WIthin Just A Few Years, UK Gas Production Could Plunge 75% -- Source -- Guess Things Happen That Way -- January 29, 2022

Link to Tsvetana Paraskova. Headline says it all; details unimportant to me. Guess things happen that way.

Guess Things Happen That Way, Jack Clement

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Book Recommendation

Again, if interested in origin of solar system, earth, fossil fuel, origin of life, this is currently the best new book on the market right now for armchair/amateur biologists, geologists, fossil fuel aficionados. 

• How The Mountains Grew
• John Dvorak
• c. 2021
• Pegasus Books, August 2021

From the book, pages 131 - 133:

Eons, eras, and periods. 

That's it. Three geologic "divisions": eons, eras, and periods.

With two exceptions, two "sub-periods":

• the Pennsylvanian (upper)
• the Mississippian (lower)
• The Brits sometimes (often?) refer to these as:
• the lower carboniferous;
• the upper carboniferous.

Let's take a look at coal:

• not evenly distributed around the world
• great abundance / vast majority of coal deposits are found in just five countries:
• India, China, Australia, and Russia: significant deposits; but,
• king of coal: the country with largest coal reserves: the United States

How did this come about:

• geologically there is a noticeable change from the deposition of limestone during the Mississippian subperiod to the deposition to coal;
• thus, a second subperiod has been created, the Pennsylvanian
• these are the only two subperiods in the geologic time scale

Introduction of the term cyclothem.

• layers of alternating strata: 
• sandstone, formed upon a surface that had been cut by sea (saltwater) waves;
• then, a layer of silt, formed by the flow of freshwater;
• then coal;
• then repeating: sandstone, silt, and the coal again
• this pattern given a name: cyclothem

Many cyclothems have been named:

• the Dennis cyclothem: southwest of Dennis, KS
• the Plattsburg cyclothem: along a road cut west of Altoona, KS
• Wabaunsee cyclothem: at the side of I-70, west of Topeka, KS
• stretches for hundreds of miles from West Texas and across Kansas and Illinois and into the hills of Appalachia 

So, if coal "came from" plant material, why is the distribution of coal so limited worldwide?

Mississippian subperiod:

• Eurameria -- the former Laurentia now enlarged by the additional of the continental bits of Baltica and Avalonia during the Devoniian Period -- straddled the equator;
• all other continental material had gathered and formed the large landmass of Gondwana,
• during the Pennsylvania subperiod, sat over the South Pole.

And, thus the reason why US is king of coal when it comes to coal reserves. 

Is The Nor'eastern Over? Aircraft Starting To Fly Back Into East Coast / New England Airports -- 6:38 P.M. CT -- January 29, 2022

Flight radar here: https://www.flightradar24.com/36.22,-75.43/6. At the time I am updating this, aircraft are starting to fly into East Coast and New England airports. Not sure about Boston.

And Now We Wait For The Power Outages; A Bit Of Commentary Regarding ISO NE -- January 29, 2022

Later, 9:45 p.m. CT: telephone call from friend in Boston. The storm is over; it was hardly a storm. A dusting is about all there was for Boston.

Power outage risks, Saturday, January 29, 2022, 7:42 p.m. CT -- right up the eastern seaboard, New England:

Right now, Saturday afternoon, 5:52 p.m. ET:

• demand: 18,144 MW; moderately high; nowhere near a record
  
• oil is now contributing more than nuclear power, and is double what renewables are providing:
• it looks like the region has run out of coal, or the plants are down for other reasons, but not using their least expensive, option, coal;
• hydro only at 6%; very expensive option;
• this helps explain why Senator Elizabeth Warren keeps bringing up other issues to try to keep folks from seeing this -- but they will see it in their utility bills;
• this is a much bigger issue than college tuition debt;

Earlier today:

Additional commentary:

1.) The single remaining coal burner - Merrimack, capacity 415 megawatts - has intermittently shut down/operated at 108 Mw output over the past few weeks. Whether this 60-year-old plant has operational issues or is fuel constrained, I do not know.

2.) Interestingly, the Millstone 2 nuke plant (~1,000 Mw capacity) has been offline for a week due to a leaking pump.  Back online now. [That explains the earlier fuel mix graphic at this post.]

3.) That regular surge in hydro is undoubtedly coming from the Northfield Mountain project which is a pumped storage system. This plant can produce ~ 800/1,000 megawatts every 24 hours, BUT it was originally conceived when obtaining cheap, overnight electricity from the nearby Vermont Yankee nuke plant was available. As Vermont Yankee is now closed, the Northfield Mountain folks are compelled to buy market priced, overnight electricity. This explains why the heretofore cheap overnight electricity prices remain at nose bleed levels. (Supposedly, the net output - economically -  from Northfield is now less than the current electricity production which is fed in at the morning and evening 'rush hour' demand times.)

