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Sebastian Jones

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3100 on: June 25, 2019, 01:13:33 AM »
Other threats Iran has over us: Terrorism:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/death-to-america-iran-is-poised-to-unleash-hezbollah-terrorists-all-across-america
Are you serious Tom? Or is this meant as an example of America yellow press hysteria? Because it is.

SteveMDFP

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3101 on: June 25, 2019, 01:31:38 AM »
Other threats Iran has over us: Terrorism:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/death-to-america-iran-is-poised-to-unleash-hezbollah-terrorists-all-across-america
Are you serious Tom? Or is this meant as an example of America yellow press hysteria? Because it is.

The article would be better cited in "The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism".  The author of the piece appears to be a catastrophe-monger.  He's here promoting his book "Get Prepared Now."  I wonder how sales of that are going.

The real problem in the situation isn't in Tehran, it's in the White House.

Sciguy

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3102 on: June 25, 2019, 05:50:23 PM »
A fracking pioneer sums up the state of the industry.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Shale-Pioneer-Fracking-is-an-Unmitigated-Disaster.html

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“The shale gas revolution has frankly been an unmitigated disaster for any buy-and-hold investor in the shale gas industry with very few limited exceptions,” Steve Schlotterbeck, former chief executive of EQT, a shale gas giant, said at a petrochemicals conference in Pittsburgh. “In fact, I'm not aware of another case of a disruptive technological change that has done so much harm to the industry that created the change.”

He did not pull any punches. “While hundreds of billions of dollars of benefits have accrued to hundreds of millions of people, the amount of shareholder value destruction registers in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said. “The industry is self-destructive.”

The message is not a new one. The shale industry has been burning through capital for years, posting mountains of red ink. One estimate from the Wall Street Journal found that over the past decade, the top 40 independent U.S. shale companies burned through $200 billion more than they earned. A 2017 estimate from the WSJ found $280 billion in negative cash flow between 2010 and 2017. It’s incredible when you think about it – despite the record levels of oil and gas production, the industry is in the hole by roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars.

It's like a pyramid investment scheme.

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The industry is at a bit of a crossroads with Wall Street losing faith and interest, finally recognizing the failed dreams of fracking. The Wall Street Journal reports that Pioneer Natural Resources, often cited as one of the strongest shale drillers in Texas, is largely giving up on growth and instead aiming to be a modest-sized driller that can hand money back to shareholders. “We lost the growth investors,” Pioneer’s CEO Scott Sheffield said in a WSJ interview. “Now we’ve got to attract a whole other set of investors.”

They'll make it up in volume though.

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But, as Schlotterbeck told the industry conference in Pittsburgh, the problem with fracking runs deep. While shale E&Ps have succeeded in boosting oil and gas production to levels that were unthinkable only a few years ago, prices have crashed precisely because of the surge of supply. And, because wells decline at a precipitous rate, capital-intensive drilling ultimately leaves companies on a spending treadmill.

D'oh!

sidd

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3103 on: June 26, 2019, 02:54:27 AM »
Davidson at wsws on Philly refinery explosion:

" refining began on the site 153 years ago"

" primary owners of Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refining Complex are Deutsche Bank AG and Bardin Hill Investment Partners"

"Earlier this year the company cut back a planned maintenance program to provide needed repairs and upgrades for the aging facilities"

"In 2018, the company filed for bankruptcy"

"the company transferred more than $590 million in “dividend-style” payments to the owners in the period prior to filing for bankruptcy."

"In 2015, the USW forced an end to a five-month struggle by 30,000 oil workers driven mostly by safety concerns."

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/25/phil-j25.html

sidd

Sigmetnow

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3104 on: June 26, 2019, 07:04:32 PM »
More:
Quote
Bloomberg (@business) 6/26/19, 11:53 AM
The Philadelphia refinery that caught fire after an explosion last week will be permanently shut down. It's the biggest gas refinery on the East Coast bloom.bg/2Nfvxju
https://twitter.com/business/status/1143910048273457152

”The loss of the refinery will likely increase the region’s dependence on supplies from Canada, Europe and the Gulf Coast, potentially boosting prices for drivers and profit margins for the remaining plants in the area.”
Biggest East Coast Refinery to Close, Driving Up Fuel Prices
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      • Massive explosion this month crippled operations at PES
      • Philadelphia refinery emerged from bankruptcy 10 months ago

The biggest refinery on the U.S. East Coast will shut down, after a massive explosion and fire crippled operations at a site that has helped fuel the region for 153 years.

The Philadelphia Energy Solutions Inc. complex on the banks of the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers in Pennsylvania has been in place since 1866, a year after the Civil War ended. It emerged from bankruptcy just 10 months prior to two fires in June that closed down key gasoline-making units just as the summer driving season gears up.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said Wednesday the refinery will close within the next month. The complex produces 335,000 barrels a day, meeting about 3% of gasoline demand in a densely populated region. Futures in New York jumped more than 5% on a Reuters report Tuesday night that the refinery would close. ...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-26/biggest-east-coast-refinery-to-close-driving-up-gasoline-prices
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Sciguy

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3105 on: June 26, 2019, 07:23:37 PM »
Oil demand is growing less than expected.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-24/oil-s-outlook-could-be-even-bleaker-than-expected-here-s-why

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While the Saudi Arabian-led efforts to restrain supply amid surging North American shale production have hogged headlines, a sense of malaise is quietly creeping across Asia. With the U.S.-China trade war now almost a year old and showing no signs of ending, its impact is manifesting itself in everything from profit warnings by Japanese car makers to sagging Chinese diesel consumption.

From Ulsan in South Korea to Mailiao in Taiwan, the region’s big oil processors are cutting run rates as weak demand for fuel products erode their margins. To make matters worse, a wave of Asian mega-refineries is coming on stream this year, flooding the market with cheap fuel and setting off a price war.

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Chinese fuel demand appears weak since the start of the year, the International Energy Agency said in its June report, and Japanese and South Korean oil consumption dropped more-than-expected in March and April, respectively. Indian oil demand growth fell to 25,000 barrels a day in April from a year earlier from 225,000 a day in the first quarter, the IEA said.

Double-digit drops in Chinese diesel demand in March and April have been partially due to a sharp slowdown in industrial output.

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The IEA cut its 2019 forecast for worldwide oil demand growth for a second straight month in June, to 1.2 million barrels a day, citing the slowdown in global trade. Wall Street is more pessimistic, with Morgan Stanley seeing an expansion of 1 million barrels a day and JPMorgan Chase & Co. projecting 800,000 barrels. While the IEA predicts growth will improve to 1.4 million barrels a day next year, it also sees supply jumping by 2.3 million barrels.

Sigmetnow

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3106 on: June 29, 2019, 06:25:19 PM »
U.S. regulator pauses review of Enbridge, Oiltanking crude export project
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HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators this week temporarily suspended their review of pipeline operator Enbridge Inc’s proposed crude export facility off the U.S. Gulf Coast, a government filing showed.

Enbridge and Oiltanking Partners in February sought federal permits to build a deepwater port about 30 miles (48 km) off Freeport, Texas, to export U.S. shale.

The U.S. Maritime Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard on June 26 issued a “stop clock” letter that pauses their evaluation of the pair’s Texas Crude Offshore Loading Terminal (COLT).

Enbridge had no immediate comment.

