What The Frack?

Fracking for natural gas is supposed to be very dangerous.
But is it? [pdf].

55. All technologies have environmental risks. Press coverage that talks about `toxic‘, `carcinogenic‘ and `radioactive‘ `chemicals‘ is meaningless. Vitamin A is toxic. A single cup of coffee contains more known carcinogens than the average American ingests from pesticide residues in a whole year. Bananas are radioactive. Dihydrogen monoxide is a chemical. The question that needs to be posed is always: how toxic, how carcinogenic, how radioactive?

And it has to be balanced against the gains.

76. Gas is a common feedstock for the chemical industry; so is ethane, a glut of which is now coming out of shale gas wells as a byproduct. Thus the shale gas revolution has already begun to draw chemical companies back to the Gulf of Mexico from the Persian Gulf, and hand them a competitive advantage. As well as being a fuel, gas and natural-gas liquids such as ethane are used in the manufacture of plastic, specialty chemicals, agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. Shale gas is therefore revitalising the chemical industry wherever it can be produced.

77. Much environmental criticism of modern high-output farming argues that it is unsustainable because it depends of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, which is manufactured from air and natural gas. Some have argued that famine will result when the gas, and therefore the fertiliser, runs out. It is now clear that the gas will not run out and will probably remain low-cost, so highoutput farming using fertiliser is indeed sustainable and affordable for the foreseeable future. This ensures not only food availability, but less pressure to convert wild lands to agriculture.

There are nearly 100 bullet points in the report and an introduction by Freeman Dyson. Read the whole thing.

Sustainable

Any method for doing anything that cannot be sustained for 100 billion years minimum is unsustainable. Nothing is sustainable in the long term. So why not just focus on getting by with an eye towards future requirements?

And let me add that the things people were doing 200 years ago were unsustainable. And 200 years hence?

My definition of sustainable? Can we keep it up for about 100 years? Which is time enough to figure out what to do next.

Which was brought up by a discussion of the Bloom Box fuel cell and water heater.

Now if you want to get more into the technology of the Bloom Box here are a couple of very pricey books that may help:

Biofuels for Fuel Cells (Integrated Environmental Technology)

That came out in 2006. I wonder if The Bloom Boys got some ideas there? Here is one of the latest books in the field:

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Technology: Principles, Performance and Operations

I haven't read either of them so I can't give any recommendations.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Got Gas?

Yes we have gas. Lots of gas. Lots of natural gas.

Last October, just as the economy was tilting into crisis, a small oil and gas company in Houston quietly announced the discovery of a mammoth natural gas field in South Texas that at any other time might have garnered bigger headlines.

Petrohawk Energy's find, however, did not go unnoticed in the oil and gas industry — and it didn't take long before oil companies large and small began making their moves.

Today, though the economy and natural gas prices remain weak, the Eagle Ford shale remains one of the hottest prospects in North America, and energy companies are moving forward there even as they're pulling back elsewhere.

That's because of what some companies suggest is a virtually recession-proof combination of highly productive wells and low drilling costs they say can yield profits even as natural gas prices hover near seven-year lows.

Just how much gas is there in the new fields using the new methods?

Recently discovered U.S. shale plays, including the Haynesville in Louisiana and Marcellus in Pennsylvania, are expected to provide a major boost to U.S. natural gas supplies in coming years. The dense rock formations, once thought too difficult to explore, have been unlocked with the help of recent advances in drilling technology.

The core areas of the eight largest U.S. shale plays may contain 475 trillion cubic feet of recoverable resources, according to an estimate by Ross Smith Energy Group, an industry research firm in Calgary, Alberta. That's roughly ten times the size of Texas' famed Barnett shale play in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which supplies nearly 10 percent of U.S. natural gas production, excluding Alaska.

That is a lot of gas. But really what does the new gas situation look like from a longer term perspective?

After declining for 15 years, U.S. natural gas production is finally on the rise, thanks to new technological developments that make it possible to draw large amounts of gas from deposits previously thought to be unreachable. An increase in natural gas production of the magnitude many industry insiders predict could do wonders for business, the environment and even U.S. energy independence.

U.S. gas production is up 9% this year – a rate of increase not seen since 1984 – with most of that gain coming from natural-gas shale, particularly the Barnett Shale, a deposit that now produces 7% of the country’s gas supply. Indeed, there could be as much as 842 trillion cubic feet of retrievable gas in shale deposits throughout the United States alone, according to Navigant Consulting. That would support the current level of U.S. consumption for about 40 years.

And that is just from the gas found so far. I have seen estimates that go as high as 100 years for the total amount of gas available with current methods. More than enough time to get fusion or even economical wind/solar/storage going.

And if Thomas Gold's The Deep Hot Biosphere : The Myth of Fossil Fuels theory is correct we may have much more than 1,000 years of gas and oil available if we can drill deep enough.

Now that would make our transition off fossil fuels very comfortable. Time and a few very deep exploratory wells will tell.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Israel Gets The Gas

A huge reservoir of natural gas has been found 80 km (50 mi) off the Israeli coast.

Three massive gas reservoirs have been discovered 80 kilometers off the Haifa coast, at the Tamar prospect, Noble Energy Inc. announced on Sunday.

The Tamar-1 well, located in approximately 5,500 feet of water, was drilled to a total depth of 16,076 feet. The thickness and quality of the reservoirs found were greater than anticipated at the location.

