by Andy May, November 13, 2018 in WUWT
Popular accounts of shale oil and gas reservoirs are often riddled with errors and, even when technically correct, often misleading. As a shale petrophysicist, retired from Devon Energy, I thought I would try and explain, in a non-technical way, how these reservoirs work and why they have been so successful.
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Figure 1. Major shale oil and gas plays in the United States. Source EIA.
by P. Homewood, November 9, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
What are the environmental impacts?
Generally the environmental impact of geothermal developments is extremely low. There are virtually no emissions and land use and visual impact are small. However, some potential impacts do need to be considered and information on each of these issues is set out in the sections below.
All these issues will be fully considered as part of the planning process. Cornwall Council has worked with the industry to develop robust Supplementary Planning Guidance to ensure risks are mitigated and minimised. In addition to planning permission, projects must also obtain the necessary licenses from the Environment Agency.
What is the risk of earth tremors (induced seismicity)?
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by Liam Denning, November 1, 2018 in BloomberOpinion
The contrast between the success of the U.S. oil and gas industry and unpopularity in the stock market grows ever starker.
The Energy Information Administration released revised monthly figures for U.S. oil production on Thursday. The headline is that production is up — way, way up. It reached 11.35 million barrels a day in August, fully 2.1 million barrels a day higher than a year before. That’s almost like adding a whole new Mexico in the space of 12 months.
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by Samuel Furfari, 8 novembre 2018 in ConnaissancedesEnergies
Ça y est ! Le seuil de production de 100 millions de barils de pétrole par jour est désormais atteint. Il y a cinquante ans, on en consommait le tiers et c’est une perspective que beaucoup d’experts autoproclamés n’avaient pas envisagé. C’est une nouvelle occasion de répéter, à l’intention de ces « experts » et de ceux qui leur emboîtent le pas, qu’il est temps de cesser la rengaine de la fin du pétrole.
Bien que toutes les annonces passées relatives à la fin du pétrole aient été démenties par les faits, des semeurs de peur s’aventurent encore à lancer ces prévisions fantaisistes. S’ils le font, c’est parce que la peur fait vendre. Tout le monde y trouve son compte: le public reçoit sa dose d’adrénaline – même s’il se plaint du prix prohibitif de son plein de carburant – les auteurs perçoivent leurs droits, les éditeurs vendent des livres ou de la publicité sur leur site internet et des traders actifs à Genève profitent de la situation pour gagner, ne serait-ce que quelques cents en plus, sur les millions de barils de pétrole brut qu’ils négocient.
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by Susann Twidale, November 2, 2018 in Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) – Cuadrilla extracted its first shale gas from its site in northwest England, it said on Friday, after it began fracking operations there just over two weeks ago.
Cuadrilla said the gas flows were small but coming at such an early stage of the project were evidence of the potential of the site.
“This is a good early indication of the gas potential that we have long talked about,” Cuadrilla Chief Executive Francis Egan said in an emailed statement.
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by P. Homewood, October 31, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
China’s power statistics have now been published for Q3, and continue to show thermal generation rising quickly. (Thermal includes coal, gas and biomass).
The rise in thermal generation since last year is more than from all other sources put together.
Biomass is virtually irrelevant in the overall view of things, having only accounted for 1.2% of generation last year.
Once again, we see that China’s unstoppable demand for energy cannot be supplied from wind and solar alone. Indeed. these two sources have only contributed 18% of the extra year-on-year demand.
In overall terms, wind and solar have only supplied 4.6% and 1.3% respectively of China’s generation so far this year.
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by GlobalData Energy, October23, 2018
Nuclear technology is a major base-load power-generating source and accounted for 10.5% of global power generation in 2017 as per GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
The nuclear power sector is growing in many countries as demand for electricity increases. The company’s latest report ‘Nuclear Power – Thematic Report’ reveals that some 31 countries are currently operating nuclear reactors for their electricity generation. Countries with significant nuclear power capacity are the US, France, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, Canada, and Ukraine, with more than ten gigawatts (GW) installed capacity each. Germany, the UK, Sweden, India, Spain, Belgium, and Taiwan have five to ten GW installed nuclear power capacity each.
