The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Energy => Topic started by: thackney on January 05, 2018, 08:01:28 pm
-
America's oceans are open for oil drilling! But why not Lake Michigan?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-met-offshore-drilling-ban-trump-huppke-20180105-story.html (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-met-offshore-drilling-ban-trump-huppke-20180105-story.html)
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement Thursday he plans to open 90 percent of America’s outer continental shelf to exploration and development, which will help with “powering America and achieving American Energy Dominance.â€
As expected, a bunch of hippy-flippy crustacean cuddlers — along with a number of Democratic and Republican governors who are presumably in the pocket of Big Dolphin — pitched a fit over this plan, which would do away with Obama administration restrictions that were put in place after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill seven years ago. (It was nothing tens of billions of dollars and the acceptance of a 60 percent reduction in dolphin reproduction rates couldn’t take care of.)
Those plankton panderers worry that offshore drilling around Alaska and in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and the Gulf of Mexico might cause environmental damage to sea life and shoreline ecosystems, just because massive, oily drilling apparatuses would be plunked down among sea life near shoreline ecosystems. How ridiculous.
Diane Hoskins, campaign director for a marine conservation group called Oceana, which is “Ocean†spelled wrong, told the Associated Press: “Americans have seen the devastation that comes from offshore drilling. Will we allow Florida's white beaches or the popular and pristine Outer Banks to share a similar fate?â€...
...A 2005 U.S. Geological Survey of the American portion of the Great Lakes found that beneath all that water there are 312 million barrels of oil and 5.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet there’s nothing in the Interior Department’s plan to undo the current ban on oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes....
-
America's oceans are open for oil drilling! But why not Lake Michigan?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-met-offshore-drilling-ban-trump-huppke-20180105-story.html (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-met-offshore-drilling-ban-trump-huppke-20180105-story.html)
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement Thursday he plans to open 90 percent of America’s outer continental shelf to exploration and development, which will help with “powering America and achieving American Energy Dominance.â€
As expected, a bunch of hippy-flippy crustacean cuddlers — along with a number of Democratic and Republican governors who are presumably in the pocket of Big Dolphin — pitched a fit over this plan, which would do away with Obama administration restrictions that were put in place after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill seven years ago. (It was nothing tens of billions of dollars and the acceptance of a 60 percent reduction in dolphin reproduction rates couldn’t take care of.)
Those plankton panderers worry that offshore drilling around Alaska and in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and the Gulf of Mexico might cause environmental damage to sea life and shoreline ecosystems, just because massive, oily drilling apparatuses would be plunked down among sea life near shoreline ecosystems. How ridiculous.
Diane Hoskins, campaign director for a marine conservation group called Oceana, which is “Ocean†spelled wrong, told the Associated Press: “Americans have seen the devastation that comes from offshore drilling. Will we allow Florida's white beaches or the popular and pristine Outer Banks to share a similar fate?â€...
...A 2005 U.S. Geological Survey of the American portion of the Great Lakes found that beneath all that water there are 312 million barrels of oil and 5.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet there’s nothing in the Interior Department’s plan to undo the current ban on oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes....
Where is this devastation? Is Santa Barbara, where oil drilling and production has been for 50 years, suffering this 'devastion'?
This cad needs to be called out for his outragious claims.
-
Where is this devastation? Is Santa Barbara, where oil drilling and production has been for 50 years, suffering this 'devastion'?
This cad needs to be called out for his outragious claims.
Perhaps not the best example to use:
(http://www.trbimg.com/img-555e06a5/turbine/la-me-g-santa-barbara-oil-spill-comparisons-20150521/650/650x366)
Oil piled up at the seawall near the Santa Barbara Harbor. Note the blackness of the incoming wave; the water has a thick layer of oil on top.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/SBHarborSeawallOilSpill.jpg)
(http://ediblesantabarbara.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/image001.jpg)
-
The times I have visited Santa Barbara's beach and harbor I never saw that.
His definition of 'devastation' leaves a lot to be desired as there are no long lasting effects that I could see.
-
What it comes down to is the lakes are off limits because places like California, Kentucky, and Utah get a vote. I'm not picking on those particular states, just pointing out that states with no stake in the great lakes get a vote when it should be up to those of us who actually live here. In short we can't drill there because of anti federalism.
Nobody is a better protector of the lakes than those of us who actually live here and that makes us the best to approve drilling because we would control the safety and environmental concerns.
