Tag Archives: Curtailed Electricity

What Monterey Shale Oil?

Richard Ha writes:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) made a dramatic announcement recently: it is revising its estimate of the Monterey Shale Oil supply downward by 96 percent.

Ninety-six percent is a lot.

Especially when you consider that the Monterey Shale Oil supply presented two-thirds of the United States’s oil reserves. It was estimated that we had 100 years of oil reserves left in this country altogether, but now that we know 66 percent of it doesn’t exist, there must be only 34 percent, or 34 years, of oil reserves remaining in the U.S.

However, the cost we would have to pay for oil companies to retrieve it would exceed what it would cost them to do so. In other words, if we consumers were willing to pay $1 million/barrel, all of those 34 years’ worth of oil could probably be recovered. But if we the people can only pay $150/barrel, we might only see ten years’ worth drilled. Hmm.

Those of us who attend Association for the Study of Peak Oil conferences (I’ve attended five now, the only person from the Big Island to do so) have known that the claim that the U.S. has a 100-year supply of oil was way overestimated. We are never going to be Saudi America.

Kurt Cobb writes about this at Resource Insights:

The great imaginary California oil boom: Over before it started

Sunday, May 25, 2014

It turns out that the oil industry has been pulling our collective leg. 

The pending 96 percent reduction in estimated deep shale oil resources in California revealed last week in the Los Angeles Times calls into question the oil industry's premise of a decades-long revival in U.S. oil production and the already implausible predictions of American energy independence. The reduction also appears to bolster the view of long-time skeptics that the U.S. shale oil boom–now centered in North Dakota and Texas–will likely be short-lived, petering out by the end of this decade. (I've been expressing my skepticism in writing about resource claims made for both shale gas and oil since 2008.)

California has been abuzz for the past couple of years about the prospect of vast new oil wealth supposedly ready for the taking in the Monterey Shale thousands of feet below the state. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) had previously estimated that 15.4 billion barrels were technically recoverable, basing the number on a report from a contractor who relied heavily on oil industry presentations rather than independent data.

The California economy was supposed to benefit from 2.8 million new jobs by 2020. The state was also supposed to gain $220 billion in additional income and $24 billion in additional tax revenues in that year alone, according to a study from the University of Southern California that relied heavily on industry funding.

But that was before the revelation by the Times that the EIA will reduce its estimate of technically recoverable oil in California's Monterey Shale by 96 percent–almost a complete wipeout–after taking a close look at actual data for wells drilled there already. The agency now believes that only about 600 million barrels are recoverable using existing technology. The 600 million barrels still sound like a lot, but those barrels would last the United States all of 40 days at the current rate of consumption….

Read the rest

We need to take a step back and reevaluate where we are and what we need to do. As I’ve been saying for years now, we need to get on with geothermal. For the Big Island, the path we need to take is clear.

A byproduct of the oil operations is natural gas, and it would be helpful if natural gas prices rose to help with the costs of development.

It’s kind of like curtailed electricity. If it could be sold at any price, it would help lower the bid price of geothermal and wind operations and would result in lower electricity costs for the rubbah slippah folks.

If curtailed electricity could be bought at a cheap enough price, it could also enable a hydrogen storage option. Then we could get a hydrogen fuel cell option for various motors. And we could look at converting hydrogen to ammonia, so we would have nitrogen fertilizer to help with our food security. 

Toyota Shifts Focus to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles

Richard Ha writes:

Toyota made a major announcement today: It will stop focusing on pure electric vehicles, and begin focusing its attention on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. This is huge.

Do you know that here on the Big Island we throw away (“curtail”) tons of electricity from geothermal and wind every night? We can turn this energy into hydrogen fuel cells, for transportation, and this can help us solve our transportation fuel problem. It can also be used for nitrogen fertilizer.

Solar energy projects do not provide curtailed electricity. We need to think about the big picture and be careful about running like lemmings after solar.

Hydrogen fuel cell for transportation is a very good opportunity for the Big Island to use its curtailed electricity. It’s a free resource that already exists; currently, we are just throwing it away.

From Audioguide.com:

Toyota will forgo further development in pure electric vehicles in search of what it sees as more promising alternative fuel vehicles.

The automaker will focus on the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles according to Toyota North America CEO Jim Lentz….”

 Read the rest

How Hawaii Farmers Can Be Competitive & Make Money

Richard Ha writes:

Nitrogen is the basis of protein production. But here in Hawai‘i, farmers have no control over nitrogen fertilizer costs.

What if Hawai‘i farmers had stable and affordable nitrogen costs, and therefore our products had a competitive advantage over imported foods? Then farmers would make money, and farmers would farm.

There is a lot going on in the area of ammonia production. Iowa State University has committed to doing research in this area.

Hawaii can build on the knowledge gained as we find a way to make ammonia fertilizer from electricity that is now being “curtailed” (thrown away).

If we can get to urea, it is a short step to blending so that it is available for most uses.

From Wikipedia:

Urea or carbamide is an organic compound with the chemical formula CO(NH2)2.
The molecule has two —NH2 groups joined by a
carbonyl (C=O) functional group.

Urea serves an important role in
the
metabolism of
nitrogen-containing compounds by animals and is the main nitrogen-containing
substance in the
urine
of
mammals. It is a
colorless, odorless solid, highly soluble in water and practically non-toxic (
LD50 is 15 g/kg
for rat). Dissolved in water, it is neither
acidic nor alkaline. The body uses it
in many processes, the most notable one being nitrogen excretion. Urea is
widely used in
fertilizers
as a convenient source of nitrogen. Urea is also an important
raw material for the chemical industry.

Read more in the
Download Yara Fertilizer Industry Handbook, 2012.

Not no can. CAN!!

Fertilizer from Local Resources

Richard Ha writes:

It’s Father’s Day, and I’m thinking about my Pop and what he always told me: “Find three solutions for every problem, and then find one more just in case.”

I’m thinking, on this Father’s Day, that it’s appropriate to talk about the “one more solution.”

Excess or “curtailed” electricity is thrown away. What if we used curtailed electricity to make fertilizer?

Three years ago, my farmer friend Steve Gruhne in Iowa was talking about the ammonia and nitrogen cycle.

Nitrogen is a building block of protein. We can take the throw-away electricity and run it through water. Hydrogen and oxygen will bubble up. Take the hydrogen and combine it with nitrogen in the air and you get ammonia fertilizer. Just think – nitrogen fertilizer made from local resources!

Pop said there are a thousand reasons why no can. We are looking for the one reason why CAN!

Happy Fathers Day, Guys.