Sleepless in Midland

FERC is inviting comments on whether to publicize names of utilities that violated rules to protect power grid against cyber attacks

Should we know which utilities haven't complied with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rules regarding protecting grids against cyber and other attacks?

Turns out the agency has received a number of FOIA requests for the names, so it's inviting public comments. If exposing the foot draggers in public will spur them to take the necessary actions to protect their power customers from the nightmare of a blackout resulting from sabotage, then do it.

Some helpful links:

Comments Sought on FERC/NERC Staff White Paper on CIP Standards Notices of Penalties
Regulator Weighs Disclosing Names of Utilities That Violate Grid Security Rules
NERC Coverup Investigation Report

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1:59 PM 9/8/2019

Finally, some potentially good news about EMP protection

The prospect of an electromagnetic pulse attack has kept anyone who read William R. Forstchen's book, "One Second After" nervous for almost a decade. And those of us who hoped the people in charge would ramp up protection were left in the dark, so to speak.

But president Trump was prescient enough to issue an executive order that might stimulate those people who could actually make a difference. See Trump orders historic plan to thwart EMP, warns attack would be ‘debilitating’ from earlier this year.

The Electric Power Research Institute issued a report in April that suggested an EMP attack might result in as much damage as had been predicted.

But some steps could be taken to minimize the problems. The article Scientists Are Zapping Fake Electrical Grids to Help Us Survive an EMP Attack tells us some of the ways they might do it. Here's an excerpt:

The results showed that although some parts of power lines and transformer equipment were damaged by the pulses, they weren’t as drastically affected as some predictions presumed. And with the control houses, some structures held up better than others — namely the ones made with mostly metal, not concrete. The conductive qualities of metal make the control house act like a Faraday Cage, absorbing and dissipating the incoming energy so none reaches the electronics inside. While the modern-day metal control house designs weren’t totally EMP-proof, they did have better shielding qualities than their concrete counterparts.

The concept of a Faraday Cage has been with us for a long time. And if protecting the control houses actually works, then more power to them. But, it's probably too soon to stop worrying, especially with since cyber attacks would be so much simpler for an adversary to pull off.

P.S. That EPRI report is not without serious criticism. See EPRI EMP Report: Selling Snake Oil to America.

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4:33 PM 9/6/2019

Oil companies give natural gas away -- wsj

The Wall Street Journal gives us this headline in the print edition: "Companies Give Away Shale Gas In Texas." Online, it's In Booming Oilfield, Natural Gas Can Be Free. (Alternate link.) Here's a three paragraph excerpt that sums it up:

American energy companies have spent billions of dollars in the past decade exploring for natural gas. But in parts of Texas and New Mexico, there is now so much of it that it is sometimes worthless. Some companies have even had to pay buyers to take it away.

Shale drillers in the Permian Basin are producing vast amounts of gas as a byproduct of prospecting for oil. But there aren’t enough pipelines to take all the gas to market, causing some of it to become landlocked, and sending local prices into free fall.

Gas prices in parts of the prolific region hovered near zero last month and some trades went negative, to as low as a negative 25 cents per million British thermal units, according to S&P Global Platts. The price-reporting agency said it was the first time on record that gas traded for less than zero at the Waha hub in West Texas. While prices have since ticked up, averaging $1.68 per million British thermal units for the four weeks through Dec. 21, that is still 40% of the $4.20 per million British thermal units that gas has fetched in that time at the main U.S. benchmark, Henry Hub in Louisiana.

Wow! Paying customers to take the product -- that's no way to make a buck.

If only the utility companies that use natural gas to produce energy would pass their savings on to their customers.

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2:35 PM 12/29/2018

Thank goodness for air conditioning and the system that keeps it running

A little storm front is angling from NW to SE in the western side of Texas as of the time of this writing. And temps are slightly lower than they've been for the past few weeks in which the daily highs exceeded 100F by several degrees.

In the history of Texas, air conditioning is a fairly new phenomenon. But what a difference it makes. Without air conditioning on a hot summer day the heat can occupy a person's entire attention.

In years past, over usage has caused system shutdowns, even without Russian hacking. Luckily, to date this summer our little region of Texas hasn't had a power outage, and that's with record setting electricity demand.

So, keep up the good work, energy workers! We're depending on you!

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1:52 PM 7/26/2018

President Trump, please just say no to alcohol, in gasoline

Conservatives and progressives can agree on this. Using corn based ethanol as a gasoline additive is a waste of resources. Conservatives don't like it because it's basically corporate welfare. Progressives don't like it because it doesn't improve the environment and adds to the cost of buying fuel.

