Power producers who invested billions in turbines are finding that making money off the wind can be as unpredictable as the energy source itself.
NextEra Energy Inc., NRG Yield Inc. and Duke Energy Corp. all said a lack of sufficiently windy days cut into second-quarter sales. And neither power generators nor forecasters seem to know exactly why.
“There was a definite trend with several utilities talking about weak wind resources,” said Shahriar Pourreza, a New York-based analyst for Guggenheim Partners LLC. “This isn’t something that has been major in the past so definitely a phenomena worth following to see if it’s sustainable or an anomaly.”Weak wind resources. LOL. A lack of "sufficiently windy days." LOL.
Saudi oil exports recover to 7.36 million b/d in June Saudi Arabia's crude exports recovered to 7.365 million b/d in June after falling to 6.935 million b/d in May, official data released by the Riyadh-based Joint Organizations Data Initiative showed during the week ended August 28.
Apart from the dip in May, the kingdom's exports have been above the 7 million b/d level since the beginning of this year.
And, following Riyadh's refusal to cut output late last year as oil prices plunged, Saudi production has held above 10 million b/d since March, climbing to 10.564 million b/d in June.
The volume of crude processed in Saudi refineries inside the kingdom fell to 2.099 million b/d in June from 2.423 million b/d in May while the volume of crude burned directly in the kingdom's power plants rose to 894,000 b/d from 677,000 b/d.Much more at the link.
"We have taken several significant steps as a company to strengthen our position, including reducing our capital spending and future deepwater exploration program. However, the workforce reductions are necessary to become a stronger, more competitive company."Look out in 2020, if not sooner. And then Congress will call for investigations why the price of oil is so high.
| 9/1/2015 | 09/01/2014 | 09/01/2013 | 09/01/2012 | 09/01/2011 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 76 | 194 | 184 | 192 | 200 |
A North Dakota oil well owned by Exxon Mobil subsidiary XTO Energy blew out on Saturday, leaking more than 550 barrels (23,100 gallons) of crude, some of which left the wellpad and seeped into surrounding grasses.
The well, located in a rural area 25 miles southeast of Watford City, was being hydraulic fractured when its pressure control valves failed and it leaked the oil and about 110 barrels (4,620) of saltwater.
The well was brought under control on Sunday morning. No one was injured.
The well, Deep Creek Federal 43X-5D (#30042), is located on the same drilling pad as four other wells and was first drilled on April 25.This is on a 5-well pad. Two were older wells, completed some time ago. Two new wells are on the pad, and one of them was one that had the blowout.
Remington Seeds, an Indiana-based retail corn and soybean processing and packaging company, is nearing completion of its new $8.5 million, 80,000-square-foot soybean seed facility.
Construction and technical crews were working on finishing touches this past week in the building that features a six-story tower on the west end of Grafton, a city of 4,200 about 40 miles north of Grand Forks.This is in the far northeast corner of North Dakota, far from the Bakken.
Although wind power provided less than 3% of Alaska's electric power generation in 2014, Alaska's wind power capacity has increased 20-fold between 2007 and 2014, growing from 3 megawatts (MW) to 60 MW.
This increase is notable in light of the challenges of installing and connecting large wind generators, specifically the high costs of expanding electricity transmission infrastructure in the least densely populated state. Alaska's nascent wind industry has sited utility-scale turbines along the Railbelt, the only large-scale transmission system in the state, and at distributed scale to supply electricity in remote or rural areas without grid access.
This 20-fold increase between 2007 and 2014, took a gazillion dollars, and innumerable unsightly turbines and transmission lines across Alaska.Hopefully President Obama's ASS will do better.
The owner of Illinois' 11 nuclear reactors must decide next month whether to close its Quad Cities plant, one of three generating stations Exelon Corp. has said are in danger of closing if lawmakers don't approve a surcharge on electric bills to boost profits.