I'm not going to track it down now but several years ago Michigan Capitol Confidential had a story with quotes from the EPA stating that horizontal drilling under the great lakes could be made completely safe by things like situating the drill sites back 1000 feet from the lake.
-
What it comes down to is the lakes are off limits because places like California, Kentucky, and Utah get a vote. I'm not picking on those particular states, just pointing out that states with no stake in the great lakes get a vote when it should be up to those of us who actually live here. In short we can't drill there because of anti federalism.
Nobody is a better protector of the lakes than those of us who actually live here and that makes us the best to approve drilling because we would control the safety and environmental concerns.
I'm not going to track it down now but several years ago Michigan Capitol Confidential had a story with quotes from the EPA stating that horizontal drilling under the great lakes could be made completely safe by things like situating the drill sites back 1000 feet from the lake.
Who actually owns the mineral rights under the Great Lakes? Is it just the states or also the feds? In general, I prefer states to handle matters rather than the expanding federal government.
Stating that only the states who border the lakes should control things is hardly a good enough answer. Otherwise, you are advocating all rivers to be controlled by just states that have them in or alongside the state. But once again, there are many tributaries that flow into those rivers and lakes, so how do you handle that mishmash?
Don't make the mistake of castigating drilling as some evil enterprise as this country has drilled alongside oceans, rivers and lakes for over a hundred years. It is safe environmentally if handled correctly. Gee, even Gold Mines are hazards if idiots do not handle them correctly.
-
Who actually owns the mineral rights under the Great Lakes? Is it just the states or also the feds? In general, I prefer states to handle matters rather than the expanding federal government.
Stating that only the states who border the lakes should control things is hardly a good enough answer. Otherwise, you are advocating all rivers to be controlled by just states that have them in or alongside the state. But once again, there are many tributaries that flow into those rivers and lakes, so how do you handle that mishmash?
Don't make the mistake of castigating drilling as some evil enterprise as this country has drilled alongside oceans, rivers and lakes for over a hundred years. It is safe environmentally if handled correctly. Gee, even Gold Mines are hazards if idiots do not handle them correctly.
It think the ability of the Feds to regulate this comes from the fact that the waters are interstate in nature, and not solely within the purview of one State. That said, I fully believe that the States should be able to regulate their own industry, with the Federal Government only involved in the instance of interstate disputes (per the Constitution).
The industry has proven, that in ordinary practice oil and gas can be safely extracted without lasting damage to the environment.
-
Who actually owns the mineral rights under the Great Lakes? Is it just the states or also the feds? In general, I prefer states to handle matters rather than the expanding federal government.
Stating that only the states who border the lakes should control things is hardly a good enough answer. Otherwise, you are advocating all rivers to be controlled by just states that have them in or alongside the state. But once again, there are many tributaries that flow into those rivers and lakes, so how do you handle that mishmash?
Don't make the mistake of castigating drilling as some evil enterprise as this country has drilled alongside oceans, rivers and lakes for over a hundred years. It is safe environmentally if handled correctly. Gee, even Gold Mines are hazards if idiots do not handle them correctly.
Watersheds are well known from the largest increments like the Mississippi watershed down to the smallest like the River Raisin watershed where I live. I have no problem with states directly affected being the ones to make the decisions. Drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge would have been a done deal decades ago if Alaska alone had been making the decision.
When it comes to the great lakes there are obvious international concerns where the feds do have at least some interest but its important to note that Canada drills under the lakes already and there are several existing wells under American waters.
I will always err on the side of federalism because its what our nation was founded to be and because the states get most things done a lot faster and better than the feds.
-
Let the Great Lakes oil reserves sit untouched for now.
When the time comes (as it will, someday) when they're needed, they'll be drilled...
-
Let the Great Lakes oil reserves sit untouched for now.
When the time comes (as it will, someday) when they're needed, they'll be drilled...
Yup.
They make a nice strategic reserve.
-
Let the Great Lakes oil reserves sit untouched for now.
When the time comes (as it will, someday) when they're needed, they'll be drilled...
With that type of logic, we would have no drilling anywhere and be a 3rd world country.
Why should other states supply energy to someone with that attitude anyway?
-
Yup.
They make a nice strategic reserve.
Here in Michigan we already claim some of the gas as a reserve for ourselves
-
Here in Michigan we already claim some of the gas as a reserve for ourselves
Unsure what you mean by that.
