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Three for the Future: Water, Food, Energy
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HOUSTON — This is not your father's energy crisis. Not by a long shot. Properly put, it may not even be a crisis but a race to avoid a crisis. Delegates gathered here for a conference on energy, organized by the World Energy Council and its American and Canadian chapters, heard about an energy world that has been transformed from the time of the gasoline lines of the 1970s to one that is squeezing abundant supplies of petroleum products from the earth, and an electric sector that is looking at an intoxicating array of new possibilities. Item: In the past three years, gas from previously unavailable tight shale formations, especially the Marcellus field, stretching from New York through Pennsylvania and down into West Virginia, has changed profoundly the outlook for U.S. energy supply. Plentiful gas has ended many schemes to import liquified natural gas and caused utilities to turn from an expected surge in nuclear power to a passion for gas. The race to avoid crisis rests on the belief that world population and its peaceful expansion rests on three interrelated pillars: water, food and energy. Normally planners look at these separately, but Cristoph Frei and Karl Rose of the WEC and Barry Worthington of the United States Energy Association share a common view that all three of these cardinal needs have to be taken together, and their impact on each other considered. Rose is preparing a study on the water needs of the energy sector going forward. He says these are enormous with an impact not always included in projections of water demand. Oil and gas in tight formations, oil sands and electric utility cooling towers are part of the future and strain the water equation; as do the obvious needs for water for agriculture, the largest user and, of course, potable water. Energy can solve or exacerbate the water problem, according to the energy savants. Item: Alstom, the Paris-based global engineering company is planning to build the mother of all wind turbines: a 6.5-megawatt offshore behemoth – the equivalent of an A380 Airbus, spinning atop a huge pole. Today's large wind turbines are in the 1.5-megawatt range. A new nuclear power plant comes in at 1,600 megawatts. Item: While nuclear is in retreat in Germany, Italy and Belgium, it is going ahead in Britain, central Europe, China and India. Jacques Besnainou of nuclear supplier Areva North America, insists that nuclear is still the cheapest form of electricity and the gateway to a whole new world of medicine. France reprocesses (or, as he says, recycles) its own nuclear spent fuel and that of other countries. Recycling is profitable for France as well as Areva. He wishes the United States had continued with recycling. Driving the rush for more energy is not only the world's voracious current consumption (approaching 90 million barrels a day of oil alone), but also the rising prosperity in Latin America and Asia. China and India, in particular, are sucking up oil and gas and furiously building electric power stations. An aspiring population demands water, quality food and energy. Item: Canada is exuberant about its oil sands and Alberta's ability to handle the environmental impact. Joe Oliver, Canada's minister of natural resources, estimates air pollution at 0.1 percent of the world's green house gas emissions. The resource is calculated to be equivalent to two-thirds of the reserves of conventional oil in Saudi Arabia. New sources of oil and gas have lifted, at least in North America, the gloom that has hung around energy production for decades. Even those who are facing market share loss to natural gas, coal and nuclear, sense there will be demand aplenty for both, as the energy for survival race heats up. Item: Even as the big three – water, food and energy – were being debated in Houston, the United Nations calculated the 7 billionth baby joined the world population. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate - no responses
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Natural Gas Is not Exactly Environmentally Clean
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If you live in the United States — almost anywhere in the U.S. — there may be a gas well coming to a site near you. Even on property you think you own, a gas well may be on its way.
Then there is the problem of how much air and water pollution that neighborhood gas well will bring with it. So far pollution has brought the most public outcry, largely because it is the issue that environmentalists are concerned with.
The new abundance of natural gas is a bonanza, but it is not a free lunch. Gas wells near or in your backyard are dividing communities, particularly in rural areas, and could eventually divide the environmental movement.
For decades natural gas has been the benign fuel without the pollution of coal, the geopolitical ramifications of oil, or the politics of nuclear. In fact, natural gas is almost too good to be true — or it has been until this latest chapter in its history opened. New supplies and new ways of liberating them are tarnishing the image of gas as the best energy available.
Traditionally, drilling for gas was like drilling for oil. A hole went deep into the ground until it penetrated a big cavern of gas with tributaries, which would yield more gas if the rock there was broken up. This rock-breaking was called hydraulic fracturing, and this was accomplished by injecting various liquids including water, chemicals and gas that had seeped to the surface outside of the piping.
Fifty years ago, there were even two experimental programs to use nuclear detonations for fracking gas. That method didn't go forward.
Since then, things have come a long way in the search for more gas and new technologies have evolved. Chief among these are seismic mapping and horizontal drilling. The former gives geologists a very exact picture of what is underground, and the latter makes the collection of it much more efficient.
Horizontal drilling finds the lock and fracking turns the key. Whereas once drillers put down one straw and sucked, now they put down one straw and then send out others horizontally in many directions.
Thus enabled, gas can now be exploited where it was previously unreachable — in shale rock. But to get the rock to give up its harvest, fracking is essential. With it come problems, and gas — if you will — loses its innocence.
Fracking is environmentally contaminating:
a. The fracking agent along with the methane could seep into drinking water and alarm farmers and communities.
b. Methane tends to escape around the well and is a major greenhouse gas.
c. A gas well using fracking demands millions of gallons of water. Many pollutants, like mercury and nitrates, are borne to the surface with the discharged water, which is then held in leach ponds.
