[timmac]

150 natural-gas fuel stations planned for America’s highways

DETROIT (July 26, 2011) — Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a company known for its work to promote natural gas transportation fuel use within the solid waste management industry, is developing a network of liquefied natural gas (LNG) fueling stations along major highways in the U.S.
Chesapeake Energy Corp., the nation’s second largest natural gas producer, is investing $150 million in Clean Energy to help fund creation of about 150 LNG truck fueling stations along major trucking corridors.

“With the advent of new natural gas truck engines well-suited for heavy-duty, over-the-road trucking, it is time to build America’s Natural Gas Highway,” Clean Energy CEO Andrew J. Littlefair said. “The investment by Chesapeake will help us accelerate the development of this important fueling network.”

Clean Energy already has been developing nine fueling stations along interstates and expects to add another 70 to that total during the next year. The remaining stations should be built within the next couple of years.

http://www.tirebusiness.com/subscriber/headlines2.phtml?cat=1204552929&headline=150+natural-gas+fuel+stations+planned+for+America%92s+highways&id=1311682462

[timmac]

One can also fill their car at home with natural gas, here's a link from PG&E talking about the filling stations they can install at your home.

http://www.pge.com/myhome/environment/pge/cleanair/naturalgasvehicles/fueling/

[ralfy]

Every time this happens, and it is happening around the world, peak oil is pushed further and further back. As the world converts to cng and lng for transportation, oil will come back down to
commodity pricing.

http://www.energybiz.com/article/11/01/ ... -discovery

I think the article refers to a century of meeting only Israel's needs.

For now, we can probably look at the IEA energy outlook chart which I think shows around a 9-pct increase in energy produced from oil and gas for the next twenty years or so. But if demand goes up by, say, 1.2 or 2 pct a year, esp. given increasing energy demand from countries like China, perhaps the rest of BRIC, and even emerging markets due to a growing global middle class....

[babystrangeloop]

Israel's been babbling since June 2010 about their vast natural gas supply. Months and months of chatter about it and what have they produced?

They've produced a lot of words. Too bad you can't convert words into electricity.

Maybe they will find a way to get some production coming out of Leviathan but the idea that this is a new discovery is so very wrong.

It's just the third (or fourth?) exploratory well to be sunk plus buckets of hype to raise the money to sink the test well. Previous test wells were unsuccessful.

Drilling to start on September 21
Cyprus mail Ltd. / August 12, 2011

NOBLE Energy Inc. is to begin exploratory drilling in Cyprus’ offshore Block 12 on 21 September, the state broadcaster reported last night. ...

... At the time of discovery, Leviathan was the largest find ever discovered in the under-explored area of the Mediterranean Sea and the largest discovery in the history of Noble Energy. ...

Talk about a qualified statement. Largest, er, in the Mediterranean Sea. Like the Mediterranean Sea is famous for having so much gas.

Plus the Cyprus mail Ltd. snarfed that quote out of Wikipedia.

Leviathan gas field
Wikipedia / scraped August 14, 2011

Discovery June 2010

Start of production 2015-2017 (expected)

At the time of discovery, the Leviathan gas field was the largest find ever discovered in the under-explored area of the Mediterranean Sea and the largest discovery in the history of Noble Energy.

And the wikipedia article is outdated (I just stamped it with a template this morning to indicate it was)

Everything about human knowledge of petroleum is lacking and poor. That's the fundamental reason we are dealing with peak oil just like a ship on a river going over the falls. Our leaders are like a bunch of cavemen in a spaceship pushing buttons at random now.

[rockdoc123]

Israel's been babbling since June 2010 about their vast natural gas supply. Months and months of chatter about it and what have they produced?

They've produced a lot of words. Too bad you can't convert words into electricity.

Its in deep water which requires delineation of the field prior to bringing it on stream. Deep water drilling though easier than it once was is still a challenge. It takes time.