Do you mean you have identified gas and keeping it in place for the future or did you identify it and are producing it?
I recall Michigan producing gas way before I entered the oil industry in the early 70s.
-
With that type of logic, we would have no drilling anywhere and be a 3rd world country.
Why should other states supply energy to someone with that attitude anyway?
Although not in the top ten oil producing states, Michigan definitely has an oil industry already:
(http://www.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/images/oil-and-gas-in-michigan-1999.JPEG)
-
Just not off the coast of Florida. The tourist industry is worth more.
-
Unsure what you mean by that.
Do you mean you have identified gas and keeping it in place for the future or did you identify it and are producing it?
I recall Michigan producing gas way before I entered the oil industry in the early 70s.
What I mean is that the state govt is claiming some of the gas under the state to be released in emergency situations. Natural gas is important to industry and farming. Releasing it into the market amid a serious price spike will help weather the storm. What I don't like hearing is people suggesting the feds can tell us that we can't hold it in reserve but the fed can.
Michigan has been producing natural gas on an industrial scale since the 1920s I believe. I remember reading a story about them building an interstate highway bridge here and had a gas blowout when they drove a piling into a gas pocket.
(https://i.imgur.com/RmHhgsn.png)
-
Just not off the coast of Florida. The tourist industry is worth more.
The belief that the tourist industry would disappear with oil platforms miles away from the shoreline in the federal waters is silly.
-
Although not in the top ten oil producing states, Michigan definitely has an oil industry already:
Every county in the lower peninsula has active oil and gas wells.
I don't know why but just last week they drilled on the same site near me where they drilled and put in the gas infrastructure a few years ago.
-
The belief that the tourist industry would disappear with oil platforms miles away from the shoreline in the federal waters is silly.
Scare tactics are the anti driller's stock in trade.
Here in Michigan the anti drillers have run ads showing offshore platforms like the Deepwater Horizon with the insinuation that it is what they want to do with the great lakes. Its not obviously but truth isn't in their vocabulary.
These are the same idiots who tried to prevent wastewater injection with horror stories about the water flashing over to steam and causing underground explosions. The anti drillers who came from Ann Arbor to panic the folks got mad at me for doing some research and asking relevant questions at township meetings. (The injection wells are about 1200 feet where the ambient rock temperatures are around 70 degrees)
-
Scare tactics are the anti driller's stock in trade.
Don't you know those offshore platforms, working for many decades, are the reason no one will get near the beach in Southern California.
-
Scare tactics are the anti driller's stock in trade.
Here in Michigan the anti drillers have run ads showing offshore platforms like the Deepwater Horizon with the insinuation that it is what they want to do with the great lakes. Its not obviously but truth isn't in their vocabulary.
These are the same idiots who tried to prevent wastewater injection with horror stories about the water flashing over to steam and causing underground explosions. The anti drillers who came from Ann Arbor to panic the folks got mad at me for doing some research and asking relevant questions at township meetings. (The injection wells are about 1200 feet where the ambient rock temperatures are around 70 degrees)
Be ready for them to give the downhole temperatures in degrees Kelvin...
Anything to make things look worse (which is why spills are reported in gallons instead of 42 gallon stock tank barrels--the standard measure of crude oil production and sale)
-
Be ready for them to give the downhole temperatures in degrees Kelvin...
Anything to make things look worse (which is why spills are reported in gallons instead of 42 gallon stock tank barrels--the standard measure of crude oil production and sale)
The antis saw what I was doing and were powerless to stop it. The best part was telling them that "I know this and I'm a high school drop out"
-
The antis saw what I was doing and were powerless to stop it. The best part was telling them that "I know this and I'm a high school drop out"
It is fun to be able to cut through the crap with simple facts which entirely refute their arguments. You even get to point out that you are just setting the record straight and inform your fellow citizens of reality. Your credibility goes up, theirs down. That simple.
-
It is fun to be able to cut through the crap with simple facts which entirely refute their arguments. You even get to point out that you are just setting the record straight and inform your fellow citizens of reality. Your credibility goes up, theirs down. That simple.
What I did was asked my neighbors in the meeting "Who knows the boiling point of water AT SEA LEVEL" and the antis realized that us ignernt hillbillies weren't so ignernt after all. Then I asked my neighbors what happened to the boiling point of water as the pressure drops vs what happens when the pressure rises. Then I asked the antis if they could tell me how much 1200 feet of rock weighs and what kind of pressure it creates and they didn't answer. I then passed around a geothermal temperature map of this area of the midwest showing the temperature at that depth to be around 70 degrees.