Regulators sought more information about an air pollution control system before permitting could resume, according to a federal filing. Enbridge has proposed a design change that would add a system to “control vapors generated during the offshore loading process,” according to the letter.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-enbridge-us-crude-terminal/u-s-regulator-pauses-review-of-enbridge-oiltanking-crude-export-project-idUSKCN1TT2IF
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vox_mundi

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3107 on: July 02, 2019, 04:43:23 PM »
Natural Gas Boom On 'Collison Course' With Climate Goals
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-natural-gas-boom-collison-climate.html

According to the International Energy Association, gas consumption rose 4.6 percent in 2018 alone, accounting for nearly half of the global increase in energy demand. Yet, a growing body of evidence suggests that upstream oil and gas activities are incompatible with mankind's plan to avert runaway planetary warming.

... More than 200 liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals are either under construction or in planning worldwide, mainly in North America, representing an outlay of $1.3 trillion (1.15 trillion euros) according to data compiled by an industry watchdog.

A report Tuesday by Global Energy Monitor said that the scale of LNG expansion currently unfolding around the world could have a potentially larger impact on global warming than the expansion of coal-fired power plants.

This is down to the amount of methane LNG produces when it is extracted and transported.

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... "The LNG boom is happening incredibly fast, just as methane is turning out to be a significantly worse actor than had been realised,"

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the safest way to achieve a limit of 1.5C would involve an immediate drawdown in fossil fuels, including a 75-percent cut in the consumption of natural gas—in all its forms—by mid-century.

Yet gas is booming.

https://globalenergymonitor.org/new-gas-boom/



--------------------------------

Retire All Existing and Planned Fossil Fuel Power Plants to Limit Warming to 1.5°C
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-fossil-fuel-power-limit-15c.html

It will be very difficult to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by enough to halt global heating at 1.5°C—the threshold at which catastrophic climate change becomes more likely—according to a new paper published in Nature.

... the new study has shown that if the world continues to use its existing power plants, it's likely that the target of 1.5°C will be exceeded. If all the fossil fuel plants and other carbon-emitting infrastructure that's currently planned are built, this target will certainly be exceeded.

... Without fundamental change to the current situation, our global climate will warm beyond 1.5°C.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2019, 04:51:03 PM by vox_mundi »
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Bob Wallace

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3108 on: July 02, 2019, 08:18:06 PM »
Quote
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the safest way to achieve a limit of 1.5C would involve an immediate drawdown in fossil fuels, including a 75-percent cut in the consumption of natural gas—in all its forms—by mid-century.

Yet gas is booming.

Two things you might consider...

1) Grids need to stay operating as much as possible 24/365.

2) Gas plants, unlike coal plants, are highly dispatchable.

If you need that explained, just ask.

Sciguy

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3109 on: July 02, 2019, 09:03:15 PM »
The boom in natural gas facilities will be even shorter lived than the so-called "nuclear renaissance" that we went through before the Fukishima disaster.  With the price of renewables being so cheap, the fossil fuel companies are going to try to get as much money as they can before they go extinct.  A lot of facilities being built now will not be operating as long as their estimated useful life.

Cross posted from the renewables forum.

Rnewables are so cheap now that even states without renewable power mandates are closing coal plants early and replacing them with solar and wind, not natural gas.  Here's a news article about the plans in Indiana, a conservative Midwestern state (and home to our current Vice President, who is not a climate activist).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/07/02/mike-pences-indiana-chooses-renewables-over-gas-as-it-retires-coal-early/#f94ea2e43b40

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Los Angeles just announced the largest and cheapest solar+storage project in the world, but that's the golden land of dreamers and subsidies. About 1,800 miles to the right, conservative Indiana—with no renewable-portfolio standard—is making similar choices.

Renewables are so cheap, said Mike Hooper, the senior vice president of the Northern Indiana Service Company (NIPSCO), that the utility can close its coal plants early and return $4 billion to its customers over the next 30 years.

"It ends up being a really big number, somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 billion for our customers, and clearly a lot of that comes from the fact that there’s hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel every year from a marginal standpoint that you're not spending, that the customer gets the advantage of through the check they write us every month."

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"We kind of made an assumption that as the results came back it would be very much similar to 2016, particularly where we sit in the world, that natural-gas generation would be the most cost-effective option," Hooper said. "And as we ran this RFP and got our results back, we were surprised to see that wind—especially early wind in service in 2020 and 2021—and then solar, on a levelized-cost-of-energy-basis, were significantly less expensive than new gas-fired generation."

Quote
Empowered by the low price of renewables, NIPSCO decided to double the number of coal plants it will retire in 2023—four instead of two—and to retire its 12 Michigan City units ahead of schedule in 2028, getting the utility out of coal in ten years.

NIPSCO could theoretically abandon coal in five years, saving even more money, Hooper added, but it needs time to develop transmission and ensure a reliable transition.

Bob Wallace

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3110 on: July 02, 2019, 09:26:37 PM »
The nuclear renaissance never really got off the ground.  It got a little bump in China, at best.

The reason that natural gas is likely to have a stronger role over the next decade or so is that we have no affordable way to store energy over long periods.  New gas plants can be installed in short times.  They provide fairly cheap electricity.  And they can be turned on/off rapidly as wind and solar start and stop generating.  Gas plants can operate for days/weeks/months if needed.  We have no acceptable way to store wind/solar generation for those longer periods. 

As we add more wind and solar gas plants will run less simply because wind and solar are cheaper sources of electricity.  We're not even close to the point at which wind and solar provide 100% of demand for 25% of all days.  Until we reach and pass that point we have pretty much no wind/solar to store for future use. 

We might find ourselves with 95%+ wind/solar/storage and still encounter a stretch of a few days per year during which we wouldn't want to pay the cost of storage for that last few percent.  It may well be that we'll use a bit of gas as the affordable way to complete the supply.  We'll either offset that CO2 output, capture and sequester it, or use biogas rather than extracted methane.

interstitial

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3111 on: July 03, 2019, 03:26:14 AM »
Bob wallace
 [size=78%] [/size][/size]
The reason that natural gas is likely to have a stronger role over the next decade or so is that we have no affordable way to store energy over long periods.
 
Its not until high levels of renewable market penetration, maybe >80%, that long term storage becomes a concern. Even if this were to become a problem in the future, I don't agree, we can shut down many existing plants while we get there. We don't need any new natural gas plants to provide this service.
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New gas plants can be installed in short times.
We can produce bleach and dump it in the ocean too but that doesn't mean its a good idea.
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They provide fairly cheap electricity.
Not as cheap as renewables.
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And they can be turned on/off rapidly as wind and solar start and stop generating.
Batteries are faster at turning on/off and batteries plus solar are cheaper in some markets.
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Gas plants can operate for days/weeks/months if needed.
renewables can operate for days/weeks/months/years without adding fuel.
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We have no acceptable way to store wind/solar generation for those longer periods.
[/size]Your focus on longer periods suggest acceptance that batteries work fine for shorter periods and higher penetration of renewables. I agree that we should do that first. I disagree we have ways to store energy for longer periods gravity storage will work nicely for long periods. It has no energy losses during storage.[/size][size=78%]  [/size]

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As we add more wind and solar gas plants will run less simply because wind and solar are cheaper sources of electricity.  We're not even close to the point at which wind and solar provide 100% of demand for 25% of all days.
That's a good starting goal. Lets get to that amount of renewables without installing any new fossil fuels.
Quote
[/size] Until we reach and pass that point we have pretty much no wind/solar to store for future use.

