Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster Japan has needed to find new power sources. This could be it and it is in their backyard. This could free up Japans stagnate economy because the cost would be so much cheaper and the money would stay in Japan. I need to know much more about how they extract the hydrates, how they process them and how they use them before I can say that this will be great for the rest of us.

http://theenergycollective.com/sbattaglia/200361/methane-hydrate-future-of-energy

Japan’s Methane Hydrates and the Future of Global Energy

Posted March 19, 2013

Authored by:

Sarah Battaglia

Sarah Battaglia has been one of the in-house Copywriters and the Social Media Specialist for Energy Curtailment Specialists since 2011.

All eyes are on Japan as they recently became the first country to successfully extract natural gas from methane hydrate deposits, commonly referred to as “flammable ice,” located nearly 900 feet below the seabed.  For a country that imports almost all of its energy, this discovery could be an incredible asset.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima Daichii disaster, Japan is in the process of moving away from nuclear power, and this new source of natural gas could be just the solution.  Spokesperson for the Japan Oil, Gas, & Metal National Corp. (JOGMEC) Takami Kawamoto stated, “Japan could finally have an energy source to call its own.”  The New York Times described methane hydrate as “a sherbet-like substance that can form when methane gas is trapped in ice below the seabed or underground.”  Even though it may resemble ice, it will burn when heated.  JOGMEC predicts at least 1.1 trillion cubic meters of this substance can be found in the eastern Nankai Trough located off the Pacific Coast.  That could be enough natural gas to last Japan 11 years!  Furthermore, an estimated 7 trillion cubic meters of “flammable ice” can be found throughout Japan’s waters, supplying natural gas for several decades.

When asked about the process, JOGMEC stated, “With specialized equipment, the team drilled into and then lowered the pressure in the undersea methane hydrate reserve, causing the methane and ice to separate.  It then piped the natural gas to the surface.”  The gas can also be attained by heating the solid methane hydrate, but this process uses a considerable amount of energy.

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Go there and read. More later.

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The insurgents who attacked the Algerian Natural Gas Plant have claimed victory but they were total failures. I am sorry that 40 people or less are dead. For the innocents anyway. Workers really just doing their jobs. But as far as I can see all of the attackers got wacked too. Ultimately I think their plan was to damage the plant and run off with the hostages and neither one of those things happened.  They probably lost many good weapons, many good explosive and many trained fighters. This was a dumb operation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/algeria/9816767/BP-Algeria-gas-plant-raid-co-ordinated-by-a-Canadian.html

BP Algeria gas plant raid ‘co-ordinated’ by a Canadian

The BP gas plant raid was “co-ordinated” by a Canadian terrorist and claimed the lives of at least 37 foreign hostages, the Algerian prime minister announced on Monday.

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Go there and read. More later.

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To be candid, most of the national organizations suck. They refuse to take local input and when they want something to happen because of a national agenda or a deal they have cut, they will shove it down your throat. Case in point, The Sierra Club and other Environmental Organizations with a base in Chicago want to rip high speed rail straight through Springfield with no consideration for the towns best interests for the path of that rail line. These guys are a little more sensitive to local issues.

http://www.edf.org/annual-reports/2011

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This has been so needed for so long. America pivots from gasoline to natural gas. When will we get over that to something that makes sense.

http://www.chron.com/business/article/Natural-gas-wins-place-as-oil-field-fuel-3900742.php

Natural gas wins place as oil field fuel

By Zain Shauk | Thursday, September 27, 2012

The biggest, baddest engines in the world, long chained to diesel fuel, are on the verge of a mass transformation because of cheap natural gas – with oil field equipment holding particular potential, executives said Thursday during a summit of heavy fuel users and producers.

“Here’s the first reason that large engines are going gas,” said JoelFeucht, director of gas engine strategy for Caterpillar’s energy and power systems division. “Large engines burn the most fuel. I could try to make it harder, but that’s pretty straightforward.”

