The Allam Cycle plant has been successfully tested in Texas. North Dakota is carefully watching.
I see several blogs are critical because the CO2 has to be sequestered after it is captured.
I think North Dakota could figure out what to do with the CO2.
North Dakota could produce "clean electricity" with coal using the Allam Cycle and using excess CO2 to enhance oil and gas production. I think this will mean we should stop thinking of North Dakota producing energy for 50 years and start thinking in terms of 200 years.
Other readers are watching the same thing. One of the leaders of CO2 enhancement of crude oil production in North Dakota/Montana is Denbury Resources.
Back in April of 2016, I wrote about an exciting new technology for which construction was just getting underway: the Net Power
natural gas power plant.
It promised to capture its own carbon dioxide
emissions, not in a separate, expensive, power-intensive process like
conventional carbon-capture facilities, but as part of the combustion
cycle. The company claimed that the technology will ultimately enable it
to produce power at prices cheaper than conventional fossil fuel power
plants — with carbon capture built in.
Net Power had just started work on a small, 50 MW power plant in La Porte, Texas, meant to demonstrate that the technology can work.
As of last year, the plant completed construction.
And as of this week, it has achieved “first fire” and is running a battery of tests meant to ensure that everything is working up to snuff.
If all goes well — lead designer and chemical engineer Rodney Allam recently told Nature,
“we’re still smiling” — the plant will begin generating electricity in
earnest later this year. The company plans to build another 300 MW plant
for sometime in 2020.
***********************************
And Now The Real Fun Begins
All times above are central time. It's 4:46 a.m. in Moscow right now; it's 8:46 a.m. in Texas right now. So a 1:00 p.m. game here in Texas means the game starts at 9:00 p.m. in Moscow (?).
A reader sent the following photos with this comment:
Drilling a 6,000-foot well to test CO2 injection from power plants in Mercer County, north of Golden Valley.
Moving to Center, ND, in Oliver County after this for the same reason.
Will be logging both wells for hydrocarbon shows.
A few observations:
note how quickly from permit to execution -- I'm impressed
Neset Consulting Services -- great Bakken story in itself
how few vehicles on site -- how efficient the operation seems to be in terms of personnel
Regular readers know my obsession/fascination with this "one."
It never quits. Penn Energy is reporting that the Kemper plant blows another deadline. After a tubing leak, Mississippi Power Co. now says it's unsure when the $7 billion plant will be finished.
I will come back to this later with links. For now, from PennEnergy, it is being reported that Australia will expand hydropower project to address shortages. Again, long time readers know the back-story.
****************************
Futures -- Sunday Night
Dow: -31 WTI: -0.80% ($48.39)
********************************
Monday: T+59
Feeling Groovy
Among the many things I will be watching tomorrow is whether there is a report that DAPL oil has begun flowing. If it does begin flowing, it will be on day #59 of Trump's presidency.
Angel Number 59 is a message from your angels that sweeping, positive changes are ahead of you.
You are asked to let go of the ‘old’ with love and gratitude and make room for the ‘new’ to enter your life. Be assured that these life changes will have long-term positive effects on many levels.
Angel Number 59 is a message that changes in your life will align you with your Divine life purpose and soul mission, and the angels encourage you to live and fulfill your lightworking duties and destiny. It is time to shift your focus from the material to the spiritual.
This is now being called the "Trump rally." He's not yet in office, and not one of his policies is yet in place. In addition, the Fed will raise rates in December, and yet the market surges past 19,000 for the first time ever.
I can't wait to see a) if ABC News mentions this story; and, b) if David Muir does mention it, how is it covered?
**********************
Other News of The Day
One has to love this headline from The Washington Post: Trump wants to lift restrictions on 'clean coal.' Whatever that is.
The Washington Post must not know that some folks fact-check on the internet: President Obama will tell The Washington Post was "clean coal" is and why he loves it -- from August 17, 2016, about four months ago.
The Obama administration continues to invest billions of dollars toward the development of so-called “clean coal” technologies designed to make coal-fired plants more climate friendly by capturing carbon dioxide emissions and storing them before they are released into the atmosphere.
Despite the industry’s woes and the steady decline in coal use for electricity production in the U.S. — largely the result of cheap natural gas — coal is still a major power source, and it is responsible for 26 percent of U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions, and 42 percent of total global emissions.
A model for "clean coal" runs off the tracks. A Mississippi project, a centerpiece of President Obama's climate plan, has been plagued by problems that managers tried to conceal, and by cost overruns and questions of who will pay.
Those were the words of the Times' editors, not mine: a centerpiece of President Obama's climate plan.
I never knew this plan was traced back to President Obama. I thought it was much older than that, and it was simply an on-going project that he inherited. Let's check wiki, timeline:
2008: conceptual design initiated
2010: project approved
2010: construction begins
And the timeline continued, but I believe President Obama was inaugurated in early 2009, and I would assume that if the "conceptual design" was initiated in 2008, there were thoughts for this plant long before that.
I have trouble calling this "Obama's" albatross but that's what The New York Times would have us believe.
Now back to the article.
The
plant was not only a central piece of the Obama administration’s
climate plan, it was also supposed to be a model for future power plants
to help slow the dangerous effects of global warming.
The project was
hailed as a way to bring thousands of jobs to Mississippi, the nation’s
poorest state, and to extend a lifeline to the dying coal industry.
The
sense of hope is fading fast, however. The Kemper coal plant is more
than two years behind schedule and more than $4 billion over its initial
budget, $2.4 billion, and it is still not operational.
The Times asked who would pay for this debacle? Well, that's easy. The local ratepayers and if that becomes a political issue later this summer, taxpayers across the nation will pay for it.
John Kemp has also noticed this and has been tracking it at his tweet. From the EIA today:
Since 2013, the share of premium gasoline in total motor gasoline sales has steadily increased to 11.3% in August and September 2015, the highest share in more than a decade.