My neighbors were angry that the antis came from Ann Arbor so sure that we were a bunch of drooling morons afraid of angering the dirt gods or something.
-
What I did was asked my neighbors in the meeting "Who knows the boiling point of water AT SEA LEVEL" and the antis realized that us ignernt hillbillies weren't so ignernt after all. Then I asked my neighbors what happened to the boiling point of water as the pressure drops vs what happens when the pressure rises. Then I asked the antis if they could tell me how much 1200 feet of rock weighs and what kind of pressure it creates and they didn't answer. I then passed around a geothermal temperature map of this area of the midwest showing the temperature at that depth to be around 70 degrees.
My neighbors were angry that the antis came from Ann Arbor so sure that we were a bunch of drooling morons afraid of angering the dirt gods or something.
That's when you need someone in back to talk about throwing them in the volcano to appease the Fire god....just to see if they are aware there are no volcanoes in Michigan.
-
What I mean is that the state govt is claiming some of the gas under the state to be released in emergency situations. Natural gas is important to industry and farming. Releasing it into the market amid a serious price spike will help weather the storm. What I don't like hearing is people suggesting the feds can tell us that we can't hold it in reserve but the fed can.
Michigan has been producing natural gas on an industrial scale since the 1920s I believe. I remember reading a story about them building an interstate highway bridge here and had a gas blowout when they drove a piling into a gas pocket.
(https://i.imgur.com/RmHhgsn.png)
So the state controls some gas wells or storage that it can quickly open up if there is a natural gas spike?
First I heard of this. Do you know the volume of storage or delivery capacity here?
-
Just not off the coast of Florida. The tourist industry is worth more.
So people in Florida would rather go to the beach than to have electricity in their houses or drive their cars?
That's odd. Are you certain the beaches are worth that much?
-
What I mean is that the state govt is claiming some of the gas under the state to be released in emergency situations.
@Cripplecreek
Are you thinking of Natural Gas Storage? Natural Gas that has already be produced from a reservoir, gone through a Natural Gas Processing Plant removing liquids and other contaminants, then pumped back into the ground for storage?
-
@Cripplecreek
Are you thinking of Natural Gas Storage? Natural Gas that has already be produced from a reservoir, gone through a Natural Gas Processing Plant removing liquids and other contaminants, then pumped back into the ground for storage?
I believe they just locked in at a low price
-
I believe they just locked in at a low price
Locking in the price of something is not a guarantee that it can be delivered when needed.
One must have some physical mechanism to deliver that gas from a supplier to a purchaser. Supply must come from natural gas storage or a shut-in field and it must come at a high enough gas rate.
-
I believe they just locked in at a low price
If you can find a link, I would appreciate it. I haven't found anything searching.
The catch is Nat Gas from the well doesn't go straight to the distribution system.
Raw Nat Gas goes through initial separation to cut liquids, but is still to wet and typically too contaminated to sell. It will have CO, CO2, N2, H2S, water, NatGas liquids, etc that make it out of specification. It goes to a Gas Plant to get cleaned up, profitable liquids like Ethane, Butane, etc are sold separately. The NatGas, now at Pipeline Spec, goes into the transmission and distribution systems for end users.
It price spike times like the Northeast earlier this year are because of bottlenecks in the delivery system to the end user. The demand spikes due to temperature, or the supply crashes due to failure. In either case, any amount of gas as a reserve in a reservoir is of no help. It cannot get past the bottleneck to help supply demand.
-
I believe they just locked in at a low price
Perhaps this is what you are remembering?
http://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/0,4639,7-159-16385_59482-424546--,00.html#tab=Storage (http://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/0,4639,7-159-16385_59482-424546--,00.html#tab=Storage)
Michigan's gas storage is also useful as an alternative supply in an emergency. For example, in the spring of 1951, floods washed out a section of Michigan Wisconsin Pipeline Company's (now ANR Pipeline Company) pipeline in Kansas, shutting off its supply to Michigan for about a week. While it was being replaced, storage fields near Austin supplied Michigan's and Wisconsin's gas needs.
Michigan's storage also serves as a way of shifting summer supply to the winter. In the late 1940s demand for natural gas in Michigan grew faster than pipelines could be built to meet it. When a gas shortage occurred in Michigan in 1947, Consumers Energy (then Consumers Power) injected propane from 1,200 railroad tank cars into Michigan Gas Storage Company (then a new affiliated company) storage fields during the summer to prevent service interruptions the following winter.
