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Renewable Gas : A Network of Modellers

The development of Renewable Gas requires more and better cooperation and coordination between state and corporate actors than previously seen.

With Renewable Gas, we are not only dealing with operations in an often vertically-integrated energy sector, we are also networking with chemical engineers and the agricultural sector.

The range of potential material inputs for Renewable Gas include electrical power, water, biomass, waste gases and recycled solid waste.

Precise modelling of the contribution that Renewable Gas can and could play in the global economy will be near-nigh impossible, and yet modelling and projections must be done, to scope out scenarios and thereby build strategies.

Some of the organisations listed in this table (see below) have already started to add Renewable Gas in their outlooks, calculations, models and reviews.

We can expect to see more in this field in the very near future.

Table : A Selection of Energy and Chemical Process Modelling Organisations
Organisation Project Model Links


National Government and International Agencies
IEA
International Energy Agency

working with :-

OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development
WEO
World Energy Outlook
WEM
World Energy Model
https://www.iea.org/topics/world-energy-outlook

https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-model

WEB
World Energy Balances

a. Energy Balances of OECD Countries

b. Energy Balances of Non-OECD Countries

World Energy Statistics

a. Energy Statistics of OECD Countries

b. Energy Statistics of Non-OECD Countries
https://www.iea.org/subscribe-to-data-services/world-energy-balances-and-statistics
ETP
Energy Technology Perspectives
MoMo
Mobility Model
https://www.iea.org/topics/energy-technology-perspectives
WEI
World Energy Investment
https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2019
IEA-ETSAP
International Energy Agency
Energy Technology Systems Analysis Programme
MARKAL
MARKet ALlocation

TIMES
The Integrated MARKAL-EFOM System

https://iea-etsap.org/index.php/etsap-tools/model-generators/markal

https://iea-etsap.org/index.php/etsap-tools/model-generators/times
ICCT
International Council on Clean Transportation
Roadmap https://theicct.org/transportation-roadmap
EIA
United States Energy Information Administration
IEO
International Energy Outlook

AEO
Annual Energy Outlook (US only)

STEO
Short-Term Energy Outlook (US only)
NEMS
National Energy Modelling System
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/
UN
United Nations
IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
AR5
Fifth Assessment Report

WG I
Working Group 1
Chapter 12
Long-term Climate Change Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility

WG III
Working Group 3
Chapter 7
Energy Systems

SRES
Special Report on Emissions Scenarios
RCP
Representative Concentration Pathways

IAMs
Integrated Assessment Models

SSPs
Shared Socioeconomic Pathways
https://unfccc.int/topics/science/workstreams/cooperation-with-the-ipcc/the-fifth-assessment-report-of-the-ipcc

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-shared-socioeconomic-pathways-explore-future-climate-change

https://skepticalscience.com/rcp.php

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-08-26/explainer-the-high-emissions-rcp8-5-global-warming-scenario/
OPEC
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
WOO
World Oil Outlook

MOMR
Monthly Oil Market Report

ASB
Annual Statistical Bulletin
https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/publications/340.htm

https://woo.opec.org/pdf-download-es/index.php

https://woo.opec.org/pdf-download/

https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/publications/3049.htm

https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/publications/338.htm

https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/publications/202.htm
GECF
Gas Exporting Countries Forum
GGO
Global Gas Outlook 2040

ASB
Annual Statistical Bulletin

Global Gas Model https://www.gecf.org/insights/global-gas-outlook?d=2019&p=1

https://www.gecf.org/insights/annual-statistics-bulletin?d=2019&p=1
IIASA
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
GEA
Global Energy Assessment
MAGICC
Model for Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change

MESSAGE
Model for Energy Supply Systems and General Environmental impact
MESSAGE-Transport
MESSAGE-GLOBIOM
MESSAGE-MACRO

GAINS
Greenhouse Gas Air Pollution Interaction and Synergies

MEDEE-2
Energy Demand Model
https://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/Flagship-Projects/Global-Energy-Assessment/About/Home-GEA1.en.html

https://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/researchPrograms/Energy/MESSAGE-MAGICC.en.html
WEC
World Energy Council
World Energy Scenarios

“World Energy Scenarios : 2019 : Exploring Innovation Pathways to 2040”
World Energy Issues Model https://www.worldenergy.org/transition-toolkit/world-energy-scenarios

https://www.worldenergy.org/publications/entry/world-energy-scenarios-2019-european-regional-perspectives
WEF
World Economic Forum
The Global Future Council on Energy https://www.weforum.org/communities/the-future-of-energy
IRENA
International Renewable Energy Agency
“Advanced Biofuels : What Holds Them Back ?”

“Hydrogen : A renewable energy perspective”

“Future of Wind”

“Future of solar photovoltaic”
Global Energy Transformation Roadmap

REmap Renewable Energy Roadmaps

“Global energy transformation : A roapmap to 2050”

“Global energy transformation : The REmap transition pathway”

https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/Apr/Global-energy-transformation-A-roadmap-to-2050-2019Edition

https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/Apr/Global-energy-transformation-The-REmap-transition-pathway

https://www.irena.org/remap

https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/Nov/Advanced-biofuels-What-holds-them-back

https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/Sep/Hydrogen-A-renewable-energy-perspective

https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/Oct/Future-of-wind

https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/Nov/Future-of-Solar-Photovoltaic
JODI
Joint Organisations Data Initiative
JODI Oil

JODI Gas
JODI Oil World Database

JODI Gas World Database
https://www.jodidata.org/oil/

https://www.jodidata.org/gas/
EC
European Commission
The Energy Roadmap 2050 https://www.roadmap2050.eu/
EU
European Union
EU Reference Scenario 2016 : Energy, transport and GHG Emissions : trends to 2050 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/aed45f8e-63e3-47fb-9440-a0a14370f243/language-en
PBL
Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
IMAGE
Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment

TIMER

The Targets IMage Energy Regional Model

https://models.pbl.nl/image/index.php/Welcome_to_IMAGE_3.0_Documentation

https://models.pbl.nl/image/index.php/Energy_supply_and_demand

https://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/TheTargetsIMageEnergyRegionalTIMERModelTechnicalDocumentation
UK Government

BEIS
Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy

formerly :-
DECC
Department for Energy and Climate Change
2050 Pathways

The UK 2050 Calculator

The Global Calculator
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/2050-pathways-analysis

https://classic.2050.org.uk/pathways/11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111/primary_energy_chart/comparator/10111111111111110111111001111110111101101101110110111

https://tool.globalcalculator.org/globcalc.html?levers=22rfoe2e13be1111c2c2c1n31hfjdcef222hp233f211111fn2211111111/dashboard/en
World Bank Energy & Extractives Open Data Platform

Global Energy Statistical Yearbook
(with Enerdata)

Global Solar Atlas

Global Wind Atlas

Energy & Mining
https://energydata.info/

https://yearbook.enerdata.net/

https://globalsolaratlas.info/map

https://globalwindatlas.info/

https://data.worldbank.org/topic/energy-and-mining?view=chart


Non-Governmental Organisations
INRIC / Balaton Group
International Network of Resource Information Centers
The Limits to Growth

Limits to Growth : the 30 year update
World 3



World3/2004
https://www.balatongroup.org/
WRI
World Resources Institute
The World Resource Report

“Creating a Sustainable Food Future : A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People by 2050”
https://www.wri.org/our-work/project/world-resources-report/wrr

https://www.wri.org/our-work/topics/energy

https://www.wri.org/our-work/project/energy-access

https://www.wri.org/annualreport/2018-19/facing-worlds-biggest-challenges
CAT
Centre for
Alternative
Technology
Zero Carbon Britain :
Rising to the Climate Emergency
November 2019
https://www.cat.org.uk/info-resources/zero-carbon-britain/research-reports/zero-carbon-britain-rising-to-the-climate-emergency/
Global Carbon Project Global Carbon Budget https://www.poyry.com/news/articles/fully-decarbonising-europes-energy-system-2050
RFF
Resources for the Future
GEO
Global Energy Outlook
https://www.rff.org/geo/
C2ES
the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
https://www.c2es.org/event/pathways-to-2050-alternative-scenarios-for-decarbonizing-the-u-s-economy/
Practical Action PPEO
Poor Peoples’ Energy Outlook
TEA
Total Energy Access
https://practicalaction.org/poor-peoples-energy-outlook/


Oil & Gas (& Coal) and Electricity Corporations
BP
BP plc
Energy Outlook (annual)

Statistical Review of World Energy (annual)
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/energy-outlook.html

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
Shell
Royal Dutch Shell
Scenarios to 2050 World Energy Model

Global Supply Model

Global Energy Resources Database

https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/scenarios.html

https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/scenarios/shell-scenarios-energy-models/world-energy-model.html

https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/scenarios/shell-scenarios-energy-models/global-supply-model.html

https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/scenarios/shell-scenarios-energy-models/energy-resource-database.html
Shell Energy Transition Report https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/shell-energy-transition-report.html
Eni WOGR
World Oil, Gas and Renewables Review (annual)
https://www.eni.com/en_IT/investors/global-energy-scenarios.page

https://www.eni.com/en_IT/investors/global-energy-scenarios/world-oil-gas-review-eng.page

https://www.eni.com/en_IT/investors/global-energy-scenarios/world-gas-e-renewables-review-2019.page
World Energy Outlook https://www.eni.com/en_IT/investors/global-energy-scenarios/world-energy-outlook.page
ExxonMobil Outlook for Energy

“Outlook for Energy : A Perspective to 2040”
https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/Energy-and-environment/Looking-forward/Outlook-for-Energy

https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/Energy-and-environment/Looking-forward/Outlook-for-Energy/Outlook-for-Energy-A-perspective-to-2040
Equinor
(formerly Statoil)
Energy Perspectives https://www.equinor.com/en/how-and-why/energy-perspectives.html
Total “Total and the climate”

“Integrating Climate Into Our Strategy”

Infographics

https://www.total.com/en/dossiers/total-and-climate

https://www.sustainable-performance.total.com/en/total-releases-its-integrating-climate-our-strategy-report-2019

https://www.total.com/en/media/infographics
Engie “A World of Energy”

ally of :
Hydrogen Council
https://www.engie.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/worldofenergy_va_2017.pdf

https://documents.engie.com/publications/VA/A_world_of_energy_2015.pdf

https://hydrogeneurope.eu/member/engie
Vattenfall “Hydrogen, an important step towards independence from fossil fuels” https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/news–press-releases/newsroom/2019/hydrogen-an-important-step-towards-independence-from-fossil-fuels
Orsted “Ørsted and partners secure government funding for hydrogen project” https://orsted.com/en/Media/Newsroom/News/2019/08/Orsted-and-partners-secure-government-funding-for-hydrogen-project


