Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Abundant, Limited Resources
This article by Spencer Jakab at the Wall Street Journal leaves me unsure of whether to laugh or rant. I agree with Jakab that the regular burning of unprofitable natural gas at some oil wells is a problem, but for different reasons. First, an introduction:
Even as more and more gas gets supercooled and shipped around the world in expensive, liquefied form, an estimated 5.1 trillion cubic feet of gas was flared world-wide in 2018, according to The World Bank—equivalent to the combined consumption of France, Germany and Belgium.
Why waste so much valuable fuel? Because it is often an unwanted byproduct of an oil well, and it isn’t worth enough to sell.
The article goes on to explain how capturing and transporting natural gas from some locations can be unprofitable, even while similar gas remains very profitable elsewhere. I appreciate that Jakab proposes finding ways to make that unsought gas profitable, rather than immediately turning to government to ban flaring.
But his concerns about a greenhouse gas effect are unwarranted, like all fears regarding global warming. The real problem is that geologic theory still posits that fossil fuels require rare conditions and millions of years to develop. Ergo, Earth has a limited supply, even if that supply is sufficient to last many generations of increasing use. If waste of irreplaceable resources can be avoided, it should be.
Much could change regarding energy production and use in the next century or two. I can’t imagine batteries requiring even rarer resources, like lithium, as a practical substitute for most power supplies now dependent on fossil fuels. But there will, of course, be further advancements in research and technology, especially when and where need is greater.
For all we know, we won’t need fossil fuels a century from now. Or we will develop more cost-efficient means of artificially producing oil and gas. But assuming that is the case would be grossly irresponsible and cruel to future generations. It’s one thing to temporarily bury resources we cannot yet efficiently recycle, like plastics (oil derivatives) and old batteries. It’s another to disintegrate resources entirely, preventing later use.
Can any Ricochet members offer insights into the challenges of preserving this natural gas or other factors in the situation? Are there already solutions that could be applied?
Published in Economics
My guess is that one reason capturing and selling that “flared” natural gas is not profitable, is that a web of government restrictions and regulations make building a pipeline prohibitively expensive, just about anywhere (and especially in the US). The so-called environmentalists have developed a very effective lawsuit regime that has prevented energy infrastructure from being built anywhere, for decades. Witness the Keystone XL pipeline, and New York’s shutting down new pipelines to their state from the Gulf, forcing their citizens to heat with very expensive oil! The person or organization who comes up with an effective way to throttle the environmental lobby and get infrastructure built will be the biggest hero ever.
I remember gas being flared in Pennsylvania as a child. Just a few years left it was piped. That’s all the details I know.
IIRC, sometimes the flare gas has impurities that made it unsuitable for general gas distribution. Even in Texas, the cost of special pipelines to a central location might be uneconomical. However, the gas could be burned to generate electricity, either for the site or into the grid.
It’s not all wasted. Gas is compressed on site and used to fuel trucks and generators. Operators do it when it makes financial sense.
Calling @jon1979. He knows about things like this.
In West Texas a lot of gas is flared. It is a by-product and sometimes there is more gas produced than pipeline capacity. But don’t worry, new pipelines are going in and NLG terminals are being built.
Of course any global warming hysteria is a lie. More CO2 in the air is good for plants and thus good for humans.
The earth makes new gas and oil all the time. It is not possible to use it all up.
If the earth is making new gas and oil at a rate that is 10,000 times less than the rate at which we’re using it, we may not use it all up but for all intents and purposes we’ll have to switch to a different fuel.
Not on a timeframe relevant to human societies.
Otherwise, we would be able to return to old wells without need of new techniques (as opposed to using more efficient methods to extract what could not be had the first time). Are you saying we already enjoyable refilling wells? Granted, we have only been drilling for a century, and much of that inefficiently.
If fossil fuels do naturally form over millions or even thousands of years, then it is practically a limited, non-renewable resource until/unless artificial production becomes cost-efficient.
