George Monbiot discusses Nigeria gas flaring and related topics with CEO of Shell
Environmentalist George Monbiot recently interviewed Jeroen van de Veer, CEO of Shell, on ethics, greenwash advertising, renewable energy investments and gas-flaring in Nigeria.
Natural gas is a by-product of oil extraction, but Nigeria doesn’t have the pipeline infrastructure to sell natural gas, so the crude oil is extracted and sold, while the gas is flared. Many oil workers are kidnapped every year in the Niger Delta, so safety is obviously one of the problems facing development of pipelines. However, it would have been interesting had Mr. Monbiot asked the CEO to explain the problems more clearly. Why does gas continues to flare across the Delta in 2008, and what are Shell’s plans for future development in the region?
Nigeria produces over 2 million barrels of oil per day (United States is a major importer). That’s 100 million dollars of oil every day (selling at $50 per barrel), yet Nigeria ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. 70 percent of the country’s population lives on $1 a day or less, and life expectancy is 47 years.
According to this NY Times article, oil companies typically keep 7 percent of the profits from oil sales, and the government gets 93 percent. So what does the Nigerian government do with the oil field royalties and leasing fees collected from developers like Shell? Are there any plans to build pipelines to pump the gas to areas where it can be used for efficient cooking and electric power production?
It would have been interesting too had Mr. Monbiot asked the CEO what kind of role Shell plays in dealing with the corrupt government of Nigeria and whether Shell sees itself as a sustainable business in the region.
The oil industry has a legacy of environmental destruction in the Delta region, causing unrest amongst fishermen and communities. But Nigeria still has a lot of oil to sell (and presumably a lot of natural gas as well to either flare, or distribute to African communities in need, via gas pipeline or electric power grid). There are 36 billion barrels of proved oil reserves in Nigeria. Compare that to 22 billion barrels in the U.S., 80 billion barrels in Venezuela, 12 billion barrels in Mexico, or 179 billion barrels in Canada.
More on Nigeria’s oil industry:
NY Times: Growing Unrest Posing a Threat to Nigerian Oil
NPR: Gas Flaring Disrupts Life in Oil-Producing Niger Delta
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.