Engineering Corporations
DNV GL Energy Transition Outlook
“A Global and Regional Forecast of the Energy Transition to 2050”
https://eto.dnvgl.com/2019/

https://eto.dnvgl.com/2018/

https://eto.dnvgl.com/2017/
Navigant Gas for Climate 2050
“A path to 2050”
https://www.gasforclimate2050.eu/

https://www.navigant.com/experience/energy/2018/gas-for-climate-2050
Poyry Fully decarbonising Europe’s energy system by 2050 (May 2018) https://www.poyry.com/news/articles/fully-decarbonising-europes-energy-system-2050


Management Consultancies
McKinsey & Company

MEI
McKinsey Energy Insights
Global Energy Perspective

Global Oil Supply and Demand Outlook to 2030
Global Oil Supply and Demand Outlook to 2035
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/oil-and-gas/our-insights/global-energy-perspective-2019

https://www.mckinsey.com/Industries/Oil-and-Gas/How-We-Help-Clients/Energy-Insights/Global-Oil-Supply-Demand-Outlook-to-2035
BCG
Boston Group Consulting
Global Energy Scenario Model https://www.bcg.com/de-de/industries/energy/power-utilities/global-energy-scenario-model.aspx
Bain & Company “Bain’s Global Energy Outlook : Energy Management in the Age of Disruptions” https://www.bain.com/industry-expertise/energy-and-natural-resources/
Deloitte Vision 2040 : Global scenarios for the oil and gas industry https://www2.deloitte.com/by/en/pages/energy-and-resources/articles/vision-2040.html
KPMG
Global Institute
Global Energy Perspective (annual)

Global Trends in Renewable Energy
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/oil-and-gas/our-insights/global-energy-perspective-2019
EY
Ernst & Young
Energy reimagined https://www.ey.com/en_gl/energy-reimagined


Data and Information Technology Markets
Enerdata

JRC Joint Research Centre European Union IPTS

UGA Université Grenoble Alpes
University of Grenoble
CNRS (Edden Laboratory)
World Energy Forecasts and Modelling POLES
Prospective Outlook on Long-term Energy System

MedPro
(adapted from MEDEE)
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/scientific-tool/poles-prospective-outlook-long-term-energy-systems

https://www.enerdata.net/solutions/forecasting-models.html

https://www.enerdata.net/solutions/poles-model.html

S&P Global Platts 2020 Outlook

UDI
WEPP
World Electric Power Plants Database
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/special-reports/oil/2020-outlook

https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/products-services/electric-power/world-electric-power-plants-database?xmlfile=chinaalert.xml
EnSys Integrated Global WORLD Model

RTEC
Refinery Technology Module
https://www.ensysenergy.com/world/

https://www.ensysenergy.com/files/ensysworld.pdf


Chemical Engineering
PSE gPROMS gPROMS
Model Builder
https://www.psenterprise.com/products/gproms/platform
Aspen Technology Aspen Plus
Aspen HYSYS
https://www.aspentech.com/en/products/engineering/aspen-plus

https://www.aspentech.com/products/engineering/aspen-hysys
Schneider Electric / AVEVA Pro-II/PROVISION

SimSci
PRO/II Process Engineering
https://sw.aveva.com/engineer-procure-construct/process-engineering-and-simulation/pro-ii-process-engineering
Batch Process Technologies inc. BATCHES https://bptechs.com/
ProSim
Process Simulation
ProSim https://www.prosim.net/en/index.php
BR&E
Bryan Research and Engineering, Inc.
ProMax https://bre.com/ProMax-New.aspx
Honeywell UniSim https://www.honeywellprocess.com/en-US/explore/products/advanced-applications/unisim/Pages/default.aspx
Chemstations ChemCAD https://www.chemstations.com/CHEMCAD/


Universities and Research Institutes
UKERC
United Kingdom Energy Research Centre
UKERC Energy 2050

“Energy 2050 – Making the Transition to a Secure Low-Carbon Energy System”
https://www.ukerc.ac.uk/programmes/flagship-projects/ukerc-energy-2050.html
MIT
Massachussetts Institute of Technology
The Future of… Studies

Food, Water and Energy Outlook
https://energy.mit.edu/research-type/future-of/

https://globalchange.mit.edu/publications/signature/2018-food-water-energy-climate-outlook
Stanford University EMF
Energy Modelling Forum
https://emf.stanford.edu/
OEAP
OpenEnergy Platform
Otto von Guericke University
openmod
Open Energy Modelling Initiative
PLEXOS Integrated Energy Model https://openenergy-platform.org/about/

https://openenergy-platform.org/factsheets/models/152/
PNNL
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

ITS
Institute of Transportation Studies

University of California, Davis

University of Maryland
GCAM
Global Change
Assessment
Model

https://www.globalchange.umd.edu/gcam/
UBA
Umwelt Bundes Amt
(German Environment Agency)

University of Iceland

Center of Environmental and Climate Research, Lund University Sweden
World6 https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/publikationen/the-world-model-development-the-integrated
PIK
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
REMIND
Regionalized Model of Investments and Development
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/research/transformation-pathways/models/remind
Energy Planning Research Group, Aalborg University, Denmark EnergyPLAN https://www.energyplan.eu/
GENI
Global Energy Network Institute
GMI
Global Model Index
https://www.geni.org/
GCI
Global Commons Institute
C&C
Contraction & Convergence
“Climate Truth & Reconciliation”
https://gci.org.uk/
IET
The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Transitioning to Hydrogen :
Assessing the engineering risks and uncertainties
https://www.theiet.org/impact-society/sectors/energy/energy-news/transitioning-to-hydrogen-assessing-the-engineering-risks-and-uncertainties/
Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland Internet of Energy Model https://neocarbonenergy.fi/internetofenergy/
NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
POWER Project Data Sets https://power.larc.nasa.gov/
Purdue University

Department of Agricultural Economics

Center for Global Trade Analysis
GTAP
Energy Research
https://www.gtap.agecon.purdue.edu/models/Energy/default.asp
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Clean Burn : Introduction and Objectives

From my studies, I conclude that humanity will continue to use gas energy fuels for a long time to come.

In that case, we need to know how to burn it cleanly, so I am starting a new phase of research and publication on this topic – “Clean Burn”.

Anybody is welcome to comment, feedback, review and contribute. It will all be Open Access.

Here is a draft version of the Introduction and Objectives.

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The United States of Energy Dependence

So, I’ve started reading again. I have spent much of my life reading. Sometimes, it feels like it’s almost like I will never, ever do anything else besides read; because I need to spend so much time reading. Even though I apply strong “meh” (try saying it) filters to the constant outpouring of human knowledge in printed form, batting away vast waterfalls of information that I just don’t have time to process, and that have little significance to my personal set of Important Developments, there is still so much to take in. I try to comprehend what is happening and changing, weigh the essence of new knowledge and data, and try to work from fundamentals out to the broad picture, so that I can keep my General Overview of Things updated.

Sadly, information does not come to me unadulterated by myth, or hopeless and inadequate ambition; in some cases, people absorb and utter things which are quite untrue sewn into the midst of the tapestry of their perfectly rational analysis. Trying to fillet these choking bones out of the good fish of their work can be hard. When I started to read “The Natural Gas Revolution : At the Pivot of the World’s Energy Future”, by Robert L. Kolb, published in 2014 by Pearson, I despaired. At first glance, he appears to have been sucked in, hook, line and sinker, into a narrative that has no basis in geological fact. However, as I continued to read, I realised that his first euphoric presentational premises may have been coloured by the political geography of his intended audience – that he was reflecting back to them what he thought they believed; but that slowly, after quite a few pages, he appeared to begin to sneak truth into his recount.

The dust cover starts with this magical thinking :-

“Thanks to stunning technological advances in natural gas exploration, the United States is about to become a reliable, consistent net exporter of energy. This is an extraordinary, completely unexpected transformation. What’s more, natural gas is about to transform the rest of the world as well – upending economic and political relationships that have lasted for generations.”

1.      Energy Independence

Let’s look first at “net exporter of energy”, with the help of a little data :-

(a)      USA Natural Gas Monthly Supply and Disposition Balance
Data 1973 to August 2017 (billion cubic feet)
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/NG_SUM_SNDM_S1_M.htm
Net Imports (billion cubic feet)
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9180us1m.htm

This certainly looks healthy enough. The USA both imports and exports Natural Gas and processed Natural Gas, and manufactured gases equivalent to Natural Gas, or chemical components of Natural Gas. It appears from this data, if considered in isolation, that the USA is moving rapidly towards its long-term political and economic goal of energy independence – at least as far as Natural Gas is concerned. However, the situation is not as rosy, or straightforward, as this data, in isolation, could imply.

(b)      USA Natural Gas Imports
Data 1973 to August 2017 (million cubic feet)
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_impc_s1_m.htm
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9100us2m.htm

This data shows that the great engine of the North American economy relies heavily on a Natural Gas trading relationship between the USA and Canada, and that the USA is in no way independent of this, and in fact, is highly dependent on Canada, and has lately become even more so :-

https://www.neb-one.gc.ca/nrg/sttstc/ntrlgs/rprt/ntrlgssmmr/2016/smmry2016-eng.html

This is shown graphically by the following chart :-

(c)      USA Import and Export of Natural Gas
https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/importsexports/annual/
Data to March 2017

Whilst Kolb may be warranted in some ways to be positive about Natural Gas energy independence – at least in terms of the whole of North America, and not just the USA – when it comes to other energy, the situation is not nearly so progressive :-



Yes ! Dependence on imports from OPEC has decreased ! But, hang on, now we’ve got dependence on imports from Canada – and a lot of that is nasty, icky tar sands oil. Not really a win.

(d)      USA Imports of Petroleum (and Other Liquids)

FAQs : “How much petroleum does the United States import and export ?” :-
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727&t=6
Imports from the World : Data to September 2017
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMUS1&f=M
Imports from OPEC : Data to September 2017
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMXX1&f=M
Imports from Canada : Data to September 2017
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMUSCA1&f=M

The United States of America cannot claim to be making significant progress towards energy independence in my view, judging on the basis of this data.

2.      No Surprise

Kolb seems to think that the rise in Natural Gas production in the USA is “extraordinary, completely unexpected”. This is really not true, as Presidents of the United States have been urging energy independence for many decades; and the technology of hydraulic fracturing, which is behind the massive increase in onshore Natural Gas production, has been in development for around the same length of time, and there have been top-level policies to support it.

