[Graeme]

Why unconventional natural gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap

In Part 1: Is there a lot more natural gas than previously thought? I asserted it now appears likely that, thanks to unconventional supplies, natural gas alone could meet a great deal of the Waxman-Markey CO2 target for 2020 - without requiring gobs of new power plants to be sited and built or thousands of miles of new transmission lines. In this post I will explain the two key reasons why.

grist

[copious.abundance]

Somewhere recently (either on Rigzone or OJG) I read an analysis by the API (I think) which concluded that Obama's climate legislation will largely have the effect of forcing a large-scale conversion of coal to NG.

But hey, I'm sure Maddog won't mind.

[Tanada]

Kind of the same thing I was saying about the CA emissions law for power plants. If UNG is as cheap as they make it sound then CA will be able to afford CC GT power plants to replace all their coal and diesel plants.

[copious.abundance]

BTW, from that link, this is a must-read too:
>> Climate action game changer, Part 1: Is there a lot more natural gas than previously thought? <<

Also, I have recently ordered a book called "The Grand Energy Transition." The guy (who has been a natural gas driller for decades) makes the case that natural gas is staggeringly abundant - and that at least some of it is abiotic in origin, too. He then makes the case that society is about to start a transition from an oil-based economy to a natural gas-based one. His reasoning is something like this:

Energy Age #1: Solid fuels - wood and then coal
Energy Age #2 - Liquid fuels - petroleum
Energy Age #3 - Gaseous fuels - natural gas

We are in the transition from #2 to #3.

The author has a website here:
http://www.the-get.com/

[mos6507]

The term "abiotic" does not exist in this dojo.

[Maddog78]

Somewhere recently (either on Rigzone or OJG) I read an analysis by the API (I think) which concluded that Obama's climate legislation will largely have the effect of forcing a large-scale conversion of coal to NG.

But hey, I'm sure Maddog won't mind.

I wouldn't mind that one bit.

[Tanada]

The term "abiotic" does not exist in this dojo.

Actually there is some pretty sound evidence that Methane can easily be produced abiotically Mos, something that is much more difficult to prove for Petroleum. We believe the early atmosphere was rich in Methane, we know that some super deep wells drilled well below biological deposits have yielded small quantities of Methane.

[americandream]

Sounds good. Does this mean that we get to continue the current living arrangements, but on natural gas?

[Tanada]

Sounds good. Does this mean that we get to continue the current living arrangements, but on natural gas?

Heh! If fossil fuels were the only limit to the system we could keep growing for a little while on natgas, but I think most of us recognize that fundamental limits exist in all sorts of other factors in our lives.

[TheDude]

Energy Age #1: Solid fuels - wood and then coal
Energy Age #2 - Liquid fuels - petroleum
Energy Age #2 - Gaseous fuels - natural gas

We are in the transition from #2 to #3.

Emphasis mine. Little Freudian Doomer Slip there.

A gas economy based on UNG would mean Drilling Gone Wild at what were previously spikes in activity, namely the all-time record set in 1981 of over 90k wells drilled (oil and gas). This proves it can be done, at least in one year; you'd still need some form of pricing mechanism to ease out prices.

Coal provided 2.3 times as much electrical generation as NG in 2008, so roughly speaking based on last year's 32,623 holes you'd need to sustain about 75k wells per year to supplant coal fully with supplies from UNG, barring technical development that would somehow mitigate the early steep declines in the wells, or implementing MRCs that could have multiple laterals off one main wellbore, assuming that would work with shale etc.

This is a graph of all wells/NG only/rotary rigs for the US 1973-2008:



NG was a sideline to the main focus on oil wells in the late 70s/early 80s, which has merely flattened the tail of our decline.

[TheDude]

Regarding Pickens Plans, this is how much NG out of total supply delivered was taken up by the transportation sector in recent years:

0.04% 1997
0.05% 1998
0.06% 1999
0.06% 2000
0.07% 2001
0.07% 2002
0.09% 2003
0.10% 2004
0.11% 2005
0.12% 2006
0.12% 2007
0.14% 2008

Gawd knows how much more drilling that would entail without supplemental new generation from renewables/nuclear. Might make a WAG later.

[americandream]

Sounds good. Does this mean that we get to continue the current living arrangements, but on natural gas?

