Impacts of Increased Access to U.S. Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Resources
I recently looked into the prospect of additional offshore U.S. oil and natural gas resources. Lifting the moratorium would increase access to oil and gas fields in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. President Bush recently lifted the executive moratorium, which was set to expire in 2012. The Congressional moratorium comes in the form of an annual appropriations rider. It must be renewed year to year by a vote in the Congress. The current 2008 ban is set to expire on September 30th, 2008 - the end of the federal government’s fiscal year – unless Congress approves a bill extending the ban and the president signs it into law. This post looks at the impact of increased access to offshore areas, based on estimates made by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the Minerals Management Service.
The first thing that jumped out at me in Table 10 is that most of the technically recoverable, undiscovered offshore oil and natural gas resources are currently open to oil and gas companies for leasing and drilling. These areas are located mostly in the western and central Gulf of Mexico.
The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) leasing program is administered by the Minerals Management Service (MMS), an agency within the US Department of the Interior responsible for oil and gas leasing in the US offshore. MMS estimates that there are currently 85.9 billion barrels of oil and 419.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that are technically recoverable from all federal offshore areas, including 26.6 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of gas offshore Alaska.
The oil and gas offshore Alaska is available for leasing and development. Therefore, the total portion of technically recoverable, undiscovered, offshore oil and natural gas that is available for leasing and development from all federal offshore areas, including offshore Alaska, is 67.5 billion barrels oil (79%) and 342.4 trillion cubic feet gas (82%). The offshore moratorium denies access to the other 21% of oil and 18% of gas from federal offshore areas.
In addition to the technically recoverable, undiscovered oil and natural gas resources estimated in Table 10, as of October 2, 2006 there were 3,911 active oil and natural gas production platforms on the Gulf of Mexico’s Federal OCS as illustrated in the following figures.
Active Oil & Gas Platforms in Western Gulf of Mexico
Active Oil & Gas Platforms in Eastern Gulf of Mexico
In the U.S. EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2007, an “OCS access case” was prepared to examine the potential impacts of lifting Federal restrictions on access to OCS oil and natural gas resources in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The OCS access case assumes that the current moratoria will expire in 2012, leasing will begin by 2012, and oil and natural gas production will begin by 2017.
Offshore oil production (Figure 20) is projected at 2.4 million barrels per day by 2030 in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day (mmbpd) in the reference case. EIA notes that oil prices are determined on the international market, so any impact on average oil wellhead prices would be insignificant in the OCS access case.
Offshore natural gas production (Figure 21) is projected to increase 18% (0.6 trillion ft^3 per year) in the OCS access case by 2030, and the average wellhead price of natural gas is projected to decrease slightly: $0.13 / MCF (2005 dollars per thousand cubic feet) by 2030.
One precaution, the OCS access case in Figure 20 and Figure 21 only account for off-shore production in the U.S. However, domestic on-shore production is more predominant than offshore — over 3/4 of the natural gas and over 1/2 of the oil produced in the U.S. are projected to come from onshore fields even in the OCS access case.
Total domestic production in the U.S. (i.e. offshore and onshore) is projected at 6 million barrels per day of oil, and 19 trillion ft^3 per year of natural gas, by 2030; so the overall projected increase in domestic production — 0.2 mmbpd more oil and 0.6 trillion ft^3 more gas — would only provide the U.S. with approximately 3% more oil and 3% more natural gas by 2030.
One other precaution according to the EIA summary, the average field size in the Pacific and Atlantic regions tends to be smaller than the average in the Gulf of Mexico. This implies that a significanct portion of the newly available fields in the OCS access case would provide less attractive return on investments than fields that are already available for exploration in the western and central Gulf of Mexico.
Building a 1000 Watt Wind Turbine (part 1)
This post kicks off a new category of entries on energy self-sufficiency and “homebrew” projects. Nothing is more inspiring than do-it-yourself stories. This entry includes the first set of photos of a windmill construction project sent to me by my fiance’s freind’s brother-in-law, who is building a 1000 Watt wind turbine in his backyard. The plans for his wind turbine come from www.otherpower.com — which is actually a very interesting site for anyone interested in installing or building a wind turbine, or anyone who wants to read about Options for Getting Started in Wind Power. A few pictures of the stator windings, spindle, yaw bearing and tail pivot are shown below. I will definitely try to follow this project and post any additional pictures provided by the wind turbine builder!
Remote, off-grid dwellers have found wind power to be an excellent complement to solar power because the wind often blows at night and during cloudy weather. Even on-grid folks may install wind turbines to offset the rising cost of electric power from the grid. You can find the average wind speed at your geographic location using average wind speed map from NREL, which will show you how much wind power you might be able to harness before you consider building a wind turbine.
According to the Small Wind Turbine Basics series, statistical wind speed distribution in most locations worldwide is typically represented by a Weibull or simplified Rayleigh distribution curve. The Weibul distribution of wind speeds image on the left is fairly common.
Wind power is directly proportional to turbine diameter squared x wind speed cubed.
The Small Wind Turbine Basics series explains what kind of power you can expect from common small turbine diameters and wind speeds.