[/size]until we reach and pass that point we have no need of long term storage. We have plenty of reasons to build only renewable infrastructure and prevent any new fossil fuel generation. Further their is no reason not reduce natural gas along with all other fossil fuels.   

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We might find ourselves with 95%+ wind/solar/storage
Thats an even better goal to start off with.
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and still encounter a stretch of a few days per year during which we wouldn't want to pay the cost of storage for that last few percent.
Currently that service is provided by generators that only run less than a day a year. That is very expensive to have and maintain equipment that is rarely used. The expensive part is only having a few hours operating time to pay for purchase and operational expenses. Gravity storage would be a good solution here.  That expensive power is the main driver behind utilities funding insulation programs. Its cheaper to insulate your house than having more infrastructure to provide peak power.
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It may well be that we'll use a bit of gas as the affordable way to complete the supply.  We'll either offset that CO2 output, capture and sequester it, or use biogas rather than extracted methane.
This bridge fuel argument is a BAU argument that doesn't really work so I get tired of it. It can serve as the last fossil fuel retired but there is no reason to build more. We should build only renewable. Their is no long term need of it for grid reliability.

b_lumenkraft

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3112 on: July 03, 2019, 09:54:59 AM »
Interstitial, there will be no more BAU arguments, no more Biden fanboyism, and no more relativising racism from Bob. He's blocked.

etienne

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3113 on: July 03, 2019, 10:33:14 PM »
Life is not so easy. Fossil fuels have as main advantage : power per sqm that is much higher than renewables, and that is an issue in cities. New powerplans are mostly replacement because electricity consumption doesn't grow much these days, so a new powerplan means better efficiency. But I aggree that it is short term thinking.

rboyd

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3114 on: July 05, 2019, 03:13:50 AM »
'Clean' natural gas is actually the new coal, report says: Don Pittis

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Effectively, the report warns that rather than being an environment-friendly product that can help solve our climate problems, gas is the new coal.

The explosion in spending on planned new liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities — the vast majority in the U.S. and Canada — combined with new calculations for leakage from the LNG supply chain called fugitive gas — means the world may soon turn against gas in the same way it turned against its solid fuel relative.

"New studies have shown there is significantly more fugitive gas than studies showed five years ago, and the gas is also a bigger contributor to climate change than was understood," said James Browning, one of the report's authors.

Quote
And according to data assembled in the GEM report, that has led to a boom in planned LNG construction worth something approaching $2 trillion. Since plants to compress the gas are much more expensive to build, gas-exporting countries are by far the biggest investors.

"At least 202 LNG terminal projects are in development worldwide, including 116 export terminals and 86 import terminals," says a release summarizing the new report. "Export terminal development is concentrated in the U.S. and Canada."

Quote
She's afraid that in pushing LNG, B.C. is wasting money it could have spent competing with the rest of the world in developing better renewable technology.

Forty to 60 years, the lifespan of an LNG plant, is plenty of time for places like China, currently in the market for Canadian gas, to discover alternative energy technology.

"China may turn around and say, 'You know, we don't need to be importing fossil fuels from other countries because we've become self-sufficient,'" said Tam Wu.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/lng-climate-investment-1.5192148

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3115 on: July 08, 2019, 11:22:40 PM »
Interstitial, there will be no more BAU arguments, no more Biden fanboyism, and no more relativising racism from Bob. He's blocked.
Good

Sciguy

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3116 on: July 10, 2019, 01:04:23 AM »
Oil demand growth is primarily driven by China.  And China's economy is slowing down, which is putting a damper on oil demand.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/A-Red-Flag-For-Oil-Chinas-Crude-Consumption-Is-Faltering.html

Quote
A Red Flag For Oil? China’s Crude Consumption Is Faltering

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jul 09, 2019, 5:00 PM CDT

China set a fresh monthly crude oil import record in April and continues to import growing volumes of crude oil this year, accounting for an estimated two-thirds of global oil demand growth in 2019. 

Yet, a rough estimate of actual Chinese oil consumption patterns lately suggest that the U.S.-China trade war has hit China’s industries and that nearly half of the rise in crude imports have gone into storage so far this year, according to Reuters columnist Clyde Russell, who offers an interesting perspective on whether China’s soaring crude oil imports adequately reflect what’s going on with the Chinese economy.

Signs are pointing to a slowdown in China’s economic growth, while stockpiling—at high levels so far this year—could decelerate later in 2019 if oil prices rise to a level Beijing considers too high to build inventories at the current pace.

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Crude oil supply in China—including imports and domestic production—minus refinery runs, suggests that between January and May, China put 1.21 million bpd into either commercial or strategic storage, compared to 850,000 bpd put into storage in the same period last year, according to Russell’s calculations.

China doesn’t provide figures about storage, so this is only an estimate, but this estimate suggests that China accelerated stockpiling this year, with 45 percent of the crude import growth heading to storage.

Add to this increased exports of fuels, and China’s actual crude oil consumption growth may have been just 340,000 bpd in H1 2019, Russell argues.

Earlier this year, data compiled by Wells Fargo Securities showed that China’s diesel demand slumped by 14 percent in March and 19 percent in April, to the lowest levels in a decade.

Quote
Apart from wobbling economy, China’s crude oil demand, and possibly imports, could be dragged down in the short term by refiners curtailing refinery runs in the third quarter as massive refinery start-ups and slowing domestic fuel demand have created a fuel glut in the country, hurting refining margins.

According to JLC International, Sinopec ZRC will cut daily crude consumption by 2.17 percent, while Tianjin Petrochemical is set to reduce its daily crude runs by 5.12 percent in July.

So far this year China has shown resilient crude oil import growth. But actual industrial and manufacturing crude consumption may have been much lower than the headline number suggests. Going forward, if China reduces the rate of crude stockpiling if oil prices rise, its crude oil imports could flash a warning sign to the oil market that the world’s top oil importer is seeing significant slowdown in crude demand growth.

sidd

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Sciguy

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3118 on: July 11, 2019, 01:18:15 AM »
I posted a link to this story in the renewables forum and reposting it here with additional information about the impacts to the natural gas industry.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2019/07/10/utility-regulators-should-avoid-risky-bets-on-new-natural-gas/#6bea45e574fa

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Solar-plus-storage is now competitive with new natural gas-fired power plants on energy, capacity, and other grid services. Investment firm Lazard pegs the cost of new combined cycle natural gas generation at $41-74 per megawatt-hour (MWh). The same report finds unsubsidized solar costs at $36-46/MWh and wind costs at $29-56 (significantly lower with federal tax credits).

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NV Energy’s recent procurement of 1,200 megawatts (MW) solar and 580 MW of four-hour battery storage trounces new natural gas on price. The public tranche of contracts paid $20/MWh for solar and $13/MWh for enough battery storage to shift 25% of daily energy, resulting in a total cost of $33/MWh per MWh delivered (including federal tax credits).

That $13/MWh is now a ceiling on the incremental cost of “reliability” services provided by new natural gas. We can now shift renewable energy to the highest-demand hours for less than the difference between the levelized cost of new natural gas and renewable generation.


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According to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook 2019, 23.5 gigawatts (GW) of natural gas additions are planned across the U.S., and the U.S. could add 300 GW by 2050 while corresponding infrastructure is projected to grow 4% annually through 2025, worth $1.5 trillion.