Although lower gasoline prices may be supporting demand for premium gasoline, the upward trend in sales is more likely driven by changes in fuel requirements for light-duty vehicles (LDV) in response to increasing fuel economy standards, which will have widespread implications for future gasoline markets. --- EIA
BNSF Railway has furloughed roughly 4,600 of its employees nationwide over the past few months as declining oil prices and coal demand have taken a toll on the industry not seen since the Great Recession.
The furloughs total about 10 percent of Fort Worth-based Burlington
Northern Santa Fe’s workforce, roughly matching the layoffs the railroad made in 2007 and 2008.
Kemper's clean coal power -- the price tag went up again. Over at bizjournal:
The price tag for Southern Co.’s Kemper clean coal power plant in Mississippi just went up... again.
In a Securities and Exchange filing, the Atlanta-based energy giant reported costs rose $18 million through February and could rise further still.
During March 2016, Mississippi Power has continued
to conduct repairs and modifications to the refractory lining inside
each of the gasifiers and to inspect and evaluate the need for
additional refractory work.
OTTAWA — An electrical plant on the Saskatchewan prairie was the great hope for industries that burn coal.
In
the first large-scale project of its kind, the plant was equipped with a
technology that promised to pluck carbon out of the utility’s exhaust
and bury it underground, transforming coal into a cleaner power source.
In the months after opening, the utility and the provincial government
declared the project an unqualified success.
But the $1.1 billion project is now looking like a green dream.
Known
as SaskPower’s Boundary Dam 3, the project has been plagued by multiple
shutdowns, has fallen way short of its emissions targets, and faces an
unresolved problem with its core technology. The costs, too, have
soared, requiring tens of millions of dollars in new equipment and
repairs.
“At
the outset, its economics were dubious,” said Cathy Sproule, a member
of Saskatchewan’s legislature who released confidential internal
documents about the project. “Now they’re a disaster.”
The
utility that runs the project, SaskPower, and advocates for carbon
capture argue that the setbacks are typical teething problems associated
with any new and complex technology.
The Boundary Dam Power Station sits near a wealth of resources not far from the North Dakota border.
Hundreds
of years of coal reserves are buried under the ground nearby, virtually
eliminating transportation costs. And the mining creates employment in
an area with limited job prospects.
But the costs are piling up.
One
shutdown last spring to clean and replenish the chemical cost 17
million Canadian dollars. Mr. Marsh said that the company was still
looking for a way to prevent the contamination.
The
repeated shutdowns have caused SaskPower to miss multiple carbon
dioxide deliveries to Cenovus Energy, the Canadian oil company that
signed a 10-year contract with the utility to buy most of the gas.
(Cenovus uses carbon dioxide to force oil from largely depleted wells.)
SaskPower has had to pay 7 million Canadian dollars in penalties,
offsetting most of the 9 million Canadian dollars in payments received.
On
top of that, the carbon system is a voracious consumer of the
electricity generated by Boundary Dam, which has 150 megawatts of
capacity. Mr. Marsh testified that about 30 megawatts of capacity were
consumed by the system, and an additional 15 to 16 megawatts were needed
to compress the carbon dioxide.
State researchers and regional energy companies want to take a promising carbon dioxide capturing technology to the lab.
The Allam Cycle, invented by 8 Rivers, uses pressurized carbon dioxide
rather than steam to generate power. It is said to be more efficient, less expensive,
and "clearner."
It is already being tested on a $140 million, 50-megawatt natural
gas-fired power plant in La Porte, Texas.
Now there's an opportunity for North Dakota to test this technology using lignite.
The Lignite Research Council voted unanimously to recommend
state funding of the research project Tuesday. It will go on to the
Industrial Commission for final approval.
The partners in this test (dollar amounts rounded):
Grand Forks-based Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC), funding from DOE: $1 million
Basin Electric Power Cooperative: %150,000
8 Rivers (HQ in Durham, North Carolina), funding from DOE $500,000
ALLETE with subsidiaries BNI Coal and Minnesota Power: $150,000
request for state funding: $1.5 million
This group plans to
evaluate how the fuel difference of gasified lignite might affect the Allam Cycle technology.
Midwest AgEnergy Group started operations on the company’s new 65 million-gallon-per-year biorefinery located next to Great River Energy’s Spiritwood Station near Jamestown, North Dakota.
The Dakota Spirit AgEnergy biorefinery uses steam from the combined heat and power plant and corn from local farmers to produce ethanol, distillers grains and fuel-grade corn oil. The plant will produce 65 million gallons per year of ethanol, 198,000 tons of distillers grains for livestock feed and 6,900 tons of fuel-grade corn oil for products like biodiesel.
The ethanol produced at Dakota Spirit AgEnergy amounts to about 20 percent of North Dakota’s annual fuel demand. The biorefinery will purchase 23 million bushels of corn annually from farmers and employs 38 people.
The cost of the project was $155 million.
As an incentive, the state provided nearly $40 million in grants and loans for the renewable fuel project, including funding for feasibility studies, construction and jobs training. The state’s investment includes loans from the Bank of North Dakota and the North Dakota Department of Commerce’s Development Fund, along with grants from the North Dakota Industrial Commission and the NDDOC’s Agricultural Products Utilization Commission and Community Development Block Grant programs. Funding for new jobs training was provided by Job Service North Dakota.
You know, this really is a big story, regardless of how one feels about ethanol. I think of the decades Mark Rodgers spent trying to cobble together that huge off-shore wind farm that came to naught. Here in the midwest, with similar tenacity, the developers never gave up, and came up with $155 million cobbled together from numerous sources. Whether this project thrives, survives, or dives, it must be quite a feeling of exhilaration right now for the folks who hung in there.
Original Post
Just a few days ago I posted that much of the activity planned for the Spiritwood site in Jamestown, North Dakota had not come to fruition.
Moments ago, a reader from Fargo wrote to tell me:
I mentioned to the reader that he/she probably knows my feelings about government-mandated ethanol. However, if the government is going to mandate ethanol, I am thrilled that folks in North Dakota are taking advantage of the opportunity.
This is wonderful for all the folks who invested time, money, human resources, to see these projects up and running.
