Huge Drop In North Dakota Rig Count; US Imports More Saudi Oil In June, Year-Over-Year -- September 10, 2015

EIA data this week (links dynamic):

• natural gas fill rate: 68; trending above the 5-year average; in the East Region, stocks were 37 Bcf below the 5-year average following net injections of 49 Bcf
• gasoline demand: wow, big drop; I'm surprised; well above last year, but still, the decline is quite striking; week ending 9/04 (doesn't include Labor Day weekend): 9.017 vs 9.438 the week before, and 8.611 one year ago; 

OPEC import data updated as of June, 2015:

• OPEC, June, 2014: 97.5 million bbls
• OPEC, June, 2015: 86.0 million bbls

• Saudi imports, June, 2013: 42.9 million bbls
• Saudi imports, June, 2014: 30.5 million bbls
• Saudi imports, June, 2015: 32.0 million bbls

• Venezuela imports, June, 2013: 27.0 million bbls
• Venezuela imports, June, 2014: 22.4 million bbls
• Venezuela imports, June, 2015: 22.7 million bbls

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 Jobs

Jobs: in-line; first-time claims drop 6,000 to 275,000; the four-week moving average was little changed at 275,750 last week.

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Bakken/Energy

Rig count in North Dakota:

	9/10/2015	09/10/2014	09/10/2013	09/10/2012	09/10/2011
Active Rigs	69	199	184	192	199

North Dakota rigs are tracked here. 

RBN Energy: coal vs natural gas in the US.

EIA "energy cookie":

U.S.-Mexico crude oil swaps approved last month by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security will likely involve exchanges of U.S. light sweet crude for Mexican heavy sour crude that is already being exported to the United States.

The swaps, which are provided for under longstanding regulations governing U.S. crude oil exports, are expected to be both economically and environmentally beneficial to both parties because of differences in crude oil qualities as well as differences in each country's petroleum refineries.

The swaps will allow a greater degree of operational efficiency in both Mexico and the United States while allowing for increased supply of lower-sulfur gasoline from Mexican refineries. --- EIA

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Solar

Updates

May 11, 2016: another small airport buys into solar energy. These stories are almost comical. Some data points:

• at best, the project might result in 1MW of solar electricity
• if it hits 1MW, it will come close to providing 3% (a rounding) error of the area's electricity need
• it will provide the city $57/acre vs $20/acre (from hay sales)
• $2 million project
• Pierre, SD
• first solar project for Missouri River Energy Services
• five acres in size
• largest solar project in South Dakota?

September 14, 2015: smaller airports cannot hide high costs of intermittent energy.

Original Post

MSP to put in more solar energy.

A huge solar power development at the Twin Cities airport is proposed to get even bigger.

A Metropolitan Airports Commission panel has given preliminary approval to a 1.3 megawatt solar installation on top of the parking ramp at Terminal 2. It is expected to provide about half the terminal's peak power need.

That's in addition to a 3 megawatt installation at Terminal 1. Together, they're nearly twice the size of the largest existing solar project in Minnesota. 

Airports are another perfect spot to place solar panels to meet state mandates. The cost overruns and more expensive electricity can be buried in the total operating costs of the airport. These costs will be matched by increased landing fees, and, of course, these landing fees, will be apportioned across thousands of airline passengers. At a couple of dollars per person per flight, the increased cost in electricity will not be noticed. It's a win-win for everyone.

To help meet the EPA standards in North Dakota, I would hope that solar power at every North Dakota air strip is part of the overall plan.

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Preaching To The Choir

I posted this link yesterday but with the MSP airport story above, I just want folks to be reminded how much this tilting at windmills is going to cost them. This is a story out of California but with California and Minnesota apparently joined at the hip when it comes to making energy decisions, this applies to Minnesota as well:

With oil prices falling by 45 percent in the last year, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) just decided the way utilities priced energy for 100 years is wrong and intend to mandate that 70 percent of Californians pay much more for energy.

The PUC “time-of-use” electricity pricing will also disproportionately increase residential energy costs on Democrat voters to pay for more wildly expensive  [intermittent] energy.

Established in 2002, accelerated in 2006 and expanded in 2011, California’s Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) is the most ambitious renewables requirement in the United States. The RPS program is trying to set a worldwide standard by requiring investor-owned utilities, electric service providers, and municipal power companies to double California’s percentage of “renewable” electric power from 18.8% to 33% over the next five years. Gov. Brown wants over half of the state’s power coming from renewable sources by 2030.

The “capacity factor” for direct costs of producing electricity from wind is 4.2 times and solar is 9 times more expensive than natural gas. But since renewables are very “intermittent and often non-dispatchable,” due to variations in wind and sunlight, the full renewables cost must also include indirect “stand-by” costs for fossil fuel capacity.

The comparative “combined cost” for wind is 12.3 times and for solar 33.8 times as expensive as natural gas power generation.

The US, Germany and the UK as the world’s renewable leaders have converted 5.8 percent of their total power generation to renewable sources since 2002. The “combined cost” for this renewables initiative was $500 billion. But had conventional natural gas technology been used for the equivalent 31 giga watts of power, the combined cost would have been $31 billion, 1/16 as much.

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Scientists Discover Old Set Of Bones; Appear "Weird" And "Bizarre"

Oh, never mind. I thought this was a story about a secret burial site below the Capitol in Washington, DC, but now I see it's a story about old bones in South Africa.