There should also be no surprise that this Golden Age of Unconventional Gas – the “Shale Gale” – might end almost as soon as it started, so Kolb’s projection that recent upticks in Natural Gas production in the United States can cause the “upending economic and political relationships that have lasted for generations” is jumping the gun a little bit hastily. Whilst in the short term, the “Dash for Gas” (Mark II) may offer a little bit of political leverage on the world energy stage, it’s not going to be a permanent or lasting shift. The geology simply can’t support it – the shale gas plays will not last forever.

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Jumping off Mount Gideon

[Friends, I have suffered a little writer’s block, so I resolved to spark some creativity in myself by joining a little local writers group. The leader of the group suggested a title, I Googled the allegedly fictional location and found it existed, and that it was near a wind farm; and Google Maps led me to the rest of my research and inspiration for this piece. Caveat Lector : it’s fictional, even though a lot of it is factual. Also, it’s only a draft, but it needs to settle for a while before I can refine/sift it. ]

Jumping Off Mount Gideon [1]
by Jo Abbess
DRAFT

In the blue-green sun-kissed uplands, west of the sediment-spewing Chocolate River sprung at Petitcodiac village, and north of the shrunken Shepody Lake, its feeder tributaries re-engineered hundreds of years ago; north still of the shale flats jutting out into the Bay of Fundy, rises Mount Gideon, shrouded in managed native Canadian spruce, pine and fir. Part of the ranging, half-a-billion-year-old craton of the Caledonian Highlands of New Brunswick, it is solid ground, and its first European inhabitants must have been hardy. Looking up, the early settlers must have seen the once-bare hinterland looming over the mudstone and sandstone shoreline, with its steep gullied waterways carved by the receding pre-historic icesheets, and it must have been redolent of the mountainous “encampments of the just” [2] where the Biblical Gideon of the Book of Judges [3] trained his elite crack troops and plotted his revenge against the hordes of ravaging Midianites. The fur-trappers and gravel miners on the eve of the 18th Century built a community by the bay, and drove a winding road up through Mount Gideon’s ravines and over its heights, a byway long since eroded and erased and replaced by a functional forestry access track. Ethnic cleansing of the first-come Acadians in the summer of 1755 destroyed much of the larger settlements in the region of Chipoudy, henceforth anglicised to Shepody. Two groups of deportation vigilantes, originally tasked with taking prisoners, burned down the infrastructure and put to death those who hadn’t fled to the woods, and since that day, nobody really lives up on the mount, aside from the occasional lumberjack in his trailer home cached off New Ireland Road, and the odd temporary bivouac of touring hippy couples, en route from Hopewell Rocks to Laverty Falls on the Moosehorn Trail in the national park, via the Caledonia Gorge and Black Hole on the Upper Salmon River. These days there is no risk of social crisis, but an insidious slow-moving environmental crisis is underway. Streams falling from Mount Gideon, spider lines scratched on early parish maps, the West River and Beaver Brook, no longer flow year-round, and there’s very little freshwater locally, apart from a few scattered tarns, cradled in the impervious igneous, plutonic rock of the hinterland. Rainwater does support the timber plantations, for now, but drought and beetle are a rising threat, brought on by creeping climate change. Humans may no longer be setting fires, but Nature is, because human beings have interfered with the order of things.

Mount Gideon isn’t really a proper peak : from its summit it’s clear it’s only a local undulation like other protruding spine bones in the broad back of the hills. Its cap sprouts industrial woodland, planted in regular patterns visible from space, reached by gravel-bordered runnelled dirt track. The former ancient water courses that fall away sharply from the highest point on the weald are filled with perilously-rooted trees, leaning haphazardly out from the precipitous banks of the ravines. The plantations and roadside thickets obscure the view of Chignecto Bay and the strong-tided Minas Passage, where the tidal turbine energy project is still being developed. With no coastal horizon, this could be hundreds of kilometres from anywhere, in the centre of an endless Avalonian Terrane. A silvicultural and latterly agroforestry economy that grew from the wealth of wood eventually developed a dependence on fossil fuels, but what thin coal seams locally have long been exhausted, and the metamorphic mass underfoot salts no petroleum oil or gas beneath. Tanker ship and truck brought energy for tractor and homestead for decades, but seeing little future in the black stuff, local sparsely-populated Crown Land was designated for renewable energy. Just to the north of Mount Gideon lie the Kent Hills, a scene of contention and social protest when the wind farm was originally proposed. For some, wind turbines would mechanise the landscape, cause frequency vibration sickness, spark forest fires from glinting blades, induce mass migraine from flickering sweeps of metal. Windmills were seen as monsters, but sense prevailed, through the normal processes of local democracy and municipal authority, and even a wind farm expansion came about. It is true that engineering giants have cornered the market in the first development sweep of wind power – those hoping for small-scale, locally-owned new energy solutions to the carbon crisis have had to relent and accept that only big players have the economic power to kickstart new technologies at scale. There are some who suspect that the anti-turbine groups were sponsored secretly by the very firms who wanted to capitalise on the ensuing vacuum in local energy supply; and that this revolt went too far. There was speculation about sabotage when one of the wind turbine nacelles caught fire a while back and became a sneering viral internet sensation. When the shale gas 1970s extraction technology revival circus came to Nova Scotia, the wind power companies were thought to have been involved in the large protest campaign that resulted in a New Brunswick moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the coastal lowlands. The geology was anyways largely against an expansion in meaningful fossil fuel mining in the area, and the central Precarboniferous massif would have held no gas of any kind, so this was an easily-won regulation, especially considering the risks to the Chignecto Bay fisheries from mining pollution.

TransAlta, they of “Clean Power, Today and Tomorrow”, sensed an prime moment for expansion. They had already forged useful alliances with the local logging companies during the development of Kent Hills Wind Farm, and so they knew that planning issues could be overcome. However, they wanted to appease the remnant of anti-technologists, so they devised a creative social engagement plan. They invited energy and climate change activists from all over Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the rest of Quebec to organise a pro-wind power camp and festival on the top of Mount Gideon. The idea was to celebrate wind power in a creative and co-operative way. The Crown Land was clearcut of trees as the first stage of the wind farm expansion, so the location was ideal. To enable the festival to function, water was piped to the summit, teepees and yurts were erected, and a local food delivery firm was hired to supply. The ambition of the cultural committee was to create an open, welcoming space with plenty of local colour and entertainment, inviting visitors and the media to review plans for the new wind farm. The festival was an international Twitter success, and attracted many North American, European and even Australasian revellers, although a small anarchist group from the French national territory in St Pierre et Miquelon created a bit of a diplomatic incident by accidentally setting fire to some overhanging trees in a ravine during a hash-smoking party.

Unbeknownst to the festival committee, a small and dedicated group of activists used the cover of the camp to plan a Gideon-style resistance to the Energy East pipeline plan. TransCanada wanted to bring heavy tar sands oil, blended with American light petroleum condensate, east from Alberta. The recent history of onshore oil pipelines and rail consignments was not encouraging – major spills had already taken place – and several disastrous accidents, such as the derailment and fireball at Plaster Rock, where the freight was routed by track to Irving Refinery. The original Energy East plan was to bring oil to the Irving Oil Canaport facility at Saint John, but a proposal had been made to extend the pipeline to the Atlantic coast. The new route would have to either make its circuitous way through Moncton, or cross under the Bay of Fundy, in order to be routed to Canso on the eastern side of Nova Scotia. The Energy East pipeline was already being criticised because of its planned route near important waterways and sensitive ecological sites. And the activist group had discovered that TransCanada had contracted a site evaluation at Cape Enrage on the western shore of the bay. Land jutted out into the water from here, making it the shortest crossing point to Nova Scotia. To route a pipeline here would mean it would have to cross Fundy National Park, sensitive fish and bird wading areas on the marshes and mudflats of the Waterside and Little Ridge, and cross over into the Raven Head Wilderness Area.

Gideon’s campaign had succeeded because of three things. His army had been whittled down to a compact, focused, elite force; they had used the element of surprise, and they had used the power of the enemy against itself. The activist group decided on a high level of secrecy about their alliance, but part of their plan was very public. They were divided into three groups : the Wasps, the Eagles and the Hawks. The Wasps would be the hidden force. They would construct and test drones, jumping off Mount Gideon, and flown out at night down the old river gullies, their route hidden by the topography, to spy on the TransCanada surface works. The plan was that when they had had enough practice the team would be ready to do this on a regular basis in future. If TransCanada did start building a pipeline here, the Wasps would be able to come back periodically and transport mudballs by drone to drop in the area. These squidgy payloads of dirt would contain special cultures of bacteria, including methanogens, that produce methane and other volatile chemicals. The environmental monitoring teams at the site would pick up spikes in hydrocarbon emissions, and this would inevitably bring into question the integrity of the pipeline. The Eagles would start a nationwide campaign for legal assistance, asking for lawyers to work pro bono to countermand the Energy East pipeline route, deploying the most recent scientific research on the fossil fuel industry, and all the factors that compromise oil and gas infrastructure. The Hawks would develop relationships with major energy investors, such as pension funds and insurance firms, and use public relations to highlight the risks of fossil fuel energy development, given the risks of climate change and the geological depletion of high quality resources. Nobody should be mining tar sands – the dirtiest form of energy ever devised. If TransCanada wanted to pipeline poisonous, toxic, air-damaging, climate-changing gloop all across the pristine biomes of precious Canada, the Mount Gideon teams were going to resist it in every way possible.

What the Mount Gideon teams did not know, but we know now, was that some of the activists at the camp were actually employees of the New Brunswick dynasties Irving and McCain. These families and their firms had saved the post-Confederation economy of the Maritime Provinces in the 20th Century, through vertical integration. Internally, within the Irving conglomerate, many recognised that fossil fuels had a limited future, even though some of the firms were part of the tar sands oil pipeline project. They were intending to take full advantage of the suspension of the light oil export ban from the United States for the purpose of liquefying Canadian heavy oils to make a more acceptable consumer product, as well as being something that could actually flow through pipes. They had held secret negotiations between their forestry units and the McCain family farming businesses. Research done for the companies had revealed that synthetic, carbon-neutral gas could be made from wood, grains and grasses, and that this would appeal to potential investors more than tar sands projects. They realised that if the Energy East project failed, they could step in to fill the gap in the energy market with their own brand of biomass-sourced renewables. They calculated that the potential for Renewable Gas was an order of magnitude larger than that of wind power, so they stood to profit as low carbon energy gained in popularity. Once again, in energy, big business intended to succeed, but they needed to do so in a way that was not confrontational. What better than to have a bunch of activists direct attention away from carbon-heavy environmentally-damaging energy to allow your clean, green, lean solutions to emerge victorious and virtuous ?