All but two of Michigan's 55 storage fields were once producing fields. They are located throughout Michigan's lower peninsula. They were converted to storage (the first in 1941) by drilling more wells and building pipeline facilities and compressor stations. Unlike producing fields, gas storage fields are designed such that their entire production can be cycled in and out of the field each year. The geologic structures that make up storage fields in Michigan have a high porosity, which makes them among the best in North America.
-
Perhaps this is what you are remembering?
The geologic structures that make up storage fields in Michigan have a high porosity, which makes them among the best in North America.
These gas storage fields in Michigan are quite different than what we have down here along the Gulf Coast.
Among other things I was involved in during my industry days, I had to analyze gas storage in both places. The storage along the coast is mostly pretty simple as they are leeched-out salt domes where the gas is stored at essentially 100% porosity like a giant tank. They are pressured up with gas and emptied by nothing more than pressure cycles at tremendously high rates. One storage facility I am familiar with had a single well, stored 7 bcf of gas, and could be emptied with that one well in 7 days.
The ones in Michigan I reviewed are in fact old gas fields, but what makes them unique is they are water-drive reservoirs where the gas was watered out. After depletion, these fields are reinjected at high gas pressures. When the gas is needed, the gas is delivered without any decrease in pressure as the water drive maintains high pressure. It does take more wells and these wells produce at far less rates than the Gulf Coast variety where the 'reservoir' has infinite permeability.
Both cases require gas compression to create storage, but only the Gulf Coast needs significant gas injection to deliver it from storage.
The other item is that storage losses can be greater in the Michigan fields as some gas is invariably trapped with the gas and will not be ever produced as it remains residual.
-
These gas storage fields in Michigan are quite different than what we have down here along the Gulf Coast.
Actually, we have both. I helped expand several times a depleted Natural Gas Storage Facility on the SW side of Houston that was an old depleted field. At the end, we could withdraw 1.2 Billion cubic feet per day. The problem with the depleted field over the caverns is they pick up more water in the ground that has to be separated out before returning to the pipeline system.
Nationally, the fields are more than 10 times greater capacity than the caverns.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_stor_type_s1_m.htm (https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_stor_type_s1_m.htm)
But even in Texas, we have 3 times as much capacity in depleted fields than in caverns for natural gas storage.
http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/media/34566/gsd-gas-storage-report-062016.pdf (http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/media/34566/gsd-gas-storage-report-062016.pdf)
These days, I work at the "King" of cavern storage, Mont Belvieu, but that is mostly for Natural Gas Liquid storage.
http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-112/issue-6/speical-report-worldwide-gas-processing/what-s-at-mont-belvieu.html (http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-112/issue-6/speical-report-worldwide-gas-processing/what-s-at-mont-belvieu.html)
-
Actually, we have both. I helped expand several times a depleted Natural Gas Storage Facility on the SW side of Houston that was an old depleted field. At the end, we could withdraw 1.2 Billion cubic feet per day. The problem with the depleted field over the caverns is they pick up more water in the ground that has to be separated out before returning to the pipeline system.
Nationally, the fields are more than 10 times greater capacity than the caverns.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_stor_type_s1_m.htm (https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_stor_type_s1_m.htm)
But even in Texas, we have 3 times as much capacity in depleted fields than in caverns for natural gas storage.
http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/media/34566/gsd-gas-storage-report-062016.pdf (http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/media/34566/gsd-gas-storage-report-062016.pdf)
These days, I work at the "King" of cavern storage, Mont Belvieu, but that is mostly for Natural Gas Liquid storage.
http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-112/issue-6/speical-report-worldwide-gas-processing/what-s-at-mont-belvieu.html (http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-112/issue-6/speical-report-worldwide-gas-processing/what-s-at-mont-belvieu.html)
MY main emphasis was to differentiate between depletion drive storage and water drive storage, not between fields and man-created caverns.
The GC fields I am familiar with are mostly are also depletion drive fields, not water drive fields. As such, they operate more like the caverns ie pressure depletion, needing compressors, rather than the water drives which do not. In some ways they are better than caverns as they have a geologically-made 'seal' which prevent escape of stored gas; in other ways, they are not as good as they do not have infinite permeability so must have more wells to both inject gas and to produce it.