ENERGY MATTERS

For Wednesday science-technology day I return to the latest issue of Energy Matters, compiled by the American Energy Society.

• 
  India is not buying crude oil from Russia.  Politics?  No, cost.
• When the Ukraine War started, the West reduced imports from Russia, so India became the second largest purchaser, next to China.  Then this sudden drop.
• One reason is that freight costs have risen, plus petroleum is now cheaper from places like the UAE.

• 
  91% of the global economy has pledged to cut emissions to zero.  However, a lot of promises, but no action.
• That net zero pledge is supposedly for 2050.  Air travel will cripple that attempt.
• To begin, the U.N. climate science panel has said that man-made carbon dioxide emissions need to fall by about 45% by 2030 to limit warming to only 1.5 C (2.7 F).
• Some say planting more trees can help.  I say planting more trees will hurt.  Most analysts don't consider methane in their calculations, and no one looks at the ultimate term.  All the tree biomass converts eventually to carbon dioxide and methane.

• 
  The OPEC+ alliance will reduce crude oil production by 2 million barrels per day in November.
• This pissed off President Joe Biden.  He is worried this news will spook the market and hurt Democrats at the mid-terms.
• First of all, what is OPEC+?
• You know the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries as OPEC.
• In 2016, OPEC allied with other top non-OPEC nations to create OPEC+.
• OPEC+ has 90% of proven oil reserves and controls 50% of global oil supplies.
• 
  World can produce up to 100 million bbl/day,  and these are the leading countries in MBPD:
• #1  USA  11.2
• #2  Russia  10.1
• #3  Saudia Arabia  9.3
• #4  Canada  4.6
• #5  Iraq  4.1
• #6  China  4.0
• #7  UAE  3.1
• You wouldn't think these countries had any oil, but Israel (#96), Taiwan (#93), Japan (#80), France (#71), Cuba (#58), Germany (#54), Denmark (#49), Thailand (#35) and UK (#20) do produce oil.

• 
  Leading world consumers in MBPD:
• #1  USA  19.8
• #2  European Union 15.0
• #3  China  14.2
• ASEAN  6.2
• #3  India  5.3
• #4  Japan  3.8
• #5  Saudi Arabia  3.8
• #6  Russia  3.3
• #7  South Korea  2.8
• The graphic at the right is per capita oil consumption.
• The U.S. reserves of natural gas have INCREASED virtually every year since 2000.
• 
  Here are the most mentioned carbon dioxide removal (CDR) systems:
• Direct air capture.
• Biomass carbon removal/storage.
• Enhanced weathering.
• Ocean alkalinity enhancement.
• Terrestrial biomass sinking.
• Ocean biomass sinking.

• 
  How ironic can you get.  There is a carbon dioxide shortage.  CO2 is needed to make beer and soda.  The price of these beverages will increase because of this problem.
• It took a century for the U.S. to generate about 1,000,000 (1 terawatt or 1000 gigawatts) megawatts of utility-scale renewable energy electricity.  This same amount of NEW RENEWABLE POWER is waiting to connect to the grid!!!
• 
• A record 12,500 MW of new utility-scale PV capacity came online in 2021, bring the total to 51,300 MW across 44 states.
• Much of the below is probably beyond your ken...but:
• 90% of this capacity uses single-axis tracking.
• The median installed cost was $1.35/W (ac, or $1.02/W dc).
• The median capacity factor was 24%.
• LCOE fell to $27/MWh using the federal investment tax credit.
• At the end of 2021, there were at least 674,000 MW of utility solar power capacity, where 284,000 MW had battery storage.
• 

  Europe, which has around 3900 MW of geothermal energy systems, mostly in Iceland, has budgeted $7.4 billion to expand geothermal use, increasing heating capacity 58% by 2030.

Using the Inflation Reduction Act:

1. Tesla may move its planned battery manufacturing plant from Germany to the US.

2. First Solar, the largest solar manufacturer, may build another factory in the US.

3. Piedmont Lithium has plans to build a processing plant in Tennessee.

4. Qcells North America may build a solar manufacturing facility in north Texas.

5. Toyota North America may expand its electric battery facility in North Carolina.

6. Honda and LG Chem are teaming up to produce EV batteries in the US. 

• 
  State gasoline taxes range from 8.95 cents/gallon in Alaska to 65.1 cents/gal in California.
• In September of 2021 President Xi Jinping of China promised China would stop building coal power plants overseas.
• So far, 26 plants were canceled.
• 14 were completed.
• Another 27 will soon be finished, mostly in Asia.

Finally, from the New York Times this morning:

Why did the U.S. recover so quickly?  We don't depend on Russian oil and natural gas, and on March 31 this year President Joe Biden began accessing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).  He today announced the release of 15 million more barrels in December.  No doubt the mid-term elections nearly three weeks away had an influence, for just this bit of news has an affect.  He had earlier approved 150 million barrels.  Both Presidents Clinton and Obama also used this SPR release to ease gasoline prices around election time.  Gulf Coast salt caverns are the site of our SPR.

For those who forgot, the U.S. had gasoline lines in 1973 because of the first Middle East oil crisis.  Congress established the SPR in 1974, which reached a high of 726.6 million barrels in 2010.  We are now at around 450 million barrels, the lowest since 1984.

What has happened is that our shale oil production has become so significant that we no longer need to depend on OPEC oil  

• Remember, though, that shale means fracking, an environmental issue that has somehow today become almost a non-issue in the U.S. 
• 95% of all new oil drilling involves hydraulic fracturing.  
• Half of all oil in our country today comes from fracking, and two-thirds of natural gas.

Consider that in 2005, the U.S. imported 10.1 million barrels per day (BPD) of crude oil, of which 4.8 million BPD (~48%) came from OPEC. The SPR contained 685 million barrels. With the U.S. importing 10.1 million BPD of crude oil at that time, that was enough oil to cover 68 days of supply.

In 2021, the U.S. imported 6.1 million BPD, of which only 800,000 BPD came from OPEC. More importantly, a lot of that imported oil was refined and re-exported as finished products. Net imports of U.S. crude oil and finished products were actually -62,000 BPD (i.e., the U.S. was a net exporter).

-