Notes

[1] This is a fictional, marginally futuristic account, but contains a number of factual, current accuracies.
[2] Bible, Psalm 34
[3] Bible, Judges 6-8

Categories
Academic Freedom Energy Change

The Delta, The Ramp, The Stretch and The Duck #2

Because of the delta, or change, in temperature of the Earth’s surface, which is caused by global warming, changes in the climate have already been observed. If we do not want to risk dangerous climate change, we must transform the global energy system, a large cause of net greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. In order to keep pace with global warming, we need to change the global energy system at the same rate. Delta T for temperature, over time t, implies a delta E for energy, over a similar time period. We have to transform what we know about the rate of change of global warming into a plan of action to create an appropriate rate of change the global energy system.

Wind power is currently one of the fastest growing new energy investments, and in the next few decades, the rate of solar power capacity additions is likely to outpace it. Together, wind and solar power are likely to dominate new electricity generating capacity investments, even as first generation wind turbines start to need to be replaced. Bloomberg New Energy Finance project that the proportion of electricity generated from fossil fuels will soon peak and then decline.

A number of energy, engineering and industrial companies have published their strategies to focus on renewable energy supply and consumption. In addition, a number of nations have policies to promote and subsidise growing portfolios of renewable energy assets. The percentage of renewables in the world electricity generation mix is likely to rise sharply in the next few decades.

For all energy, not just electricity, and including traditional biomass, renewable energy provides almost 20% of current final energy demand (energy accounted at the point of final use). Note that nuclear power generation is only around 2.5% of the global total energy final demand. As of 2016, the proportion of the world’s total final energy demand met by renewable energy, apart from traditional biomass, is only around 2%, but this is rising sharply.

Can the world ramp up renewable energy supply fast enough to meet the demands of tackling climate change ? Many energy industry and energy organisation projections show a ramp in demand for primary energy – the energy that goes into the global energy system before losses. Coal, oil and Natural Gas are believed to continue to form a major part of the energy supply by many analysts, even where they have to continually revise their lacklustre projections for renewable energy.

Can we continue to direct investment capital into renewable energy ? Bloomberg New Energy Finance has been cautious in their position about renewable energy investment growth, for example, although one could say recent loss of growth in renewable energy spending could correlate with much cheaper prices – particularly for solar power installations.

Projections need to be taken seriously, but perhaps not too seriously. It is hard to know in advance which technologies will have a wide base of investment potential. For example, it seems highly probable that the electric vehicle market will start to have enormous growth; whereas a fast deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is not really something with a timetable.

Whatever precisely happens next, energy investment needs to continue to happen, and also, the profile of energy consumption and supply needs to alter. These changes can be split roughly into three scales : macroeconomic investment decisions; mesoeconomic network supply and demand profiles; and microeconomic demand decisions. Macroeconomic investment decisions are essentially decisions about which energy technologies to build, and strategies to finance them and run them. At this scale we get decisions about building new megawatt or gigawatt power plants, for example. Mesoeconomic issues centre on grids, both power grids and gas pipeline networks, and how to manage peaks and troughs in both supply and demand. If supply is variable, demand must become better managed, and energy storage must play its part. Microeconomic demand decisions are made by individual energy consumers on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour basis; and consumers need to be empowered to consume different kinds of energy at different times in order to optimise grid, network and energy storage systems.

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The Delta, The Ramp, The Stretch and The Duck #1

I gave a guest lecture at Birkbeck College, of the University of London on the evening of 22nd February 2017 in the evening, as part of the Energy and Climate Change module. I titled it, “Renewable Gas for Energy Storage : Scaling up the ‘Gas Battery’ to balance Wind and Solar Power and provide Low Carbon Heat and Transport”.

The basic concept is that since wind and solar power are variable in output, there has to be some support from other energy technologies. Some talk of batteries to store electrical energy as a chemical potential, and when they talk of batteries they think of large Lithium ion piles, or flow batteries, or other forms of liquid electrolyte with cathodes and anodes. When I talk about batteries, I think of electrical energy stored in the form of a gas. This gas battery doesn’t need expensive metal cathodes or anodes, and it doesn’t need an acid liquid electrolyte to operate. Gas that is synthesised from excess solar or wind power can be a fuel that can be used in chemical reactions, such as combustion, or burning, to generate electricity and heat when desired at some point in the future. It could be burned in a gas turbine, a gas boiler or a fuel cell, or in a vehicle engine. Or instead, a chemically inert gas can be stored under pressure, and this compressed gas can also be used to generate power on demand at a later date by harnessing energy from decompression. Another option would be holding a chemically reactive gas under pressure, allowing two stages of energy recovery.

As expected, the Birkbeck audience was very diverse, and had different social and educational backgrounds, and so there was little that could be assumed as common knowledge, especially since the topic was energy, which is normally only an interest for engineers, or at a stretch, economists.

I decided when preparing that I would attempt to use symbolism as a tool to build a narrative in the presentation. A bold move, perhaps, but I found it created an emblematic thread that ran through the slides quite nicely, and helped me tell the story. I used Mathematical and Physical notation, but I didn’t do any Mathematics or Physics.

I introduced the first concept : the Delta, or change. I explained this delta was not the same as a river delta, which gave me the excuse to show a fabulous night sky image of the Nile Delta taken from the International Space Station. I demonstrated the triangle shape that emerges from charting data that changes over time, and calculating its gradient, such as the temperature of the Earth’s surface.

I explained that the change in temperature of the Earth’s surface over the recent decades is an important metric to consider, not just in terms of scale, but in terms of speed. I showed that this rate of change appears in all the independent data sets.

I then went on to explain that the overall trend in the change in the temperature of the Earth’s surface is not the only phenomenon. Within regions, and within years and seasons, even between months and days, there are smaller scale changes that may not look like the overall delta. A lot of these changes give the appearance of cyclic phenomena, and they can have a periodicity of up to several decades, for example, “oscillations” in the oceans.

These discrete deltas and cycles could, to a casual observer, mask underlying trends, especially as the deltas can be larger than the trends; so climatologists look at a large set of measurements of all kinds, and have shown that some deltas are one way only, and are not cycling.

Teasing out the trends in all of the observations is a major enterprise that has been accomplished by thousands of scientists who have reported to the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, part of the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Fifth Assessment Report is the most comprehensive yet, and shows that global warming is almost certainly ramping up – in other words, global warming is getting faster, or accelerating.

Many projections for the future of temperature changes at the Earth’s surface have been done, with the overall view that temperatures are likely to carry on rising for hundreds of years without an aggressive approach to curtail net greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere – principally carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O).

From observations, it is clear that global warming causes climate change, and that the rate of temperature change is linked to the rate of climate change. In symbols, this reads : delta T for temperature over t for time leads to, or implies, a delta C for climate over t for time. The fact that global warming and its consequential climate change are able to continue worsening under the current emissions profile means that climate change is going to affect humanity for a long stretch. It also means that efforts to rein in emissions will also need to extend over time.

I finished this first section of my presentation by showing a list of what I call “Solution Principles” :-

1. Delays embed and extend the problem, making it harder to solve. So don’t delay.

2. Solve the problem at least as fast as creating it.

3. For maximum efficiency, minimum cost, and maximum speed, re-deploy agents of the problem in its solution.

In other words, make use of the existing energy, transport, agriculture, construction and chemical industries in approaching answers to the imperative to address global warming and climate change.

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JODI Oil and BP #7

I both love and loathe Geography at the same time. I squirm at the irregularities – not the Slartibartfastian squiggly coastlines – but the way that people of differing cultures, languages and political or religious adherences refuse to occupy territory neatly, and deny being categorised properly. Actually, no, that’s just a joke. I love diversity, and migration, and long may culture continue to evolve. I find the differing mental geographies of people intriguing – such as the rift between the climate change science community and those few shrill shills resisting climate change science; for some reason often the very same people ardently opposed to the deployment of renewable energy. How to communicate across psychological boundaries remains an ongoing pursuit that can be quite involving and rewarding sometimes, as the entrenched antis diminish in number, because of defections based on facts and logic. One day, I sense, sense will prevail, and that feels good.

So I like divergence and richness in culture, and I like the progress in communicating science. What I don’t like is trying to map things where there is so much temporal flux. The constantly rearranging list of Membership of the European Union, for one good and pertinent example; the disputes over territory names, sovereignty and belonginess. When it comes to Energy, things get even more difficult to map, as much data is proprietary (legally bound to a private corporation) or a matter of national security (so secret, not even the actual governments know it); or mythical (data invented on a whim, or guessed at, or out of date). And then you get Views – the different views of different organisations about which category of whatever whichever parties or materials belong to. In my struggle to try to understand petroleum crude oil production figures, I realised that different organiations have different ways of grouping countries, and even have different countries in similar-sounding groups.

So I decided that as a first step towards eliminating categorisation overlaps or omissions, I should establish my own geography which was flexible enough to accommodate the Views of others, and permit me to compare their data more knowingly. Here are my first versions :-

1. Country Regional Grouping
I have given up to three levels of geographical detail, and an alternative grouping for most of the main land masses. Here it is in Excel spreadsheet format (.XLS). And here it is as a Comma-Delimited text file (.CSV).

2. Country Regional Comparison
I have compared the definitions of territorial regions between the following organisations and agencies : JODI (Joint Organisations Data Initiative), BP plc (the international company formerly known as British Petroleum), OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), EIA (United States of America, Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration), IEA (International Energy Agency of the OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and the United Nations (UN). Here it is as an Excel spreadsheet (.XLS). And here it is as a Comma-Delimited text file (.CSV).

There are some differences. Surprisingly few, in fact, if you only consider countries with significant oil production. I did find quite a lot of spelling mistakes, however, even in documentation that I assume was partially machine-generated.

The result is that I can be fairly confident that if I separate out data for China, Mexico, Israel and Turkey and a few other less significant countries when I compare data sources, any large divergence in numbers will have to be down to the different ways that people count oil rather than the way they categorise territories.

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Academic Freedom Oil Change Peak Oil The Data The War on Error

JODI Oil and BP #6

This is my first attempt to reconcile the 2015 global oil production data from five different publicly available sources : JODI Oil, BP, OPEC, EIA and IEA, and truth be told, it’s ugly.

I can feel I’m going to need to redo every step, just in case I made an error in assumption or copying figures into my spreadsheet(s).

I’m also going to need to contact each of the agencies for one reason or another, in particular to request a country-by-country full breakdown of the data, as it is impossible in some cases to compare the regional country groupings used by each agency.