Heh! If fossil fuels were the only limit to the system we could keep growing for a little while on natgas, but I think most of us recognize that fundamental limits exist in all sorts of other factors in our lives.

So whats this article inferring if systemic failure is a given due to general resourcing failure? That natural gas is going to save us from AGW? But if there's no growth of any significance due to the built in resourcing constraints, whither natural gas?

Looks to me like more window dressing to forestall the day of reckoning. Whats your game Graeme?

[nobodypanic]

Energy Age #4: Solid fuels -coal and then wood.

[copious.abundance]

Emphasis mine. Little Freudian Doomer Slip there.

Oops, I fixed it.

[copious.abundance]

Regarding Pickens Plans, this is how much NG out of total supply delivered was taken up by the transportation sector in recent years:

0.04% 1997
0.05% 1998
0.06% 1999
0.06% 2000
0.07% 2001
0.07% 2002
0.09% 2003
0.10% 2004
0.11% 2005
0.12% 2006
0.12% 2007
0.14% 2008

Gawd knows how much more drilling that would entail without supplemental new generation from renewables/nuclear. Might make a WAG later.

A guy on Seeking Alpha recently took a stab at the question of, "If we converted half of US cars to natural gas, how much more gas would we need to produce?" His methodology was a bit crude and relied largely on the specs of the Honda Civic GX, but it's probably a halfway decent order-of-magnitude estimate.
>>> Seeking Alpha <<<

Before you ask, remember that natural gas in the GX is compressed natural gas (CNG) at a pressure of 3,600 psi, which is why the gas tanks don’t need to actually be 968 cubic feet in size. Now we know how many GX tanks we need to fill every day, and we know how much natural gas is contained in each tank, so it’s easy to compute the amount of natural gas needed to power one half the cars in trucks in America for one year:

(24,375,000 GX tanks/day)*(968 cuft/GX tank)*(365days/year)

= 8,612,175,000,000 cubic feet natural gas

= 8.6 TCF (trillion cubic feet) natural gas

That would be the amount needed for a whole year. But last year the US produced 26 Tcf, so that 8.6 Tcf would only represent about a 1/3 additional production needed. A lot to be sure, but within the realm of possibility.

[Graeme]

Sounds good. Does this mean that we get to continue the current living arrangements, but on natural gas?

Heh! If fossil fuels were the only limit to the system we could keep growing for a little while on natgas, but I think most of us recognize that fundamental limits exist in all sorts of other factors in our lives.

So whats this article inferring if systemic failure is a given due to general resourcing failure? That natural gas is going to save us from AGW? But if there's no growth of any significance due to the built in resourcing constraints, whither natural gas?

Looks to me like more window dressing to forestall the day of reckoning. Whats your game Graeme?

Utilization of NG just buys us more time to transition to renewable energy - Energy Age #4!

[americandream]

Sounds good. Does this mean that we get to continue the current living arrangements, but on natural gas?

Heh! If fossil fuels were the only limit to the system we could keep growing for a little while on natgas, but I think most of us recognize that fundamental limits exist in all sorts of other factors in our lives.

So whats this article inferring if systemic failure is a given due to general resourcing failure? That natural gas is going to save us from AGW? But if there's no growth of any significance due to the built in resourcing constraints, whither natural gas?

Looks to me like more window dressing to forestall the day of reckoning. Whats your game Graeme?

Utilization of NG just buys us more time to transition to renewable energy - Energy Age #4!

So do you foresee a world of wall to wall Walmart, Wallstreeted, containerised Chinese plastic pumpkined,sub-primed, renewable energised business as usual.

[TheDude]

I'm only counting gas delivered to customers, the EIA includes various lost costs in there such as pipeline and distribution use which don't meet the end users. Their figure for 2008 is 21.3 tcf. "Marketed Production" on the U.S. Natural Gas Gross Withdrawals and Production page.

Your man at SA lost me when he calculates 24,375,000 CNGvs as replacing 1/2 of the US vehicle fleet. More like 1/10, as I'm sure the commentators pointed out to him. How many CNG vehicles were supplied in 2008? Drumroll please...2,765. There are something like 100k in use, the figure data .xls for this is faulty on this page however: EIA-Alternative Transportation Fuels.