But the ethanol lobby has a lot of clout. And they've got Donald Trump's ear. Too bad he’ll allow more ethanol sales to make farmers very happy.

Trump campaigned as a maverick, but in many ways he is a typical politician.

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2:20 PM 4/13/2018

Why isn't Mella McEwen getting wider coverage beyond Midland Reporter Telegram?

The morning paper -- online at MRT.com -- employs a very good reporter in the field of energy production. Here's an example of her good reporting: ‘Frac hits’ growing issue as infill drilling, frac stages rise. That's an article about how some new wells are being drilled so close to existing wells that they tap into the frac fluid that was injected into the nearby well. Maybe that should have been common sense, but it was news to me.

The morning paper relies heavily on the Houston Chronicle for energy news. Both papers are owned by the Hearst corporation. So here's the question: Shouldn't it be the other way around, i.e., shouldn't the Houston Chronicle be using MRT's articles?

Well, we are out here in flyover country, even for other Texans. So I guess we are easy to ignore.

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1:03 PM 2/22/2018

Lawrence Wright provides a colorful word picture of the first gusher in a primer about the Texas oil industry

Lawrence Wright did the historical research and brings it up to date for readers of The New Yorker. Read it at The Dark Bounty of Texas Oil. Here's a excerpt in the part about the early days with a colorful picture of the first gusher:

Around the turn of the twentieth century, near Beaumont—on the Gulf Coast, close to the Louisiana state line—there was a sulfurous hill called Sour Spring Mound. Natural gas was perpetually seeping to the surface, and schoolboys sometimes set the hill afire. Patillo Higgins, a disreputable local businessman who had lost an arm in a gunfight with a deputy sheriff, became convinced that oil was trapped below the mound. At the time, wells weren’t drilled; they were essentially pounded into the earth, using a heavy bit that was repeatedly lifted and dropped, chiselling its way through the strata. There was quicksand beneath Sour Spring Mound, and it confounded any attempt to bore a stable hole. Nevertheless, the persistent Higgins forecast that oil would be struck at a thousand feet beneath the surface—a figure he simply made up.

In 1898, Higgins hired a mining engineer, Captain Anthony F. Lucas, to help him dig wells at Sour Spring Mound. Lucas’s first effort delved only five hundred and seventy-five feet before the pipe collapsed. He decided to try a novel device called a rotary bit, which turned out to be more suitable for penetrating soft layers. The drillers at the site also discovered that by pumping mud down the hole a kind of concrete formed, which buttressed the sides. These innovations created the modern drilling industry.

Lucas and his team hoped to establish a well that could produce fifty barrels of oil a day. On January 10, 1901, at a thousand and twenty feet—almost precisely the depth predicted by Higgins’s wild guess—the well suddenly vomited mud, and then ejected six tons of drilling pipe clear over the top of the derrick. Nobody had seen anything like this, and it was terrifying. In the unnerving silence that followed, the drilling team, drenched in mud, crept back to the site and began cleaning up debris. Then they heard a roar from deep in the earth, from an era millions of years ago. More mud flew up, followed by rocks and gas and then by oil, which spouted a hundred and fifty feet into the air: a black fountain surging from the arterial wound that the drillers had made. It was the greatest oil discovery in history. For the next nine days, until the well was capped, the gusher spurted into the air a hundred thousand barrels of oil a day—an output that exceeded the production of all the other wells in America combined. After the first year of operation, the well, which Higgins named Spindletop, was producing seventeen million barrels a year.

It's a long article, and that was just a taste. The article published in the print edition of the January 1, 2018, issue was titled “The Glut Economy.” Apparently, they thought "The Dark Bounty of Texas Oil" would be more appealing to the web audience.

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3:04 PM 12/26/2017

Trump should eliminate ethanol gasoline requirement

It's encouraging that Trump is keeping his promise to trim back EPA regulations, e.g., his pledge to end the war on coal.

However, there's one promise Trump made that conservatives wish he hadn't made -- his pledge to keep the ethanol-in-gasoline requirement. And dammit, he did it. See Trump's agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, declares that 'ethanol is here to stay'.

Trump's renewable fuel goals favor ethanol industry.

And here's an interesting reaction. Increasing number of Americans are willing to drive farther, pay more for ethanol-free fuel. That article contains a link to pure-gas.org which purports to direct drivers to stations that sell gasoline without ethanol.