Another factor in the local corn market is Dakota Spirit AgEnergy at
Spiritwood. The ethanol plant will begin buying corn in April and start
testing equipment and operations in May. Plans call for the plant to be
fully operational this summer.
Dakota Spirit will accept corn under contract on a controlled basis
this month, Brown said. As the plant staff gain experience and some of
the testing is complete, the plant will begin buying corn on a cash
basis.
“When we become more comfortable we’ll open things up,”
Brown said. “We aim to support the local producers by offering another
market for their corn.”
Once in full production, the plant will
use about 2 million bushels of corn per month. This exceeds the 2014
Stutsman County corn production of 18.6 million bushels.
Great River Energy's Spiritwood Station, North Dakota’s newest coal-fired power plant, started operations this week.
The
plant, located near Jamestown, produces between 35 and 40 megawatts. At
full capacity, it can pump 99 megawatts of power into the grid, said
GRE spokesman Lyndon Anderson.
The plant employs 24 people and cost $425 million to build.
In
addition to supplying electricity, the plant will also use steam energy
to power an adjacent malting company and a 65 million gallon-per-year
ethanol plant.
According
to GRE, most conventional coal-fueled plants are 30 to 35 percent
efficient. Spiritwood’s combined heat and power plant will be 60 percent
efficient.
The plant will do so by using GRE's patented DryFining
technology, which uses waste heat from GRE's Coal Creek Station near
Underwood to dry lignite coal. The dry coal produces more energy with
less raw material. It will be transported to Spiritwood via covered
railcar.
$425 million / 99 MW = $4 million / MW. Either I did the math wrong or I am misreading something or comparing apples and oranges, but $4 million/MW for a coal-powered plant seems expensive. Or maybe that's what it costs now for a "clean coal power plant." But if that's accurate, ....
******************************** Additional Background To Spiritwood
On another note, this article at Prairie Biz Magazinemay help explain the "confusion." The plant was completed in 2011 but then sat idle until recently.
The
99-megawatt coal-fired electric generating plant was completed in
August 2011. The plant went through a testing and commissioning process
and then was shut down because of lack of demand for electricity in
Minnesota. The plant has sat idle since.
Construction on
the Spiritwood Station generating plant, which is being built near
Spiritwood, N.D., began in 2006. The plant cost about $350 million to
construct and was intended to produce steam for use at the Cargill Malt
plant and electricity for the Minnesota markets.
A Jamestown business leader says plans for a
nearby ethanol plant have been scrapped and the city-county
development corporation is getting its money back.
Connie Ova, the chief executive officer of the
Jamestown-Stutsman Development Corp. She says developer Harold
Newman was given a deadline of June 1 to start construction on the
100 million gallon ethanol plant in the Spiritwood Energy Park. The
project has been on the drawing board since 2006.
Ova said changes in the ethanol industry hurt its chances.
The Jamestown-Stutsman Development Corp. committed $6 million to
the project. Ova said the corporation will get its money back with
interest. She said it has purchased the land from the Newman
Group.
A new industrial park under development by GRE near Jamestown, N.D.,
features a combined heat and power (CHP) plant designed specifically to
supply process steam to adjacent industrial processors. The project,
known as Spiritwood Station, was originally intended to host a 100 MMgy
corn ethanol plant. Plans have since changed, and a new 20 MMgy
cellulosic biorefinery is expected to be built in its place.
“Back in the 2007-‘08 timeframe, when we were just breaking ground on
the [CHP] plant, the conventional ethanol plant was cancelled,” says
GRE’s Manager of Business Development Sandra Broekema. “That left us
with a big hole of 350,000 pounds-per-hour of steam that we were
planning to produce for sale that we now need to find a home for.”
Broekema says there are several reasons why a cellulosic biorefinery
is a well-suited addition to Spiritwood Station. In addition to the
plant’s high-steam usage requirements, the facility will also produce
purified lignin pellets as a coproduct. “Our CHP is a fluidized bed
combustion system which has some inherent fuel flexibility,” he
continues. “By cofiring 10 percent lignin with DryFine (a refined North
Dakota lignite), we would be able to reduce our carbon footprint even
further.”
As a result GRE has stepped into the lead development role of the
cellulosic ethanol plant. “The primary motivation for GRE’s involvement
is to secure additional steam partners for the industrial park in order
to achieve our original design efficiencies and economies for our
cooperative membership,” Broekema says. “Because we are taking a
‘cooperative approach’ involving as many of the key stakeholders as we
can, we have laid out a somewhat conservative five-year development plan
beginning in 2010 through 2014 startup, if all goes according to plan.”
Great River Energy, Dakota Spirit AgEnergy.
Date: 2013-02-15.
Great River Energy, which operates a coal-fired plant near Underwood, has received federal renewable fuel certification for a 65 million gpy corn ethanol plant in the Spiritwood Park project near Jamestown.
Great River's Bismark-based subsidiary Dakota Spirit AgEnergy plans to build a plant that will utilize 23 million bushels of corn per year. The subsidiary hopes to complete financing this spring and break ground this summer (2013).
The facility will be co-located with Great River's coal-fired electric generating Spiritwood Station and will use the plants excess steam for ethanol production.
The Jamestown plant will also produce corn oil, distiller's grains (DDGs), and meet the EPA's revised Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires cornstarch-based ethanol plants built after 2007 to have lifecycle carbon emissions 20 percent lower than conventional motor fuels.
So, hopefully this clarifies things.
Wow, I learn a lot from my readers. Again, a huge thank you to the reader who sent the information that the power plant and the ethanol plant were up and running.
It never ceases to amaze me how much activity is going on in a state with such a small population. Very, very impressive.
This is not an investment site. Do not make any investment or financial decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. I don't know where the blog is going this morning, but I am pretty sure that if I mention ten companies, I invest in, maybe, one of them. I talk about them because I find the story lines interesting; I don't talk about them for investing purposes.