50 million CNGs would be more along the lines of 15 tcf. 100k vehicle fleet consumes 30,093.57 mmcf, multiply by 500 for 50 million vehicles/15,046,785 tcf. There are ca. 90 million solo commuters in the US according to the last broad vehicle survey, 135 million commuters total, 250 million cars, 200 million registered drivers.

You'll need more than 781 CNG stations too. I've been collating info on AFVs and might have something published at TOD. As it stands long range travel is out of the question without bi mode vehicles that also can run on gasoline, adding to the weight and cost. Perhaps you recall the story about the CA state vehicle fleet being FFV by mandate; nice gesture but none of the drivers could find stations with E85 so it was in the end just a boondoggle.

[Graeme]

For the moment, we are talking about energy and climate. Ideally, we want to reach 100% renewable energy and an atmosphere with less than 350 ppm CO2. Discussion of the ideal society could be discussed in another thread.

[copious.abundance]

TheDude, I'll help ya out here. What he did was to assume that all gasoline in the US is used for vehicle transportation (reasonable, and pretty close to reality), then he assumed that half of that gasoline consumption would be converted to NG, and converted the energy content of that gasoline consumption to natural gas using assumptions on mileage, etc. I have no doubt it's off (especially with the all-Civic-equivalent fleet), but as I said it's just an order-of-magnitude estimate.

A disproportion of NG vehicles in the US right now are government truck and bus fleets, so I'm not sure your current consumption / vehicle number is a particularly useful indicator.

How Much NatGas is Required to Fuel 50% of US Cars & Trucks?

Let’s begin with some basic facts, all of which are found on the EIA’s website:

* The US uses 390,000,000 gallons of gasoline per day
* 1 Gallon gasoline = 124,000 Btu
* 1 cubic foot of natural gas = 1028 Btu

The Honda Civic GX (HMC) is the only NGV for sale to US consumers. For the sake of this analysis, I will assume every car and truck in the US that is converted to run on natural gas will mimic the 2009 Honda Civic GX’s specifications:

* Mileage: 28 mpg (combined)
* Tank capacity: 8.03 GGE @ 3600 psi (GGE=gallons of gasoline equivalent)

As a starting point, let’s assume replacing half the cars and trucks in America with NGVs will halve US gasoline consumption. Let’s further assume average gasoline vehicle mileage in the US is 25 mpg and that these miles will be converted directly to NGV miles. So, for the number of miles to be converted from gasoline to natural gas we have:

(390,000,000/2 gal/day)*(25miles/gal) = 4,875,000,000 miles/day

Now, for the Honda Civic GX we have:

(28miles/gal)*(8.03 GGE/tank) = 225 miles/tank

However, I have heard a more realistic range for the GX is 200 miles per tank. This is because the pressure in the natural gas tank falls as it becomes closer to empty and therefore it is wise to refuel sooner rather than later. So, I’ll use the 200 miles/tank number to figure out how many GX tanks would need to be refueled every day to replace 50% of America’s gasoline powered cars and trucks:

(4,875,000,000 mi/day)/200 mi/GX tank = 24,375,000 GX tanks/day

But how much natural gas is contained in one GX full tank? Here’s where it gets a bit messy. We know from the EIA website what the energy content is for a gallon of gasoline and for a cubic foot of natural gas, and we know the tank capacity of the GX is 8.03 GGE, so we can figure out how much natural gas there is in one GX tankful as follows:

(8.03 GGE/GX tank)*(124,000Btu/gal gas)/(1028 Btu/cuft natgas)

= 968 cubic ft natural gas/GX tank

Before you ask, remember that natural gas in the GX is compressed natural gas (CNG) at a pressure of 3,600 psi, which is why the gas tanks don’t need to actually be 968 cubic feet in size. Now we know how many GX tanks we need to fill every day, and we know how much natural gas is contained in each tank, so it’s easy to compute the amount of natural gas needed to power one half the cars in trucks in America for one year:

(24,375,000 GX tanks/day)*(968 cuft/GX tank)*(365days/year)

= 8,612,175,000,000 cubic feet natural gas

= 8.6 TCF (trillion cubic feet) natural gas

As for your CNG stations, in a single year (last year) 764 CNG stations were built in Pakistan. If they can build that many CNG stations in a poor nation like Pakistan in one year, it should be a breeze to do it in the US in 10 years.