With trillions in natural gas investments at risk if renewable costs fall as anticipated, who will hold the bag for new infrastructure investments? Duke Energy plans to build 9,534 MW of gas capacity in the Carolinas alone, but will add only 3,671 MW of solar capacity to the region in the same timeline. With solar and wind plus storage contracts so far below the cost of new gas today, utilities like Duke can’t rightly say they didn’t see it coming.

Regulators must protect customers against the cost and impacts of new gas

If in 2019, regulators see renewable and storage costs as slightly higher than current natural gas costs, they must recall we live in an era of rapid disruption with significant risk natural gas will become uneconomic compared to rapidly falling clean energy costs.

Natural gas assets have a projected asset life of about 30 years, but falling renewables and storage costs may render them uneconomic within a few years. Meanwhile, natural gas price risk still looms large – exacerbated by climate extremes. Utility claims to the contrary, or which use outdated cost information, risk undercutting their own businesses in the long-run.

vox_mundi

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3119 on: July 11, 2019, 06:46:40 PM »
Fossil Fuels Increasingly Offer a Poor Return on Energy Investment
https://m.techxplore.com/news/2019-07-fossil-fuels-increasingly-poor-energy.html

... An enduring argument for the ongoing use of fossil fuels is their high energy return on energy investment. This refers to the ratio of how much energy a source such as coal or oil will produce compared to how much energy it takes to extract.

Previously, the estimated ratios for energy return on investment (EROI) have favoured fossil fuels over renewable energy sources. Oil, coal and gas are typically calculated to have ratios above 25:1, this means roughly one barrel of oil used yields 25 barrels to put back into the energy economy. Renewable energy sources often have much lower estimated ratios, below 10:1.

However, these fossil fuel ratios are measured at the extraction stage, when oil, coal or gas is removed from the ground. These ratios do not take into account the energy required to transform oil, coal and gas into finished fuels such as petrol used in cars, or electricity used by households.

A new study, co-authored by scientists from the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, has calculated the EROI for fossil fuels over a 16 year period and found that at the finished fuel stage, the ratios are much closer to those of renewable energy sources—roughly 6:1, and potentially as low as 3:1 in the case of electricity.

The study, undertaken as part of the UK Energy Research Centre programme and published today in Nature Energy, warns that the increasing energy costs of extracting fossil fuels will cause the ratios to continue to decline, pushing energy resources towards a "net energy cliff". This is when net energy available to society declines rapidly due to the increasing amounts of "parasitical" energy required in the energy production.

Paul E. Brockway, et.al., Estimation of global final-stage energy-return-on-investment for fossil fuels with comparison to renewable energy sources, Nature Energy (2019)
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gerontocrat

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3120 on: July 11, 2019, 07:39:58 PM »
Fossil Fuels Increasingly Offer a Poor Return on Energy Investment
https://m.techxplore.com/news/2019-07-fossil-fuels-increasingly-poor-energy.html

... An enduring argument for the ongoing use of fossil fuels is their high energy return on energy investment. This refers to the ratio of how much energy a source such as coal or oil will produce compared to how much energy it takes to extract.

Renewable energy sources often have much lower estimated ratios, below 10:1.
A new study, co-authored by scientists from the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, has calculated the EROI for fossil fuels over a 16 year period and found that at the finished fuel stage, the ratios are much closer to those of renewable energy sources—roughly 6:1, and potentially as low as 3:1 in the case of electricity.

The University should be ashamed of itself, subscribing the the fallacy of the argument.

The argument is dumb. It does not matter how "inefficient" renewable energy is, because the energy comes directly or indirectly from our local Nuclear Fusion reactor that uses up 600 million tons of hydrogen per second, while fossil fuels put CO2 into the air. So it does not matter that a PV panel has only 20% efficiency in turning sunlight into energy. It is free energy at that point.

Renewable energy puts very little CO2 into the air. Fossil fuels put loads of CO2 into the air. Renewable electricity is now as cheap as fossil fuel produced energy. End of.

Energy used in constructing renewable energy facilities is significant, but so is the energy used in constructing fossil fuel based energy systems. As renewables become an increased percentage of the energy mix, that dumb argument disappears as well.

It makes me tired - dammit, a Professor at a well-regarded University not killing this false logic at birth.
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etienne

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3121 on: July 13, 2019, 08:50:52 AM »
The article gives an ERoEI of 3 for electricity from fossil fuels, wikipedia  in german provides data from 2013 with an ERoEI of 4 for PV pannels This fully explains the PV boom, you would get 33% more electricity with PV than with fossil fuels. The main differences are storage where you loose the extra electricity, and kW per square meters.

Produced is a wrong concept for energy. Fossil fuels are extracted and renewables is more a recycling concept. An ERoEI of 3:1 with fossil fuels means that you use 4 to get 3. Same thing with renewables, excepted that the original energy is something you can't use any other way and can't be stored.
« Last Edit: July 14, 2019, 09:56:40 PM by etienne »

Tor Bejnar

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3122 on: July 13, 2019, 05:59:18 PM »
Quote
It makes me tired ..., a Professor at a well-regarded University not killing this false logic at birth.
cause:  short term lucre - $$  ££  €€  Au (and undoubtedly, just the paycheck, nothing 'exorbitant')
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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3123 on: July 13, 2019, 08:42:34 PM »
An ERoEI of 3:1 with fossil fuels means that you use 4 to get 3. Same thing with renewables, excepted that the original energy is something you can't use any other way and can't be stored.

An ERoEI of 3:1 means you spend 1 part of energy to get 3 parts of energy. Usually this is measured at or near the well head, as it gets more and more difficult to identify the energy costs the further you move away from the well head. Charles Hall, among others, has tried assessing these wider costs.

I see all the deregulation around the fossil fuels as attempts to reduce the energy spend requirements as the ERoEI falls. Last ditch attempts to keep the fossil fuels flowing. Next may be semi-nationalization with the subsidies paid for by the less powerful.

Sciguy

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3124 on: July 15, 2019, 10:16:09 PM »
IEA is predicting a huge oil glut in 2020 as producers keep pumping faster than consumers use oil.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/IEA-Huge-Oil-Glut-Coming-In-2020.html

Quote
Global oil supply exceeded demand by about 0.9 million barrels per day (mb/d) in the first six months of this year, according to the International
Energy Agency’s latest Oil Market Report. This retrospective look upends the prevailing sentiment that occurred just a few weeks ago. For instance,
the IEA said that the oil market saw a surplus of about 0.5 mb/d in the second quarter, while the agency previously thought there was going to be a
0.5 mb/d deficit.

“This surplus adds to the huge stock builds seen in the second half of 2018 when oil production surged just as demand growth started to falter,”
the IEA said. “Clearly, market tightness is not an issue for the time being and any re-balancing seems to have moved further into the future.”

OPEC has been attempting to prop up prices by restricting supply, but US shale drillers have continued to pump no matter what the price is.  Those days may be over though.

Quote
The one bit of uncertainty in those forecasts is the unfolding slowdown in the U.S. shale industry. As Bloomberg reported, “pipeline limits, reduced flow from wells drilled too close together, low natural gas prices and high land costs” are putting a squeeze on Texas shale drillers. Financial results are bad, and have been rather grim for quite some time. Despite huge increases in production (or, because of such extraordinary growth) North American oil companies have burned through $187 billion in cash since 2012.

