Freezing weather with light snow flurries greeted about 200 climate activists gathered on the steps of the state Capitol noon Monday to demand the state Legislature get serious about climate change. [Get Serious!]
The climate rally unfolded four hours after the highest predicted tide of 2013 in Budd Inlet. Climate activists draw attention to the winter high tides, calling them a precursor of a future shoreline under siege from sea-level rise. [Under Seige!]
The irony of Monday’s cold weather compared to a global climate that is heating due to a carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere was not lost on the crowd, or some of the speakers. [Global Heating!]
“Climate and weather are two different things,” Olympia-area environmentalist Paul Pickett was quick to remind the bundled-up crowd. Climate is long term and weather is what happens daily, he said. [Different things!]Well, I'm glad that was pointed out: that climate and weather are two different things. The other difference, of course, is that we can't predict the weather, but we can predict climate change.
Turns out the Monday high tide of 16.9 feet fell about a foot short because of the high pressure system parked over South Sound.As my daughter would text, LOL.
Look no further than the Port of Olympia, he told the climate activists. One of the port’s newest commodities is a type of ceramic sand shipped from China, unloaded in Olympia, then moved by rail to oil drilling sites in North Dakota. It’s used to prop up or “frack” the earth deep underground to release the oil.Again, the devil made me do this (post this). I was really hoping to go a whole day without a story on global warming.
SandRidge has agreed to let Green Field Energy Services Inc. provide power to a well in northern Oklahoma's Mississippian formation from natural gas being produced there.
SandRidge, which has struggled to get electricity to its well sites in rural Oklahoma and Kansas, also is using 43 natural gas generators to reduce its diesel usage, Dewey said.
Green Field is teaming with GE Oil and Gas to bring cheaper, cleaner power generation options to the oil field, the Louisiana-based company announced this week. SandRidge and Houston-based Apache Corp. will test the equipment in their operations.
Green Field announced this week it had signed a global supplier agreement with GE, which last year partnered with Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. to promote natural gas as a transportation fuel.
Chesapeake subsidiary Peake Fuel Solutions is marketing GE's modular “CNG in a Box” units to ease the spread of fueling infrastructure.Go to the link for additional information.
Continental Resources Inc. has used natural gas to power a couple of its rigs in North Dakota, which helped cut fuel costs by about a third, said Rick Muncrief, the company's senior vice president of operations.More at Green Field Energy services website.
a) the WTI/WCS spread is almost $40; unsustainable; the oil sands price will have to jump significantly to narrow that spread; can the Keystone XL do that?b) assuming WCS will increase in price, even those optimistic say it won't happen until 2014 -- that's a year away; the question: can Alberta wait that long?
The extremely low price for bitumen, which is currently sapping Alberta government revenues, should rise in 2014, according to the former chief executive of Suncor Energy.
But the “serious” situation should remind Albertans about the dangers of having basically one customer for your product, Rick George said during the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation’s annual luncheon on Tuesday at the Shaw Conference Centre.
“This differential (the spread between prices for Alberta’s bitumen and U.S. oil) is serious and it goes back to the fact that we need more export capacity and we need more markets than the U.S.,” he said.
George expects the northern segment of the Keystone XL pipeline, the section proposed to run between Hardisty and Nebraska, to be approved by the U.S., as well as the Line 9 reversal which will bring Western and U.S. light crude to the Montreal refinery. These two projects will be important factors in getting the differential gap to shrink. But export markets outside the U.S. are vital.January 16, 2013: Canadians need to win on the Keystone XL.
“Overall, the U.S. gulf coast is a huge crude oil market – nearly equivalent to all of China today,” says the IHS report, written by a team of three experts including the company’s global oil director, Jackie Forrest. “Consequently, the U.S. gulf coast will be a critical part of the future for oilsands, particularly for bitumen blends.”January 16, 2013: Suncor weighing decision to cut expansion in the oil sands.
University of Calgary energy economist Michael Moore says the IHS report suggests the province should be focused on getting approval to build the Keystone XL pipeline to get oilsands products to the Texas gulf coast.
Suncor Energy Inc. is considering making an C$11.6 billion ($11.8 billion) oil-sands project the first major spending reduction among Alberta energy producers as the region’s crude prices sink to the lowest in the world.
The oil-sands benchmark, West Canada Select, traded at a record $42.50 a barrel less than U.S. crude on Dec. 14.
Canadian companies are forgoing about C$2.5 billion a month because of the lower prices, according to an estimate by Houston-based investment bank PPHB Securities LP. The discount has helped erode Canadian oil profits and hurt companies’ shares.
Canadian heavy oil prices, pressured by a combination of tight pipeline capacity and delays in a U.S. refinery retooling, have fallen close to the trigger point for companies to begin shutting off some production, an analyst said on Tuesday.
Prices for Western Canada Select (WCS) heavy blend, a widely quoted grade, have fallen recently to around $50 a barrel, less than half the price of a barrel of international benchmark Brent, pressuring the bottom lines of producers.
With little in the way of new pipeline capacity expected in the coming months, the deep discount is expected to persist, said FirstEnergy Capital Corp analyst Martin King.
The first production that is likely to get shut down will be traditional heavy oil, in which low-volume wells pump crude without the aid of steam or other enhanced recovery, King said.
"You've got to think that the more conventional heavy is probably borderline right now," he told Reuters after speaking to an industry audience in Calgary.
He said such supplies are likely to require a price of $45-$50 a barrel to generate positive cash flow.This all goes back to the killing of the Keystone XL. Amazing. This, of course, probably puts downward pressure on all North American oil ... until they stop producing producing completely.
The US will continue to need hydrocarbons from the oil sands of Canada despite its rising output of light oil from tight formations, which nevertheless are reshaping markets for heavy Canadian material, says IHS.
Although production from tight formations in the US eclipsed that of output from the Canadian oil sands last year—2.2 million b/d vs. 1.7 million b/d—it does not eliminate the US need for imports, according to the IHS CERA Oil Sands Energy Dialogue report. If demand changes little and US conventional supply declines, tight oil can replace only about one third of US net oil imports by the end of the decade.
Expansion of tight oil supply has created transportation bottlenecks and glutted the US Midwest, destination of 80% of exports from the oil sands region, IHS points out.
Synthetic crude oil (SCO) from upgraders in Alberta, historically more than half the supply from the oil sands, now competes with tight oil. Most future supply from the oil sands will be blended bitumen, similar to heavy crude oils the US now imports.So, we'll see.