Monday, August 31, 2015

Monday, August 31, 2015 -- Part II; WPX Monetizing Some Of Their Midstream Assets In The Bakken; Another New Natural Gas Discovery Overseas; Quantum Tunneling Explains Everything

Press release, Ares Management, LP, will acquire the Van Hook Gathering System in North Dakota in an agreement with WPX, for $185 million:
Ares Management, L.P. announced today that a fund managed by its Ares EIF Group has entered into a definitive agreement with WPX Energy, to acquire the Van Hook Gathering System in North Dakota in a transaction valued at $185 million
The acquisition consists of pipeline systems that currently gather approximately 11,000 barrels of oil, 6,500 million cubic feet of natural gas, and 5,000 barrels of water per day from WPX Energy’s Bakken shale oil assets.
WPX Energy will continue to operate the Van Hook Gathering System.
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More Natural Gas
This Time Off-Shore Great Britain

Last week, ENI announces a "supergiant" natural gas field off-shore Egypt. Today, it's Britain's turn. Penn Energy is reporting:
The offshore development of the largest new field discovered in the UK North Sea for a decade has been approved by the UK Oil & Gas Authority. The Maersk Oil operated high pressure, high temperature (HPHT) Culzean field in the UK Central North Sea is expected to produce enough gas to meet 5% of total UK demand at peak production in 2020/21. Culzean is also the largest gas field sanctioned since East Brae in 1990.
Discovered in 2008 by Maersk Oil and its co-venturers, the gas condensate field has resources estimated at 250-300 million barrels of oil equivalent. Production is expected to start in 2019 and continue for at least 13 years, with plateau production of 60,000-90,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Maersk Oil and its co-venturers, JX Nippon and BP (Britoil) are investing around USD 4.5 bn in the development, with more than 50% committed to investments in the UK.
The Culzean field aligns with the UK’s commitment to increased gas-fired electricity generation and is expected to support an estimated 6,000 UK jobs and create more than 400 direct jobs.
Again, the numbers are staggering, but let's see what we can do. Somewhere between 20 trillion and 30 trillion cubic feet defines a "superfield," apparently.

If this article mentioned "trillion cubic feet," I missed it. The only number I saw was "boe."

Working backwards from 250- 300 million boe, we get 1.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  That sounds about right considering production is expected to last only about 15 years.

Something tells me intermittent energy, particularly wind energy, is dead in Great Britain, except for niche projects.

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Notes to the Granddaughters

It was on page 51 of Nick Lane's book, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and The Origins of Complex Life, that I finally had an epiphany: bacteria don't have species.

All that taxonomy I learned in high school and college is wrong. Bacteria, like all other life forms, are given genus/species names, but by definition, bacteria can't be separated into species.

From page 51 of Nick Lane's book:
Yet [eukaryocytes] did not accrue this complexity in an obviously predictable way: they came up with a whole series of traits, from sex and ageing (sic) to speciation, none of which have ever been seen in bacteria or archaea.
Googling bacteria do not have species reveals a paucity of links -- only one in fact in the first few pages, and for some reason that link did not download last week for me. Finally today the link downloads:
Googling among bacteria species do not exist, the hits are not much better, but there two:
Unfortunately, the method of naming bacteria is too entrenched -- as Lynn Margulis says in the article at the first link -- to change now, so you, our granddaughters, will be learning the "species" of bacteria just as we did 40 years ago.

In the first linked article, Lynn Margulis also mentions Carl Woese and his contribution to the discussion. Nick Lane suggests there were "three major revolutions that have wracked our view of life in the past half century": a) Lynn Margulis' discovery; b) Carl Woese's discovery; and c) the third revolution currently going on trying to accommodate both Margulis and Woese because their theories seem to be at odds with each other, and not by just a little bit.

However, the fact that the way "we've" been teaching bacterial taxonomy all these years is wrong is really, really neat. We learn there is much more to explore behind this "closed door."

On the hand hand, the science of global warming is not to be discussed; it is complete; we understand it all. Don't question it; just believe it.

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Tunneling

Fox News is reporting that authorities are perplexed how secret information from the federal government got on to Hillary's server because the two systems are/were not connected. The government's secret server was/is not connected to Hillary's server and yet information appears to have gotten from one system to the other.

This is not hard to understand. It happened the same way the Whitewater papers showed up in the White House bedroom after being "lost" for years.

The answer: tunneling.

More specifically, quantum tunneling:
Quantum tunneling refers to the quantum mechanical phenomenon where a particle tunnels through a barrier that it classically could not surmount.
Q: Did you wipe your server clean?"
A: With what, a cloth?

Q: How did classified information get on your private server?
A: Quantum tunneling.

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Rumors From The Land Of The Ice And Snow

There are rumors that President Obama will announce a huge federally-funded solar farm project for Alaska's North Slope to offset the carbon footprint from his decision to okay Shell drilling in the Arctic.

The Alaskan Solar Set-Up (or ASS for short) would be active only during those times when the Arctic's sun does not set. According to the EIA, Alaska’s energy demand per person is the third-highest in the nation. President Obama will be able to announce that due to his ASS initiative, energy costs will be lowered for the average Alaskan. Living north of the Arctic circle. At least for a day or two.

There were plans to call the project the Alaskan Solar System but he thought folks might confuse that with the "original" solar system. 

The Immigrant Song,Karen O with Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

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