@rushbabe49 has a very good point here about the environmental lobby having a stranglehold on politicians(generally of the leftward variety) and environmental policy. Here in MN there is an ongoing debate about building a new pipeline from Canada but the enviro-warriors had halted any progress despite it providing thousands of jobs for our ailing northern MN workers who traditionally voted D. It’s one reason Sen Klobachar is walking a very fine line between the progressive left of the Twin Cities and the blue collar workers for which this is a top voting issue-and why they could go for Trump in 2020.
Strictly speaking, there is a point at which too much CO2 in the air will kill humans. We’re not talking about such levels when we’re discussing climate change, but just because something is good for us doesn’t mean it won’t kill us. As the saying goes, the dose makes the poison.
Right now, you have a vast area of the western Permian Basin that was, prior to about 2006, just a marginal player in the area’s oil and gas production suddenly considered as having a half century of reserves using the current recovery methods. But the efforts at the moment are targeted towards ‘wet’ gas locations, where the gas (and the gas condensate) really is a bi-product of the oil production. In a perfect world, the oil and gas are both going to market, but because the area is relatively new, the takeaway capacity isn’t there, and while companies find alternative ways to get the oil to market (rail and even trucking) the current price of gas at the Waha hub in the Permian is so low non-pipeline methods of shipping would be financial losers. So it’s better to flair as much as the Texas Railroad Commission will allow you to flair before trying to ship to market (where there was such a glut this summer shippers had to pay the transmission companies at Waha to take the gas off their hands).
That problem should ease by 2021 as the new pipelines are completed. But even then, hardly anyone’s drilling the ‘dry’ gas areas, where there’s little oil to be found. Back in 2006-08, when natural gas was 4-5 times its current price, it was being drilled and delivered as the main product. Now, if you can’t get mostly oil out of a well site, it’s being left in the ground.
So there’s tons of gas still in the ground that could be recovered, but isn’t at the current prices. And current technologies, improved as they are, still are leaving about two-thirds of the fossil fuels in a drilling zone in the ground. So we’re not running out of natural gas for a long, long time (which is different from the possibility of Democrats barring people from getting the gas and oil out of the ground in the name of Gaia and Greta).
If you have a lot of gas being flared, it might be a good site for a factory or an incinerator. Move the industry to the fuel.
You could also use the fuel locally in colder regions for gas heating, power, and hot water.
Gas is the feedstock for plastic as well. I am not familiar with if all gas services this purpose.
The railroad commission regulates that? Sounds like an expansive definition of railroad.
Like some of the ways Texas pronounces city and county names having nothing to do with the way they’re spelled (Mexia and Bexar County are ones where the founders decided to have fun with the letter ‘X’), the Texas Railroad Commission nowadays has virtually nothing do to with what it was originally established to do. The state’s first big oil boom didn’t hit until 1901, 10 years after the RRC was established, so what was initially a minor task of the commission eventually turned into it’s main reason for existence (since the railroads were the leading edge in the late 1880s-early 1890s of expanding development into isolated parts of the state, it was also given land oversight, including the development of oil and gas on lands in the state).
Gas is flared off not just economic reasons – but also for safety reasons – to reduce pressure and prevent ruptures and possible explosions. Also not all natural gases are created equal some gas can be contaminated with hydrogen-sulfide (H2S) which would be a “Sour Gas” or Carbon Dioxide which would be an “Acid Gas”. These gasses cannot be used in the same systems with methane.
This is a gas flare from an Esso (?) refinery just south of Edmonton Ab.
— Esso, btw gets its name from the sound of its old parent companies old abbreviated name. SO – Standard Oil.
… and their refinery division used to be called Enjay, because they were Standard Oil of New Jersey (N.J.)
But in Canada its called Esso.
Other Standard Oil companies (edited):
We have at least a 1,000 year supply of recoverable Natural Gas in the US. All data we have suggests that the rest of the world does, too.
