Archives de catégorie : energy and fields

A new coal war frontier emerges as China and Japan compete for energy projects in Southeast Asia

by P. Homewood, April 3, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


A joint report by Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and CoalSwarm indicates that Southeast Asia will be the new epicentre of coal production. Asia accounts for 85 per cent of new coal power development in the world’s top 20 coal producing countries, with China as the leader of the pack. However, while tighter restrictions on domestic coal plants have been imposed by the central government to curb pollution, Beijing has pushed the development of high-efficiency, low-emission coal plants across Southeast Asia as part of the “Belt and Road Initiative”.

As China is expanding its influence, Beijing’s foremost strategic competitor in Asia, Japan, is being forced to step up efforts to combat its shrinking influence in the region. The booming energy sector of Southeast Asia, especially coal, is proving to be the new front line in the geopolitical rivalry between Asia’s two industrial giants.

Oil’s Seven Sisters Enter a ‘Golden Age’, Goldman Sachs Says

by Kelly Gilblom, March 26, 2018 in BloombergMarkets


  • Big Oil’s weight in equity indices to rise from 50-year low
  • Cost cuts, recovering oil prices put companies in a sweet spot

The world’s largest oil companies have survived a life-changing crisis, and are now poised to reap the rewards, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said.

 
 

Big Oil is in a sweet spot with rising oil prices and low operating costs, leaving them with the biggest cash-flow growth in two decades and boosting earnings, Goldman said in a report Monday. That will increase their attraction for investors after years of elevated spending followed by crude’s slump sent their weighting in global equity indexes to a 50-year low, according to the bank (…)

American Energy Is Being Piped And Shipped All Over The World — Here’s The Data

by M. Bastach, March 19, 2018 in TheDailyCaller


U.S. exported more natural gas in 2017 than it imported for the first time in 60 years, according to the Energy Department.

Natural gas production has boomed in recent years, particularly in Pennsylvania and other parts of Appalachia, thanks to hydraulic fracturing or fracking and horizontal drilling. The boom has offset Canadian imports and allowed U.S. companies to ship more fuel abroad.

Le pétrole américain à l’assaut du marché

by L’essentiel, 18 mars 2018


Grâce à une production de pétrole en plein boom, les États-Unis exportent désormais sans complexe leur or noir dans le monde, entraînant une refonte des infrastructures sur leur territoire et rebattant les cartes sur le marché mondial. En pompant actuellement plus de 10 millions de barils par jour, le pays est devenu le deuxième producteur de brut au monde, derrière la Russie et devant l’Arabie saoudite. Un essor lié aux nouvelles techniques permettant d’extraire à moindre coût du pétrole de schiste

U.S. monthly crude oil production exceeds 10 million barrels per day, highest since 1970

by PennEnergy Editorial Staff, February 2, 2018


U.S. crude oil production reached 10.038 million barrels per day (b/d) in November 2017, according to EIA’s latest Petroleum Supply Monthly. November’s production is the first time since 1970 that monthly U.S. production levels surpassed 10 million b/d and the second-highest U.S. monthly oil production value ever, just below the November 1970 production value of 10.044 million b/d.

Within the Lower 48 states, November 2017 production reached a record high in Texas at 3.89 million b/d, followed by North Dakota at 1.18 million b/d. Production in the Federal Gulf of Mexico reached 1.67 million b/d, up 14% from the October 2017 level as the region recovered from Hurricane Nate.

 

BP Energy Outlook

by BP Global, March 2018


The Energy Outlook explores the forces shaping the global energy transition out to 2040 and the key uncertainties surrounding that transition. It shows how rising prosperity drives an increase in global energy demand and how that demand will be met over the coming decades through a diverse range of supplies including oil, gas, coal and renewables.

Looking forward to 2040

Extending the Energy Outlook by five years to 2040, compared with previous editions, highlights several key trends.

For example, in the ET scenario, there are nearly 190 million electric cars by 2035, higher than the base case in last year’s Outlook of 100 million. The stock of electric cars is projected to increase by a further 130 million in the subsequent five years, reaching around 320 million by 2040.

Another trend that comes into sharper focus by moving out to 2040 is the shift from China to India as the primary driver of global energy demand. The progressively smaller increments in China’s energy demand – as its economic growth slows and energy intensity declines – contrasts with the continuing growth in India, such that between 2035 and 2040, India’s demand growth is more than 2.5 times that of China, representing more than a third of the global increase.

