SHALE GAS AND FRACKING

[principled]

There are two ways of driving down UK CO2 emissions in the short term.
1) Use gas (shale gas preferably)
2) Export all your industry and close businesses; make travel so expensive that everyone stays at home (no need to travel 'cos there's no work anyway); force people to return to the land and become subsistence farmers (no need for food transportation), make central heating illegal and insist everyone keeps a cow in the basement for heat...
It seems to me that (1) is just too hard for politicians to agree on, so let's go for (2) instead! Simples.

[marchesarosa]

I have a cow in the basement already, principled!

(Sorry, Joanne, just joshing!)

[marchesarosa]

Replacing coal with natural gas would reduce warming
www.agu.org/news/press/jhighlight_archives/2012/2012-07-16.shtml

A debate has raged in the past couple of years as to whether natural gas is better or worse overall than coal and oil from a global warming perspective. The back-and-forth findings have been due to the timelines taken into consideration, the details of natural gas extraction, and the electricity-generating efficiency of various fuels. An analysis by Cathles, which focuses exclusively on potential warming and ignores secondary considerations, such as economic, political, or other environmental concerns, finds that natural gas is better for electricity generation than coal and oil under all realistic circumstances.




Map of major shale gas basis all over the world from the EIA report World Shale Gas Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the United States .

[marchesarosa]

Schlumberger's clever frack takes aim at gas costs
Fri, Aug 31 07:30 AM EDT
By Andrew Callus

STAVANGER, Norway (Reuters) - Production costs of natural gas from unconventional fields could tumble in the United States if a new technique developed by Schlumberger lives up to its billing.

The world's largest oilfield services company by market value and others working in the industry have suffered this year because the runaway success of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling techniques to extract so-called unconventional gas has created a glut and caused a price slide.

But using a proprietary system called Hiway that only became commercially viable last year, Schlumberger's fracker in chief believes he has knocked a lump out of the infant industry's three major cost components; water, sand, and trucks.

Schlumberger is already using the system on nearly a third of all fracking jobs, and expects that to rise rapidly to 50-70 percent, according to Kyel Hodenfield, the company's vice president for unconventional resources.

"It can vary, but using Hiway we generally say you need 40 percent less proppant," (graded sand mixed with guar gum or lubricating chemicals), he told Reuters in an interview.

"Water is more variable, but it's somewhere between 20 and 50 percent less."

Less sand, less water and less pumping adds up to fewer trucks, Hodenfield explained on the sidelines of the Offshore Northern Seas (ONS) conference in Stavanger, Norway.

"Those are the big costs. Anything you can do to reduce the amount of sand, the amount of water, and the amount of horsepower is going to fall to the bottom line."

Fracking, often combined with modern horizontal drilling techniques, recovers previously unreachable gas by fracturing the rock that contains it and then pumping in fluid and mined or manufactured sand to hold open the cracks and force out the gas.

The process, pioneered in the United States, requires many more wells to be drilled than traditional oil and gas extraction. The fracking generally takes just a few days, even though some fracked fields will produce for years, so the infrastructure, materials and equipment need to be mobile.

At some sites, water is piped in, but usually, both sand and water are trucked to the site. More trucks are needed to provide the horsepower to pump the mixture into the cracks, and road regulations restrict their size, so the number of heavy vehicles per site can be considerable.....

more of this article from Reuters here
mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE87U0GE20120831?irpc=932

[marchesarosa]

Will Gazprom-Green Alliance Kill European Shale Revolution?Posted on Thursday 13 September 2012

The same natural gas revolution in the US, which was enabled by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), is now threatening to loosen Gazprom’s noose on the EU, and Gazprom simply won’t have it.

Gazprom has Europe’s natural gas market in a stranglehold and Europe is attempting to fight back, first with a raid last year on the Russian giant’s offices and then with a probe launched earlier this week against its allegedly illicit efforts to control the EU’s natural gas supplies.

The bottom line is that the same natural gas revolution in the US, which was enabled by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), is now threatening to loosen Gazprom’s noose on the EU, and Gazprom simply won’t have it.

To head off a potential natural gas revolution in the EU, Gazprom is pulling out all the stops, and EU officials say that the company has been illegally throwing obstacles in the way of European gas diversification.

