Aqua Terra Water Management Enters The Bakken; Barack's Iraq -- August 9, 2014

BusinessWire is reporting:

Aqua Terra Water Management, L.P.has announced the acquisition of two saltwater disposal facilities operated by Borejaks Energy Services, LLC.

The acquired facilities are located in the heart of the Bakken shale in the McKenzie and Dunn counties of North Dakota, and represent the Company’s first entry into the U.S. saltwater disposal industry. The facilities will operate under the Aqua Terra brand.

“Entering the Bakken shale is consistent with our desired goal of serving all the major light oil and liquids rich plays in North America,” said Scott Perekslis, Managing Partner and co-founder of Bregal Partners. “Our pending facility near Alameda, Saskatchewan combined with the acquired facilities in the U.S. Bakken creates a cross-border solution that few water management companies can provide.”

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting on the steady growth of takeaway capacity in the Bakken:

North Dakota added 2,578 miles of crude oil and natural gas pipelines in 2013, a 15 percent increase, but most of the state’s oil is still shipped to market on trains, state officials said Friday.

The newly built pipelines largely collect oil and gas from well fields, reducing the amount of local truck traffic and wasteful burning, or flaring, of gas at the wellhead, said Justin Kringstad, director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority.

“We are connecting more wells to our gas system than were drilled,” he said.

But gathering pipelines don’t take oil to market, and haven’t reduced the need for oil trains.

In June, 59 percent of North Dakota’s oil was shipped to market by rail, or about 700,000 barrels per day, a slight increase over May, according to new data released Friday from the authority.

Later this year, Kringstad said, two new oil pipelines, with a total capacity of 160,000 barrels per day, will begin transporting oil to Wyoming and then to a major terminal in Cushing, Okla., via another pipeline.

I didn't read the entire article, so it's possible the writer mentioned the challenges the oil and gas industry has in getting pipelines approved so as to cut down on the need for trucking and CBR, and all the CO2 that trucks and trains emit. I'm sure The Star-Tribune is leading the fight to get more pipeline in the ground, through Minnesota and on to Chicago.

See also this posting: 2014-2015 is the year for the pipeline.

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Nuclear Energy and Transmission Lines

I knew -- and regular readers knew -- that solar and wind energy was much more expensive than coal and natural gas, but I did not know -- and I doubt most readers knew -- how really expensive solar and wind energy are. Motley Fool is reporting:

Therefore, Frank wrote, it would take four wind farms or seven solar generators to replace one coal-fired plant generating similar output. Solar generation costs $189,000 to match 1 megawatt per year generated by coal, and wind power is nearly as expensive. Hydropower, he said, provides a net savings, but only a small one.

Frank's paper concluded that the winner in this comparison of zero-emission power generation is nuclear power because, despite initial costs, it is greatly efficient and operates non-stop.

Now, a moment of reflection. I'm not in the mood to write a really long dissertation, so you, gentle reader, might have to fill in a few gaps to connect the dots.

At some point, we run out of fossil fuel -- perhaps a 200 years from now. It is said that the US has 100 years (or more) of coal to meet US needs.

At some point, we come to our senses and realize exactly how expensive wind and solar energy is.

At some point, we come to our senses, and get back to nuclear power. Hold that thought.

Texas is now the #1 state in raw numbers for wind-generated energy. T. Boone Pickens was way ahead of everyone when he tried developing wind energy in Texas. He did not have friends in high places and his venture cost him huge amounts of money.

Well, now, there are friends of wind energy in high places and Texas is now #1 in wind-generated electricity.

Regular readers know what stopped T. Boone Pickens: rights-of-way for transmission lines. He simply couldn't get the necessary transmission lines to his proposed wind farms. Hold that thought.

The road to New England: regular readers also know that New Englanders don't want natural gas pipelines or transmission lines. At some point, one or the other will happen. Or New England will become irrelevant (perhaps to some extent it already has except for eastern Massachusetts). But, there is a chance that New Englanders will take transmission lines (hydroelectric power from Canada) over natural gas pipelines.

A long time ago, a reader sent me this item:

The US Department of Energy and NuScale Power signed an agreement in which NuScale will receive up to $217 million over five years for small modular reactor development, the company said Wednesday.

NuScale joins Babcock & Wilcox in receiving money as part of a six-year program DOE initiated in 2012 to distribute $452 million to support licensing and development of small modular reactors. DOE defines SMRs as reactors of less than 300 MW that can be built in a factory and shipped to utility sites as demand arises.