In a 10 mph wind (very common), there are 100 Watts of power available with a 5 foot diameter wind turbine. Betz lowers this to 59.26 Watts, and with Klemen’s “good” turbine losses we are down to at most 35 watts of output. That’s only enough power to fire up a couple of efficient CF light bulbs. By comparison, a 10 foot turbine has 401 Watts available, 238 W with a “perfect” turbine, and 140W output in an excellent turbine design. Much better, but not anything that’s going to make your electric meter run backwards! A “good” 20-foot turbine could possibly give 740W at 10 mph.
When we double the wind speed to 20 mph, the exponential increase in power available becomes apparent 280 possible Watts from a “good” 5-footer, 1,100W from a 10-footer, and 5,900W from a 20-footer. Now we are talking some real power for a sailboat or cabin (the 5-foot machine), an off-grid home (the 10-foot machine), or an on-grid house trying to offset the power bill (the 20-foot machine). Of course it varies by location, but on a good wind power day that most people would call breezy, the wind will usually be between 10 and 20 mph.
Advertised wind turbine ratings in terms of Watts are commonly based on peak output in high winds of 28-30 mph, which are relatively rare.
“Zero-Waste Ottawa” to Benefit from Innovative, Privately Financed Waste-to-Energy Plant
The City of Ottawa and PlascoEnergy Group formed a partnership in 2006 to demonstrate a municipal waste gasification plant (pictured on the right), which was constructed in 2007 and capable of converting 75 tonnes per day of unsorted solid waste into electricity, using PlascoEnergy’s electric-plasma torch technology.
Each tonne of solid waste is converted into 1.2 MWh of electricity, 300 L potable quality water, 5-10 kg commercial grade salt, 150 kg of construction grade aggregate, 5 kg sulfur agricultural fertilizer, air emissions in compliance with environmental regulations, heavy metals recovered for safe disposal, and a two tonne reduction in greenhouse gases. The greenhouse gas reduction is the result of a displaced coal-fired electricity and diverted waste from landfills where it would produce methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.
Based on the success of the Ottawa demonstration facility, PlascoEnergy has now proposed a full commercial scale 400 tonnes-per-day facility (150,000 tonnes of residual waste per year), which is expected to produce 21 MW of net electrical power for sale to Hydro Ottawa. Under the deal, which will be passed by a full council soon, the city of Ottawa will pay PlascoEnergy the standard waste tipping fee of $60/tonne (i.e. $8M per year for residential garbage that isn’t recycled or composted), no capital expenditures, and no operating expenditures. And because the city of Ottawa was a partner in testing the technology, it will get royalties of up to $3.5 million a year once Plasco plants are sold to other countries and cities and begine operating. As a comparison, city officials estimated that the costs of a new landfill could reach $150 million and approvals would take years. PlascoEnergy intends to finance the construction and commissioning of its own waste to energy facilities. The plant will cost about $125 million, all of which will be paid by the company.
The primary requirements to build a facility are a guaranteed waste stream, guaranteed sale of electricity and a location. Shown below is a computer generated image of a new plant proposed by PlascoEnergy for the City of Los Angeles: building exterior and landscaping design by Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal.
The Concept of Fuel Economy: Does it Lead to Good Decisions?
If you own two vehicles, a car and a SUV about the same age, then you will inevitably be faced with the decision of which car to replace first. If saving fuel is one of your motives, then you might be interested in this quick miles-per-gallon-math from Technology Review.
Say you’ve got two cars in your garage. One of them gets 34 miles per gallon; the other gets only 12. You drive both cars 10,000 miles in the course of a year.
Would you save more gas by a) trading in the 34-miles-per-gallon car for one that gets 50 miles per gallon, or by b) trading in the 12-miles-per-gallon car for one that gets 14 miles per gallon?
New experiments suggest that people tend to pick a). After all, a 16-miles-per-gallon improvement seems better than an improvement of just 2 miles per gallon.
The right answer is b).
If you start driving the 50-miles-per-gallon car instead of the 34-miles-per-gallon car, you’ll save 94.1 gallons of gas per year.
If you start driving the 14-miles-per-gallon car instead of the 12-miles-per-gallon car, you’ll save 119 gallons per year.
The math is simple arithmetic. Divide the total number of miles driven (10,000) by the miles per gallon to get the total gallons used to drive that distance. For 12 miles per gallon, the answer is 833. For 14 miles per gallon, it’s 714.
So what do you think — is “mpg” a good indicator of fuel economy?
Where Are Oil Prices Headed?
A recent presentation by EIA looks at oil prices and market conditions such as surplus capacity, increasing demand, and dollar depreciation, behind a six year 500% increase in oil prices. The forecast for ongoing demand growth is quite clear, while the forecast for oil production growth is mostly cloudy, and the only certainty about the price of oil is that it will change.
Diesel & Gasoline Prices Slip: First Time Since March 08
The average price of gasoline and diesel fuel in the U.S. has started to slip in recent weeks. Last week the average price of gasoline was $4.10 per gallon, and diesel fuel was $4.65 per gallon.
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NYMEX: Light, Sweet Crude Oil (CL)
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NYMEX: Natural Gas (NG)
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NYMEX: Heating Oil (HO)
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EIA: Retail Prices
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Bloomberg: Wind Energy Index
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MAC: Global Solar Energy Index