What's the harm in using gasohol? A casual web search suggests there's not a consensus. Many newer cars have been built to handle it. But the older vehicle owners might consider an additive along with a fill-up to prevent damage. The same holds true with small engines in mowers and boats.

Whether there's potential harm or not, the government should not be picking winners and losers.

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1:30 PM 10/10/2017

One good reason Putin wouldn't want Hillary as president after all

The spin these days is that Vlad Putin initiated the hacking of the DNC and the successful phishing and eventual publishing of John Podesta's emails. And the intent attributed to him by Democrats is that he wanted Donald Trump to be president. Maybe, maybe not. We've heard too much from them during the campaign to take Democrats or the msm seriously on matters that don't include irrefutable evidence.

Melissa O'Sullivan set forth a theory on why Putin would want Hillary Clinton to win -- Clinton's opposition to fossil fuel energy. Russia is a major producer, and the U.S. is a competitor. If the U.S. energy industry has it tough because the government is trying to stifle it any way it can, that's good for Russia in the world market. Therefore, Russia would prefer Clinton over Trump.

See The Fake-est of Fake News.

The last thing Putin wanted was for Alpha Male Trump to be prez-elect. Look at his picks- Tillerman from Exxon to be Sec State, Perry from Texas to be Sec Energy. Look at Trump’s rhetoric on the Dakota access pipeline. A Trump presidency means carbon based energy-friendly policies. In no way is this in Russia’s interest.

Drill baby drill.

Boom town man camps are dwindling away

Midland, Texas, one of the country's many oil boom towns, saw it population rise and unemployment rate drop over the past few years as the fracking boom brought workers in from around the country.

Inevitably, housing became short in supply as apartments filled and hotels and motels hung out their modern day equivalents of "No vacancy" signs.

So the oil companies moved into residential neighborhoods by leasing homes in which to house their workers. The city code enforcement office was probably flooded with complaints from long time residents seeking ways to rid their neighborhoods of these transient workers. And the police probably got their share of complaints about noisy shift workers letting off steam with tail gate parties in the driveways.

But the party's over. Now that the price of oil is half what it was at the peak and oil and gas exploration is declining, the workers are no longer needed. So the boom town man camps are drying up.

It's not just Midland. Bloomberg.com says it's happening throughout the oil producing areas. See The Oil Industry’s ‘Man Camps’ Are Dying. Excerpt:

America’s oilfield “man camps”—as the industry calls them—are turning into ghost towns as drillers cut back the free housing, food, and air travel once used to lure shale boom workers. The mini-settlements that sprang up throughout drilling regions in Texas, North Dakota, and Colorado are fading away as energy companies look to slash as much as $114 billion in spending this year, says a Cowen Group survey, and lay off tens of thousands of employees.

Post Script: The oil industry goes through periodic booms and busts. The cycle has repeated numerous times, and it will be repeated again. You can bank on it. In the next up cycle someone will inevitably say, "It's different this time." Don't you believe them.

Get corn out of our gasoline

Energy news has been dominated lately by the Keystone XL pipeline, the sharp decline in the price of oil, and the oil export ban. But there's another issue that should get some attention. That's the government's requirement that corn be put in our gasoline.

Environmental groups and the petroleum industry both oppose it. But corn farmers had the clout to get it placed into law. A re-do is long overdue.

Senators Toomey, Feinstein and Flake have co-sponsored Senate bill 577 to eliminate the Clean Air Act's mandate for corn in the gasoline we buy at the pump. Will they be successful? We have to hope so.

See: Corn, Scorn and Policy Porn -- Trigger warning -- there's no porn there,
Bill 577 status,
Toomey's press release,
Feinstein's press release.

The oil bubble has burst

Although no one could have predicted the exact date, the graphs showing meteoric oil production increases over the past few years were the handwriting on the wall. The law of supply and demand can't be repealed by wishful thinking.

Forbes paints an ugly picture:

Prof. Bill Gilmer of the University of Houston has crunched the numbers on some worst-case scenarios for Houston. Assume an average 33% reduction in oil company capital spending this year, followed by 5% growth in 2016. That, figures Gilmer, would result in the loss of 75,000 Houston jobs. This would be an enormous shock considering that Houston has added 100,000 new jobs every year since 2011.

And it’s not just Houston. In North America, Midland, San Antonio, Sweetwater, Oklahoma City, Williston, Pittsburgh, Alberta, Mexico City, and even Bakersfield, Calif. will feel the pain. The layoffs have started, with about 15,000 cuts announced so far from the likes of Shell, BP , Pemex, Halliburton HAL +0.13%, Suncor and more (full list compiled at the end of this piece) and they will only get worse.