The global cumulative installed nuclear power capacity in 2010 was 376GW, of which more than 100GW was in the US alone.
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by Alain Préat, 17 octobre 2018, in ScienceClimatEnergie
Bertrand Cassoret a récemment publié un excellent ouvrage [1] sur le sujet. Cet auteur est ingénieur et docteur en génie électrique et s’est lancé sans a priori dans le dédale des ‘promesses’ des énergies vertes en tentant de préciser ce qu’il en est à partir d’une quantification rigoureuse des rendements énergétiques réels. Pourquoi ‘réels’ ? Simplement parce qu’il faut débusquer tout ce qui n’est pas mis en avant (principalement pertes énergétiques cachées) et surtout mettre à plat les ordres de grandeurs du monde de l’énergie. Sa conclusion sera sans appel « même si l’efficacité énergétique est utile et même indispensable, elle ne sera pas suffisante… il est nécessaire de modifier l’usage que l’on fait des appareils consommateurs ». Autre conclusion sans appel « mon objectif n’est pas de critiquer les énergies renouvelables, ni les nécessaires mesures d’efficacité, mais plutôt de montrer qu’elles pèsent bien peu face à l’ampleur des problèmes ».
…Figure 1 : Image du trafic aérien du 29/06/2018 par le site FlightRadar24 (©Filght Radar14) [4]
by David Middleton, October 15, 2018 in WUWT
From the International Energy Agency’s Oil Market Report (OMR):
Home » Newsroom » News » 2018 » October
OMR: Twin Peaks
12 October 2018
Both global oil demand and supply are now close to new, historically significant peaks at 100 mb/d, and neither show signs of ceasing to grow any time soon. Fifteen years ago, forecasts of peak supply were all the rage, with production from non-OPEC countries supposed to have started declining by now.
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by Anthony Watts, October5, 2018 in WUWT
More than 100 leading scholars from 12 countries have issued a report contending “the global war on fossil fuels … was never founded on sound science or economics” and urging the world’s policymakers to “acknowledge this truth and end that war.”
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), an independent organization founded in 2003 to fact-check the work of the United Nations on the issue of climate change, today released the Summary for Policymakers of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels. The 27-page Summary provides an early look at a 1,000-page report expected to be released on December 4 at a climate science symposium during the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP-24) in Katowice, Poland.
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Among the findings reported in the Summary for Policymakers:
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- Reducing fossil fuel use to achieve dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions would inflict tremendous economic hardship. Reducing greenhouse gases to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 would require a 96% reduction in world GDP, reducing per-capita GDP to $1,200 from $30,600 now forecast. Per-capita income would be at about the level it was in the United States and Western Europe in about 1820 or 1830, before the Industrial Revolution.
by J. Hopkins, September 28, 2018 in ClimateChageDispatch
Foreign markets are lining up to purchase American coal by widening amounts as U.S. coal consumption reaches its lowest level in more than three decades.
Power plants’ consumption of coal dropped to 298 million short tons in the first half of 2018, a sharp fall from 312 million in the same period last year, according to a Thomson Reuters report.
This marks the lowest level of consumption since 1983 and a reflection of the coal industry’s declining status as natural gas continues to grow.
Coal-fired generation diminished by 32 billion kilowatt-hours during the first six months of 2018.
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by Andrew Montford, September 27, 2018 in GWPFbriefing34
The briefing, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, focuses on the output of the BBC and the Guardian, and outlines many examples of biased coverage.
However, it wasn’t always this way, as author Andrew Montford explains:
“When shale gas first came on the scene, coverage was very positive: gas was seen as a low-carbon alternative to coal. It was only when it looked as though it would price renewables out of the market that the scare stories and bias began”.
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by The Energy Advocate, September 26, 2018
The French Government will drastically reduce the growth of its renewable spending in 2019, with the ecology ministry’s draft budget showing a 1.3% rise, which will effectively be flat after inflation.
