale currently in operation. The Tangier deposit of oil shale in the north of Morocco is likely to see Eesti Energy-owned Enefit of Estonia work to mine this shale directly for domestic electricity generation, which would treat the kerogen shale more like a cousin of coal rather than an ancestor of oil.

Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company, has developed a technique of extracting oil as well as gas from oil shale, and has been involved in this process commercially since the early 1980s. A partnership between Petrobras and TOTAL energy of France has been developing towards shale-to-oil mining at the Timahdit deposit, a deposit much larger than Tangier, approximately 240 kilometres southeast of Rabat, Morocco’s capital. Petrobras would be the main operator of the Timahdit mine, but both world energy majors will share the costs and profits. _ExtremeExtraction

The above article goes on to point out a few of the environmental problems with a large scale development of shale oil extraction in Morroco. The world kerogen resource is not yet ready for modern development -- at least not in ways that would satisfy modern environmental lobbies -- particularly in the US.

And yet if environmental lobbies continue trying to block and prohibit the development of all forms of reliable large-scale energy and fuels, eventually they are likely to be lined up against a wall and shot. The reason for this is that civilisation cannot exist without energy, and if the only forms of large-scale reliable energy happen to be objectionable to the big money environmental lobbies, popular opinion will eventually swing violently against these special interests -- which too often only pretend to be concerned about the environment, being in reality more often concerned with their own power, wealth, and influence.

Here is a broader look at some of the replacements for crude oil, including kerogens:Shale is a type of sedimentary rock rich in organic matter. Deposits of shale often contain kerogen, a set of organic compounds from which petroleum (oil and natural gas) can be extracted through a series of chemical processes. Extraction of oil from shale had been the standard way of extracting oil for centuries, with British patents granted for extraction of oil in this way going back as far as the 16th century. Oil from shale came to an abrupt end when liquid oil started gushing from wells in the continental United States. Rising demand for petroleum products and significant deposits of oil and natural gas in shale has led oil companies the world over, from the US to India, to start investing in technologies to make possible its extraction. So much so, that shale gas is slated to form a major portion of the natural gas produced in the US. In India too, companies such as Reliance, Reliance Natural Resources and ONGC are preparing to invest in shale gas exploration in a big way, with large deposits found in the Cambay Basin in Gujarat, the Gondwana Basin in Central India and the Assam-Arakan basin in eastern India.

...Technically, bitumen is a highly viscous form of petroleum. Rising prices of oil in the international market have made bitumen an unlikely, yet promising, source. So much so that even within this most conventional of energy sources, extraction of petroleum from bitumen is termed as unconventional oil.

Canada and Venezuela are especially well endowed with large reserves of oil sands. Located beneath boreal forests, the Canadian deposits are the world’s most extensive and are supposed to contain a potential 170 billion barrels of oil, larger than the total reserves of Saudi Arabia.

... _Drilling for Dummies by a Dummy
Shale gas to liquids and coal to liquids are yet two more large-scale sources for crude oil replacements for the future. All of these approaches to peak oil substitution are made more viable by the use of process heat from gas-cooled gen III nuclear reactors.

One sign of hope that some of the environmental special interests may be developing a small bit of pragmatism, is the growing number of self-labeled environmentalists who are publicly coming out for new, safe, advanced, nuclear power. While their backing of nuclear power may be caused by a delusional carbon hysteria, it is welcome all the same.

If only more of the whining obstructionists would learn to solve problems, rather than creating or exaggerating them, they might be taken more seriously by the people who actively prop up the infrastructure of civilisation.

Energy Density of Automotive Fuels: Electricity Trails Badly

2011-12-27T07:31:00.000-08:00

Exxon Mobil via New Energy and Fuel
The most striking thing about the graphic above is the poor performance by today's automotive electrical storage devices. Liquid fuels far outperform electrical storage in terms of energy density -- range of travel between refuelings. Until better electrical storage devices are developed and delivered -- which may take decades -- liquid fuels will be demanded by discriminating drivers.
...contrast the 300 to 400 miles that a gasoline vehicle can take you with what it would take to do the same in an electric vehicle. Electric vehicle batteries have just a fraction of the energy density of gasoline, meaning they would have to be charged multiple times during a 400-mile trip. There’s currently no major infrastructure for charging electric vehicles on the road, and it can take hours for an electric vehicle battery to charge.