It's just the third (or fourth?) exploratory well to be sunk plus buckets of hype to raise the money to sink the test well. Previous test wells were unsuccessful.

Not sure where you get your information on that but the wells drilled into the two main closures by Noble were all successful. There is a pretty high degree of confidence in the reserve estimate given the mappable nature of the closure and the reservoir continuity.

Talk about a qualified statement. Largest, er, in the Mediterranean Sea. Like the Mediterranean Sea is famous for having so much gas.

There is a lot of gas discovered offshore Egypt in the Nile Delta, something like 75 TCF of it of which Egypt produces 8 BCf/day.

Everything about human knowledge of petroleum is lacking and poor

That’s a bit much. What exactly is it we don’t know?

[babystrangeloop]

It's just the third (or fourth?) exploratory well to be sunk plus buckets of hype to raise the money to sink the test well. Previous test wells were unsuccessful.

Not sure where you get your information on that but the wells drilled into the two main closures by Noble were all successful. There is a pretty high degree of confidence in the reserve estimate given the mappable nature of the closure and the reservoir continuity.

Leviathan partners drop on TASE as Noble suspends drilling
By HILLEL KOREN AND GLOBES STAFF / April 3, 2011

The partners in the Leviathan drilling project showed lower prices for their Tel Aviv Stock Exchange-listed securities on Sunday, as trading resumed after being halted on Sunday morning following Noble Energy’s announcement on Friday that it had suspended drilling operations at the Leviathan 1 exploratory well. ...

Made up some excuse about the bore and never resumed drilling.

Where's all your information about their successes?

[vtsnowedin]

A couple of points on posts further back in the thread. Let's suppose that some discovery of Natural gas could provide a significant amount of world energy demand. Say in the neighborhood of five to ten percent of world consumption. Would this change the date of peak oil and the maximum daily production on that date.? I think the answer is yes. An available alternative would reduce demand for oil and the effort expended on exploring for it. This would have the effect of flattening Hebert's curve but it will not change the area under the curve representing total recoverable oil as that is fixed (assuming a limit to technological improvements to recovery rates) .
Then we have the old question of NG being an adequate substitute for crude oil, or not. As we are only talking five to ten percent of present oil consumption I think it is, as you can certainly use NG to build a fire to heat buildings or any other job where heat is what is required. Simply replacing all the heating oil burned each year to heat buildings would reduce the demand for oil greatly. Other conversions for trains and ocean going ships are certainly possible and much more practical then NG autos or jets but why worry about them as long as there is a house heated with #2 fuel oil?

[peeker01]

Yes, I'll concede to the flatting of Hubbert's curve. But is that what is at issue here? If
alternatives such as LNG, CNG, hydrogen, whatever, take the top 25% off the demand curve,
wala, you have oil prices reflective of the smelly, dirty, commodity it is and not diamonds or
gold. We are being extorted due to a perceived supply shortage. Kill the shortage and you kill
the speculators.

During the time that we create a surplus, technology will conquer deep and offshore drilling,
and it will be 200 years before this discussion is ever heard again on the internet.

[vtsnowedin]

whatever, take the top 25% off the demand curve, wala, you have
oil prices reflective of the smelly, dirty, commodity it is and not diamonds or gold. ....

25%??? Asking a lot aren't you. Alternatives will come in increments less then one percent and we will not have the time to adjust to the decline of oil.

extorted due to a perceived supply shortage.

Don't feel extorted! That hasn't even begun yet. Enjoy oil while it still is dirt cheap.

[ralfy]

Yes, I'll concede to the flatting of Hubbert's curve. But is that what is at issue here? If
alternatives such as LNG, CNG, hydrogen, whatever, take the top 25% off the demand curve,
wala, you have oil prices reflective of the smelly, dirty, commodity it is and not diamonds or
gold. We are being extorted due to a perceived supply shortage. Kill the shortage and you kill
the speculators.

During the time that we create a surplus, technology will conquer deep and offshore drilling,
and it will be 200 years before this discussion is ever heard again on the internet.