In order to do this comparison, it has been necessary to read the “fine print” in the data reports and database information from the agencies, to try to understand how each of them treats each territory it holds data for, and which geographical region it assigns to which data for each country. A couple of notes here should show how complicated it can get : for example, BP considers Mexico to be a part of “OECD Americas” and “North America”, but OPEC considers it to be in “OECD Americas” and “Latin America”; the EIA consider Estonia to be a part of “Eurasia” in recent data downloads, whereas BP considers it a part of “OECD Europe” in the Statistical Review of World Energy 2016; and OPEC includes data from Indonesia in its total of OPEC oil production for 2015 in the Annual Statistical Bulletin 2016, but Indonesia only rejoined OPEC on 1st January 2016.

Let me just explain the content of the results spreadsheet – available in .XLS Excel Spreadsheet format and .CSV Comma-Delimited Fields format.

1. JODI Oil Data
I downloaded this data in late May 2016, and ran it through a C programme to group the country data roughly according to the BP schema.

2. Missing JODI Data
Where country data was missing in JODI, I filled in the gaps by pulling out the figures from the EIA Crude Oil (including Lease Condensate) data. I chose this data set because a comparison of figures between JODI Oil and EIA for the United States showed they were close. This I call “Adjusted JODI” data.

3. Regrouped Adjusted JODI Data
I re-grouped the Adjusted JODI data to match the regional groupings of the other data sets – essentially pulling “OECD Asia Pacific” and “Other Asia” data into the same group.

4. OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin
I took the data for OPEC oil production from the OPEC ASB 2016 Table 3.5 and for the rest of the world from OPEC ASB 2016 Table 3.7. I then compared OPEC and JODI Oil data by subtracting the JODI data from the OPEC ASB data. Since some of the countries were not specifically named, and belonged to different regions in the JODI analysis, the results are not completely accurate. It was not possible to split “Eastern Europe and Eurasia” into “Europe” and “Eurasia” countries.

5. Adjusting OPEC ASB data for OPEC countries
The OPEC data for OPEC countries does not report Lease or Field Condensates in the main crude oil figures – these are lumped in with NGL figures, which also include NCF – non-conventional fossil fuels. The OPEC data for non-OPEC countries appears to include NCF in the main crude oil figures. The JODI Oil data do not appear to include NCF. So for the regions where there were significant NCF showing in the EIA data, I added these on to the JODI figures to permit a clearer comparison to the OPEC data.

6. IEA Oil Market Report (OMR)
I took the 2015 data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) OMR of 13 July 2016 and compared them to the Adjusted JODI data. The difference for the OPEC figure seemed very large, and this appeared to be because NCFs were included for the OPEC data, but not in the other figures. So I subtracted the OPEC NGLs figure from the IEA OPEC total, and instead added in the NGLs figure from the EIA data for the comparison with JODI.

7. EIA Data
I compared the Crude Oil plus Natural Gas Processing Liquids (NGPLs) data from EIA with JODI.

8. BP Data
I compared the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016 page 8 for oil production in thousands of barrels per day with the JODI data. I needed to move some of the countries between regions for the comparison, but this was not possible as they were not explicitly mentioned in the BP data – splitting “Europe and Eurasia” into “OECD Europe”, “Eurasia” (Former Soviet Union or FSU) and “Other Europe”.

My main conclusion so far is that anybody basing analysis on any of these data sets should be very wary. Some of the numbers look suspect. Also, the total production of hydrocarbons may be larger than previously, but it’s an apples and oranges problem : NGLs are not the same as crude oil, and cannot give the same amount of refined oil products.

In my next post, I’m going to explain all the acronyms I haven’t explained this time, and delve further into regional geography.

Categories
Academic Freedom The Data

JODI Oil and BP #5

Zeroes, man. Or as most computer scientists say, “It’s a null value problem.” Trying to tally the JODI Oil data with BP data, I encountered the “binary meaning of a zero” question – where you ask “is this really a zero value, or is it a missing value (or null) ?” Nulls are the bane of engineers and social scientists alike. Helpfully, JODI has provided a guide to trying to determine whether a zero is a null or a zero value, in the form of the download JODI-Oil monthly data availability by country (in Excel file) on the Data Downloads web page, but I found one or two problems when I looked into the actual data – where a data point is supposedly available, it is sometimes given as a zero. I also found that some of the totals given in the JODI Oil data were given as zeroes instead of proper values. I am going to report what I found to JODI, but in the meantime, I have improved my C programmes to read the JODI Oil data and produce reports similar to those found in the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

This time, I have reproduced page 8 from the 2016 BP Stat Rev based on JODI data and then calculated the difference for each value between the two versions. I have used conditional formatting in Excel to create a spectrum of cell background colours to highlight where the two data sets diverge. It seems clear that data problems for North America were fixed in one or other of these two data sources in 2009, but data for the Middle East are still quite divergent. Most of the countries in the Middle East are in the OPEC group, and according to various documents, their figures for crude oil production do not include NGLs – Natural Gas Liquids (or Natural Gas Plant Liquids), so I thought this was possibly where some of the divergence came from. So as an experiment, I looked up the OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin (ASB) for 2016 to get 2015 crude oil production data for OPEC countries from Table 3.6 “World crude oil production by country (1,000 b/d)” and found some agreement with the JODI Oil data. This was not a total surprise, as OPEC reports into the JODI group. JODI Oil however, is reporting significantly higher than OPEC for several key OPEC countries – so this will take some further investigation.

What this experiment confirms is that BP is probably reporting high for the Middle East because of the NGLs question. But the BP report is showing much higher values for crude oil production for the non-OPEC category as well, and only shows close agrement with JODI Oil for the European Union region and the OECD.

The NGLs question is hard to answer, because OPEC report NGLs for the OPEC group as a whole and not for each individual country. So now I have to go back to the EIA dataset for an independent data source to try to untangle this. I don’t know how independent any of these data sources are, though. They seem to rely on each others’ data reports in some cases, and their reporting cycles are staggered accordingly. OPEC has a table of monthly production from “secondary sources”, which presumably means companies or countries further upstream in oil production, which would also be reporting to JODI.

It looks like I have more to understand about oil production (and consumption) reporting before I can get on to world gas.

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JODI Oil and BP #4

In my seemingly futile and interminable quest to reconcile the differences between the data provided by the JODI Oil organisation and BP as revealed in part by the annual BP Statistical Review of World Energy, I have moved on to looking at production (primary supply), found a problem as regards Africa, and had some confirmation that a major adjustment in how the data is collected happened in 2009.

First – the problem with Africa. The basket “Other Africa” for oil production is far less in the BP data than it is in the JODI Oil data – shown by negative figures in the comparison. For 2015, this is approximately 65% in scale (-3800 KBD) of the summed positive difference between the BP and JODI figures for the named countries (5884 KBD). This reminds me that there was a problem with the refined oil product consumption figures for “Other Africa” as well. Without a detailed breakdown of individual country accounts from BP it is almost impossible to know where these differences arise, it seems to me, or begin to understand why these differences are so large. Maybe I should just ask BP for a full country breakdown – if they’d ever deign to communicate this kind of information with me. Standing by my email Inbox right now… Could be here some time…

It is fairly clear from the comparison for North America that a major shift in understanding by either BP or JODI Oil took place in 2009, as the oil production data converge significantly for that year onwards. There was similar evidence of this in the refined oil products consumption data.

As with the consumption data, the production data for the Middle East region is strongly divergent between BP and JODI. I did read something potentially useful in the JODI Oil Manual, which I would recommend everyone interested in energy data to read. In the notes for Crude Oil, I read : “One critical issue is whether the volumes of NGL, lease or field condensates and oils extracted from bituminous minerals are included. All organisations exclude NGL from crude oil. If condensates are able to be excluded, it should be noted to the JODI organisation(s) of which the country/economy is a member. Most OPEC member countries exclude condensates.” Now, I guess, the struggle will be to find some data on condensates. Of which there are a variety of sources and nomenclature, be they light liquid hydrocarbons from oil and gas production or oil and gas refining/processing/cryoprocessing. There may be faultlines of comprehension and categorisation, such as about who considers NGPL or Natural Gas Plant Liquids from Natural Gas processing plants to be in the category of NGLs – Natural Gas Liquids, and therefore effectively in the bucket of Crude Oil.

I’m no closer to any answers on why BP oil data doesn’t align with JODI Oil data. And it looks like I’ve just opened a whole can of condensate wormy questions.

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JODI Oil and BP #3

So after the mystery of why JODI Oil regional refinery products demand data (oil products consumption) is so different from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy for 2016, I took a look at the individual country data supplied by BP and compared it to the JODI Oil numbers.

The first thing that struck me was that there are many items of data that are very similar between the BP and JODI Oil data; and yet there are also a good number that are significantly different – and the vast majority of these show BP reporting much higher oil consumption than JODI. This means that the definitions that BP and JODI are using for oil products consumption must correlate in many cases, when countries make their reports. But it also means that there are some understandings of oil consumption that BP has that do not have cognates in the JODI Oil reports.

The second thing that struck me was that each region in BP apart from North America is showing a total much higher than JODI Oil. Only some of the countries are specifically named in the BP report, and other countries are lumped into the bucket of “Other” within each region. Each “Other” figure is much higher in the BP report than in the JODI Oil data. Part of the reason is clearly going to be because some countries have not been reporting to JODI Oil, or not reporting reliably. For example, for South and Central America, JODI Oil data for Bermuda, Cuba, El Salvador, Haiti and Suriname are all zeroes; and JODI Oil data for Bolivia has zeroes for NOV2015 and DEC2015 (other months average at 63 KBD). But these could all be expected to be low oil products producers; so it is unclear to me where BP thinks consumption is occurring outside of the individually-named countries.

The “Other Africa” line is much higher in BP than in JODI, which looks dubious. I have not looked at this closely, but this might relate to countries such as Nigeria who produce and also consume a lot of oil.

The most significant differences : countries where no JODI Oil data is available : Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Israel, Bangladesh, Pakistan; and also countries with medium-to-high BP oil consumption data compared to JODI : Brazil, Venezuela, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation, all the named Middle East countries, South Africa, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam.

It could be that in some cases the BP data is for all oil consumption – from national refineries and imports; whereas the JODI Oil data is for consumption from a nation’s own refinery. I would need to check this in more detail, but at first glance, the BP oil consumption data for the Middle East is much more divergent from the JODI Oil data than for other regions, and this does not make sense. I know that refinery product self-consumption is increasing in Middle East countries that are in strong economic development, but not all Middle East countries are experiencing increasing national demand, and I cannot imagine that oil products imports are so high in this region as to explain these differences between BP and JODI Oil data.