This negates the big environmental virtue of gas that it burns with half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal and none of the nitrous oxides. The lunch tab has gone from nearly free to quite pricey.
The problem for the environmental movement is that it has favored natural gas for electricity production over its bete noirs: nuclear and coal.
The problem of an unwanted gas well landing on land you thought you owned is an historical one which recognizes "split estates." This was a concept in law that the land had two values: the surface and the oil and gas contained under the surface.
These two estates could be split and a landowner could sell the rights to the subterranean estate. Historically, many have done so. Now with the value of shale gas rising in 30 or more states, homeowners are finding that grandpa or a previous owner may have tried to capitalize too early by selling the underground rights.
As Amy Mall of the Natural Resources Defense Council told a meeting on fracking in Washington this week, the law's results can be devastating. A family in Wise County, Texas, lost all value in their 10-acre holding when a gas company, which leased the mineral rights from neighbors who had bought them earlier, set up a rig and occupied five acres of land for their operations.
This is part of the back story on the new bonanza of natural gas that is giving so many so much hope for our energy future. The new gas is not your father's gas and while it is a boon, it is not all blessing. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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Israel Set To Join the Rich Countries’ Club
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From Israel, there is good news and bad news.
The good news – and it is huge – is that Israel will soon be awash in natural gas. Gas discovered on the country’s outer continental shelf will turn the country from being hydrocarbon-deprived to being a net exporter.
Indeed, Israel is set to become so rich that it is laying the groundwork for creating a sovereign wealth fund for overseas investments in order to protect the country from inflation and the shekel from getting too strong.
The bad news is that with Hezbollah poised to control Lebanon’s government, Iran has de facto arrived on Israel’s northern border. Even without an Iranian nuclear weapon, this is a grave deterioration in Israel’s security.
Already Lebanon has asked the United Nations to guarantee that Israel does not violate the integrity of Lebanon’s outer continental shelf, where Iran plans to help Lebanon drill for gas.
Geology is about to change the political geography of the world’s most combustible neighborhood.
The two huge gas discoveries are in the Tamar and Leviathan fields. Taken together, the gas reserves are estimated at 26 trillion cubic feet or 10 times larger than Britain’s North Sea discoveries.
Since its creation in 1948, Israel has drilled on land for oil and gas with very little success. While the Arab Gulf countries have found and produced massive quantities of oil and gas, Israel has scrounged in the international markets for its hydrocarbons, including coal. But its isolation has made this difficult and expensive.
In recent years, Israel has bought gas from Egypt. Now Egypt will lose its good customer.
Turkey, Israel’s only Moslem friend until the botched seizure of a humanitarian ship bound for blockaded Gaza, will be affected too. There were plans for a pipeline that would carry gas from Azerbaijan across Turkey and undersea to Israel. That economic boost will not go to Turkey, but instead will probably go to Greece and Greek Cyprus. There have been preliminary discussions between Israel and Greece about shipping gas through Greece–by an undersea pipeline or a liquefied natural gas train–as an entry point into Europe.
Cyprus is a possible export-staging destination, as the Leviathan field, 86 miles off the Israeli coast, is nearby. But Turkish Cyprus, on the north side of the island, is not onboard.
The Tamar field is 50 miles off the Israeli coast and there are two smaller fields, potentially subject to claim by a free Gaza or a Palestinian state.
The gas will change Israel itself. Its defense force will have to defend the gas installations and the miles of pipes, pumps and other infrastructure. Israel has no domestic heating market, so all the new gas bounty will go to electric generation. The government hopes to make Israel the first 100-percent electric car country and the new gas will speed that transformation.
Credit for the Eastern Mediterranean gas discoveries goes to Houston-based Noble Energy. It is the technical leader in a consortium of Israeli companies. Now the world wants in before a whiff of the new gas has come onshore. Gazprom, Russia’s gas behemoth is keen to have a piece as an investment and to protect its European markets.
The Israeli government expects an influx of U.S. and European companies to supply piping, pumps, controllers and construction equipment and materials. It is not just private companies that are salivating: The Jerusalem government has just passed a law to tax gas profits at 62 percent.
Israel’s hostile neighbors want in too. The Eastern Mediterranean is in play in an area where play is rough.
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The lost art of debate — and other wordy topics
January 30th, 2012
Guests: Aram Bakshian, author and critic; Atul Singh, Fair Observer
Obama’s strengths and weaknesses; the Internet
January 23rd, 2012
Guests: Tim Farley, Sirius XM Radio; Adam Clayton Powell III, University of Southern California; Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Report
A discussion of Shirley’s book, “December 1941: 31 Days That Saved America and Changed the World”
January 16th, 2012
Guest Craig Shirley, author
World events as the U.S. elections get fully underway
January 9th, 2012
Guests Arnaud de Borchgrave, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Andrei Sitov, Itar-Tass; Al Leeds, The Washington Post
The Joys of Transportation
January 2nd, 2012
Guests Bill Gouse, Transportation Consultant – Originally Broadcast October 16, 2011