Peak Oil News and Message Boards

We drive so little that we may never buy another car so it is probably moot for us.
On long trips we started renting a car back maybe in '05. Saves wear and tear, you can have something nicer than you normally drive and better mpg to boot. Won't work for everyone but I suspect more people will be like us in the future and not need to drive 35 miles a day.

Pops - Interesting proposition. Seems like EV's might be the logical progression as some speculate for the various reasons offered. But back to NG as a source compared to coal. But in the longer term (15+ years) what happens if NG prices and supplies push a switch back to coal? Texas wind power is holding back new coal-fired generation buildout here. But we ARE NOT shutting down the coal burners even as we switch to more NG.

So far on a national level the growth of new alt electrical generation is not impressive. NG is providing the big push away from coal...not the alts. And coal still provides about as much US electricity as NG.

I assume it is cheaper to switch from coal to NG than to build a whole new field of PV or wind plus storage

The cost of alts is coming down far faster than I would have guessed. Still, building out alts plus storage is going to be hard.

Another 15 or 20 years is going to give some perspective on GW and that will make a difference. I kinda think the most likely thing when the rubber isn't meeting the road will be some kind of nukes.

Pops - The Texas plants I know of have two separate sets of burners: lignite and NG. So no cost to switch. But have read that adding NG burners to a coal plant essentially cost the same as building a new one except for the generators. But that requires connecting the new turbines to the generators...not cheap but not a deal killer...I think.

But then there's the cost of connecting to the grid. If the solar is too distant then a big cost factor: like the $7 BILLION in tax payer monies Texas citizens paid to upgrad our grid to handle the new wind power supply.

But even with that support some cities, like Austin, voted to pay higher initial rates as more incentive for the infrastructure buildout. As I've said before the most doable path IMHO is with govt, industry, utility and tax payer joint cooperation.

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While it is possible to retrofit gas as a fuel instead of coal in a steam turbine plant , it's really a crazy idea
it only make sense if there is non technical motivation such as regulations or taxes
the best way to generate electricity with gas is to use it straight in a turbine not unlike a jet engine ,
in fact jet engines have been used for this purpose for decades

gas is not as thermally powerful as coal , using the steam path get you a lower efficiency

Using gas to turn turbines, combined with downstream heat capture, is the basic premise behind the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine technology that currently touts 60%/62% efficiency in power generation.
In Pennsylvania alone, there are about 18 new natgas fueled power plants either coming online, being built, or in the proposal phase with cumulative output over 10,000 Mw. Many are being sited adjacent to coal burners to take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure.
In regards to transportation applications, the several Adsorbed Natural Gas breakthroughs announced this past year may prompt a more rapid adoption of CNG fueled vehicles way faster than most think ... commercial vehicles are already leading the way.
As sub 500 psi handling and - most crucially - storage, is now technically possible, the 50 million plus US households that are supplied with natgas could fill their vehicles at their own residences.
At a buck per GGE ( gallon of gas equivalent), less than $20 could propel a car for near 500 miles.
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you ...

Coffee - Glad to have some downstream knowledge here. Mucho thanks.

thanks for the info everyone, here's an article
http://www.power-eng.com/articles/print ... e-u-s.html

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@ pops , did read the article with great interest .

It mention the "hybrid " solution of using the new generation coal /boiler alongside the gas /turbine
that's a great concept , giving the benefit of both and excellent back up characteristics .

unfortunately , engineers and accountants have found the hard way that a dual design also often give you the worst of both

Good article Pops. And here's the basic problem with such predictions: "But by 2035, the agency anticipates natural gas will be the primary fuel for electricity generation." That's a consumption model which is fine but it has to be based upon a NG price model to some degree.

The problem that we might be able to generate a long term average NG price. But it's standard deviation over the last 15 to 20 years renders it less applicable. In the last 6 years it hung around $2 to $4.50 per MCF. But the prervious 6 years $4.50 to $12 per MCF. And the 6 years prior to that back to the lower range.

So they are predicting 15 years into the future that NG prices environmental concerns will push coal to the back burner, so to speak. LOL. I doubt they are assuming NG prices aren't going to run average 3X to 4X the current price. But no one has ever come close to CONSISTANTLY predicting NG prices more then a year or two out. I have zero confidence in any prediction more then 3 or 4 years into the future let alone 15 years.