Total spending on renewable projects will equate to €7.3 billion and will mostly go towards wind and solar schemes.
The move will force France to seek alternative forms of energy after last year France had to import UK coal power to fuel the country as temperatures plummeted in the winter months.
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by Matt McGraph, September 27, 2018 in BBCNews
Building work has restarted at hundreds of Chinese coal-fired power stations, according to an analysis of satellite imagery.
The research, carried out by green campaigners CoalSwarm, suggests that 259 gigawatts of new capacity are under development in China.
The authors say this is the same capacity to produce electricity as the entire US coal fleet.
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See also here
by David Middleton, September 20, 2018T in WUWT
One of my favorite sayings is, “We didn’t leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones.” Technically we never left the Stone Age because we use more rocks now than we did in the Stone Age.
And we never left the “Wood Age.” There was no energy transition from biomass (wood) to fossil fuels. Coal piled on top of biomass, oil piled on top of coal and natural gas piled on top of oil
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by David Middleton, September 18, 2018 in WUWT
Even though coal’s lead has been cut from 17 to 2 States since 2007, it’s still in first place. Numbers in parentheses reflect the change since 2007.
Coal: 18 (-10)
Natural Gas: 16 (+5)
Nuclear: 9 (+3)
Hydroelectric: 6 (+2)
Petroleum: 1 (0)
Total: 50
What about wind and solar? Let’s ask Dean Wormer!
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by David Middleton, September 12, 2018 in WUWT
Statistical Review of World Energy
Global primary energy consumption grew strongly in 2017, led by natural gas and renewables, with coal’s share of the energy mix continuing to decline
Energy developments
- Primary energy consumption growth averaged 2.2% in 2017, up from 1.2 % last year and the fastest since 2013. This compares with the 10-year average of 1.7% per year.
- By fuel, natural gas accounted for the largest increment in energy consumption, followed by renewables and then oil.
- Energy consumption rose by 3.1% in China. China was the largest growth market for energy for the 17th consecutive year.
Carbon emissions
- Carbon emissions increased by 1.6%, after little or no growth for the three years from 2014 to 2016.
[…]
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by Australian Associated Press, September 5, 2018 in DailyMail
The Northern Territory holds enough natural gas to supply Australia for 200 years-plus and is comparable to the shale resources that have revolutionised the US energy sector, Resources and Northern Australia Minister Matt Canavan says.
Such abundant gas should enable Australia to reduce its current high energy prices, which were the fault of southern states preventing development, Senator Canavan told an NT Resources Week conference in Darwin.
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by F. Sotiropoulos, September 2018, in Stony Brook University/ published in Nature
The use of in-stream flow (or hydrokinetic) energy converters in rivers appears to offer another workable and effective option to expand renewable energy and limit carbon emissions in the United States. While the potential for in-stream flow energy harvesting systems has already been demonstrated for rivers with fixed beds, researchers now developed a scaled demonstration of hydrokinetic energy generated from a river channel with a sandy bed. Their findings, detailed in a new paper published in Nature Energy, showed that the model hydrokinetic power plant can generate energy effectively and safely without undermining the stability of the river geomorphic environment.
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by P. Homewood, September 2, 2108 in NotaLofPeopleKnowThat
Something so extraordinary has lately been going on at the other end of the world that, if it did not run so flatly contrary to the prevailing groupthink of our time, it would surely have made big headlines over here.
We may have gathered that there has been something of an earthquake in the politics of Australia, where the prime minister Malcolm Turnbull faced such a revolt by his Cabinet colleagues over “climate change” that he was eventually forced out of office, to be replaced as leader by Scott Morrison.
But the real significance of this has only now come to light with the unveiling by Australia’s new energy minister, Angus Taylor, of the country’s wholly new energy policy, which completely reverses that of the Turnbull government.
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by Johann Rivalland, 24 août 2018 in Contrepoints
Les nouvelles politiques énergétiques et le choix des énergies renouvelables sont-ils en train de nous mener droit dans le mur ?