Exelon says it should be rewarded for producing reliable, carbon-free electricity that will help Illinois meet an Obama administration mandate to reduce greenhouse gases. But opponents say ratepayers should not have to bail out an unprofitable plant for a private company that's still making money.
The company learned that one of the at-risk plants — in Byron in northern Illinois — is going to make millions after a recent electricity reliability auction, while the future of the third plant, Clinton in the central part of the state, is still in doubt.My hunch: the decision will be kicked down the road for at least another couple of months. But that part about "feeling entitled" -- "should be rewarded" -- bothers me. But yes, it appears that legislators value wind and solar differently than nuclear, but that's politics is all about.
| 9/1/2015 | 09/01/2014 | 09/01/2013 | 09/01/2012 | 09/01/2011 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 76 | 194 | 184 | 192 | 200 |
For the past several months shippers in Midland, TX – in the middle of the prolific Permian Basin - have been paying premiums up to $2/Bbl over the benchmark Cushing, OK trading hub price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude. That means shipping WTI from Midland to Cushing is a money losing proposition. Historically Cushing WTI has traded at a premium to Midland – usually at least covering the ~$1/Bbl pipeline tariff.
Today we explain how traditional price dynamics have been turned upside down.
We last looked at Permian Basin crude takeaway capacity back in May (2015) when we wondered aloud how Enterprise Product Partners (EPD) secured shipper support for their proposed 540 Mb/d Midland, TX to Sealy, TX pipeline expected online in 2017. The addition of half a million barrels of new takeaway capacity out of the Permian on a new EPD pipeline just doesn’t match current expectations about crude production in the basin by 2017. Lower crude prices and independent producers reigning in their drilling budgets to only drill in those sweet spots that remain profitable have crushed production growth expectations.
Our analysis back in May – based on RBN’s Permian crude production forecast at the time – showed that a combination of existing takeaway pipelines with those expected online in 2015 would easily exceed production needing to find a route to market by the second half of 2015. That meant too few barrels chasing too much pipeline capacity. But all of that discussion was about a hypothetical future situation - when and if the EPD pipeline comes online in 2017. In the meantime, two major Permian takeaway pipelines have commenced operations since April 2015 - leaving the market with more than enough pipeline capacity and too few barrels of crude and turning traditional price dynamics in the Permian upside down.
OPEC said in an article that it "stands ready to talk to all other producers" to achieve "fair and reasonable prices." In its monthly OPEC Bulletin, the cartel added, "But this has to be a level playing field. OPEC will protect its own interests."
Though the article, headlined "Cooperation holds the key to oil's future," does not spell out how the discussion would go, the focus would clearly be on how to moderate production levels in a way to drive up prices, which fell below $40 a barrel this month.
Some of the newest rigs can travel hundreds of yards to the next well under their own power, lurching along like 150-foot- tall robots on pneumatic legs that raise the equipment five inches at a time, nudging forward at about a foot per minute. While that sounds slow, it is faster and cheaper than dismantling a rig and trucking the parts to a new site nearby.
More efficient drilling rigs that cost a third less than just a year earlier are changing the face of the U.S. shale industry, helping boost per-rig output in the four largest fields by at least 40 percent since the crude price plunge began in 2014. While helping producers pump more oil, the new rigs have a downside. Companies such as Helmerich & Payne Inc., Nabors Industries Ltd. and Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. that provide the equipment face investor concern that the improvements they’ve made might translate into fewer sales in the future.In other news, farmers are now using tractors in North Dakota.
The U.S. oil industry pumped less crude than initially estimated this year, according to new government data that offered the clearest look yet at the impact of drillers' retrenchment in response to collapsing prices.
The downward supply revisions were "unambiguously" bullish for a global market awash with oil, said Credit Suisse global energy economist Jan Stuart, suggesting the oft-cited resilience of U.S. shale producers to lower crude prices might have been overstated. Oil prices surged by as much as $3 a barrel on Monday, with some traders citing the new data.Decreased production at a time when gasoline demand is setting new records.