Oil companies alone use nearly 1.2 billion gallons of diesel fuel a year just for pressure pumping equipment that supports hydraulic fracturing, said David Hill, vice president of natural gas economy operations for Encana Corp. Adding the diesel used to power drilling rigs themselves, the total is more than 2.8 billion gallons annually, said Pierce Dehring, a project engineer for Baker Hughes.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Come on. 4 refineries in a 4 state region are effected at the same times by “disasters” that would be easy to contrive. In 2 of the biggest markets in the country, the Great Lakes Region and California. Can that be an accident. Looks highly suspicious to me. One thing is for sure everybody is loving those rising gas prices besides the drivers and President Obama. Maybe that is what they are after, defeating Barack Obama and electing one of their own Mittens Romney.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/fire-is-latest-pollution-1494592.html

Fire is latest pollution problem at Chevron plant

By JASON DEAREN

The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — A massive Chevron oil refinery fire that sent hundreds of people rushing to hospitals and is pushing West Coast gas prices higher was just the latest pollution incident at the facility that records show has increasingly violated air quality rules over the past five years.

The refinery is one of three such facilities near San Francisco that rank among the state’s top 10 emitters of toxic chemicals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory.

Chevron’s Richmond refinery — the scene of Monday’s fire that shrouded the area in black smoke — has been cited by San Francisco Bay area regulators for violating air regulations 93 times in the past five years.

The number has increased from 15 violations in 2007 to 23 in both 2010 and 2011. The refinery is also the state’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to state regulators.

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Go there and read. State Fair starts today so I may be gone  for a couple of days. More tomorrow.

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That is the bitch about science. Over time it is always right. The Catholic Church was very slow to get this. RJ Reynolds eventually got it but it cost it billions. All of the asbestos people eventually got it too. But the Koch Brothers were just gona prove them wrong. I do not know whether it is endemic  to capitalism but this “prove them wrong” phase is what the space exploration crowd is experiencing the same thing right now. Call it the Buck Rogers phenomena but private companies will fail to develop space much like Climate Change needed to stop 30 years ago, 30 years from now the space people are going to be wondering what happened to their dreams…if any of us are still left alive.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/29/koch-funded-climate-scientist-i-was-wrong-humans-are-to-blame/

Koch-funded climate scientist: I was wrong, humans are to blame

By Jonathan Terbush
Sunday, July 29, 2012 14:16 EDT

The founder and director of a climate change study project funded heavily by the Koch brothers, who last year reversed course and said he believed global warming was real, has gone one step further, writing in a weekend op-ed in the New York Times that he is now convinced the phenomenon is caused by humans.

In a piece titled, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Richard A. Muller, a University of California, Berkley physicist who founded the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature study (BEST) wrote that his, “total turnaround, in such a short time,” was driven by a new report from the group that concluded for the first time that global warming is a man-made problem. That revelation brings Muller essentially full circle from his stance a few years ago, when he criticized other global warming studies as flawed and questioned whether the Earth was even warming abnormally, dangerously fast at all.

“Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted,” Muller wrote. “I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes.”

The BEST study, he wrote, found that the Earth had warmed by about two and a half degrees over the past 250 years, with the bulk of that spike occurring in the past 50 years. Moreover, he found that, “essentially all of this increase” was likely due to greenhouse gas emissions, a point climate change believers have accepted as fact for years.

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Go there and crow. More tomorrow.

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Yah right. That is so laughable. Even after they announced that they were going to try to bring 5 nuclear plants on line there were no commercial backers and so the price went up before they even started. It has been all downhill since then.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/news-guide-building-nuclear-power-plants-16750327#.T_2tBZGkNyU

News Guide: Nuclear Industry Facing Cost Pressures

Q: How many nuclear plants are under construction in the U.S.?

A: Three. Two nuclear reactors are being built at Plant Vogtle in eastern Georgia. Two more reactors are under construction at Plant Summer in central South Carolina. A fifth reactor mothballed in 1985 is being finished at Plant Watts Bar in Tennessee.

Q: How often are nuclear plants built?

A: The last nuclear plant built in the United States was the existing reactor finished at Watts Bar in 1996.

Q: How much does a nuclear plant cost?

A: Billions of dollars. Nuclear plants are among the most complicated and expensive infrastructure projects in the world. The plants require incredible amounts of design and engineering work and must be built to exacting safety standards. Federal inspectors can require that parts of the plant be ripped out and replaced if they don’t meet muster. The plants require huge amounts of metal, concrete, cables and wires. Building two Westinghouse Electric Co. AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle is supposed to cost roughly $14 billion, though the final expenses could be more.

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Go there and read the rest. More tomorrow.