Poland’s situation is a case in point. Last year, a US Department of Energy report estimated Poland’s shale gas reserves at 171 trillion cubic feet. Gazprom got nervous. In March this year, the Polish Geological Institute suddenly felt compelled to contradict that report, saying reserves were only around 24.8 trillion cubic feet. In June, Exxon announced it would pull out of its shale gas projects in Poland. Investors started getting cold feet and shares began to drop. Chevron and ConocoPhillips are plodding along with their shale gas operations, for now.

Still, 24.8 trillion cubic feet is no paltry volume and enough to ensure that Gazprom remains nervous. And then there is Ukraine, which also has sizable shale gas reserves and where the Russian noose is even tighter.

Right now, the only thing keeping the shale gas revolution from hitting Europe as it has in the US is technology: the shale reserves in Europe are on land that is more inaccessible, there is a lack of necessary infrastructure and fracking equipment, and protests against the environmental impact of fracking are more serious. But the biggest problem is Gazprom.

EU governments are both desperate to break the Russian stranglehold by developing shale gas reserves and wary of going up against a gas giant on whom they depend for supplies. It’s a tough position and the outcome will depend on how the EU hedges its bets: Can it develop enough shale gas reserves quickly enough to take on Gazprom?

Poland is still a long way off from being able to fully develop its shale gas reserves. It will take time to conduct the necessary environmental impact studies and infrastructure would require a major overhaul.

The EU publics are divided between those who fear fracking and those who fear Gazprom and so far, the former fear is trumping the latter. France and Bulgaria have both banned fracking under pressure from the public, but Poland is marching on, its officials relentlessly insisting that fracking is safe.

Earlier this week, Germany’s Environmental Ministry urged a ban on fracking near drinking water reservoirs and mineral springs and called for environmental impact studies from developers, prompting concerns that Germany will tighten fracking regulations. Germany has massive natural gas potential, but environmental concerns are keeping a tight rein on development for now.

The end victory for Gazprom would come in the form of a European Commission ruling banning fracking-a ruling which would be applied to all EU countries, including Poland which has shown more political will to stand up to the Gazprom boogey man than others.

In the meantime, the EU is investigating Gazprom’s actions in eight countries-Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In Bulgaria, where fracking has been banned, Gazprom is the only supplier of gas. It is also the sole supplier to the Baltic states and Slovenia. It supplies over 80% of gas needs to Poland and Hungary, and nearly 70% of the Czech Republic’s.

It has strengthened its grip on Europe further due to the fact that it owns the one-way gas pipelines into the region and forces buyers into long-term contracts in which prices are tied to oil.

The EU has tried numerous tactics to loosen the Gazprom grip, including the implementation of new energy policies designed to separate supply from delivery and by seeking new pipelines that could deliver gas from elsewhere. While the EU’s alternative pipeline dreams have largely failed so far, it is eyeing developments now in Northern Iraq, where Turkey is courting the Kurds to build a new pipeline that could eventually deliver gas to EU markets. But this is a long way, and possibly a war, off.

Having failed so far in the area of alternative suppliers, the EU is now moving the front lines of the battle to the legal field, targeting unfair competition, which it stands a better, but still only minimal, chance of changing the rules of the game. The probe into Gazprom is looking at three things: Gazprom’s attempts to hinder the free flow of gas across the EU; its purposeful blocking of diversification efforts; unfair pricing and contractual arrangements.

Specifically, the EU says Gazprom has implemented a strategy to segment national markets by preventing gas exports and limiting delivery options, as well as by obligating buyers to use Gazprom infrastructure. Most significantly to the consumer, Gazprom’s pricing policies, which fix gas prices to oil prices, mean that European consumers see no benefit from the natural gas revolution in the US, which has increased global supplies and reduced prices on the open market.

Will the EU be able to actually levy fines for unfair competition and unravel the monopoly? Not unless it plays as dirty as Gazprom, which will simply cut off supplies and the circulation of those European countries that used to be in its back yard. Eastern and Central Europe will be the ones to pay the price for the European Union’s battle.

Let’s not pretend that energy companies are clean and that governments aren’t using them to forward nefarious geopolitical objectives (US multinationals in Northern Iraq, for instance). The point is not to paint Gazprom as the ultimate evil in energy. This is about Europe, and the EU’s “Mommy Dearest” struggle with Gazprom, which is undoubtedly playing an underhanded energy-politics game worthy of the most sinister of accolades.