The big question is whether or not the blistering rate of growth begins to slow as investors sour on the industry. Right now, there is only patchy evidence of this, with the rig count down and the pace of growth seemingly on the wane. Bloomberg cited more than a half dozen shale drillers
that have dramatically scaled back their production growth forecasts as they slow the pace of drilling. It remains to be seen if, in the aggregate, U.S. output begins to flatten out.

If that occurs, it would be a massive relief to OPEC, which would find its task of rebalancing a bit easier. Otherwise, by 2020, the cartel may be forced to cut production by even more than it already has.

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3125 on: July 16, 2019, 12:07:14 AM »
China oil imports up 15 % compared to june 2018. That's almost 1,3 million barrels a day extra in just one year. And their economy still grows with 6 % a year. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Chinas-Refineries-Hit-New-All-Time-Operating-Record.html

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3126 on: July 17, 2019, 12:21:42 PM »
Stronger earthquakes can be induced by wastewater injected deep underground


Virginia Tech scientists have found that in regions where oilfield wastewater disposal is widespread -- and where injected water has a higher density than deep naturally occurring fluids -- earthquakes are getting deeper at the same rate as the wastewater sinks.

Perhaps more critically, the research team of geoscientists found that the percentage of high-magnitude earthquakes increases with depth, and may create -- although fewer in number -- greater magnitude earthquakes years after injection rates decline or stop altogether.

...

"Earthquakes are now common in the central United States where the number of magnitude-3 or greater earthquakes increased from about 19 per year before 2008 to more than 400 per year since," said Pollyea, an assistant professor of geosciences and director of the Computational Geofluids Laboratory at Virginia Tech. (Pollyea adds that the overall earthquake rate per year has been declining since 2016.)

"In many cases, these earthquakes occur when oilfield wastewater is disposed of by pumping it into deep geologic formations," Pollyea added. "As wastewater is injected deep underground, fluid pressure builds up and migrates away from injection wells. This destabilizes faults and causes 'injection-induced' earthquakes, such as the damaging 5.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Pawnee, Oklahoma, in 2016."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190716113030.htm

Not directly important but if this results in more damaging quakes over time it might change the public opinion.
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ArcticMelt2

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3127 on: July 18, 2019, 07:16:04 PM »
Conflict escalation continues. It is said that Iran is very bad in the economy, and the Iranian government dreams of a psychological victory (like Trump before the elections).

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/18/middleeast/iran-tanker-intl/index.html

Quote
Iran seizes foreign oil tanker with 12 crew, state media says

Abu Dhabi, UAE (CNN)Iran has seized an oil tanker it claimed was carrying 1 million liters of "smuggled fuel," state news agency Press TV said on Thursday.

The semi-official Fars news agency said Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces ambushed the tanker, carrying 12 people on board, on Sunday.
The IRGC said it had initially responded to distress calls from a ship on Sunday but when they searched it, they discovered it was a smuggling operation, according to Iranian state media.

Citing an IRGC statement, Fars reported that the ship -- which has a capacity of 2 million liters -- is a foreign tanker and was seized in an area south of Larak, a small island in the Strait of Hormuz.

Fars added that the ship was carrying fuel smuggled to it on Iranian dhows, or small boats.
In a statement on Thursday, a US State Department official said the US "strongly condemns the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy's continued harassment of vessels and interference with safe passage in and around the Strait of Hormuz."

"Iran must cease this illicit activity and release the reportedly seized crew and vessel immediately," they said, adding that the US will "continue to work closely with our allies and partners to ensure the Iranian regime's extortion tactics and malign activities do not further disrupt maritime security and global commerce."

Recent incidents

The ship's seizure is one in a series of recent maritime episodes involving Iran.
Shortly after US intelligence raised fears that a foreign tanker had been forced into Iranian waters last weekend, Iran said that it had assisted one vessel suffering a technical glitch.

Since the weekend, US intelligence has been investigating what happened to the vessel, believed to be Panamanian-flagged tanker M/T Riah.

The ship-tracking website Marine Vessel Traffic has not had a current location for that tanker since July 7.

While US intelligence suggested that the tanker was UAE-owned, the United Arab Emirates said on Wednesday that the tanker in question was "neither owned nor operated by the UAE. It does not carry Emirati personnel, and did not emit a distress call," according to state-run WAM.

It is unclear whether the tanker that Iran said on Thursday it had seized is the same vessel as the one that Tehran claimed to have assisted earlier this week.

The IRGC have denied seizing any other tankers, Fars said Thursday.

In another incident last week, armed Iranian boats tried unsuccessfully to impede the passage of a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, according to two US officials with direct knowledge of the incident.

In June, tensions between the US and Iran escalated into a military standoff after an American drone was shot down by Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most vital shipping routes.

Sciguy

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3128 on: July 18, 2019, 07:22:34 PM »
Gas pipeline owners are starting to push back on oil companies that flare natural gas rather than pay pipeline owners to ship it to where it can be used.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Will-The-US-Gas-Glut-Cap-Oil-Production.html

Quote
A pipeline company is fighting the practice of flaring gas in Texas, threatening to slow the pace of oil production.

Flaring gas has become an epidemic in Texas. Permian drillers have ramped up oil production to astounding levels, which has led to a wave of associated natural gas output. But while there have been serious constraints for moving oil on pipelines, the bottlenecks for gas pipelines are even worse. With no place to put the gas, shale companies are simply lighting the gas on fire and flaring it off into the air.

In the Permian and the Eagle Ford, shale drillers flared an average of 740 million cubic feet of natural gas per day in the first quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal. The amount of gas burned off into the air in the first three months of the year was worth $1.8 million per day and emitted the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 5 million cars, the WSJ said.

Quote
As WSJ notes, Williams Co. is trying to contest a flaring permit request by Eagle Ford shale driller Exco Resources. Exco apparently wants to flare all of the gas from a series of wells in South Texas despite the fact that the wells can be connected to existing pipelines. Exco wants to flare the gas because its more profitable than buying space on the pipeline. Williams fears that unchecked flaring would be a setback for pipeline companies who look for contracts before building new pipelines.

Texas shale drillers have not run into significant resistance to flaring to date, but opposition from a powerful midstream company may pose a more formidable obstacle. If the Texas Railroad Commission denies the permit, it could slow the pace of oil production in the state.

Quote
Evidence of this dynamic is already visible in North Dakota, where flaring is also running well above state limits. But the constraints on flaring in the Bakken, such as they are, are nonetheless having more of an impact than they are in Texas. North Dakota’s Lieutenant Governor Brent Sanford told an industry conference that Bakken oil production would be vastly higher if not for bottlenecks on capturing natural gas.

“The only thing keeping us from setting a new oil production record is our gas production. It is outpacing our oil production and makes it difficult to meet our gas capture goals,” Sanford said at the Bakken Oil and Gas Conference Expo in Bismarck, according to S&P Global Platts. Sanford argued that North Dakota would be producing 2 million barrels per day (mb/d) if not for gas constraints, up from roughly 1.4 mb/d currently. He said that the “gas capture challenge is limiting further growth.”

Tor Bejnar

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3129 on: July 19, 2019, 04:42:32 PM »
Australia is on track to become the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2019
Quote
Between 2012 and 2018, Australia’s LNG export capacity increased from 2.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) to more than 11.4 Bcf/d

In November and December 2018, Australia briefly overtook Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter
LNG = liquid natural gas
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vox_mundi

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3130 on: July 19, 2019, 05:42:43 PM »
Refinery Explosions Raise New Warnings About Deadly Chemical
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/19/742367382/refinery-explosions-raise-new-warnings-about-deadly-chemical
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/attack-here/


Flames and smoke emerge from the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in Philadelphia on June 21. Experts say the explosions could have been far more devastating if deadly hydrogen fluoride had been released.