"It was only yesterday that we actually signed the cooperative agreement, which will provide up to $217 million to NuScale," John Kelly, DOE deputy assistant secretary for nuclear reactor technologies, said Wednesday at Platts' annual Small Modular Reactors conference in Washington. 

NuScale, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, has a target commercial operation date of 2023 for its first SMR. The first plant is expected to be built in Idaho. NuScale is majority owned by Fluor, an engineering and construction company.

DOE announced in December that NuScale would receive a portion of the funds, on a 50:50 cost-share basis, to support design development and NRC certification and licensing of its 45-MW SMR design, but did not specify the amount.

NuScale applied for the funding under a solicitation, announced by DOE in March 2013, for proposals with the potential to deploy an SMR around 2025. It was DOE's second such solicitation for the program.

NuScale, along with B&W, Holtec International and Westinghouse, applied for DOE's SMR development program in 2012, but the department selected B&W's mPower SMR design in that first solicitation. 

Much more at the link.

So, now the bottom line. Some day, when we come to our senses (presidents come and go), and realize that we don't want to be like Spain (bankrupt due to renewable energy) or Germany (return to coal because of cost of renewable energy), and return to nuclear, it won't have to be the huge nuclear plants that take years to approve, finance, and build. Instead, all these small reactors. And the initiative either began or was hastened under Mr Obama's regime.

This is the irony. Without transmission lines in place, these small reactors will have their problems, also (yes, I know the small reactors are designed for the local market, but...). Acres and acres of wind farms (whose tax credits have long run out) and acres and acres of solar panels (that no longer work because of all the bird crap on them) will be replaced by a small nuclear reactor that will take up a pad less than a city block in size -- farmers can get back to farming, desert tortoises can have their sand back, and eagles can once again fly free.

But it's the transmission lines going in now for wind and solar that will be there waiting for all those small nuclear reactor facilities. Such sweet irony.

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For audiophiles only

 
Last night, Friday, August 8, 2014, I had the opportunity to test some really nice headphones: Audeze, reviewed here. I understand the appeal of Beats and the reason Apple bought 'em, but when I experienced Audeze, I really had to wonder whether Beats was to headphones, as Apple is to personal computing. I guess Beats is for use "on the road," but Audeze is when at home in the big recliner.

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Geo-Politics
Barack's Iraq

Disclaimer: this is not a political science site. Do not take any ideas from this site for your political paper dissertation. You will no doubt get a failing grade. 

The consensus is that Barack pretty much "lost" Iraq; squarely falls on his shoulders; admits intelligence was wrong; (his intel agencies, his national security adviser, his SecDef, his Sec State -- they provided him his intel -- they must have all gotten it wrong) -- and no one will be held accountable; calling ISIS equivalent to a "JV" basketball team; maybe so, but neither Iraq's basketball first team OR the US bench team even showed up until it was too late.

He did say that he had no choice to pull forces out of Iraq; their country did not ask us to stay. Then, when it was pointed out that Iraq asked for air support prior to the ISIS push (aka "the Iraqi Tet offensive"), President Obama at that time said "no." This was reported early last month by The New York Times. 

The Times is now reporting:

President on Thursday night found himself exactly where he did not want to be. Hoping to end the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of American ambition.

The mandate he gave to the armed forces was more limited than that of his predecessors, focused mainly on dropping food and water. But he also authorized targeted airstrikes “if necessary” against Islamic radicals advancing on the Kurdish capital of Erbil and others threatening to wipe out thousands of non-Muslims stranded on a remote mountaintop.

As he explained himself to a national television audience, Mr. Obama made a point of reassuring a war-weary public that the president who pulled American forces out of Iraq at the end of 2011 had no intention of fighting another full-scale war there. Yet his presence in the State Dining Room testified to the bleak reality that the tide of events in that ancient land has defied his predictions and aspirations before.

Interestingly enough, the two big stories in today's Los Angeles Times covering this story, suggests that the President decided to act when the Kurdish oil fields looked to be in jeopardy. So, it's all about oil?

Bloomberg says the decision was made following the president's discussion with the US military's top officer. I doubt the plight of stranded refugees was the tipping point for the decision. My hunch, a) a democratically-elected ally was at risk of falling; and, b) the democratically-elected ally controlled a lot of oil. Without that Keystone XL pipeline in place, a lot of "reserve" oil is stranded, which limits one's options.

Timeline/mission creep:

• no combat troops on the ground; no air support; only 300 military advisers to protect US interests
• humanitarian aid only 
• limited air strikes
• no combat troops on the ground at this time (see first link above)