**************************
Coffee Shops
I read a story yesterday that some analysts expect Starbucks shares to do better and better. They talk about the competition that Starbucks has: Dunkin' Donuts, Peet's, McDonald's, independent mom and pop coffee shops, marijuana shops in Colorado.
From an investor's point of view some may do better, some worse, who knows? But the article never discussed the "culture" as it were. Dunkin' Donuts does not compete with Starbucks. Put them next door to each other and they would both do well, but with their "own" customers.
Same with McDonald's.
In Belmont (Massachusetts), I often went to Dunkin' Donuts because it was just a block away; in the rain, I wasn't going to ride my bike one mile for Starbucks. I never truly enjoyed my experience at Dunkin' Donuts but their regulars did, and their regulars would never step foot in Starbucks, with some exceptions, I suppose. I don't know enough about Peet's yet to say how Starbucks and Peets will compete. A new (and first in the area) Peets is going in next door to where we live (replacing the Starbucks). It's in the grocery story (like Starbucks is in Target) but it is not inviting at all. My hunch is that in this particular case, Peets will mostly be carry-out. As it is in Target's Starbucks.
Against a stand-alone Starbucks, I have not yet seen a real competitor in that niche.
*********************************** Coal
I think coal is really, really dead in this country. There are three stories out there right now. First, there was the story making the rounds (again) yesterday about the largest coal mine operator warning us that there will be many coal mining bankruptcies in the next twelve months; he, himself, said he is snapping up the good ones at a bargain price; he did not say what his plans for the future are. The second story was about the governor of Wyoming (a Republican) approaching the governors of Washington State and Oregon (both Democrats) hoping to get their states to agree to larger terminals to ship Wyoming coal to China. If Washington and Oregon agree, I would be surprised. I think the state of Wyoming could be in a heap of trouble.
Finally, a third story, the link sent to me by a reader this morning, from The Wall Street Journal. My rule of thumb, take it for what it's worth, if a utility wants to go out and buy a coal company to produce electricity, it would expect to pay $750,000/MW (or less) in the old days (five years ago). It's probably up to a million dollars/MW now. For a natural gas power plant, a similar amount, maybe closer to $1 million/MW now, but it was cheaper some years ago. For a new wind farm / solar farm figure about $3 million/MW; for a used wind farm, significantly less. Maybe even get one for free with all the tax credits, subsidies whatever. No matter how far off my figures out, the cost for producing electricity is about $500,000 to $3 million per MW in this country. And $3 million/MW is outrageously expensive. If that's what your utility is spending on new sources, you're getting ripped off, but probably feeling good about "going green."
So, now we get this story out of Mississippi. Regular readers are very familiar with it though we haven't talked about it in ages. It's that "clean coal" plant in Mississippi. This is the link to the story. You may need a password. If so, and you don't have a WSJ subscription, try googling may have to raise electricity rates for Mississippi power customers by 41%, or $37 a month for the typical household. This story is now tracked here.
The cost for electricity for this plant has soared to .... drum roll.... $10 million / MW. Let's do the math. They say the plant will now cost over $6 billion to provide less than 600 MW of electricity. Nice numbers. 6 billion / 600 MW. So it's going to be a "one" followed by a zero. I doubt it's three zeroes ($1,000/MW); I doubt it's four zeroes ($10,000/MW) or even five zeroes ($100,000/MW), so now we're getting up to $1 million/MW (six zeroes) but $1 million/MW would not get a headline story. So, we're talking $10 million/MW for this power plant.
The cost of the Kemper power plant has ballooned several times to $6.2
billion, as the price tag swept past the $2.88 billion cap set by state
utility regulators to protect customers from budget overruns.
So, $6.2 billion is the estimated cost.
The lede said this:
South Mississippi Electric Power Association, which furnishes power to
smaller utilities in the state, dropped its plan to buy a $600 million,
15% stake in the project spearheaded by Atlanta-based Southern Co., citing construction delays.
Fifteen percent of what is $600 million? $4 billion. Somewhere between the second paragraph of the story and the eleventh paragraph of the story, the cost of the plant ballooned from $4 billion to $6.2 billion.
And the tenth paragraph was very, very short. One sentence. And they all raised their hands and said, "Amen."
I hate to see the estimated cost of this plant on Monday.
*************************** Workin' On The Railroad
Which of course leads us to the next story. If the Wyoming story and the Mississippi story tea leaves tell us coal is dead, who's next to feel the pain. Yup, you guessed it. And the stories are already out there. A lot of analysts "grade" their recommendations on an "A, B, C, D, F" scale. At the height of the CrBR and CoBr (crude-by-raid and coal-by-rail respectively), I assume UNP was given an "A" rating by Merrill Lynch. I don't know. I do know that Merrill Lynch now rates UNP a "D." I assume Merrill Lynch has an "F' in their ratings but that I do not know either. But I do know that yesterday, Merrill Lynch was giving UNP a "D" recommendation.
There's a story out there on UNP that it will be crushed with decline in coal shipments. Guaranteed: UNP won't make up the difference shipping Teslas.
And now today, Don sends me this story, that Warren Buffett is laying off railroad employees in North Dakota. It's a bad news story coming out of North Dakota, so you know it's being posted by The Dickinson Press:
BNSF
Railway Co., the largest railroad in North Dakota, is furloughing some
employees across its network, including in Grand Forks and elsewhere in
the region.
Jim
Chase, the North Dakota legislative director for the Sheet Metal, Air,
Rail and Transportation union (SMART) said almost 200 operating
employees have been furloughed in four locations: 11 in Grand Forks, 40
in Dilworth, Minn., 60 in Mandan, and 71 in Minot. Operating employees
responsible for running the trains, like engineers and conductors.
“I’ve never seen cuts this deep,” Chase said. [Hasn't been to a coal mine lately.]
Chase
added many of those employees have been hired within the last year. BNSF
hired about 7,000 new employees to meet increased shipment demands.
There are several story lines in that article but I don't have time to go into them right now.