Another thing to note is that Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (formerly known as the “Former Soviet Union”) data divergence accounts for most of the data divergence in the “Europe & Eurasia” region; and that BP oil consumption data for the Russian Federation (which forms a part of CIS) is much higher than the data given to JODI.

I now have too many questions about how and from whom all this data is sourced, how categories of liquid hydrocarbons are delineated, and doubts about how anybody could check the reliability of any of this data. Without more information, I cannot analyse this data further; but maybe looking at oil consumption is not that illuminating. There appears to be a small and steady increase in annual oil demand and consumption over the recent period – this is indicated by both BP and JODI Oil data. The real issues for my analysis are whether oil production is capable of sustainably satisfying this demand-with-small-annual-increases, so my next step is to move to look at liquid hydrocarbons production data.

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JODI Oil and BP #2

Previously, I was comparing data from the annual BP Statistical Review of World Energy with the annual averages of JODI Oil data, and when I cast my eye over a table of differences, it was easy to spot that something happened in 2009 – the data from the two sources jumped to more closely correlate. For some countries and product types, if it didn’t happen in 2009, it happened in 2010; but since then some data lines have begun to diverge again. Either somebody was lying prior to 2009 (and by “lying”, I mean, making errors in reporting on hydrocarbon refinery), or something changed in the definitions of the sub-categories of hydrocarbon products from petrorefineries. At this stage, I cannot tell if the corrections were done by BP or by JODI Oil, but the corrections show a step change. This intrigued me, so, here follow a few diagrams and some summary notes.



The example of North America is dominated by a correction in the data for the United States of America (whether the correction was in the JODI Oil data, or in the BP data) for the “Others” category. Since 2009, the data lines have been coming progressively closer, until it seems they are reporting from either the same sources, or using the same industry data to base their calculations on.


Data from South and Central America as a whole is rather random when compared between BP and JODI – however there is a clear correction in the category “Others” in 2009, and perhaps a further correction to both “Light distillates” and “Others” in 2011. Since then, the trend is for BP and JODI data to diverge.




The 2009 correction for the “Europe and Eurasia” region (an artefact) is mainly due to the big correction for the European Union in 2009 for “Light distillates” and “Others”. The data for CIS undergoes a smaller correction, and this is in 2010, for “Fuel oil” and “Others”.


The “Others” category is also adjusted for the Middle East in 2009.


There are minor corrections in the data for Africa in both 2009 and 2010, and recently a large divergence for “Middle distillates”.




Asia Pacific data is corrected for “Light distillates”, “Middle distillates” and “Others” in 2009, reflecting corrections in both China and Japan data.




Corrections in 2009 for OECD data are the main reason for the differences between BP and JODI to snap shut; whilst Non-OECD data still remains divergent.

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JODI Oil and BP #1

Once a year BP plc publishes their Statistical Review of World Energy, as they have done for 65 years, now. Recent editions have been digital and anodyne, with lots of mini-analyses and charts and positive messages about the petroleum industry. Whenever energy researchers ask questions, they are invariably directed to take a look at the BP report, as it is considered trustworthy and sound. Good scientists always try to find alternative sources of data, but it can be hard comparing the BP Stat Rev with other numerical offerings, partly because of the general lack of drill-down in-depth figures. Two other reputable data sources are the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the JODI Oil initiative. I have already looked at EIA data and data from the National Energy Board (NEB) of Canada recently in order to check on the risks of Peak Oil. Now I’m diving into JODI.

Two of my concerns of the week are to try to understand the status and health of the global economy – which can be seen through the lens of overall consumption of hydrocarbons; and to see if there are changes happening in relative demand levels for the different kinds of hydrocarbons – as this could indicate a transition towards a lower carbon economy. The BP Stat Rev of June 2016 offers an interesting table on Page 13 – “Oil: Regional consumption – by product group”, which breaks down hydrocarbon demand into four main categories : Light distillates, Middle distillates, Fuel oil and Other. The “Other” category for BP includes LPG – Liquefied Petroleum Gases, a blend of mostly propane and butanes (carbon chain C3 and C4), which are gaseous and not liquid at normal room temperature and pressure – so strictly speaking aren’t actually oil. They also have different sources from various process units within petroleum refinery and Natural Gas processing plants. The “Other” category also includes refinery gas – mostly methane and ethane (carbon chain C1 and C2), and hydrogen (H2); and presumably fuel additives and improvers made from otherwise unwanted gubbins at the petrorefinery.

Not by coincidence, the JODI Oil database, in its Secondary data table, also offers a breakdown of hydrocarbon demand from refinery into categories almost analagous to the BP groupings – LPG, Gasoline, Naphtha, Kerosenes, Gas/Diesel oil, Fuel oil, and Other products; where LPG added to Other should be the same as BP’s “Other” category, Gasoline added to Naphtha should be equivalent to BP’s “Light distillates”; and Kerosenes added to Gas/Diesel oil should be analagous to BP’s “Middle distillates. So I set out to average the JODI Oil data, day-weighting the monthly data records, to see if I could replicate the BP Stat Rev Page 13.

Very few of the data points matched BP’s report. I suspect this is partly due to averaging issues – I expect BP has access to daily demand figures, (although I can’t be sure, and I don’t know their data sources); whereas the JODI Oil data is presented as monthly averages for daily demand. However, there are a lot of figures in the BP report that are high compared to the JODI Oil database. This can only partly be due to the fact that not all countries are reporting to JODI – four countries in the Commonwealth of Indepdendent States (CIS) – formerly known as “Former Soviet Union” – are not reporting, for example. I’m wondering if this over-reporting in the BP report might be due to differences in the way that stock transfers are handled – perhaps demand for refinery products that are intended for storage purposes rather than direct consumption is included in the BP data, but not in JODI – but at the moment I don’t have any relevant information with which to confirm or deny this concept.

Anyway, the data is very close between BP and JODI for the United States in recent years, and there are some other lines where there is some agreement (for example – Fuel oil in Japan, and Light distillates in China), so I am going to take this as an indication that I understand the JODI Oil data sufficiently well to be able to look at monthly refinery demand, refinery output and oil production for each region and hopefully reach some useful conclusions.

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Peak Oil Redux

Peak conventional crude petroleum oil production is apparently here already – the only thing that’s been growing global total liquids is North American unconventional oils : tight oil – which includes shale oil in the United States of America – and tar sands oil from bitumen in Canada – either refined into synthetic crude, or blended with other oils – both heavy and light.

But there’s a problem with unconventional oils – or rather several – but the key one is the commodity price of oil, which has been low for many months, and has caused unconventional oil producers to rein in their operations. It’s hitting conventional producers too. A quick check of Section 3 “Oil data : upstream” in OPEC’s 2016 Annual Statistical Bulletin shows a worrying number of negative 2014 to 2015 change values – for example “Active rigs by country”, “Wells completed in OPEC Members”, and “Producing wells in OPEC Members”.

But in the short term, it’s the loss of uneconomic unconventional oil production that will hit hardest. Besides problems with operational margins for all forms of unconventionals, exceptional air temperatures (should we mention global warming yet ?) in the northern part of North America have contributed to a seizure in Canadian tar sands oil production – because of extensive wildfires.

Here’s two charted summaries of the most recent data from the EIA on tight oil (which includes shale oil) and dry shale gas production in the United States – which is also suffering.

Once the drop in North American unconventionals begins to register in statistics for global total liquids production, some concern will probably be expressed. Peak Oil just might be sharper and harder and sooner than some people think.

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Brexit or Remain ? Evolving Political Realities

I have been looking at some of the finer details of the new BP report – the annual “Statistical Review of World Energy” for 2016. It’s a bit confusing trying to compare it to the 2015 report, to try to see how positions have changed, partly because of the evolving nature of territorial politics of the various countries and their membership of regional blocs. For example, in the 2015 report, the country that calls itself Eire was known as “Republic of Ireland”, but in the 2016 report it is referred to as “Ireland”; and the bloc that BP knew as “Former Soviet Union” is know labelled as “Commonwealth of Independent States”, which has lost Estonia to the European Union, and Georgia, Latvia and Lithuania to the region known as “Europe” – which is not the same as the European Union or OECD Europe. It’s going to take me a few weeks to analyse this report, and compare the data to that available from other sources, such as JODI Oil, which last reported on 20th June 2016.

In the meantime, the country known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – itself a regional bloc – could well vote to secede from the European Union, an Act which, if carried and enacted by the British Parliament, and overseen by whoever is Prime Minister, would consume all the working hours of all civil servants in all Departments of Government for many years. This would be the administrative spanner-in-the-works to beat all bureaucratic snarl-ups – the unpicking of the UK from the EU – as it would involve extensive and detailed work to rewrite and recode the entire British legislative corpus. There wouldn’t be any time left to actually govern the country, or support action on climate change.

But this is what the so-called “Eurosceptics” want – to hold up progress on climate change action. They are as much climate change science deniers as they are European Union-haters. In fact, leading science-denying politicians may have coerced the Prime Minister into agreeing to the EU Referendum in the first place. It really does matter how the UK voters act on 23rd June 2016 in the polling booths. If the UK votes to remain in the European Union, then the Energy Union will continue, and environmental legislation – including measures to combat climate change – will go ahead – bringing energy and climate security. If the UK votes to leave the European Union, where it plays a vital role, then ministers and civil servants will be locked into discussions attempting to negotiate the UK’s changed relationship with the EU for months and months to come. The government won’t be free to attend to policies to alleviate the effects of global recession on the country, or deal with managing immigration, creating employment, the need for building homes, or bailing out failing industry if they spend all their time over the next few years re-drafting laws to remove the effects of European Union from them. More importantly, the UK Government will be too busy undoing European Union to attend to responsibilities to keep to the UK’s Carbon Budget, or developing the renewable energy industries.

Vote Remain. For climate, for security, for society.

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New Hands on DECC

So, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have a new top dog – Alex Chisholm – formerly the attack beast in charge of putting pressure on the electricity utility companies over their pricing rip-offs when at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

There’s a huge and dirty intray awaiting this poor fellow, including the demonstrable failings of the Energy Act that’s just been signed into law. I’d recommend that he call for the immediate separation of the department into two distinct and individually funded business units : Nuclear and The Rest. Why ? Because nuclear power in the UK has nothing to do with answering the risk of climate change, despite some public relations type people trying to assert its “low carbon” status. Plus, the financial liabilities of the nuclear section of DECC mean it’s just going to bring the rest of the department down unless there’s a divorce.