Philadelphia Energy Solutions' worst-case disaster scenario includes 143,262 pounds of hydrogen fluoride released over 10 minutes, which could travel as a toxic cloud for more than 7 miles and impact more than a million people, including in schools, homes, hospitals, prisons, playgrounds, parks and a wildlife sanctuary.

Two other refineries in the Philadelphia region also use HF, as do some four dozen around the country. The Philadelphia explosions, along with similar accidents in the past four years, are reviving concerns about inadequate safety measures and calls to end the use of the deadly chemical.

... For those who know deeply about the dangers of HF, the news of the PES refinery explosion struck a terrifying chord that echoed beyond the clouds of black smoke visible to TV viewers nationwide.

"Don't look at it and say, 'Man, a nuclear bomb went off and nothing was released, so that must mean it's safe,'" says engineer and activist Sally Hayati. "No, that just means the fortuitous outcome of this just happened to be such that it wasn't released. You could have had tens of thousands of people die."

In 2015, at what was then the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, an explosion sent an 80,000 pound piece of equipment flying and it landed just a few feet from a tank full of HF.

Hayati says a release of HF from the Torrance facility, like the refineries in the Philadelphia area, would be difficult to flee. "There's no place to evacuate to, and there would be no time," she says.

... The definitive experiment on the release of hydrofluoric acid was done back in 1986, and it did not go well.

Ron Koopman conducted the experiment. He's a physicist and expert on chemical safety, and worked as a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for 36 years. He says when about 1,000 gallons of HF were released in the Nevada desert test site, the results were shocking.

The HF turned into an expanding ground-hugging vapor cloud. A terrifying video of the experiment shows white billowing clouds of the toxin getting larger and moving rapidly along the ground. Two miles downwind, the HF cloud had more than twice the lethal concentration. Koopman says those exposed to HF die a horrible death.

Consider that each of the two settler tanks at the Torrance Refinery holds 50,000 lbs. of HF — six times more than the 1986 “Goldfish” Release Test.

https://traa.blog/2018/09/20/1986-hydrofluoric-acid-release-test/

... The Obama administration boosted protections around the accidental release of toxic chemicals and emergency response. President Trump's EPA tried to delay that, and then in 2018 proposed rolling back some parts of the rule, including the requirement for industry to assess safer alternatives.

https://www.nap.edu/read/11597/chapter/6#42
https://truthout.org/articles/philadelphia-explosion-underscores-danger-of-refineries-using-hydrogen-fluoride/
https://publicintegrity.org/workers-rights/use-of-toxic-acid-puts-millions-at-risk/
« Last Edit: July 19, 2019, 05:59:08 PM by vox_mundi »
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Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Sciguy

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3131 on: July 19, 2019, 07:41:42 PM »
Yet another fossil fuel disaster.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Another-Massive-Gas-Explosion-Rocks-China-Casualties-Unknown.html

Quote
A massive explosion has been reported at China’s Yima gas plant in Henan province, damaging buildings in a 3-kilometer radius.

The casualties are still unknown as of the time of reporting, with some media citing Chinese television as saying that 18 people had so far been reported as injured, a dozen missing and possibly two confirmed fatalities.

Stills taken from Chinese television show giant plumes of smoke in the aftermath of the explosion.

This will get less news coverage in the US then a Tesla on fire or all the birds killed by windmills.

ArcticMelt2

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3132 on: July 19, 2019, 10:05:07 PM »
New war is getting closer.

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/iran-british-tanker-july-2019/index.html

Quote
Iran says it has captured a British oil tanker

Armed aircraft protecting US cargo ship in the Straight of Hormuz
The US is taking measures to protect a ship near where two British tankers were seized by Iran.

According to a US defense official with direct knowledge, at this hour, the US military is monitoring the transit of US commercial cargo ship through the Strait of Hormuz using armed aircraft overhead. The US will not say the location or other details, but the transit typically takes six to eight hours.

The seizure of two ships was clearly a preplanned and coordinated Iranian operation, the US military believes. Both tankers were boarded by IRGC and taken into Iranian waters, about a half hour apart.

20 min ago
Trump says he will talk to the UK about seized tankers
CNN's Allie Malloy at the White House

President Trump hailed a "close alliance" with the United Kingdom as he answered a question about seized British tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

"We have a very close alliance with the United Kingdom. We always have," Trump told reporters at the White House.

Later, Trump claimed the episode proved his warnings about Iran correct.

"This only goes to show what I'm saying about Iran. Trouble. Nothing but trouble," he said. "It goes to show you I was right about Iran."

He noted the "US has very few tankers going in because we’re using a lot of our own energy," but said the American presence in the region was still robust.

"We have a lot of ships there that are warships," he said.

"We’ll talk to the UK," he said, suggesting there was a lack of clarity about the current situation: "We heard about it. We heard it was one. We heard it was two."

Trump noted there would soon be a new British prime minister. "That's a good thing for the UK," Trump said.

52 min ago
Iran has seized a second tanker, US official says
From CNN's Barbara Starr

Iran has also seized a second tanker, the Liberian-flagged MV Mesdar, according to a US official. Two more US officials tell CNN that, according to maritime intelligence reports, the indication is the Mesdar has been seized.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced earlier that its navy has captured a British-flagged tanker ‘Stena Impero’ in the Strait of Hormuz.

The order of seizure of the two ships isn’t clear at this time. 

58 min ago
UK Chamber of Shipping: "We condemn unreservedly" the ship's capture
From CNN’s Nada Bashir

The UK Chamber of Shipping said it "condemn unreservedly" the capture of a British tanker.

Here's the statement from CEO Bob Sanguinetti:

We condemn unreservedly the capture of Stena Impero as she transited the Strait of Hormuz earlier today. The action by those involved is in violation of international regulations which protect ships and their crews as they go about their legitimate business in international waters.
Our priority is for the safety and welfare of the crew. We call on the UK Government to do whatever is necessary to ensure their safe and swift return.

This incident represents an escalation. Whilst we call for measured response, it is also clear that further protection for merchant vessels must be forthcoming to ensure enhanced security to guarantee free flow of trade in the region.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its navy has captured the British-flagged oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Two US officials also said a British tanker has been seized.

1 hr 11 min ago
The White House is "aware of reports that Iranian forces seized a British oil tanker"
From CNN's Kaitlan Collins

The White House is aware of reports a British oil tanker was seized in the Gulf, a spokesman said Friday.

"We are aware of reports that Iranian forces seized a British oil tanker," national security counsel spokesman Garrett Marquis said in a statement.

"This is the second time in just over a week the UK has been the target of escalatory violence by the Iranian regime," Marquis went on. "The U.S. will continue to work with our allies and partners to defend our security and interests against Iran’s malign behavior."

1 hr 15 min ago
US-Iran tensions have been escalating this summer. Here's a recap of some of the events.

Tensions between the US and Iran have in recent weeks following several incidents involving tankers and drones.

Here's a look at some of the key events:

Wednesday, June 10: Armed Iranian boats unsuccessfully tried to seize a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, according to two US officials with direct knowledge of the incident. The British Heritage tanker was sailing out of the Persian Gulf and was crossing into the Strait of Hormuz area when it was approached by boats from the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranians ordered the tanker to change course and stop in nearby Iranian territorial waters, according to the officials.