One would not be surprised to discover that Gazprom has gone environmental and has had a hand in shaping the environmental concerns of the EU publics. As such, it is highly convenient that Gazprom has recently come under very public attack by our leading international environmental group. Everyone plays dirty, any means to an end.

OilPrice, 12 September 2012

[marchesarosa]

Agence France Presse



Storm Clouds Gather Over Gazprom
Posted on Monday 17 September 2012

AFP: From falling profits to a European Union (EU) anti-trust probe and a possibly misguided strategy based on pipelines storm clouds are finally gathering over Russia’s previously invincible gas gaint Gazprom. But its Achilles heel has been a failure to grasp the significance of shale and liquefied natural gas products that created instant supply gluts in North America.

A January/March net profit slip of 23.5% marked the start of an ugly month in which Gazprom has waged diplomatic war with the EU Commission and then had President Vladimir Putin personally shield it from the probe.

The world’s largest producer also outraged local players by refusing to buy their gas, a move whose contractual legitimacy is open to question, and binned its biggest offshore project ever due to a client shortage.

“For the first time since 1998, Gazprom is facing serious financial troubles,” VTB Capital wrote in reference to the year of post-Soviet Russia’s worst economic crisis to date.

“Russia has overutilised Gazprom for a long time and this has been happening in many different ways, including to achieve some foreign policy goals, fill the budget and employ state officials,” it told clients in a special report.

Gazprom was created in the late Soviet era from the USSR Ministry of Gas Industry and took its current form in 1993 under the iron-fisted leadership of the late prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

The company almost instantly became known as a “state within a state” a behemoth so large and powerful it formed its own foreign policies while running loose of taxpayer control.

Gazprom today ships natural gas to one in four European households and employs 400,000 people in regions where it often replaces the government in duties such as providing healthcare and schools.

It is this very scale and ungainliness that has made Federal Anti-Monopoly Service chief Igor Artemyev last week call Gazprom “a highly inefficient company that has enough money and must simply bring its house in order.”

The company’s stock has rarely suffered too badly from it because investors often view Gazprom as a “Russia” play dissociated from the fundamentals.

But its Achilles heel has been a failure to grasp the significance of shale and liquefied natural gas products that created instant supply gluts in North America and lay the foundation for a global market trade.

Gazprom, meanwhile, is now working on two massive new pipelines to Europe at the staggering cost of around US$30bil. Analysts question if EU clients with supply diversification top of their agenda will need either in the years to come.

[marchesarosa]

A new report from the Institute of Directors (IoD) reveals the huge potential of Britain’s shale gas reserves, calculating the job creation, decarbonisation and economic benefits of exploiting the shale gas on our doorstep.

Britain’s Shale Gas Potential, the latest report in the IoD’s Infrastructure for Business series, explores the extent of UK shale gas, the practical and policy implications of fracking and the lessons that can be learned from the US’s experience opening up their reserves. New polling of IoD members shows that British business leaders support developing a UK shale gas industry.

British shale gas could create 35,000 jobs, reduce carbon emissions and lower energy prices
21 September 2012
www.iod.com/Influencing/Press-Office/Press-releases/British-shale-gas-could-create-35000-jobs-reduce-carbon-emissions-and-lower-energy-prices

[marchesarosa]

from a BBC programme from 2010

"Solitaire Townsend runs a city PR firm, but one
which specialises in communicating a single issue:
sustainability.

TOWNSEND: I was making a speech to nearly 200
really hard core, deep environmentalists and I played
a little thought game on them. I said imagine I am the
carbon fairy and I wave a magic wand. We can get rid
of all the carbon in the atmosphere, take it down to
two hundred fifty parts per million and I will ensure
with my little magic wand that we do not go above
two degrees of global warming. However, by waving
my magic wand I will be interfering with the laws of
physics not with people – they will be as selfish, they
will be as desiring of status. The cars will get bigger,
the houses will get bigger, the planes will fly all over
the place but there will be no climate change. And I
asked them, would you ask the fairy to wave its
magic wand? And about 2 people of the 200 raised
their hands."

Just for anyone who thinks Shale is unstoppable. The CAGW crowd's primary mission isn't to cut CO2 emissions.