Africa’s contribution to global energy consumption also becomes more material towards the end of the Outlook, with Africa accounting for around 20% of the global increase during 2035-2040; greater than that of China.

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Clean Coal: Carbon Capture and Enhanced Oil Recovery, Part Deux

by D. Middleton, March 8, 2018 in WUWT


Not quite a year ago (April 18, 2017) I authored a post on the completion of the Petra Nova carbon capture project at the W. A. Parrish coal-fired power plant in Fort Bend County, Texas.  Petra Nova was billed as “the largest post-combustion carbon capture project in the world.”  In addition to capturing CO2 from a very large coal-fired power plant, Petra Nova was also designed to serve a useful purpose: Deliver CO2 for enhanced oil recovery to West Ranch Oil Field in Jackson County, Texas.  The ultimate goal is to boost production in the field from around 500 barrels of oil per day (BOPD) to 15,000 BOPD and recover about 60 million barrels that would otherwise have been left in the ground.

EIA had an update on the carbon capture aspect back in October…

A ‘Major Second Wave’ of U.S. Fracking Is About to Be Unleashed Upon the World

by J. Worland, March 6, 2018 in Time


The widespread adoption of fracking in the U.S. opened billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas to production and transformed the global energy sector in a matter of a few years. Now, a leading global energy agency says U.S. natural gas is about to do it again.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new forecast this week that growth in U.S. oil production will cover 80% of new global demand for oil in the next three years. U.S. oil production is expected to increase nearly 30% to 17 million barrels a day by 2023 with much of that growth coming from oil produced through fracking in West Texas.

The Next Entrant in the Shale Revolution? OPEC’s Saudi Arabia

by W. Mahdi and B. Stanley, March 7, 2018 in Bloomberg


Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil exporter, is set to join the shale revolution with plans to start producing unconventional natural gas this month and exploit a deposit that could rival the Eagle Ford formation in Texas.

Saudi Arabia’s gas resources from shale and other alternative supplies are “huge,” Khalid Al Abdulqader, general manager of unconventional resources at Aramco, said Wednesday in Manama, Bahrain. Production at the kingdom’s North Arabia basin will start by the end of March and reach its target by the end of this year, he said, without giving details.

New U.S. Record-Level Oil Production! Peak Oil Theory Disproven! Not.

by R. Heinberg, March 6, 2018 in Resilience.org


Well, I’m amazed and impressed. Tight oil production has pushed total United States petroleum output to more than 10 million barrels a day, a rate last seen almost a half-century ago. It’s a new U.S. record. Fifteen years ago I was traveling the world with a Powerpoint presentation featuring a graph of U.S. oil production history. That graph showed a clear peak in 1970 and a long bumpy decline thereafter. (…)

Recognizing The Obvious: World CO2 Emissions Will Continue To Increase

by Francis Menton, February 25, 2018 in ManhattanContrarian


Every day you read about the crisis of climate change and fossil fuel usage and CO2 emissions, and commitments from politicians around the world to “act” to “save the planet.”  Surely then, CO2 emissions are in steep decline and headed for zero.

The truth is of course the opposite.  In the developed world, rapidly increasing use of “renewables” like intermittent wind and solar energy only serves to drive electricity prices through the roof, while having only the most marginal effect on reducing emissions.

UK looks to fracking as cold snap exposes its poor energy supply

by J. Hodges and K. Gilblom, March 2, 2018 in BusinessDay


London — Britain’s natural gas fracking industry is using a cold snap that’s gripped large swathes of Europe this week and laid bare weaknesses in the UK’s energy supply to make its pitch.

Britain’s natural gas market has been stretched to its limits as the coldest spell since 2010 tests the nation’s energy and transport network. UK pipeline manager National Grid Plc even urged industry to curb its gas usage while the cold weather persisted. (…)

Strategic minerals – Our next energy and security crisis?

by Paul Driessen, February 26, 2018 in WUWT


America has had its share of oil-centered energy problems and disruptions. Now it faces potential renewable energy and high technology crises, because of its heavy reliance on imports of the rare earth and other strategic minerals that are the essential building blocks for wind turbines, solar panels, computers, smart phones, medical diagnostic devices, night vision goggles, GPS and communication systems, long-life batteries and countless other applications.

(…)

‘Very, very scary’: This mammoth new shale drilling method is about to supersize the future of fracking

by Alex Nussbaum, February 23, 2018 in BloombergNews


Cube development,’ which taps multiple layers of shale all at once, could accelerate the U.S. shale boom and make the global supply glut even worse.