The oil and gas business is cyclical, and the cycles are long. We appear to have entered the downside of this particular cycle.

How to solve the West Texas Prairie Chicken problem

Radical environmentalist have wanted to shut down the fossil fuel industry in the U.S. for years. And one incremental approach to their goal is to find some critter living on oil rich land and try to get it declared endangered or at least threatened. The Lesser Prairie Chicken falls in that category.

Well, here's a solution. Sell the little birds to the state of Illinois. Prairie Chickens are endangered in Illinois, so the state has been flying them by plane from Kansas to Illinois. The Illinois Watchdog says this:

“Illinois is the Prairie State and prairie chickens are an endangered species here, so we thought it would be a good idea to bring them back,” said Scott Simpson, site manager for Prairie Ridge State Natural Area in Newton, Ill.

The feds are chipping in $337,000 toward the program and the state will pay $117,000. Some of the cost to state government may be offset by private fundraising done by the Audubon Society, Simpson said.

That puts the total cost of the program at $455,000 for the next three years. ...

So far this year, the state has relocated 50 cocks and 41 hens. That puts the cost of the program at $1,166 per bird.

There you go. If they'll pay the freight, let them have the West Texas prairie chickens. The birds get relocated out of this drought stricken god forsaken region, and the oil industry gets to stay in business. It's win win.

Via Moonbattery.com.

What is a "meteoric" rise?

A meteoroid is a small solid object traveling through space. One that enters the earth's atmosphere loses its "oid" and becomes a meteor. Once a meteoroid enters the atmosphere the heat produced by the friction will give off a bright glow visible to the naked eye. And most burn up before striking the earth or exiting the atmosphere.

I'm no astronomer, I simply read the definition at this dictionary. But what brings this to the front is the headline in the morning paper:

New data show ‘meteoric’ rise of Texas oil.

And that makes one wonder just what a "meteoric rise" is. Oil production has certainly been climbing of late. But the metaphoric meteor is rather ominous. Most likely, the headline writer simply pulled up a newsy cliche without putting much thought into it.

But if she had thought it through, she might have envisioned a flaming meteor streaking toward the earth, visible for an instant, then either crashing into the earth or simply disappearing. Either way, the metaphor isn't very encouraging to people in the oil business.

Meanwhile, take a look a this chart. What does that look like?

It looks less like a meteor than a needle in search of a balloon.  Chart source.

Use CO2 to generate power in geothermal plants

This is interesting. Someone has come up with a proposal to use underground C02 storage sites for geothermal power. Here's the writeup at If We Can Bury Carbon Dioxide, Why Not Use It to Make Electricity? Excerpt:

In conventional geothermal plants, water and steam heated by hot rocks deep underground drive turbines in a power plant. The water is then pumped back underground to be heated up again.

The new technology would use carbon dioxide instead of water. This approach has several potential advantages. By eliminating the need for water, it increases the prospects for geothermal projects in dry areas. And computer simulations show that CO2 could produce twice the electricity from a given area that water produces, says Martin Saar, a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Minnesota. Saar is cofounder of Heat Mining, a company that plans to test this technology in a small power plant that it will build next year.

It's all based on computer simulations so far, and we saw how far astray those things led some people about global warming. But it just might work. Read the whole thing to see the pluses and minuses of the project.

Meanwhile, speaking of global warming, this is interesting, too: Study: El Nino caused half the global warming since 1970s.

Oil boom -- how long will it last?

Operators have been fracking wells for decades, but lately it's all the rage due to the advent of horizontal drilling and fracking's ability to crack open rocks saturated with oil and/or gas that wasn't previously obtainable.

But how steady is the production stream from a newly fracked well? There's the old analogy that pumping a bunch of stuff into a structure is like shaking up a bottle of hot classic Coke. Pop the top and it spews like old faithful. That sudden gush seems endless, but after the initial spurt the stream dwindles to nothing.

This comes to mind after reading a throw-away line from an abstract of Ed Yardeni's US Oil Production Is Gushing (excerpt). (Via blogs.wsj.com.) He says that America is still some distance from energy independence but that innovative entrepreneurs and new and old technology may make it possible. But here's the line:

The Naysayers say it won’t happen because much of the surge in production is attributable to fracking of old oil wells that deplete in a few months after they are tapped for a second time.

Is that true? All wells will deplete over time, and mature fields like those found in west Texas have produced for decades, albeit at a low rate. But if fracking has given them new life and Yardeni's naysayers are correct, the current west Texas oil boom will last only so long.