The UK Government have been pursuing new fission nuclear power with reams of policy manoeuvres. The call for new nuclear power is basically a tautological argument centring on a proposal to transition to meet all energy demand by power generation resources, and the presumption of vastly increasing energy independence. If you want to convert all heating and cooling and transport to electricity, and you want to have few energy imports, then you will need to have a high level of new nuclear power. If new nuclear power can be built, it will generate on a consistent basis, and so, to gain the benefit of self-sufficiency, you will want to transfer all energy demand to electricity. Because you assume that you will have lots of new nuclear power, you need to have new nuclear power. It’s a tautology. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a sensible or even practical way to proceed.

DECC evolved mostly from the need to have a government department exclusively involved in the decommissioning of old nuclear power plants and the disposal of radioactive nuclear power plant waste and waste nuclear fuel. The still existing fleet of nuclear power plants is set to diminish as leaking, creaking, cracking and barely secure reactors and their unreliable steam generation equipment need to be shut down. At which point, this department will lose its cachet of being an energy provider and start to be merely an energy user and cash consumer – since there’s not enough money in the pot for essential decommissioning and disposal and DECC will need to go cap in hand to the UK Treasury for the next few decades to complete its core mission of nuclear decommissioning. It doesn’t take too much of a stretch of the imagination to figure out why this department will remain committed to the concept of new nuclear power. It would certainly justify the continuing existence of the department.

The flagship DECC-driven nuclear power project for Hinkley Point C has run aground on a number of sharp issues – including the apparent financial suicide of the companies set to build it, the probably illegal restructuring loans and subsidy arrangements that various governments have made, what appears to be the outright engineering incompetency of the main construction firm, and the sheer waste of money involved. It would be cheaper by around 50% to 70% to construct lots of new wind power and some backup gas-fired power generation plant – and could potentially be lower carbon in total – especially if the gas is manufactured low carbon gas.

In order to stand a chance of making any new low carbon energy investment in the UK, the Department of Energy and Climate Change needs to split – much like the banks have. The risky, nuclear stuff in one team, and the securely certainly advantageous renewable energy stuff in the other team. We will have more wind power, more solar power and more of lots of other renewables in the next 10 years. We are unlikely to see an increase in nuclear power generation in the UK for the next 15. It’s time to split these business units to protect our chances of successful energy investment.

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Sour Push

The exact chemistry of Natural Gas as it comes out of the ground is data that is not always easily available – and industry watchers always seem to charge a lot just to access rudimentary information that was hastily published in trade journals.

But the exact chemistry of Natural Gas as it comes out of the ground is very important to know, especially as, over time, naturally-occurring gases collected from the sub-surface of the Earth are expected to change in their composition. This is due to a number of factors, including the depletion of major oil fields – where much Natural Gas comes from.

Changing Natural Gas chemistry will also arise because of changes in the choice of resources. Here’s a note from Lallemand et al. from PTQ magazine for Q4 2013, starting at page 81, “For decades to come, gas will be an energy source of choice to meet increasing energy demands. Oil and gas operators have always preferentially produced the gas from those reservoirs that are technically the easiest and the cheapest to develop, but they will have to develop fields with a higher acid gas content in the future. Effectively, over 40% of the world’s conventional gas resources currently identified as remaining reserves to be produced, representing over 2600 trillion cubic feet (tcf), are sour, with both [hydrogen sulfide] H2S and [carbon dioxide] CO2 present most of the time. Among these sour reserves, more than 350 tcf contain H2S in excess of 10%, and almost 700 tcf contain over 10% CO2. The Middle East, the Caspian Sea area and China have gas reserves with a high H2S content, while large amounts of gases with a high CO2 content are encountered in South East Asia and, to some extent, in South America and North Africa.”

Another Natural Gas contaminant to look out for is nitrogen, which can be present in very high percentages.

What’s astonishing to me is that there is not more discussion of the issues surrounding the attentuation or lessening of value of Natural Gas owing to this chemistry.

Not that I’m going to attend, but there is a conference up soon on this matter, “Sour Oil & Gas Advanced Technology 2016”, or SOGAT, being held in Abu Dhabi, and the blurb makes for interesting reading : “…The technologies involved in sour field management and production are always progressing and the latest developments across the whole management spectrum including observations on capturing CO2 from sour gas processing facilities for use in [Enhanced Oil Recovery] EOR will be included in the SOGAT Conference Programme…”

Now, admittedly, Enhanced Oil Recovery is a valid use for unwanted carbon dioxide in Natural Gas, and is widely in use to achieve this aim. Carbon dioxide and other inert gases are pumped into an oil field to create extra “lift” pressure, to increase the production of crude petroleum oil liquids. It’s a technique that can be fairly effective over some length of time.

It’s not always certain if the re-injected carbon dioxide stays put – so it’s not necessarily a recipe for permanent “sequestration” of that CO2 back underground. However, this was the original CCS – Carbon Capture and Sequestration, or Carbon Capture and Storage, method proposed by the oil and gas companies when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) wanted to hear on carbon mitigation technologies.

But is there another way to deal with the carbon dioxide emerging in Natural Gas, rather than using it to pump up more oil ? After all, even if the re-injected CO2 stays re-buried, it assists in the liberation of more carbon dioxide overall, when the oil gets burned.

The answer is “yes”. The carbon dioxide that emerges with Natural Gas could be used to increase the overall volume of sweetened gas supplied to market. How is that possible ? Well, if the sour gas countries of the Middle East took to deploying desert plains full of solar panels, and then made Renewable Hydrogen from seawater using this solar electricity, then they could methanate the carbon dioxide from Natural Gas into high-methane gas that could be added back to the Natural Gas, increasing its volume.

This would make a better asset out of the carbon dioxide than using it for EOR.

None of this technology or chemistry is new. It just needs applying. And it’s important because a lot of the world’s remaining Natural Gas has a high level of carbon dioxide in it – and that can’t all be used for Enhanced Oil Recovery.

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Forty Years of Silence

I thought I’d dip into an energy textbook today, not realising that I would encounter a new angle on a story of forty years of silence and denial that’s been shocking climate change commentators.

Ever since Inside Climate News published a report on the company Exxon and the history of its global warming research (“Exxon : The Road Not Taken”), strong reaction has continued to accumulate, on a spectrum from disbelief, to disappointment to deep cynicism.

In the United States, almost predictably in that uniquely litigious culture, various lawsuits are accumulating with the large oil and gas companies as their targets, and Exxon is the latest defendant. It is a matter of political, social and environmental import to have the facts where there is suspected misleading of the public on matters of science. In this case, if proved, those misled would include shareholders in the company.

And it’s not just a question of global warming science here – Exxon’s alleged readiness to obscure basic physics and the implications of carbon loading of the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning may have also resulted in an obscuring of the scientific realities underlying their own corporate viability.

You see, Exxon’s business interests rely on their continued ability to find and dig up oil and gas. Now last year was a difficult one, as depressed crude oil and Natural Gas commodity prices put some of Exxon’s resources “off-books”, so their reserves replacement – topping up their bankable assets – was only 67% of their previous end-of-year. It could be easy to connect the dots on this one – some of the gas they could pump is just too costly right now to get to. But what if Exxon are finally meeting another kind of Nemesis – of their own making – because they’re working on faulty geophysical data, which they produced themselves ?

So, let’s start where I did, with Chapter Eight “Basin stratigraphy” of the reference book “Basin Analysis” by Philip A. Allen and John R. Allen, 3rd edition, published by Wiley Blackwell, ISBN 978-0470673768.

The chapter introduces many important concepts regarding how sedimentary basins formed in deep Earth time – sediments of organic matter that have in some cases become reservoirs of fossil fuels. It talks about how strata get laid down – the science of “process stratigraphy”. Much of the logic relies on the phenomenon of the rising and falling of sea level relative to land masses over geological cycles, correlating with significant swings in climate. The book mentions early work by Exxon scientists : “Using seismic reflection results, a team of geologists and biostratigraphers from Exxon constructed a chart of relative sea level through time (Vail et al., (1997b), updated and improved by Haq et al. (1987, 1988)).” The chapter goes on to critique one important working assumption of that original work – that all sedimentary similarities must be an indicator of synchronicity – that is, that they happened at the same time. The text goes on to read, “In summary, we follow Carter (1998) in believing that the Haq et al. (1997) curve is a ‘noisy’ amalgam of a wide range of local sea-level signals, and should not be used as a global benchmark…its use as a chronostratigraphic tool by assuming a priori that a certain stratigraphic boundary has a globally synchronous and precise age, which it is therefore safe to extrapolate into a basin with poor age control, is hazardous.”

Why is this important ? Because all of the understanding of petroleum geophysics relies on the stratigraphic charts drawn up by these scientists. And yet, even at their inception, there was corporate “confidentiality” invoked. According to a paper from Anthony Hallam, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 1984, 12: 205-243 : “Most important, details of the evidence supporting the eustatic claims of the Exxon group (Vail et al 1977) are not published, and hence their claims cannot be checked directly”. What ? A data set relied on not only by everybody in the fossil fuel energy industry, but also all geologists and even climate change scientists, has a fault line in the evidence ? Why would Exxon want to obscure the origin of this data ? Did they need to keep quiet about their stratigraphy science because it revealed too much about climate change ? Are there problems with the science, but that even they didn’t find out ? And is there then the possibility that they have relied too much on faulty 40 year old research in fossil fuel exploration and discovery ?

Exxon might be starting to be more transparent – as this set of charts from 2010 reveals, “A Compilation of Phanerozoic Sea-Level Change, Coastal Onlaps and Recommended Sequence Designations”, Snedden and Liu, 2010, AAPG Search and Discovery, in which the text includes, “The magnitudes of sea-level change in this chart follow the estimation of Haq and Schutter (2008) and Hardenbol et al. (1998). However, there is little consensus on the range of sea-level changes, though most believe that the sea-level position during most of the Phanerozoic was within +/- 100 meters of the present-day level.”

To me, it remains an intriguing possibility that the whole oil and gas industry has been working with incomplete or misaligned data, in which case, can we really believe that there are another four or five good decades of good quality fossil fuels to exploit ?

Other PDFs of interest :-
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bilal_Haq2/publication/23297207_A_Chronology_of_Paleozoic_Sea-Level_Changes/links/55daff3708aeb38e8a8a3702.pdf?inViewer=0&pdfJsDownload=0&origin=publication_detail
https://curry.eas.gatech.edu/Courses/6140/ency/Chapter10/Ency_Oceans/Sea_Level_Variations.pdf
https://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Haq1987.pdf
https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.earth.20130201.11.pdf

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The Appliance of Trust

Although I don’t recommend it, considering things in the fevered daze of influenza is a great counterweight to thinking things through in my normal state of mind, a little bit like Herodutus’ “Persian Strategy”, but with the only alcohol involved being in the cough medicine.