In the scrublands of West Texas there’s an oil-drilling operation like few that have come before.

Encana Corp.’s RAB Davidson well pad is so mammoth, the explorer speaks of it in military terms, describing its efforts here as an occupation. More than 1 million pounds of drilling rigs, bulldozers, tanker trucks and other equipment spread out over a dusty 16-acre expanse. As of November, the 19 wells here collectively pumped almost 20,000 barrels of crude per day, according to company reports.

Fossil Fuels and Emissions Forecast To Continue To Rise – BP Energy Outlook

by P. Homewood, February 22, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


These are the highlights:

The speed of the energy transition is uncertain and the new Outlook considers a range of scenarios. Its evolving transition (ET) scenario, which assumes that government policies, technologies and societal preferences evolve in a manner and speed similar to the recent past, expects

(…)

Where Do We Get Most Of Our Energy (Hint: Not Renewables)

by Bjorn Lomborg, February 20, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch


The world is mostly run on fossil fuels (81%). Nuclear makes up 5%, with 14% from renewables. Solar panels and wind turbines contribute 0.8%.

When you hear 14% renewables, you will likely think ‘wow, things are going pretty well with the switch to renewables’. But these renewables are not the ones you hear about. The biggest contributor is humanity’s oldest fuel: wood (…)

Study: thanks to fracking, we don’t need Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) to meet Paris climate target

by A. Watts, February 16, 2018 in WUWT


From the “thanks to fracking, the biggest driver of lower carbon dioxide emissions has been declining natural gas prices” department.

Even without the clean power plan, US can achieve Paris Agreement emissions reductions

CMU researchers point out that there are many paths to compliance

OPEC’s Oil Price Nightmare Is Coming True

by Julian Lee, February 11, 2018 in BloombergGadlfy


The latest surge in U.S. oil output will probably hasten the country’s rise to the top of the producer pile. More important, it’s starting to look as though at least half of OPEC’s nightmare scenario for 2018 — a surge in shale output and slowdown in demand growth — is coming true.

Last week’s avalanche of releases from the U.S. Department of Energy showed daily oil production above 10 million barrels a day for the first time since 1970.

US oil production tops 10 million barrels a day for first time since 1970

by Patti Domm, January 31, 2018 in CBNC


  • U.S. crude oil production broke 10 million barrels a day in November for the first time since production peaked in 1970, at the start of a decades long decline.
  • The U.S. is the world’s third largest oil producer, and its status is growing. Russia is the largest, with about 11 million barrels a day. The U.S. output rivals Saudi Arabia, which has had production of 10.6 million barrels a day, but currently has cut back due to the OPEC deal with Russia and others to keep supply off the market.
  • The U.S. production is expected to expand and could top 12 million barrels a day by the end of 2019, according to Dan Yergin, IHS Markit Vice Chairman.

U.S. on Track to Top Russia as World’s Largest Oil Producer, Upending Global Trade and Geopolitics

by Haaretz and Reuters, January 29, 2018


Surging shale production is poised to continue pushing U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago. The U.S. government forecasts that the nation’s production will climb to 11 million barrels a day by late 2019, a level that would rival Russia, the world’s top producer.

(…)

New technology, new fields

The next phase of shale output growth depends on techniques to squeeze more oil from each well. Companies are now putting sensors on drill bits to more precisely access oil deposits, using artificial intelligence and remote operators to get the most out of equipment and trained engineers.

Oil Boom Gives the U.S. a New Edge in Energy and Diplomacy

by Clifford Krauss, January 28, 2018 in TheNewYorkTimes


HOUSTON — A substantial rise in oil prices in recent months has led to a resurgence in American oil production, enabling the country to challenge the dominance of Saudi Arabia and dampen price pressures at the pump.

The success has come in the face of efforts by Saudi Arabia and its oil allies to undercut the shale drilling spree in the United States. Those strategies backfired and ultimately ended up benefiting the oil industry.

Overcoming three years of slumping prices proved the resiliency of the shale boom. Energy companies and their financial backers were able to weather market turmoil — and the maneuvers of the global oil cartel — by adjusting exploration and extraction techniques.

Fracking firm Cuadrilla to reignite West Sussex plans

by Jillian Ambrose, January 9, 2018, in TheTelegraph Business


Cuadrilla will be allowed to test wells in the Sussex countryside until 2021 to see whether the fossil fuel flows from underground limestone rock could be a commercial source of homegrown energy.

The unanimous approval of the county council does not include permission to use the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, but is nonetheless likely to reignite local opposition.