Transcript of Solitaire Townsend the program is at news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/25_01_10.txt



Courtesy of Bishop Hill

[marchesarosa]

From Ric Werme in the USA

One minor sign of fall where I live is the arrival of a letter from the gas utility announcing the “Fixed Price Option (FPO) lock-in price” for the winter season. FPO offers a price which people can accept and can plan on heating expenses for the winter.

Over the last six years, the FPO prices in US dollars per therm(*) were:

Year "FPO" price

2007 $0.8925
2008 $1.2043
2009 $1.2835
2010 $0.8420
2011 $0.8126
2012 $0.6919

This is stunning – in three years the price of natural gas has fallen 46% – nearly half....



wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/03/cheap-natural-gas-but-wait-theres-more/

[marchesarosa]

Europe left behind as shale shock drives America’s industrial resurgence
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9639192/Europe-left-behind-as-shale-shock-drives-Americas-industrial-resurgence.html

The wonders of US shale gas continue to amaze. We receive fresh evidence by the day that swathes of American industry have acquired a massive and lasting advantage in energy costs over global rivals, demolishing assumptions about US economic decline.

Royal Dutch Shell is planning an ethane plant in the once-decaying steel valley of Beaver County, near Pittsburg. Dow Chemical is shutting operations in Belgium, Holland, Spain, the UK, and Japan, but pouring money into a propylene venture in Texas where natural gas prices are a fraction of world levels and likely to remain so for the life-cycle of Dow's investments.
Some fifty new projects have been unveiled in the US petrochemical industry. A $30bn investment blitz in underway in ethelyne and fetilizer plants alone.

more.........

[alancalverd]

The cow is not a good source of heat. It produces a lot of CO2 (the principal means by which it generates heat) and a fair bit of CH4, which could in principle be burned if you could separate it from the CO2, but alas that takes more energy..... If you keep the cow in the basement you have to transport its food, hence producing more CO2 and no useful heat.

[marchesarosa]

People often overlook that gas is not just a source of energy but also a feedstock for all sorts of useful chemicals and, of course, switching from coal fired electricity generation to gas fired will automatically cut CO2 emissions (if that is the sort of anxiety that besets you).

Amazing how most of Europe led by Germany is looking this natural gas gift horse in the mouth. What were they thinking ?

I always think of this memorable scene from Band of Brothers when I use that phrase!




David Webster "Hey, you! That's right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That's right! Say hello to Ford, and General fuckin' Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives... For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?


And now Germany has been given a medal for not taking us there again. But they are still in the vanguard of, let us say, "confused thinking" and susceptibility to strange quasi-mystical ideologies.

[marchesarosa]

"US CO2 emissions from domestic energy have declined by 8.6% since a peak in 2005, the equivalent of 1.4% per year.

However, the researchers warn that more than half of the recent emissions reductions in the power sector may be displaced overseas by the trade in coal."

wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/30/us-shale-gas-drives-up-coal-exports/#more-73343

What do they expect? There will always be a demand for reliable sources of energy to keep society functioning.

[marchesarosa]

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, in the US the cost of natural gas is about 70% of the cost of manufacturing nitrogen fertilizer. As the cost of this component comes down, its percentage share will come down as well.

Cheap Natural Gas Gives New Hope to the Rust Belt

online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444549204578020602281237088.html?mod=ITP_pageone_0

[marchesarosa]

Huge scale of UK's 'dash for gas' revealed
Emissions targets will be broken if reliance on gas rises in line with new forecasts, say critics

Damian Carrington and Jamie Doward
The Observer, Saturday 3 November


The amount of power expected to be generated from gas by 2030 has quadrupled in the last year, according to official projections that will infuriate green campaigners who are demanding greater use of renewable energy sources.

They claim that the statistics, buried in recently published government documents, will leave the country unable to meet its carbon emission targets. The figures will reinforce the sense that chancellor George Osborne is winning his battle to downgrade the role of green energy in favour of a dash for gas../

...Data from the department of energy and climate change show the amount of power being generated from gas by 2030 leapt from 8GW in its 2011 projections to 31GW in the same projections 12 months later. The data also show that, as it stands, the carbon targets for the 2020s – called the fourth carbon budget – will be broken. Less than a tenth of the gas power is projected to have carbon capture and storage technology fitted to trap and bury carbon dioxide emissions.

more...
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/03/uk-dash-gas


Thank god the juggernaut of climatechangeism is being turned round at long last!