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I do not normally boost someone else’s net contributions just because I think the author is cool. Had he not written about oil stocks I probably wouldn’t either, but it is the summer. Because I was getting alittle burnt out on all the serious blogging I have done for 5 years, I gave myself permission to post whatever I wanted too and boringly I have stuck to energy conservation, the residential market and all things environmental. So today is a really “what the hell” kinda day. Enjoy.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/708101-time-to-slide-into-oil-stocks

Time To Slide Into Oil Stocks

??By Mike Nadel

The last time I filled my car’s tank, I paid less than $3 a gallon. As my wife will attest, I was more than a little giddy. “Two-ninety-seven!?!? You gotta be kidding me!!! This is incredible!!!” Hey, we all have to find life’s little thrills wherever we can, right?

The price of crude oil, the source of gasoline, is determined by numerous factors: supply and demand, the Middle East unrest, natural and unnatural disasters, Wall Street speculators, economies in the U.S., Europe and emerging markets, etc.

Crude oil reached $110 per barrel on February 24 and was still over $100 per barrel two months later. It has been on a fairly steady decline since, hitting $80 per barrel on June 22 – its lowest level in two years – before rebounding into the mid-80s. So what’s next?

I certainly am no oil-price-trend expert… and even if I were, I wouldn’t listen to myself. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that alleged experts were predicting $5 gas by Memorial Day and maybe even $6 by the Fourth of July? Still, when it comes to forecasting oil prices, “Up” usually is a reasonable guess – especially after it has been down.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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I skip the light fandango.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-06/15/scottish-undersea-turbines

Technology

Largest tidal arrays in the world to be built in Scotland

Scotland will see the world’s largest tidal arrays constructed off its coast, as the first large-scale rollout of tidal energy generation.

A trial with one 30m turbine, the HS1000, anchored to the ocean floor in a fast-flowing channel near the Orkney Islands, raised one megawatt of electricity — enough to power around 500 homes. Now, Scottish Power is planning on building two farms of turbines off the Scottish coast.

The project at the Sound of Islay should hopefully generate 10MW, and then the later project off Duncansby Head (the most northeasterly point of Scotland) should generate around 95MW. While individual turbines have been trialled across the world, the arrays will be the largest of their kind, with local communities having their power provided by renewable tidal sources.

The turbines — built by Andritz Hydro Hammerfest, a Norwegian firm — represent a tricky engineering challenge. Considerations for wild plants and fish means that the blades can’t move too fast, and the turbines must be located in areas where there is a reliably fast current travelling at at least 2.5m/s (such as the Sound of Islay, a narrow passage between the Scottish mainland and the island of Jura).

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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How cool would the world be if we actually stopped raping the Earth and started responsible stewardship instead. But I am suspicious around humans, so we will just have to see.

http://www.wheels.ca/news/peak-oil-are-we-looking-at-it-all-wrong/

Peak oil: Are we looking at it all wrong?

By as early as 2015, global demand for oil will begin to decline, some scientists say. Not because we’ll have run out of the fossil fuel, but because we just won’t need as much of it.

Published May 31, 2012

I don’t know about you, but when I’m skimming around on the Web and I catch sight of the phrase “Scientists now say” or “Some analysts find” I usually just click right on by. Because that article is going to be a bummer. Those analysts will find that the U.S. educational system is actually removing knowledge from children’s minds, and those scientists will turn out to say that pizza consumption is related to early-onset dementia. So I keep going until I find something about psychic twins or a baby raised by goats.

But it’s a good thing I broke with tradition when I came to the New Scientist article “Dump the pump: When oil will lose its luster.” Guess what these scientists and analysts now find? You know that whole problem with oil, how eventually it’s going to run out and trigger a global depression and maybe a breakdown of civilization and is it really such a good idea to bring children into this crazy world? Well don’t sweat it, everything’s going to be totally fine. It’s all going to be one hundred percent a-okay.

All right, that might be a somewhat simplistic rendering of the argument. What the scientists and analysts are arguing – and presenting evidence for – is that although we’ve been worrying this whole time about peak oil supply, the operative force will actually be peak oil demand. Due to a variety of factors – the article focuses mainly on advances in automotive fuel efficiency – global demand for oil is only going to keep increasing for a few more years, after which it will begin to decline and will continue on a downward path.

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I just printed the premise. Go there and read the rest. More Next week.

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