Thursday, June 13: The United States blamed Iran for the attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The Pentagon released a detailed set of photos that it said showed Iranian boats removing a mine from one of two vessels that were attacked.

Monday, June 17:  The Trump administration said it will deploy 1,000 additional troops and more military resources to the Middle East. The forces are being sent in response to what Washington called "hostile behavior by Iranian forces that threaten United States personnel and interests across the region."

Thursday, June 20: Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it had shot down an "intruding American spy drone" after it entered into the country's territory Thursday. A US official confirmed to CNN a drone had been shot down, but said the incident occurred in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most vital shipping routes.

Monday, June 24: Trump announced new sanctions against Iran in part to retaliate after the downing of a US drone.

Thursday, July 18: President Trump said that the USS Boxer downed an Iranian drone that came within 1,000 yards of the Navy ship and ignored "multiple calls to stand down." Trump said the drone was "threatening the safety of the ship and the ship's crew" in the Strait of Hormuz and was "immediately destroyed." The drone was destroyed using electronic jamming, according to a US defense official.

Friday, July 19: Iran says it has seized a British tanker.

ArcticMelt2

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3133 on: July 19, 2019, 10:10:17 PM »
That was 30 years ago:



What damage to the environment will be this time?

TerryM

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3134 on: July 19, 2019, 10:20:58 PM »
Wasn't it the capture of a loaded Iranian tanker a week or so ago by the UK that began this tit for tat?
Terry


Alexander555

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3135 on: July 19, 2019, 10:47:33 PM »
Somebody attacked 6 oil tankers a couple weeks ago, near the Strait of Hormuz.

vox_mundi

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3136 on: July 19, 2019, 11:33:44 PM »
As they say ... the situation is fluid.



COBRA meeting underway re Iran seizing tanker, British official says.

According to CNN, citing unnamed U.S. defense officials, at least one unspecified U.S. military aircraft is providing armed overwatch for a U.S. cargo ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

... it appeared that HMS Montrose, or one of the Sandown class minehunters the Royal Navy has in the region, arrived on the Strait of Hormuz. possibly to begin a patrol to try to prevent any further seizures from occurring. However, the ship then abruptly turned around and began heading in the opposite direction (at a high rate of speed).

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29076/iran-has-followed-through-with-its-threat-to-capture-a-british-tanker-in-the-middle-east



Update: ... unconfirmed reports that Iran may be planning to begin routinely boarding and inspecting foreign oil tankers ostensibly to ensure compliance with environmental regulations. This could make it difficult for ships to avoid seizure in the future, as failing to stop for such a check could also give Iranian authorities a pretext to detain a ship.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2019, 01:10:23 AM by vox_mundi »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3137 on: July 19, 2019, 11:45:54 PM »
Somebody attacked 6 oil tankers a couple weeks ago, near the Strait of Hormuz.

As you say "somebody" (someone)

The "Brits" have always been fast with action on rumors that later were proven wrong or not certain.

In that place are quite a few potential players, each with their own interests. From Somali pirates looking for revenge to Iran, to competitors on the oil market, to the "Allies" who need a reason to do what they wanna do or already did.

I'm with Terry there and all this "dangerous" "Kinderkarden" and "Sandbox" games are so ridiculous   if they only were not so dangerous and costly, paid with money exploited from the working people of which many of course don't deserve much better since they don't think by themselves but simply consume propaganda.

Alexander555

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3138 on: July 20, 2019, 12:33:21 AM »
But who has drones in the air, who has his fleet moving up and down in that area ? Not the pirats, that's for sure.

philopek

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3139 on: July 20, 2019, 12:51:58 AM »
But who has drones in the air, who has his fleet moving up and down in that area ? Not the pirats, that's for sure.

The U.S. of A. for one ?

Not implying anything here, i dunno like we all can only guess but then in reply to your question, the U.S. Navy has probably the highest number of all you were asking in that region, even vessels of significant firepower and size.

And of course, to be fair there are the Iranians but there are also the Saudis and others.

How many times have we seen re-branded (painted) warfare to fake the news.

The U.S. have always been good at that by the way. Never forget that they disguised as natives and shot their own people to get reason to call the cavalry and cease another piece of land.

etc. etc.  but again, I'm not making any claims, I only ask for prudence with judgement  because things are way less clear than they appear obvious.

And then who started, directly or indirectly, the last dozens or so wars involving oil and other major resources. Recently it were the U.S. and before that it were mostly the "Brits" for several hundred years and what a surprise, they're bot involved again in this charade.

Alexander555

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3140 on: July 20, 2019, 01:17:52 AM »
I understand, but the US or the UK don't hangs people because they are gay. And the entire planet made war in the last hundreds and thousands of years. Not just the brits and the US. Because i'm getting a little sick from all these so called subsidised "good man". That come to tells us how bad we are. If you like these regimes like Iran, China, north korea , Venezuela.... Than just go live there. I'm sure they will pay you to be a "good man".

philopek

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3141 on: July 20, 2019, 01:59:09 AM »
I understand, but the US or the UK don't hangs people because they are gay. And the entire planet made war in the last hundreds and thousands of years. Not just the brits and the US. Because i'm getting a little sick from all these so called subsidised "good man". That come to tells us how bad we are. If you like these regimes like Iran, China, north korea , Venezuela.... Than just go live there. I'm sure they will pay you to be a "good man".

No you change to topic to stay "right" no problem, it happens all over this and other forums and one has to live with it.

Only that i won't take part in this ever diversion from the original topic to justify a point of view.

The point of view one has to respect as another opinion, but not the kind dishonest way to debate.

The topic was who started to cease vessels and not who is beheading who and then the European history is full of inquisitors, torturers and conquistadores as well as pirating in the name of the crown.

Why do we not give other cultures the time to develop and help them like we needed some time to exit our caves and stop doing certain things while in fact our system is still cruel, it's just not so physically violent anymore but more mentally.

If you ask innocent people spending 20 years in jail or seeing their reputation destroyed, i think they won't see the new way of torture and destruction as that much more civilized.

May i say may opinion that those of us who think we became nice and good humans are simply arrogant and ignorant at the same time ?

There are 2% good and 2% evil and the rest is average and it has been that way for many thousand years.

This is not just me,read the bible or other literature from renown authors and the verdict will be the same.

petm

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3142 on: July 20, 2019, 03:36:59 AM »
Wtf is this thread about and why?


TerryM

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3143 on: July 20, 2019, 05:09:20 AM »
Wtf is this thread about and why?


The "Mesdar" was issued a warning by Iranian forces and is now on it's way again - now with their transponder turned on.


It appears as though the 3 Russian crewmen on the Stena Impero (no Brits or Americans on board) have been accounted for.


Israel's Mossad apparently believes that the "Boxer" missed the three Iranian drones flying over their own territory, but shot down one of the two American drones that had been sent from the UAE to patrol the same region without alerting the Boxers crew.


Now that both the Americans and the Iranians have shot down an American drone - should we consider it even?


BTW - In case of a war, Trump would almost certainly win the next election - is that what we want?
Terry


etienne

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3144 on: July 20, 2019, 09:22:46 AM »
BTW - In case of a war, Trump would almost certainly win the next election - is that what we want?
Terry
I also find that it looks like Trump wants a war. Maybe he would prefer a victory, but a war is much easier to get.