Hervé Machenaud a mené toute sa carrière professionnelle dans le secteur de l’énergie, où il a notamment contribué à la création de centrales nucléaires en France et à l’étranger et à la conception de l’EPR, le réacteur franco-allemand.
C’est en spécialiste des questions industrielles liées à l’énergie qu’il tire la sonnette d’alarme, mettant en cause des orientations politiques périlleuses, susceptibles selon lui de causer des dommages colossaux à nos sociétés dans leur ensemble.
UN CONSTAT IMPLACABLE
Au cours de la dernière décennie, ce sont des montants gigantesques de dépréciations qui ont été essuyés par les grands électriciens européens. Plus de 100 milliards d’euros rien qu’en quatre ans depuis 2014. Constat qui se paye par un désengagement préoccupant des grandes compagnies dans la production d’électricité. Au total, ce sont en effet 60 GW de moyens conventionnels d’électricité qui auront été arrêtés en Europe à la fin de la décennie, précise-t-il, soit l’équivalent du parc nucléaire français.
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by Faith Birol, August 2018 in InternationalEnergyAgency
Total energy investment has fallen again…
2017 was the third consecutive year of decline in global energy investment with energy efficiency the lone sector of growth. Despite a 6% decline in spending, the electricity sector again attracted the largest share of energy sector investments, exceeding the oil and gas industry for the second year in row, as the energy sector moves toward greater electrification.
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by prof. Samuel Furfari, 21 août 2018 in ScienceClimatEnergie
Il ne se passe pas un jour sans que surgisse sur les réseaux sociaux ou dans les médias une discussion sur le prix de l’électricité. Pour les uns, le prix de l’électricité produite par les énergies renouvelables est bas et pour les autres au contraire il est élevé. Qui a raison ?
Il faut examiner l’ensemble de la filière de la génération d’électricité pour pouvoir juger et non pas comme on le fait trop souvent se cantonner à un seul aspect. Nous allons donc procéder étape par étape, de manière à présenter de manière objective ce qu’il en est. Nous allons d’abord constater que la génération d’électricité à partir d’énergies renouvelables est déjà une forte réalité et qu’elle est en croissance. Nous allons ensuite observer qu’il est crucial d’équilibrer constamment la génération d’électricité et sa consommation et que cela ne peut se faire que par l’intermédiaire d’un réseau. Nous passerons ensuite au caractère intermittent de certaines énergies renouvelables et verrons quelles en sont les conséquences pour enfin pouvoir aborder la réalité des prix aux consommateurs. Dans la dernière partie nous allons parler du prix de l’électricité que nous payons en tant que consommateur et qui n’est pas bien entendu le coût de production.
Le but de cet article est qu’à travers cette démarche pédagogique le lecteur puisse se faire sa propre opinion sur la question du prix de l’électricité d’origine renouvelable.
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by JP Schaeken Willemaers, 20août 2018 in ScienceClimatEnergie
Depuis des décennies l’hydrogène revient régulièrement à l’ordre du jour comme moyen de stocker l’énergie pour ensuite la convertir en électricité. Cette filière est particulièrement prisée dans le cadre d’une politique bas carbone vu qu’elle n’émet pas de gaz à effet de serre (GES ) la combustion de l’hydrogène ne produisant que de l’eau. Bien entendu la production de ce gaz doit elle-même « être propre ».
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by A.J. Kondash et al., August 15, 2018 in ScienceAdvances
Abstract
Unconventional oil and gas exploration in the United States has experienced a period of rapid growth, followed by several years of limited production due to falling and low natural gas and oil prices. Throughout this transition, the water use for hydraulic fracturing and wastewater production in major shale gas and oil production regions has increased; from 2011 to 2016, the water use per well increased up to 770%, while flowback and produced water volumes generated within the first year of production increased up to 1440%. The water-use intensity (that is, normalized to the energy production) increased ubiquitously in all U.S. shale basins during this transition period. The steady increase of the water footprint of hydraulic fracturing with time implies that future unconventional oil and gas operations will require larger volumes of water for hydraulic fracturing, which will result in larger produced oil and gas wastewater volumes.
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