The curve is not "flatting" because of alternatives but because we are looking at aggregate info. Obviously, the curve for, say, a smaller data set will be much sharper.

What you should be looking for is not oil prices but oil production and energy demand. For example,

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailycha ... onsumption

In which case, the only way to "kill the shortage" is to put that "technology" that you are fantasizing about online and hope that issues like EROEI won't affect extraction. The more logical approach, of course, is to find more "easy oil," but that's not likely.

With that, if we don't hear this discussion two hundred years from now, it'll probably be because of other reasons.

[peeker01]

So Pop's......what effect do you suppose 10 million natural gas vehicles worldwide has
on world crude consumption. Increases it I suppose.

[rockdoc123]

NG is not a liquid petroleum mitigation,

some might argue GTL is a proven technology that is economic.
http://www.shell.com/home/content/aboutshell/our_strategy/major_projects_2/pearl/
http://www.sasol.com/sasol_internet/downloads/DeutscheBankSep03_1064304691262.pdf

Shell has just sold their first production from Pearl the GTL project in Qatar whereas Sasol is now at 200,000 bopd. Sasol has the longest history with the technology which they were forced to develop during the South African apartheid when they couldn't import oil from most countries. They have now signed at least 2 agreements in North America to convert shale gas that is some distance from markets into GTL that can be sold as a diesel substitute.

Obviously not a solution at this point in time but it could eventually be part of one.

[kublikhan]

Let me get this straight. Oil is far overpriced because of speculators. cng and lng are cheap alternatives that will kill the oil market. Yet in order to move just 10% of our oil use over to natural gas, Pickens needs huge multi billion dollar subsidies to make it happen. Huh? If oil is so overpriced why aren't people switching to cng and lng in droves already? You want to spend $9 billion in subsidies to lower our oil demand by 10%? For what? To postpone peak oil a few years? Sounds like a real ass backwards thing to do. If natural gas is so cheap and abundant as you claim, it should not need $9 billion in new subsidies, that's not counting the existing subsides oil and gas already get. I thought you were ripping on energy subsidies for renewable energy in various other threads. But yet here you are trumpeting Pickens plan to move vehicles over to natural gas. A plan that calls for massive subsidies and yet is not sustainable. Sounds like you have no problem with subsidies when they flow to fossil fuels, you only object to them when they flow to renewable energy.

Also, I don't get how you think the US lowering it's oil demand by 10% is going to have a major effect on peak oil. Unless you are somehow envisioning using 10x as much natural gas as Pickens proposed in his plan.

[Ferretlover]

Off topic posts deleted.

[rockdoc123]

As i pointed out Shell is now shipping GTL from their Qatar plant and Sasol has entered into arrangements in North America to convert shale gas to GTL.
EROI doesn't come into the equation simply because they are using natural gas to create a fuel (diesel) that is needed and can be sold at an economic profit. The gas can't be used as fuel on its own.
There are reasons why the technology hasn't caught on in the past. The process requires lots of facility design so companies are reticent to enter into projects until they are sure there is a market. Diesel demand in the past was never very high and prices were not that attractive. Now diesel demand in Europe, North America and Australia is quite strong. Sasol is targeting their projects on countries with strong diesel demand, high diesel prices and stranded or undervalued gas.

[peeker01]

I think you guys are making a huge mistake betting against technology and the good old US of A.
If Natgas isn't a total solution, and it might not, electric vehicles might indeed take another 10 percent of the transportation. GTL maybe another 10, biofuels maybe another 5, and on and on.

It's a fool's argument to say the world as we know it is going to end because of a decrease in
one type of energy.

[ian807]

It's a fool's argument to say the world as we know it is going to end because of a decrease in
one type of energy.

It's a fool's argument to say that the world as we know it is going to continue business as usual with a 160 exajoule decrease in one type of energy over the next 40 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil).

There. Fixed that for you.

Arithmetic. It's a good thing.