*****************************
Transition
Well, actually I do have time. I'm retired, but the line at Starbucks has now dwindled from 40 to one, and it's my opportunity after being here since 9:55 a.m. to now 10:39 to get a tall coffee with no room for cream. I used to order by "type" -- Pike, Tall Blonde, Ethiopian Dark, Somalian-Hair-On-Fire, or whatever was on tap, but they didn't always have what was showing, so I now just order whatever is brewed. I used to order a Tall Blonde but was always disappointed; not what I thought she would be. If one can tell the difference, one is doing better than I. And yes, that's the correct grammar. "I" (not "me") follows "than."
So, there you have it. I didn't need the coffee; we're going out to lunch in an hour. I don't want to go out to lunch because I'm perfectly happy here but I would be seen as anti-social, so I will go to lunch. It will turn out to be incredible: it's a new Asian restaurant for me. Our older granddaughter recommended it (she's eleven years old) and wants to take her best friend, or as they used to say, BFF. I don't know what they say call a BFF now.
So, for investors -- OMG -- did I say "investors"? This is not an investment site, but I can't resist. It looks like coal is dead but could be a great opportunity to build a portfolio for a great-granddaughter with a significant holding of shares in coal companies. Rail could be in trouble but they have the ability to scale up and down fairly quickly, but it could be rocky. Big HealthCare is going to do very, very well. REITS and MLPs and so-called utility "yield cos" will do very, very well.
**********************
Update On The JV Team
More interesting to go on to next subject. The mainstream media is not yet reporting it. Fox News is reporting it. Yup, ISIS has attacked INSIDE Saudi Arabia. It's the lead story over at Fox News right now. Most of the other networks talk about weather on the weekend. So does Fox News unless ISIS attacks INSIDE Saudi Arabia. Then weather slips to the second hour. Add this bullet to previous ISIS bullets:
ISIS attacks INSIDE Saudi Arabia
I assume the president has gone golfing. Which reminds me: didn't the US president just hold a Mideast Conference in Camp David to reassure our Mideast allies they have nothing to fear but fear itself? ISIS was a JV team.
Saudi Arabia princes left the conference muttering, "If ISIS is the JV team, let's hope the varsity team doesn't show up."
Again, remember this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment or financial decisions regarding ISIS. The pharmaceutical company. In 2003, one could have picked up ISIS shares for $4.00/share; ISIS is now trading near $70/share. And so it goes. I have never invested in ISIS. Never have, never will.
But I digress, the ISIS on the other side of the world now stretches solidly from Tunisia in west North Africa through Libya and then over to Syria (where it controls half the country -- the fun part of the country), to Iraq, to Yemen (unlike Syria, not a fun country), and now to Saudi Arabia. I read this morning that the US Congress is looking into President Obama's ISIS strategy. But then the Senate passed the president's trade bill without reading it because they saw how well ObamaCare worked out and they didn't read that either. [Later, May 25, 2015: Congressional Dems and GOP agree that the president's war on ISIS is in "neutral," at best.]
Okay, that's it. That's all the subjects I thought about writing about while riding my bike to Starbucks this morning: coal, rail, Dunkin' Donuts, Syria, ISIS, the unread trade bill passed by the US Senate, the thoughtful, deliberative body of the Congress.
There will be factual and typographical errors in a long post like this. They will be corrected when I am alerted to them. This post is for my use only. Use it any way you want but don't quote me on it. I will deny it all.
A new power plant in West Texas that could transform coal into
cleaner-burning natural gas is poised to break ground later this year,
an executive in charge of the project said at a conference in Houston
Wednesday.
The project, located on a 600-acre site in Odessa, uses coal as a
feedstock for a 400 megawatt power plant. But instead of burning it, the
plant uses a chemical process to first strip it of carbon, sulfur and
mercury.
The result, project leaders say, is a hydrocarbon that can fuel the
power plan but burns even cleaner than natural gas — even though it was
derived from coal. The extra carbon dioxide that gets stripped away is
sold to production company Whiting Petroleum, which can pump in
underground through a process known as enhanced oil recovery that helps
coax more hydrocarbons from the earth.
“We’re not actually burning coal; we’re unlocking hydrocarbons,”
said Jason Crew, CEO of Summit Power, the Seattle-based company behind
the undertaking dubbed the Texas Clean Energy Project.
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded the project $450 million in
federal grants. Even though the U.S. is moving to phase-out coal in
favor of natural gas-fired plants and alternative energy sources, coal
is still poised to be a vital source of energy for the U.S. and other
countries for years to come, said Jason Lewis, federal project manager
at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology
Laboratory.
The Odessa project is one of three carbon-capture projects in Texas.
The Petra Nova project,
a joint venture involving NRG Energy Inc., is under construction in
Fort Bend County. Technology added to an existing power plant is
designed to capture carbon before it’s emitted into the atmosphere.
Air Products and Chemicals is capturing carbon from a hydrogen production facility in Port Arthur. All three projects have received federal support.
North Dakota presses on. This is kind of cool -- it's a great story for those who like this sort of stuff. The good news? Hillary, Barry, and Pocahantas will all say "they didn't build that." The Dickinson Press is reporting:
A North Dakota wind farm proposed in the
migration route of an endangered bird has been revived after the
developer unsuccessfully sued Xcel Energy for pulling out of the project
in 2011.
San Diego-based EDF Renewable Energy first proposed the 100-turbine, 150-megawatt Merricourt Project in 2008.
The
wind farm would straddle southeastern North Dakota’s McIntosh and
Dickey counties and produce enough renewable energy to power 43,500
homes, the company said.
Xcel Energy Inc. signed a $380 million deal to purchase the wind power and assets from EDF, formerly known as enXco.
But
Minneapolis-based Xcel terminated the contract after EDF failed to
secure a site permit from state regulators by March 31, 2011. The delay
was blamed in part on concerns raised by federal officials about the
potential effects on the endangered whooping crane and threatened piping
plover.
By the way, that "piping plover"? It's one of the poster birds for the environmentalists. Even the folks in Massachusetts are starting to say that if the piping plover cannot recover after 50 years of humans protecting it, it wasn't meant to be.