4.) Regarding the natural gas supply, the FSRU Exemplar is coming up to its fourth week of injecting natgas into the system via the Northeast Gateway Port just offshore Boston. Sourced from Trinidad. This is about the limits of its carrying LNG capacity (based upon the January, 2019 injection history) and I do not know if a replacement FSRU is scheduled to replace it. The company Excelerate owns/operates the Northeast Port and has about a dozen FSRUs worldwide. Replacing that FSRU appears to be absolutely  crucial to maintaining New England's already precarious power situation these next 5/6 weeks.

5.) The site marinetraffic.com is a real time, global trafficking site for worldwide shipping ... an incredible site for the maritime junkies amongst us. The size of the non stop armada of ships delivering expensive fuel oil to New England is simply breath taking. This directly leads to ...

6.) Setting aside all the eye glazing economic components of the ISO/Regular Folks' monthly electricity billings, that constant $160/$200 per Megawatt hour wholesale price we keep seeing will manifest in about 5 month's time in New Englanders' electric bills. 

For rough context, a mere 10 months ago - March, 2021 - the average wholesale electricity price was ~$16/Mwh. With pricing currently, consistently  at 10 times that level,  those poor folks will see absolutely crushing electricity pricing in a few month's time. AND they will still be fortunate IF they have not had blackouts. (See FSRU status for the supply of critically needed natgas).

With all this drama (I picture ISO head van Welie acting like the Lloyd Bridges character in the movie 'Airplane'), New England is facing 2 to 3 more winters - minimum -  of these conditions as lead times for any workable 'solutions'  take just that long. 

Compounding all this self-induced idiocy, there currently  exists NO viable, mid term pathway to alleviate this situation as the huge, power-sustaining LNG terminal at Everett is scheduled to be shut down in 2024.

Simply fascinating- albeit morbidly  so - to observe so many intelligent, concerned people hurtle headlong into a self destructing situation.

And, one more observation:

Brief mention of the availability of natgas and Boston's temperature ... 

When you noted the changing percentage/usage of the natgas component in New England's electricity generation, just Google 'Boston temperature' and you will find a 100% correlation between coldness and natgas availability for power burn. 

This is identical to South Australia's electricity prices and the contemporaneous  temperature and wind speed.

Update On The Three Best Sites For Tracking The Cyclone Bomb -- January 29, 2022

Updates

Later, 6:00 p.m. CT: the "cyclone bomb" remains settles in off shore Boston.Wow, wow, wow -- flights are starting to arrive back in Boston. This storm lasted less than twelve hours, at least as far as the airlines were concerned. They started canceling flights earlier but that was to get aircraft positioned in proper airports. Flights are also arriving New York.

Original Post 

Earlier I said these were the best three sites for tracking the nor'eastern, Winter Storm Kenanf:

The winds: one can pick any point on the globe, to get wind speed, direction and exact GPS coordinates. 

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-71.09,30.29,2600/loc=-70.727,42.505.

ISO NE, of course: https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts.

• at the linked site, fine “fuel mix”;
• click on “renewables”
• note wind component
• % renewable  times % wind = % wind component

Flight radar here: https://www.flightradar24.com/36.22,-75.43/6. At the time I am updating this, there is one plane "stranded" at Logan Airport (Boston). 

THIS IS SO COOL. Updated at 3:21 p.m. CT, Saturday, January 29, 2022.

I just checked the three sites.

1. The "cyclone' is now just to the east of Boston, having moved from off-shore North Carolina overnight.

2.  There remains one stranded airplane at Logan airport. This has not changed from overnight.

3. There are but a handful of stranded planes at Newark and at JFK but most amazing, while checking Flight Radar for this update, a Bombardier Global 6000 (GLEX) was headed from the northwest (over Pennsylvania) headed into Newark when it literally -- in front of my eyes while watching Flight Radar -- was diverted, making a sharp left turn toward White Plains, NY. It had been on a 120° heading (heading southeast) when it abruptly turned to the northeast on a 45° heading. Pretty amazing to see that live on a random observation. Right now I see plane (call sign N408GJ) having just departed Newark, with a heading due south, 180° and now turning to the southwest, along the coast, over central New Jersey. That plane is a private plane, with flight plans from Teterboro Airport (New Jersey, 12 miles from midtown Manhattan) to Raleigh-Durham.

There is a Lear Jet en route to NYC.

It appears that another plane (XAJCZ) was also headed to Newark and was suddenly diverted and is now headed toward JFK. This is a US Customs and Immigration Enforcement aircraft. Nope, it appears it returned to Teterboro. And that aforementioned GLEX aircraft appears to have landed at Teterboro also.

CLR Mountain Gap Wells Updated -- January 29, 2022

Link here. 

Last update was back in 2019. Look at how much these wells have produced since the last update. 

That dreaded Bakken decline. 

Twenty years from now, they're going to say, "we under-estimated the Bakken." LOL.