I had the feeling that Iran was coming back to democracy before the nuclear agreement was ended by the USA.This is just what the extremists needed to gain back influence.

I also believe that this is more or less on topic because the issue must be access to Iranian oil, just like it was in Irak during the gulf war. The main difference is that Iran has more support than Saddam used to have, so the game is much more dangerous. There are so many places on earth where nobody cares about women, gays and democracy.

vox_mundi

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3145 on: July 20, 2019, 05:38:56 PM »
Re:
Quote
...This will get less news coverage in the US then a Tesla on fire or all the birds killed by windmills.

Here's some more ...

After 800,000-Gallon Spill, Chevron Site is Still Leaking Oil
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-07-18/chevron-oil-spill-california-diane-feinstein

News broke that a Chevron oil well in Kern County had leaked nearly 800,000 gallons of crude petroleum and water into a dry creek bed about 35 miles west of Bakersfield over the past two months. The mixture was about one-third oil and two-thirds water, and the flow has since ceased, according to the state Department of Conservation. The seep occurred in an oil field where Chevron uses a process called steam injection to extract underground crude oil.

However, California officials confirmed Thursday that the site was once again seeping a hazardous mix of oil and water.

Ted Goldberg, an editor at KQED News who often reports on Bay Area refineries, uncovered the spill while searching a government database for updates on an entirely separate incident at Chevron’s Richmond refinery in Northern California. “In May, Chevron officials began noticing that oil and water started coming up from the ground when it shouldn’t,” Goldberg explained. “It lasted for a little while and then it stopped. And then on two other occasions since then, it started [again]. The agency that’s responsible for regulating this stuff has been criticized, basically, for not doing an aggressive job in general.”

California officials confirmed Thursday that the site was once again seeping a hazardous mix of oil and water.



--------------------------

320,000 Litres of Oil and Produced Water Spills at Alberta Facility
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/320-000-litres-of-oil-and-produced-water-spills-at-alberta-facility-1.4512582

The Alberta Energy Regulator has few details about Saturday's spill on its compliance reporting website.

It says 320,000 litres of the substances leaked after a problem with pump equipment.

--------------------------

Longest Oil Spill in U.S. History May Be 900 Times Larger Than Originally Estimated
https://earther.gizmodo.com/longest-oil-spill-in-u-s-history-may-be-900-times-larg-1835847992

While the BP oil disaster has received far more attention, elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, oil has been leaking into the water for far longer. The so-called Taylor oil spill began in 2004 but it went largely unnoticed until an investigation by the Associated Press in 2015. Now, federal agencies are finally learning just how much oil has leaked in what has become the longest spill in US history—and it’s looking far worse than the company let on.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a report Monday detailing how many gallons of oil have been spilling a day since powerful waves from 2004's Hurricane Ivan caused an off-shore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico to fall into the ocean, spewing oil onto the ocean floor. Developer Taylor Energy Company, which shut down in 2008, has maintained that the incident has resulted in 3 to 5 gallons leaking a day since the disaster, according to E&E News. This new government study, however, shows that the leakage could be as high as 4,578 gallons a day.

That’s more than 25 million gallons of oil over these 15 years. The Deepwater Horizon Spill, for comparison, resulted in 168 million gallons of oil total.

Research from earlier this year suggested the leak could be as high as 71,400 gallons a day, reports the Times-Picayune.

https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/data_reports/an-integrated-assessment-of-oil-and-gas-release-into-the-marine-environment-at-the-former-taylor-energy-mc20-site/



----------------------

12,000 L of Oil Spilled in North Atlantic Off Newfoundland, Forcing Rig Shutdown
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/hibernia-oil-spill-production-stopped-1.5216108



According to the Canada-Newfoundland & Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, satellite imagery at 9 a.m. NT on Thursday shows two slicks. One is 1.71 square kilometres and 3.27 kilometres long, and one is 6.64 square kilometres and 3.78 kilometres long - Company spokesman fromHibernia said the sheen was reported to be 900 metres by 20 metres, but was dissipating. Who you going to believe?
« Last Edit: July 20, 2019, 06:11:01 PM by vox_mundi »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

philopek

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3146 on: July 20, 2019, 05:49:16 PM »
BTW - In case of a war, Trump would almost certainly win the next election - is that what we want?
Terry
I also find that it looks like Trump wants a war. Maybe he would prefer a victory, but a war is much easier to get.

I had the feeling that Iran was coming back to democracy before the nuclear agreement was ended by the USA.This is just what the extremists needed to gain back influence.

I also believe that this is more or less on topic because the issue must be access to Iranian oil, just like it was in Irak during the gulf war. The main difference is that Iran has more support than Saddam used to have, so the game is much more dangerous. There are so many places on earth where nobody cares about women, gays and democracy.

Quite exactly what i think as well.

The U.S. of A. are (still) strong enough to live with what they call a "bad deal" in favor of Iran who's less dogmatic groups need support to slowly get away from the current clergy-ruling that, as we all know, was even worse before.

What the "Donald" did was to kill the process to make a point for himself and most probably with re-election as the real goal in mind.

He had to find a conflict where he would have wide support and could be sure that the counterpart (Iranian Gov) reacted in a way that helps him to pull his scam.

This means nothing else that the greatest idiotic thinking patterns on planet earth jointly help each other to keep the rest of the world in kind of custody.

Trump should consider who is the laughing third (axis) that is the Russian/Chinese axis.

They can lean back and chuckle and jump in upon risk-free opportunities  like in Syria.

vox_mundi

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3147 on: July 20, 2019, 06:04:47 PM »
Iran is just having the sort of days that would make St. Francis of Assisi kick babies.

Iran Grain Ships Stuck in Brazil Without Fuel Due to U.S. Sanctions
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-iran-sanctions/iran-grain-ships-stuck-in-brazil-without-fuel-due-to-u-s-sanctions-idUSKCN1UD2QK

SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Two Iranian vessels, Bavand and Termeh, have been stranded for weeks at Brazilian ports, unable to head back to Iran due to lack of fuel, which state-run oil firm Petrobras refuses to sell them due to sanctions imposed by the United States.

---------------------

Two More Iranian ships May Be Stranded in Brazil as Sanctions Bite
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-iran-sanctions-ships/two-more-iranian-ships-may-be-stranded-in-brazil-as-sanctions-bite-idUSKCN1UE2PP

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Two more Iranian bulk carriers, Delruba and Ganj, that came to Brazil carrying urea and were expected to return home with corn could be left without enough fuel, as Brazilian state oil firm Petrobras refuses to provide them with bunker fuel due to U.S. sanctions.

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

SteveMDFP

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3148 on: July 20, 2019, 06:21:16 PM »


Trump should consider who is the laughing third (axis) that is the Russian/Chinese axis.

They can lean back and chuckle and jump in upon risk-free opportunities  like in Syria.

The standoff raises oil prices, which helps Russia but hurts China.  Of course, the people in Iran are hurt the worst.

etienne

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Re: Oil and Gas Issues
« Reply #3149 on: July 21, 2019, 11:02:35 AM »


Trump should consider who is the laughing third (axis) that is the Russian/Chinese axis.

They can lean back and chuckle and jump in upon risk-free opportunities  like in Syria.

The standoff raises oil prices, which helps Russia but hurts China.  Of course, the people in Iran are hurt the worst.

I don't know if China is so much hurt by high petrol prices. They are leading in more than one greenBAU technologies, cleantech... This will increase PV and windpower installations, EV demand...