Demand for Natural Gas Brings Big Import Plans, and Objections

[Coastie for Truth]

New York Times, Wednesday, June 15

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---The Trunkline LNG complex in Lake Charles, La., is one of the country's leading depots for supplies of liquefied natural gas. ("Coastie" was there - food is great, but its hot and muggie)

New York Times, Wednesday, June 15

Just as the 19th century was shaped by coal and the 20th century by oil, people in the energy industry say, this century will belong to natural gas. But to judge by the battle over energy legislation that began yesterday in Congress, it will not happen easily.

International energy companies, the Bush administration and governments in gas-rich countries are aggressively championing the creation of a global market for natural gas, with the United States at its center as the largest importer. They are promoting the fuel as more plentiful and less polluting than oil and needed to sustain economic growth.

But in the same way that American oil output began to fall short in the 1960's and has steadily diminished as a source of energy, the United States is already running low on its own production of natural gas. To fill the gap, vast amounts of gas will have to be imported - in liquefied form, arriving by tanker on the coasts of the United States or elsewhere in North America.

Like oil, large reserves of natural gas are found far from the big markets for the fuel, in countries like Qatar, Iran, Russia, Angola, Yemen and Algeria. Competition for gas projects in these places has prompted a frenetic race among international oil companies to meet demand for the fuel in rich industrialized countries.
<snip> -- much more more in the article ---> New York Times, Wednesday, June 15

Not all sweetness and light. Local officials in some states where energy companies want to build LNG terminals (Alabama, California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island) worry about a catastrophic explosion, accidental or set by terrorists.

President Bush has endorsed legislation that would allow the federal government to overrule the states.


Bush has said

"Congress should make it clear to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission its authority to choose sites for new terminals, so we can expand our use of liquefied natural gas..."

1. Energy companies want to construct more than 40 such terminals at a cost of $500 million to $1 billion each.

2. Big issue number one - are we once again putting all of eggs in one basket--

a)placing too little emphasis on improving energy efficiency
b)failing to make necessary investments in other methods for producing power and heat, including wind, biomass and nuclear energy,
c)becoming too reliant on natural gas from abroad, (imported oil de ja vu) and running the same risk we made when when we became over dependent on oil from unstable sources in the Middle East.

Natural gas is about 24% of our energy input, and is expected to overtake coal and rival oil within twenty years according to the Times article.

Efforts to import more natural gas have become politicized out here in California where resistance has mounted to plans to build L.N.G. terminals, in Long Beach, plus two off the coast, (Oxnard, and near Camp Pendleton). I guess we'll have a referendum. :)

As usual in California, the energy companies, (Chevron and BHP Billiton of Australia) are financing a group called "Californians for Clean Affordable Safe Energy" to persuade people of the need for L.N.G. The group is part of a $1 million campaign supporting L.N.G. created by a Republican political strategist, Mike Murphy.

But skepticism persists. Susan Jordan, director of the California Coastal Protection Network, an environmental group in Santa Barbara that is campaigning against L.N.G. terminals says "If you jump-start an industry this way and bring in an abundance of natural gas, you're creating an addiction to something that wasn't there,... This is happening without any mention of conservation and with little regard for the renewable alternatives."

There are a bunch of Coast Guard studies going back to the 1960's on the issue of bulk shipping of LNG - this stuff (bulk LNG) can be devilishly difficult and expensive to ship around the world. To create a liquid, natural gas must be cooled to 260 degrees below zero F, squeezing its volume by a factor of approximately 600. Once it reaches its destination, it needs to be reheated before it can be used in the power grid. Non-trivial.

Per BTU natural gas is about half the cost of crude oil.

Lot of good stuff in the linked article. New York Times, Wednesday, June 15

[davidinalameda]

1. can I ask a really stupid question

what is the stuff that is produced by decaying garbage, etc?

isn't that natural gas?

[Coastie for Truth]

2. Yes - methane

Yes - but it's farly dilute. There is some serious research at the state universities to capture that gas (also sewage gas) in economic concentrations by a process called anaerobic digestion. I am optimistic about it.

Check out

[davidinalameda]

3. but with the square miles of landfills that we have

wouldn't methane be a fairly reliable source for energy or is the cost prohibitive

[phantom power]

4. How many square miles of landfill do we have?

[davidinalameda]

8. not sure but found this little statistic

In 1997 we gave a collective heave-ho to more than 430 billion lbs. of garbage. That means each man, woman and child tossed out an average of nearly 1,600 lbs. of banana peels, Cheerios boxes, gum wrappers, Coke cans, ratty sofas, TIME magazines, car batteries, disposable diapers, yard trimmings, junk mail, worn-out Nikes--plus whatever else goes into your trash cans. An equivalent weight of water could fill 68,000 Olympic-size pools.



I'm guessing that's pretty damn big

[phantom power]

10. It's "big", but the problem itself is, sadly, a whole lot bigger.

According to this site, methane could power a million homes, if it were fully exploited. That sounds good, on the other hand there are on the order of 100 million homes in the US. So that's only a 1% solution.
http://www.state.sc.us/energy/Renewable%20energy/lmop.htm

According to this site, a landfill can generate methane for up to 15 years. So, that would make it a 1% solution, with a useful lifetime of 15 years.
http://www.solidwasteauthority.org/consumers/methane/default.htm

That's residential, so it doesn't account for the energy needs of industry or agriculture.

[Coastie for Truth]

11. Lovins-Hawken Model

We try to keep the world a closed eco-system and, like a pig butcher, we harvest "everything but the squeal."

Example - how much Fe, Al, Cu do we smelt from ore? How much do we recycle from scrap?

Example - paving asphalt - how much comes from the refinery - and how much is recycled (not enough - I know).

Example - in a pure hybrid - in braking how much of the car's kinetic energy is lost as heat - and how much is recaptured as electricity.

When I went to engineering school - centuries ago - we didn't think like that. Today, at least "up the Nimitz" at UC Berkeley - that is now part of the engineering curriculum. About time.

[Coastie for Truth]

6. The problem is collecting and recovering it

Anerobic digestion is one way of forcing the chemical reaction "locally".

[jpak]

5. "Landfill methane" is ~50% methane ~50% CO2

http://www.epa.gov/lmop/overview.htm

Nationwide, there are ~380 landfill methane projects with another 600 landfills with potential for exploitation...

[Coastie for Truth]

7. There is a price point where this becomes economically feasible.

It's technologically feasible today. But's it's the cost.

[phantom power]

9. 24% of our energy input. That's about 25 ExaJoules per year.

Or, 650 billion cubic meters per year. Or, 24-thousand-trillion BTUs per year.