If not for the boom in the Marcellus I have no doubt prices would be much higher today. But the rig count and new production stats clearly show that boom has ended. Just as the trend of consistanly decreasing NG imports over the last 6 years has now started to reverse itself. And if predicting future production volumes wasn't difficult enough they need to be integrated with our economic vitality over the next 15 years.

No model is any better then the accuracy of the major ASSUMPTIONS used to build the model.

The old Ass-U-Me problem, it always gets you in the neck LOL

Jim - Which is why I'm always much more interested is seeing a detailed list of assumptions needed to make every model. And then an explanation of the validity of each assumption. Without that info no model is of much importance to me.

We seem to have a lot of Natural Gas left to frack so I think running out won't happen for a few decades yet. Then again they are working on perfecting underground coal gassification whch produces combustable gas that works fine for fueling combined cycle gas turbine power systems without all the messy fly ash and clinker ash that come from mining coal and burning it as a fuel.

Sub - What...you missed the good ole days when we had Graeme to pick on? LOL.

"...Natural Gas left to frack so I think running out won't happen for a few decades yet.". We both know we'll never "run out" of oil or NG. The volume that many could afford will certainly decline. Just like every conventional oil or NG trend there are a finite number of unconventional locations at a particular price point. Higher prices...more locations. Lower prices (as we have today) then there will be fewer wells drilled (just as we have today). But just like we saw in 2008 and again starting 2 years ago the global economy can only sustain the high drilling motivating prices just so long.

But back to the question: what after NG? Easy answer: (A) coal; (B) alterative energy sources; and (C) a combination of A + B.

As far as the transportation side it's difficult to see coal sustaining the system IMHO. Short of some techno-miracle I don't see it scaling up to an economical meaningful size. But on the electrical generation side it might be the "bridge" to an alt electricity world. Unless, of course, the alts boom very massively very quickly. Which I wouldn't bet you lunch on happening. In the last 10 years look at the high price fossil fuel price periods and the political push for environmental reasons. And yet globally new alt energy gains during this period have been very weak. And now the lower
ff prices are offsetting some of the financial advantage of cheaper alt costs.

In 50 years or more maybe alts will have grown significantly. But I don't think the global economy can wait that long. Thus I see (C) as the more likely future path. I haven't researched the numbers but I would bet we have more proven Btu's of coal then oil and NG combined...maybe a great deal more. Just as we've seen every day since the beginning of the industrial revolution the world has used every energy source that was economicly available.

I see no reason to expect mankind to change.

Mmasters, this is what I was trying to describe with my earlier response here,
gasoline-to-ng-how-many-years-does-the-us-have-of-ng-t73195.html

If you folks have not seen pictures of Qatar's Pearl plant, the Google images offer impressive shots.

The varying Adsorbed Natural Gas breakthroughs in the last couple years is spurring furious efforts amongst competing companies to commercialize CNG in the American and Chinese marketplace.
Interesting times.

Pennsylvania DEP just released March production numbers the other day.
Big evolution in completions is obvious as 20/30 MMcfd flow rates for weeks (months?) are becoming routine.
5 well pad from Cabot, the King pad, has produced over 22 Bcf in less than 8 months online.
A new outfit, Travis Peak, just brought online it's very first well, a Utica up in Tioga county.
Online 21 days and over 258,000 MMcf already.
Shell has been developing Utica wells in Tioga for a few years now and only recently seems to produce consistent high producers.
A 3 well pad - the Gee - has been online under 5 months with the wells producing near 2 Bcf each.

Just reading up a bit on the - mostly new - phenomena of shipping liquefied ethane from US ports ( Morgan's Point and Marcus Hook).

Indian, European and Chinese companies have gone from zero to big-time bokoo capacity by building mini fleets of new, purposefully built ethane carriers to fuel their crackers.
All this seems to have happened in the blink of an eye, time wise, and bodes well for the high btu gas coming out of the shale areas.

Coffee - I actually noticed that some time ago an posted a short note here. That's when I discovered much (maybe most) "LNG" shipped from the east coast was ethane and not methane. And it wasn't being imported for heating but for the manufacturing industry. Maybe tonight I'll be able to research the global context. As I suspect many who see LNG automatically think of home heating/power generation by methane. I had been until I discovered who some of the Brit LNG importers were and what they were doing with it.