Obama gave the California-based Ivanpah Solar Electric Power Plant $1.6 billion of your tax dollars already claiming that it would bring a thousand jobs and power to millions of people.
But the plant is still failing financially and now is demanding another $539 million taxpayer bailout to keep it afloat.
Like all of Obama’s so-called “green energy” projects, this is a massive failure and a giant waste of tax money.
After already receiving a controversial $1.6 billion construction loan from U.S. taxpayers, the wealthy investors of a California solar power plant now want a $539 million federal grant to pay off their federal loan.
"Wealthy" investors? I hope they are wealthy; that's what investing is all about. And if the federal government is offering grants, they should take it.
I'm sort of a spectator in all of this, but I do pay high electric rates in Texas through NRG:
The Ivanpah solar electric generating plant is owned by Google and renewable energy giant NRG, which are responsible for paying off their federal loan. If approved by the U.S. Treasury, the two corporations will not use their own money, but taxpayer cash to pay off 30 percent of the cost of their plant, but taxpayers will receive none of the millions in revenues the plant will generate over the next 30 years.
In the big scheme of things, it matters not to me. But if the grant helps hold down my utility costs, I say, "go for it."
Crestwood Midstream Partners LP announced today the loading of the 1,000th
crude oil unit train at its COLT Hub in Epping, North Dakota.
The COLT
rail facility commenced service in June 2012 with an original capacity
to load 80,000 barrels per day. The facility has undergone two
major expansions since 2012 and has a current capacity to load up to
160,000 bopd.
Crestwood’s COLT rail facility is one of the largest
crude-by-rail loading terminals in the U.S., based on daily volumes
loaded, currently averaging approximately 120,000 bopd.
1,000 crude oil unit trains / 720 days = more than a unit train on average every day.
Wow, that's working 24/7.
Hillary Clinton, said in a recent speech, that this CBR terminal was built by the government. She said every business in this country was built by the government. Not even going to find the link.
A big "thank you" to a reader for finding / sending me the Crestwood press release. In fact, I think most of the stories linked on this post are coming in from readers.
From 2002 to 2013, 1,169 new places of business were opened in Burleigh and Morton counties.
“The
growth of our community is undeniable, but it can be difficult to
quantify that growth when it’s happening at such a fast pace,” marketing
and research director Judy Sauter said in the Bismarck-Mandan
Development Association newsletter.
“So while it’s easy to point to
specific building projects or anecdotal stories, quantifiable statistics
like those in our monthly Economy-at-a-Glance are the best indicators
of just how far we’ve come.”
As of 2013, there were 33,267 business establishments in North Dakota, according to North Dakota Job Service statistics.
Hillary would be proud: all these businesses being "built" by the government. It's really quite remarkable when you think about it. No wonder Hillary gets so excited when she talks about it. Just imagine all the "businesses" and "jobs" her government will create if she becomes president.
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Global Warming
Climate Change
Extreme Weather
Ice Age Now
The Pause That Refreshes
Okay, we all agree there has been no warming for 19 years. Now, the UN's climate experts are saying the "pause" will last another 30 years. I can't make this stuff up. Yahoo!Video: UN climate scientist says "cooling" could last another 30 years. I was looking for a site that had the "print" report and there are literally so many sites saying the same thing. Just like a growing snowball, all these reports now coming out that global warming is over. That was easy.
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How's That Clean Coal Plant In Mississippi Working Out?
They Would Have Been Better Building A Nuclear Plant
I'm sure the folks in Mississippi will be happy to hear that news -- that global warming is on "pause" for the foreseeable future. Bloomberg is reporting:
Southern Co. said its first-of-a-kind clean coal power plant in Mississippi will cost almost
three times more and take three years longer than originally
proposed. [They would have been better off building a nuclear plant.]
The estimated cost of the Kemper County project is now $6.1
billion and it’s expected to be in service in the first half of
2016, Atlanta-based Southern said today in a filing.
The company
initially said the project would cost $2.2 billion and begin
generating power four years after it was proposed in 2009.
“It’s the gift that keeps on taking,” said Paul Patterson, a New York-based analyst for Glenrock Associates LLC.
“This is one of many write downs and it’s a disappointment,
obviously.”
The plant would be the first designed to capture carbon
dioxide by turning coal into a gas, with technology that
Southern plans to sell to others as countries from the U.S. to
China seek to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Kemper will heat the
coal to high temperatures to turn it into a gas and then
separate carbon dioxide that can be piped to oil fields to
improve output.
The Chinese are adding a new coal-powered plant once a week, on average. I guess this Kemper County project is another "business" that is being built by the government, the stuff that Hillary talks about. Delayed. Over budget. The big story here is whether someone will eventually "pull the plug" on this project and just take the write-off. The costs are going to be passed on to the customers.
I doubt many folks will read the RBN Energy blog today: Burning natural gas this summer -- bluntly put: Texas will consume its own stored supplies to meet in-State
needs first – depriving other States of a helping hand if need be. So
low storage levels in Texas will likely have more impact out of State
than in. Buried in that long post:
By October
2013, Texas’s stored gas had rebounded to 730 Bcf (only 2% less than its
fall-of-2012 peak) but by March of this year in-state storage levels
had plummeted to 418 Bcf, 26% lower than a year earlier and the lowest
in the state since February 2004.
Texas, with the most natural gas storage in the United States (in the
world?), reported 26% lower storage of natural gas than a year early and
the lowest in the state since February 2004.
I don't think the word "coal" was mentioned it the RBN Energy post, but
one can't explain away that dismal figure simply due to "the weather"
(the polar vortex). Clearly there is something else going on. Yes, it's
not that difficult to figure out: the war on coal is succeeding here in
the US, and all that promised solar/wind energy simply cannot keep up.
Again, seldom reported: utilities need to add one-half MW of fossil fuel
capacity for every one MW of solar/wind energy brought on-line for
those periods (like all night) when the sun is not shining, and the wind
is blowing too fast or too slow.
The big story is not that natural gas stores are depleted; the big story is "why."