Consumers at times may take for granted the convenience and time-savings offered by the existing fuel station network. The technological processes that recover crude oil from the earth, transport it to refineries, refine it into gasoline and diesel, transport it to fuel stations and store it over time are so incredibly advanced that consumers can fill up with gasoline 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in as many quantities as necessary. That’s a convenience that does not currently exist with other transportation fuels.

...One of our top scientists uses the analogy of backpacking when talking about the importance of energy density: You want to buy the lightest, most easily carried food for backpacking, but it also needs to contain a lot of energy to keep you going. Likewise, gasoline and diesel are the lightest and most energy-dense fuels to carry for transportation. A typical car’s gasoline tank contains less than 100 pounds of gasoline but can power a 3,000 pound car for 400 miles at 60 miles per hour. This performance sets a high standard, and there are few transportation fuels currently on the market that are as light, energy dense and portable as gasoline or diesel. _EMblog via Brian Westenhaus

In the future, the development of lightweight advanced fuel cells running on liquid fuels will shift the equation toward the use of electric motors. But liquid fuels will still be valued for their high energy density, compared to electrical storage.

Super-hybrid vehicles utilising fuel cells, supercapacitors, and chemical storage batteries are likely to play a part in the future vehicular mix. All of those components will be necessary just to match the performance of the internal combustion engine running on liquid fuels.

But with far fewer moving mechanical parts, once such systems are perfected they should have fewer maintenance problems, and may have longer useful lifetimes.

Did Santa Forget to Bring Peak Oil for Christmas Yet Again?

2011-12-26T09:12:00.000-08:00

But didn’t world oil production peak in 2006, as the International Energy Agency concluded probably occurred? Doesn’t this condemn the world to fighting more future wars over dwindling petroleum resources? No....“experts” have been repeatedly predicting the depletion of the world’s oil reserves since the late 1800s, but it never seems to happen. New technologies and periodic higher prices make previously uneconomic deposits viable—such as the tar sands and shale oil that have recently become economic—thus sustaining world production. _EurasiaReview
In fact, global oil reserves continue to rise, year on year. This is largely from improvements in oil extraction technologies, which are reviving "tired old oil wells," convincing them to produce the remaining 70% to 80% of their oil which has remained underground. But giant new oil fields have been discovered -- mostly under the seas. And as oil prices edge upwards due to largely political factors, a massive deluge of synthetic hydrocarbon fuels from CTL and GTL grow ever more affordable.

Peak oil grifters and con-men have been predicting the onset of peak oil and the collapse of global civilisation for roughly a century now. More astoundingly, peak oil drones are claiming that "peak oil actually happened in 2005 (!)", although civilisation failed to collapse -- in a most unobliging fashion.

But don't give up, faithful disciples and cultists of peak oil doom. Eventually, either civilisation will collapse -- and you can claim it was from peak oil -- or you will be able to lay down this burden of trust and move on to the non-corporeal level.

A quick glance at popular doomer sites will confirm that doomers are unwilling (or unable) to let go of their pet doom -- even for Christmas! Peak oil doom shared the Christmas table of every true-blue doomer worth his salt, and that calls for another round of libation.

Speaking of libation, we should always remind ourselves that ethanol is for consumption by humans, not by engines. Butanol is a far superior fuel for ICEs. If you must use ethanol for energy production, consider fuel cells.

JBEI Berkeley Develops Master Controls for Synthetic Biology

2011-12-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

Synthetic biology is an emerging scientific field in which novel biological devices, such as molecules, genetic circuits or cells, are designed and constructed, or existing biological systems, such as microbes, are re-designed and engineered. A major goal is to produce valuable chemical products from simple, inexpensive and renewable starting materials in a sustainable manner. As with other engineering disciplines, CAD tools for simulating and designing global functions based upon local component behaviors are essential for constructing complex biological devices and systems. However, until this work, CAD-type models and simulation tools for biology have been very limited...

...“Because biological systems exhibit functional complexity at multiple scales, a big question has been whether effective design tools can be created to increase the sizes and complexities of the microbial systems we engineer to meet specific needs,” says Jay Keasling, director of JBEI and a world authority on synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. “Our work establishes a foundation for developing CAD platforms to engineer complex RNA-based control systems that can process cellular information and program the expression of very large numbers of genes. Perhaps even more importantly, we have provided a framework for studying RNA functions and demonstrated the potential of using biochemical and biophysical modeling to develop rigorous design-driven engineering strategies for biology.”