Charles D. Davidson, Noble Energy's chairman, president and CEO, said in an announcement that his company was "extremely excited by the results. This is one of the most significant prospects that we have ever tested and appears to be the largest discovery in the company's history."

Speaking on Army Radio Sunday morning, an exhilarated Yitzhak Tshuva, owner of the Delek Group Ltd, one of the owners of the well, called the discovery "one of the biggest in the world," promising that the find would present a historic land mark in the economic independence of Israel.

There are plans underway to sell some of the gas to other countries. Now wouldn't it be something if Europe became dependent on Israeli natural gas? Especially since Russia cut off natural gas supplies to Europe.

Schools closed, heating shut down and nearly a dozen European nations reported a cutoff of natural-gas supplies in one of the coldest winters in recent memory.

Russia and Ukraine blamed each other in a dispute as bitter as the temperature with a cold front blanketing Europe. Thermometers fell to minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit in some capitals.

Them Russians is not nice people. It will be fun to see if Europe's attitude towards Israel changes should they decide to buy Israeli gas. I think, however, it is more likely that Lebanon or Egypt will become Israel's first customer. With Turkey also in the running.

Israel as a major energy power. That should have interesting repercussions.

Update: 18 Jan 2009 1520z

I have been informed that Israel currently buys its natural gas supplies from Egypt. So I guess Egypt is off the list.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Ask The French For Help

Nick has left an interesting comment on my error in the post Blazing Economies.

Seems to me the difference won't matter once the winter comes and the Russians shut the lights off on Germany.

I seem to recall that Secretary of State Rice warned the Europeans about getting too deeply dependent on Russian Energy supplies. Well what do you know? I recalled correctly.

ANKARA, Turkey, April 25 [2006 ed.] -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday warned Greece and Turkey against allowing Russia to obtain a monopoly over Europe's supply of natural gas, implicitly bolstering a planned pipeline from Azerbaijian that would weaken Russia's tight grip on European energy supply.

"It's quite clear that one of the concerns is that there could be a monopoly of supply from one source only, from Russia," Rice told reporters in Athens after meeting with Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis.

Rice waded into the battle over the increasing dominance of Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom -- which recently sought a stake in a Greek-Turkish pipeline -- even as she sought to build support in Greece and Turkey for sanctions against Iran concerning its nuclear program.

Her trip to Athens was the first independent visit to Greece by a secretary of state in two decades. As she met with Bakoyannis, about 3,000 protesters marched with signs calling Rice a war criminal and urging her to "go home," and some youths clashed with riot police.

And who do they expect to defend them if the Russian Bear comes calling? I guess they couldn't see that far ahead. Fortunately, America has an administration with a little foresight.

What do you want to bet that the Euros ask for another American division to protect their sorry asses? I suppose we could just tell them we are busy. Ask the French for help.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Picken Apart Pickens

Bob Zubrin discusses the T. Boone Pickens plan to replace natural gas electricity with wind based efficiency. He seems a bit weak in understanding how wind and natural gas electricity are complimentary. So I wrote a comment:

Bob,

Evidently you don't know what natural gas is used for in America. It is not for base load, it is for peaker plants. Wind and natural gas are dispatchable in the same time frame. About 15 minutes. So if the wind is blowing you can shut down the peakers. When the wind declines you can start them up again.

In addition distributed wind can supply about 20% of nameplate rating as base load. Not bad since a wind plant delivers about 33% of nameplate rating on average.

Love your flex fuel plan for autos. Your understanding of the electrical generation market indicates further study is required.

==

Let me add here that using natural gas for home heating is its most efficient use. Wind would lower natural gas demand and thus lower heating bills. That would be a good thing.

H/T Instapundit


Cross Posted at Classical Values

Obama Gives McCain Some Help

The Obama camp has a new blog up The Low Road Express, which discusses McCain's "distortions" of Obama's words. This is the print version of WORM which stands for What Obama Really Meant. Here is one of my favorites from Cincinnati Enquirer.

The McCain ad’s claim that Obama says ‘he’ll raise taxes on electricity’ is based on an interview Obama gave to a San Antonio newspaper in February in which he said ‘what we ought to tax is a dirty energy like coal, and, to a lesser extent, natural gas.’

And raising taxes on our two chief sources of electrical energy won't raise prices?

So what is the paper's answer to this? They say McCain is for the same cap and trade tax raising policies Obama supports. Evidently they have not been keeping up. McCain Is Taking Economics Lessons.

...on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac’s two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely — even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read.

Evidently the advisor was right. None of our betters in the press have read it. Nor has any one from the Obama camp.

Fortunately you have me to help you keep an eye on things.

Did I mention McCain was looking into the near term prospects (good) for fusion a year ago? That is something else the press is unaware of.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Progress Is Our Most Important Product

A while back I did a post called Electricity where I discussed a number of things that would need to be done to stabilize Iraq and advance the welfare of its people.

I pointed out that security was the first order of business. That seems to be coming along nicely.

What is not coming along so well is improvements in basic modern services. Electricity, sanitation (clean water supplies, water borne and solid waste), natural gas heating and cooking.

A government that can't improve the lot of its citizens (at least bringing a country up to second world standards) is not going to last. With the high price of oil to finance such improvements, rolling out such efforts in an improved security situation should get priority.