Don just sent me an interesting Motley Fool story that touches on this. Motley Fool is reporting:
The Australian Broadcast Corporation, Australia's public
broadcaster, reports that electricity providers in that country are
actually switching back to coal as the international price of natural
gas is making coal a more cost-effective fuel to generate electricity.
ABC also reports that Australian domestic gas prices may triple by 2021
as domestic producers elect to export gas to higher value international
markets.
Meanwhile, here in the states:
U.S. natural gas currently sits at about $4.10 per million British
thermal units (MMBtu) as reported by the EIA, with futures even lower as
reported by Bloomberg.
However, the international price of natural gas,
as reported by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is much
higher than the U.S. price.
Natural gas in Asia and South America can be
as much as three times the U.S. price, likely prompting U.S. domestic
producers to develop export markets in pursuit of higher prices.
In
addition, even in the U.S., the converted energy cost of coal is
significantly lower than natural gas, as reported by FERC, potentially
pushing the U.S. electricity generators back to coal. [Presidents come and go. Common sense tends to remain common.]
Motley Fool then goes into "clean coal" projects and carbon capture/CO2 EOR which have already been reported on the blog. Both projects are in ... drum roll ... drum roll ... Texas and one of the projects is being underwritten by the Obama administration. The other project is a joint project with Japan's JX Nippon.
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North Dakota Crude Oil Production and Exponential Production
From Calculus: Single Variable, Deborah Huges-Hallett (Harvard University) and Andrew W. Gleason (Harvard University), c. 1998, p. 14:
Whenever we have a constant growth factor, we have exponential growth.
Month-over-month, the oil production in North Dakota increases by about 2 percent. Rarely, the month-to-month growth declines (from early winter to late winter, for example), and often the rate is significantly more than 2 percent month-over-month. But I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that over time, the month-over-month increase in North Dakota oil production has been exponential.
So far this year:
Month
bopd
% change
Dec-13
923227
Jan-14
935126
1.29%
Feb-14
952055
1.81%
Mar-14
977178
2.64%
Apr-14
1001149
2.45%
May-14
1039635
3.84%
Production change by month for all of 2012 and 2013 can be found here. The numbers may be very, very slightly "off" due to fact that the monthly production numbers are revised following the initial report. I don't always have the most current data, but it's very, very close. Close enough for retired government employees.
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A Note for the Granddaughters
One of my favorite pastimes with our granddaughters is to work with math with them, which we try to do every day. We probably succeed four days out of seven, which is not bad. We have not less than three different "series" of math texts and/or workbooks for the summer. She says she loves geometry so we have a separate book on geometry. We started going through the book, working the problems, but due to the short time left before they leave for a few weeks, I have been going through the book, not doing the problems, but just going over the concepts. Her memory is such that I am convinced that when she starts getting into geometry sometime in the next three years in middle school, she will say, "oh, yes, I remember that." Much of math is the fear of the unknown, I think.
On the other hand, her dad has the Singapore Math Series for her which she must do as prescribed, not skipping any problems or any pages: the textbook, the workbook, and the intensive practice book.
I was surprised how quickly the word problems became exceedingly more difficult after starting out with quite easy problems. She has not had algebra yet, but we have gradually been introducing the concept. When I saw the following problem, I could only solve it using algebra:
The total cost of 5 CDs and 3 video tapes was $169.20. The total cost of a CD and a video tape was $43.80. If I bought 3 CDs and 5 video tapes and paid with two $100 bills, how much change would I receive.
Obviously, once one figures out the cost of a single CD or a single video tape, the rest is just "busy work."
Our older granddaughter, studied the problem for awhile, and then came up with a way to solve the problem without using algebra, and I am convinced that was exactly what Singapore Math expected. The series had not yet introduced algebra but yet there was a fairly simple, albeit somewhat tedious, way to solve the problem without using algebra.
With regard to the last link, the last story: enough is enough and the coal industry -- file under "What goes around, comes around.'
A long, long time ago I wrote about this very phenomenon: President Obama has a long history of talking about killing the coal industry. As an ideologue, he certainly believes this is the right outcome -- the demise of the coal industry. It happened more quickly than anyone could have predicted and, with a bit of irony, it happened on his watch. And thus, the "what goes around, comes around." If I run across my earlier posts on this subject, I will post the links.
However, I do believe the article underplays the importance of regulations and the administration's attitude toward coal. The article suggests it is more about market dynamics (excess natural gas undercutting use of coal); in fact, the Chinese are eager to buy American coal, but the administration turns a deaf ear. The administration is on record saying that the Chinese are in the forefront of "clean coal" technology. The administration is also on record with "all the above" as a stated policy for energy. Unless "all the above" includes oil, natural gas, or coal.
******************
A huge "thank you" to Don for sending the two links.
A Note to the Granddaughters
My laptop is about to run out energy; the battery is down to 17 percent. An iPad with 17 percent battery life left would last almost two hours. The MacBook Pro might last another twenty minutes. And no outlet where I am to charge the battery.
But I couldn't leave without this short note. Yesterday I didn't get the chance to read the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal (the older daughter had a swim meet a couple of hours distant in driving time -- only a few miles away for a Canadian goose, but the meet was in Salem, Massachusetts, on one of the last weekends before Halloween, perhaps the biggest tourist month of the year for Salem; think witches).
So, today, before the start of the second day of that same swim meet, I will read the WSJ -- all the more so because Starbucks accidentally gave me a "grande" instead of a "tall" which represents about twice as much coffee, three times more than I need. But that's another story for another day.
Back to the WSJ. I used to know some friends (okay, one) who subscribed to Playboy Magazine for the stories. That's the way it is with me. No, not Playboy Magazine, but the WSJ. I subscribe to the WSJ, not for the business news, but for the incredibly good writing, the weekend edition, and the fourth section each day (in that order).
This weekend's issue might be one of the best in a long time. Or maybe like meat loaf it just seems better because it's a day older and I've been looking forward to it twenty-four hours.