Keasling, who also holds appointments with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkley, is the corresponding author of a paper in the journal Science that describes this work. The paper is titled “Model-driven engineering of RNA devices to quantitatively-program gene expression.” Other co-authors are James Carothers, Jonathan Goler and Darmawi Juminaga. _LawrenceBerkeleyLab_via_GCC

The art of dealing with complexity will separate those societies which succeed from those which fail. Some levels of complexity cannot be totally mastered, yet they can be "accomodated" or dealt with.

Learning to fine-program biological organisms to produce substances of use to humans in useful form and quantity, would allow a passage through a threshold separating one type of society from earlier types. This has always been the promise of synthetic biology, but the specific tools to be used have been either lacking, or far too crude. This is changing.

“We needed to formulate models that would be sophisticated enough to capture the details required for simulating system functions, but simple enough to be framed in terms of measurable and tunable component characteristics or design variables,” Carothers says. “We think of design variables as the parts of the system that can be predictably modified, in the same way that a chemical engineer might tune the operation of a chemical plant by turning knobs that control fluid flow through valves. In our case, knob-turns are represented by specific kinetic terms for RNA folding and ribozyme catalysis, and our models are needed to tell us how a combination of these knob-turns will affect overall system function.”

JBEI researchers are now using their RNA CAD-type models and simulations as well as the ribozyme and aptazyme devices they constructed to help them engineer metabolic pathways that will increase microbial fuel production. JBEI is one of three DOE Bioenergy Research Centers established by DOE’s Office of Science to advance the technology for the commercial production of clean, green and renewable biofuels. A key to JBEI’s success will be the engineering of microbes that can digest lignocellulosic biomass and synthesize from the sugars transportation fuels that can replace gasoline, diesel and jet fuels in today’s engines.

“In addition to advanced biofuels, we’re also looking into engineering microbes to produce chemicals from renewable feedstocks that are difficult to produce cheaply and in high yield using traditional organic chemistry technology,” Carothers says. _LBL

Brian Wang provides additional information and materials

Green Car Congress coverage of this story

Gas Cooled Small Nuclear Reactors -- The Slayer of EROEI, The Death of Peak Oil

2011-12-22T06:03:00.001-08:00

DOE ORNL Small Modular Reactors PDF
In an earlier article, we detailed several incredible energy breakthroughs which would be made possible by abundant, cheap, high temperature process heat from nuclear reactors. We demonstrated how the concept of EROEI would be made obsolete and how peak oil could be turned into a distant sour memory.

Industry is doing its part to develop scalable generators of heat and power (PDF via Brian Wang), at increasingly affordable prices. It is the US government -- in particular Obama's NRC under Jaczko -- which is gumming up the works. By delaying the licensing of safe, advanced, world-changing nuclear technologies, the Obama administration is adding to its damnable record of overall energy starvation.

Short List of SMRs from World-Nuclear
It is impossible to overstate the importance of cheap and abundant process heat for the transition to a more abundant society -- in terms of energy, fuels, food, chemicals, materials, and more.

With plentiful process heat provided at temperatures between 700 C and 950 C, a person could kill peak oil and have plenty of energy left to power industry and a broad spectrum of industrial processes. Specifically, one could:
Unlock the trillions of barrels oil equivalent in oil sands (PDF)
Unlock the trillions of barrels oil equivalent in coal to liquids and gas to liquids (PDF)
Unlock the trillions of barrels oil equivalent in shale oil kerogens
Provide abundant industrial process heat for production of fertilisers, refining fuels, making plastics, etc
Split CO2 into CO to use as a hydrogen carrier
Overturn conventional fears of EROEI and Peak Oil
Those things, and many more, will be accomplished by next generation gas-cooled high temperature nuclear reactors. Helium gas coolant will run gas turbine generators at high temperatures, which provides electrical power at higher efficiencies than older steam cycle generation systems. And as mentioned above, the higher temperature process heat will find a wide range of practical uses in industrial processes and energy production. _Source

With combined heat and power, versatile, portable gas-cooled SMRs can go to where the resource is in a timely fashion. Instead of requiring ten years to build and implement -- like conventional nuclear reactors -- the smaller, cheaper, safer, and more versatile SMRs can be built and installed in under 2 years.

With all of these advantages, one has to wonder why any benevolent government would stonewall the development of this technology.