Burning NatGas makes CO2,which is plant food. The more CO2, the more plants we have. Plant life adds to all other life. Life is good.
I am all in favor of relaxing regulations so that it becomes easier and cheaper to harness “extra” gas instead of flaring it. Then we can let industry figure it out – no company is interested in gratuitous waste of a potential asset!
We might have reasonable estimates of enough gas for the foreseeable future. Consumption rates (rising nations, growing populations, increased demand of plastics, etc), access (stymied by wars, environmental hysteria, or just plain stupid government), and much else are difficult to predict a century out, let alone ten centuries. But we don’t have exact measures for the supply side either.
My dad was a senior petroleum geologist. He was largely responsible for deciding where to drill offshore, after consulting with geophysicists, engineers, and money men. I don’t retain half his knowledge or understanding of oil and gas discovery. But he always emphasized that you’re never really sure what you have until you drill. Seismic data, core samples, and the rest of it only allows for educated guesses.
As my father in-law (head geologist of Gulf Oil) used to say, “We know where the oil is, the hard part is getting it out of the ground and selling it at a profit.”
Wanna know how to make a million dollars in the oil biz? Start with 50 million dollars.
Technology has certainly improved since my dad retired from a Noble subsidiary. But I expect it only offers modern geologists the same view of ideal conditions for oil deposits rather than the oil itself. They know where petroleum usually forms, what absorbs it, what pushes it this way or that. But they just play the odds in a sport where every game has a few surprises.
I sent this story to my siblings not long ago to explain an old company magazine we once found with our father on the cover, along with a seismic map he had framed:
They have gotten a lot better with the 3-D seismograph imaging in figuring out where the oil and gas is — you can look at the Texas Railroad Commission’s interactive GIS Viewer of all well sites statewide, and if you match it up with the list of permitted and drilled wells over the past 15 years, the dry hole percentage is down considerably (but not completely — Apache has had some stuff not pan out in the marginal areas they’re working down near the Davis Mountains). Some of the current 3-D mapping’s now about 20 years old, and I some areas are due for updates.
My first job was at the oil company. There was one guy doing 3D when I left, though I never quizzed him about it. I remember thinking, “Nobody needs two computer monitors for anything!”
Not coincidentally, I helped get rid of a less powerful computer the size of a cow.
And fertilizer. Haber-Bosch process. Lots of people don’t know that.
It’s how we use imported oil to produce government-subsidized corn to produce government-mandated ethanol. (Maybe not so much of the oil is imported any more. I’m not sure)
We still have to import high-sulfur content ‘heavy’ oil, because the shale oil tends to be intermediate or light grade, and there are U.S. refineries built to handle the dirtier stuff (‘sour’ oil vs. ‘sweet’ oil). Much of that used to come from Venezuela, but Chavez and Maduro managed to tank that production to the point they can’t even supply their state-owned Citgo refineries in Texas, Louisiana and Illinois, let alone anyone else’s heavy oil refineries. So those facilities are still using imported oil from the Middle East (there still is the option of moving heavy tar sand oil down to the U.S. from Canada, which is what the Keystone XL pipeline was all about. But it’s still only partially completed, and will probably be blocked again if Trump loses this November).
I see that Haber-Bosch is mostly fueled by natural gas energy (not surprisingly) so I wonder if anyone is looking at putting a new plant in west Texas. To find out where the world’s ammonia fertilizer plants are located, it seems I’d have to pay a $200/year fee to ammoniaindustry.com to get an up-to-date map, but after the big explosion in West, Texas, there was an article saying two of Texas’s four plants are located in the Texas panhandle. I had wondered if these plants needed to be near sources of abundant water, and this suggests that they don’t. But maybe they need more water than can easily be obtained in west Texas.
Once you get about 40 miles north of Midland-Odessa, you’re into the Ogallala Aquifer territory, and the surface land becomes far better for underground irrigation farming (and also for cattle feed crops), which might explain why the fertilizer plants are in the Panhandle.