The long, long lead story is fantastic -- read this story if you want to know my reading habits: My 6,128 favorite books, by Joe Queenan. Fortunately he only lists about 100 books. Most of those were books he did not like, so he must have read more than 6,128. You know that any article that mentions Middlemarch in the first few paragraphs is going to be a great piece of reading.
Paul Johnson's five favorite biographies: Macaulay, Sir Arthur Bryant; Ulysses S. Grant, Michael Korda; Lincoln at Gettysburg, Garry Wills; Rossetti: His Life and Works, Evelyn Waugh; and, A Portrait of Charles Lamb, David Cecil. The authors are relatively unfamiliar to me; the lives they have chosen to write about I know very, very well, except for Charles Lamb.
And finally, before I run out of battery (now 13%): How the French Invented Love, Marilyn Yalon. Four hundred pages of what appears to be an exceptionally interesting book. I don't know if this was planned by the WSJ editors or if it just happened, but earlier in the section there is an essay on "the new face of infidelity" by Peggy Drexler. Her findings: infidelity is no longer an exclusive domain for men (it never was, but the statistics are starting to even out): 23 percent and 19 percent. You can google the article to see what the numbers refer to. Something tells me the former number is way, way low [Update, November 9, 2012: how low? Well, when the paragon of virtue, US Army General Petraeus, admits to an extra-marital affair after 37 years of marriage, what can I say?]; the latter number is low, but hard to say by how much. It will be interesting to see what a similar essay reports 15 years from now. My hunch is that the definition of infidelity will have changed. See Marilyn Yalon's book review.
And with that, I leave, with only 11% of battery life left.
Days after state environmental officials found unacceptable noise
levels from wind turbines in Falmouth, they are considering new
regulations that would require the state to review potential noise
issues before wind turbines are built in Massachusetts. [ Update, May 25, 2013: the citizens voted. The wind turbines in Falmouth will continue to turn for now.]
A Massachusetts alternative energy start-up finalized a $1.25
billion deal Monday to build a plant in western China to convert coal
into synthetic natural gas, an agreement that underscores China’s
growing hunger for power and the state’s position as a global center
for energy technology. The deal, one of the biggest yet for the state’s
alternative energy industry, creates a partnership between GreatPoint
Energy, a seven-year-old Cambridge firm with just 30 employees, and
China Wanxiang Holdings, an industrial conglomerate.
So, coal is now called "alternative energy." I can't make this stuff up.
The Bismarck Tribune is reporting today that Minnkota Power Cooperative is unveiling a state-of-the-art chimney at its Milton R. Young coal-fired power plant which will remove significant amounts of pollutants before reaching the atmosphere.
The story:
This is a huge story that the Tribune is reporting. It's too bad "they" don't have the space to really get into what this story means. There are three reasons for posting this story, even though it doesn't have anything to do with the Bakken.
First, it helps me better understand the "clean coal" initiatives in North Dakota.
I had never heard of "Coal Country" until today and I'm only beginning to piece it together. If I'm off-track, please let me know. According to the 2005 "white paper":
The purpose of the Coal Country Development Initiative is to attract and develop new industry in North Dakota’s Coal Country, located northwest of Bismarck and south of Lake Sakakawea.
Broadening the industrial base of the area would create jobs and diversify the local economy. In support of the Initiative, this paper defines the potential of Coal Country’s material, energy, infrastructure and intellectual assets as levers for new business development. Marketing the region’s lignite energy resources as low cost industrial inputs, for example, may provide the necessary competitive advantage to attract new industrial development.
Trillium Planning & Development directed this project with the assistance of the Yale University Industrial Environmental Management Program. Mercer County Economic Development and the North Dakota Department of Commerce conceived of and funded the project. [For this report in its original PDF format, click here. This is a phenomenal report.]
The Bismarck Tribune is reporting today that Minnkota is unveiling a state-of-the-art chimney at its Milton R. Young coal-fired power plant which will remove significant amounts of pollutants before reaching the atmosphere.
A new pollution control chimney at Minnkota Power Cooperative’s Milton R. Young coal-fired power plant near Center will finally be put into service next month.
Minnkota is one of three Coal Country power producers, along with Great River Energy and Basin Electric Power Cooperative, that have together invested more than $1 billion to improve air quality in the past three years.
The chimney shell was completed in 2009 and towers 550 feet high in Oliver County. It is the centerpiece of Minnkota’s pollution upgrade project that it says will remove nearly all the sulfur dioxide and more than half the nitrous oxide from plant emissions.
The power plant is located near Center, ND.
Great River Energy is based in Underwood, ND, and was the subject of an earlier posting regarding coal beneficiation / coal gasification.
The second reason I have for posting this story: I am always impressed when the folks in North Dakota partner with academia in the energy arena. I have always maintained that one can argue about our public education, kindergarten through high school, but our nation's undergraduate and graduate programs across the nation are second to none.
The third reason has to do with my personal thoughts about renewable energy and fossil energy. Since most folks who read my blog on a regular basis can just about guess what I would write here, I will say no more.
*****
A geography lesson (for me, not my readers who probably know the map of North Dakota much better than I do):
The southern east-west route across North Dakota is I-94, stretching from Fargo on the east to Dickinson/Belfield/Beach/Montana border on the west. Midway along this highway is the capital of North Dakota, Bismarck.
About forty miles northwest of Bismarck, as the crow flies, is Center, North Dakota. Center is about 20 miles due north of the interstate. Driving 80 miles west on the interstate, one reaches Dickinson, one of the centers of the North Dakota oil industry.
And then ... drum roll, please ... you are in Bakken Country. South Heart is located about thirteen miles west of Dickinson. South Heart is in Stark County, and if you've been following the news, you know that Whiting is making a huge investment in Stark County, extending their Lewis and Clark prospect to the southeast from the Bicentennial Field.
Belfield, another twelve miles to the west of South Heart, is where Whiting is apparently putting in a new industrial park.
*****
This is really, really, very exciting. I keep thinking of what I'm not going to write in this blog regarding the third reason I posted this story.