I had the overpowering insight that I can get my mind inside anything I wanted, but the realisation that I don’t have the interest to get into that much, actually. What really interests me, apart from having my basic nutritional, shelter and socialisation needs met, is energy – more to the point – energy transition, from the fossil fuel-dominated energy systems of today, to the 100% renewable energy systems of tomorrow.

I’m less of a shaper in this Energy Change, more of a watcher and commentator. I don’t really know what I could do to effect or affect any significant part of Energy Change. I wouldn’t know where to try to place myself. I despair of the British Government’s lack of sanity in energy policy, and yet the UK are considered a major contributor to the process of Energy Change. Maybe the incestuous relationship between the academic community and the energy industry has a stronger influence on the government narrative than it should. I’m fairly scornful about the lack of attention the major energy companies are giving to the imperative of Energy Change, or at least in their public-facing personae, because they’ve got market share and shareholders to think about.

As for something more practical, it’s been a while since I did any proper hands-on engineering, so I’m not sure if I could play that role anywhere. The flow of money dictates most change, but I’m not sure if I could help people move money – it would involve a lot of public relations, which I hate.

When I raise questions of Energy Change – mostly centred on Renewable Gas – some people in government and industry can be very dismissive. Sometimes I wonder why I bother trying to make any contribution at all. I’m just observing – not dictating or showing anything revolutionary. It almost doesn’t matter if I do nothing – because Energy Change is inevitable.

My argument in a very condensed form :-

1. There are problems with continued fossil fuel production growth.

2. There are problems arising from the continued use of fossil fuels.

3. There must be a transition to renewable energy.

4. The timeframe for some of the major elements of the new configuration is around 25 years or less.

5. Major elements of Energy Change must be started now.

6. All expenditure in the economy must be a “carrier wave” enabling investment in and consumption of renewable energy. All economic decisions need to be guided towards placing trust in companies and organisations that have Energy Change as part of their business strategy.

It doesn’t need to be me who says these things.

On the other hand, it interests me.

So I have to apply trust – if it interests me, since my judgement is fairly sound, it must be interesting. And since I trust myself to my interests in Energy Change, I need to continue working in this area, although I’m not sure precisely where.

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Fields of Diesel Generators

Recently, I had a very helpful telephone conversation with somebody I shall call Ben – because that’s his name, obviously, so there’s no point in trying to camoflage that fact. It was a very positive conversation, with lots of personal energy from both parties – just the sort of constructive engagement I like.

Amongst a range of other things, we were batting about ideas for what could constitute a business model or economic case for the development of Renewable Gas production – whether Renewable Hydrogen or Renewable Methane. Our wander through the highways and byways of energy markets and energy policy led us to this sore point – that the National Grid is likely to resort to “fields of diesel generators” for some of its emergency backup for the power grid in the next few years – if new gas-fired power plants don’t get built. Various acronyms you might find in this space include STOR and BM.

Now, diesel is a very dirty fuel – so dirty that it appears to be impossible to build catalytic exhaust filters for diesel road vehicles that meet any of the air pollution standards and keep up fuel consumption performance. It’s not just VW that have had trouble meeting intention with faction – all vehicle manufacturers have difficulties balancing all the requirements demanded of them. Perhaps it’s time to admit that we need to ditch the diesel fuel itself, rather than vainly try to square the circle.

The last thing we really need is diesel being used as the fuel to prop up the thin margins in the power generation network – burned in essentially open cycle plant – incurring dirty emissions and a massive waste of heat energy. Maybe this is where the petrorefiners of Great Britain could provide a Renewable Gas alternative. Building new plant or reconfiguring existing plant for Renewable Gas production would obviously entail capital investment, which would create a premium price on initial operations. However, in the event of the National Grid requiring emergency electricity generation backup, the traded prices for that power would be high – which means that slightly more expensive Renewable Gas could find a niche use which didn’t undermine the normal economics of the market.

If there could be a policy mandate – a requirement that Renewable Gas is used in open cycle grid-balancing generation – for example when the wind dies down and the sun sets – then we could have fields of Renewable Gas generators and keep the overall grid carbon emissions lower than they would otherwise have been.

Both Ben and I enjoyed this concept and shared a cackle or two – a simple narrative that could be adopted very easily if the right people got it.

Renewable Gas – that’s the craic.

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Academic Freedom Emissions Impossible Energy Change Energy Crunch Energy Denial Renewable Gas

Renewable Gas : Book Launch

So I’m in the wonderfully atmospheric wood-panelled Room 102 at 30 Russell Square in Bloomsbury trying to talk engineering to mostly business and communications students. Which is a challenge in itself. Yet I’m also trying not to do too much talking, but encourage the other people in the room to play with the information I’m presenting and do their own thinking.

It’s all about energy transition – or “Energy Change” – as I term it – that I argue is an essential response to Climate Change. I also argue that Energy Change is an essential response to discontinuities and emerging fractures in the current fossil fuel-dominated global energy system and the global economy.

But mostly I argue with a fair amount of positive personal energy that we already have all the technologies we need to move towards a very low carbon and 100% renewable energy system, where low carbon gas backs up variable renewable electricity generation.

During the discussion after my presentation, where the room became full of buzzing brain power, I ask people to break out into small groups to answer these not-too-simple policy questions :-

Q1. Can you design a policy support mechanism
for Renewable Gas that doesn’t involve subsidies
in any area of : electricity generation, heating &
cooling, transportation or energy storage ?

Q2. In whose short-term and long-term
interests would it be to begin to provide
Renewable Gas ? What should their strategy be ?

Q3. What barriers to the growth of Renewable
Gas production do you think there will be ?

There were some very interesting answers given to the room at the end before we had to open celebration bottles to complete the positive cheer. And then, of course, after all that jollity, I had to take in a pint of dry cider and some hot potato chips at the pub with my colleague Dr Paul Elsner and engage in a conversation, the upshot of which is that I now have a massive “to do” list.

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The Lies That You Choose

I have had the great fortune to meet another student of the Non-Science of Economics who believes most strongly that Energy is only a sub-sector of the Holy Economy, instead of one of its foundations, and doesn’t understand why issues with the flow of commodities (which include energy resources) into the system is critical to the survival of the global economy, and that the growth in the Services Industries and Knowledge Economy cannot compensate for the depletion of freshwater, fossil fuels and other raw resources.

This person believes in Technology, as if it can fly by itself, without seeming to understand how Technological Innovation is really advanced by state investment – a democracy of focus. This otherwise intelligent learner has also failed to grasp, apparently, that the only way that the Economy can grow in future is through investment in things with real value, such as Energy, especially where this investment is essential owing to decades of under-investment precipitated by privatisation – such as in Energy – investment in both networks of grids or pipes, and raw resources. And this from somebody who understands that developing countries are being held back by land grab and natural resource privatisation – for example ground water; and that there is no more money to be made from property investment, as the market has boomed and blown.

How to burst these over-expanded false value bubbles in the mind ? When I try to talk about the depletion of natural resources, and planetary boundaries, people often break eye contact and stare vacantly out of the nearest window, or accept the facts, but don’t see the significance of them. Now this may be because I’m not the best of communicators, or it may be due to the heavy weight of propaganda leading to belief in the Magical Unrealism always taught in Economics and at Business Schools.

Whatever. This is where I’m stuck in trying to design a way to talk about the necessity of energy transition – the move from digging up minerals to catching the wind, sunlight and recycling gases. If I say, “Look, ladies and laddies, fossil fuels are depleting”, the audience will respond with “where there’s a drill, there’s a way”. As if somehow the free market (not that a free market actually exists), will somehow step up and provide new production and new resources, conjuring them from somewhere.

What are arguments that connect the dots for people ? How to demonstrate the potential for a real peak in oil, gas, coal and uranium production ? I think I need to start with a basic flow analysis. On the one side of the commodity delivery pipeline, major discoveries have decreased, and the costs of discovery have increased. The hidden underbelly of this is that tapping into reservoirs and seams has a timeline to depletion – the point at which the richness of the seam is degraded significantly, and the initial pressure in the well or reservoir is reduced to unexploitable levels – regardless of the technology deployed. On the other end of the commodities pipeline is the measure of consumption – and most authorities agree that the demand for energy will remain strong. All these factors add up to a time-limited game.

Oh, you can choose to believe that everything will continue as it always seems to have. But the Golden Age of Plenty is drawing to a close, my friend.

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Academic Freedom Alchemical Big Picture Climate Chaos

Born of Collision

As we pay increasing attention to the Earth, humanity discovers deeper and deeper resonance.

For example, it appears that the Earth and the Moon are more intimately of one kind than previously imagined, which has implications for our picture of the origins of life.

It also has consequences for our narrative of climate change throughout the aeons, as it could alter our framework of understanding about the evolution of Earth’s atmosphere, and consequently the circling waves of global warming and global cooling that have taken place since then.

Life may well have not been possible without the interference with the planet’s development from this violent impact that mixed the stuff of early Earth with Moon. And the interaction of life with the planet has always had an impact on the temperature on the surface of the Earth, which has been following a cooling trend overall, right up until the last 350 years, when we started pulling old life carbon out of the Earth and burning it into the sky.

What we learn should shake us to the core, and what we take to be true could always be subject to a jolt. Life has been born of violent collision, and as long as we still have hearing, we must listen to the deepest of bass.

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Academic Freedom Climate Change Energy Change Renewable Gas

Happy New Renewable Gas Year

A new year, and a renewed mission of investigation into and communication about the need for and potential of Renewable Gas.

I need to prepare a presentation for discussion in February, so I started writing notes in December, and now I’m thinking about the images I would like to use for overhead slides and the things I’d like the audience to read before the event.

Proceedings will best be split into two parts, I think : the first part covering energy systems and energy technologies; and the second part opening up the issues in energy policy and energy investment.

As usual, I don’t like to do all the talking, so I hope to keep the presentation as short as possible to allow the maximum time for group conversation. With enough of the right kind of preparation, I feel, most groups of intelligent people can collectively approach the core of a problem and suggest ways out, and how to stimulate and monitor progress.

My point of entry, I think, should be considering the logic that Climate Change implies Energy Change – in other words, that global warming-induced climate alteration will both impact the way that energy systems operate, and will also require new energy technologies to be deployed, to prevent climate change becoming seriously dangerous.

Climate Change also means Economy Change – as the current high flow rates of raw resources and energy in trading and commerce contribute significantly to climate change, and trade and commerce are also being adversely affected by climate change.

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Cumbria Floods : Climate Defenceless

I fully expect the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, will be more than modicum concerned about public opinion as the full toll of damage to property, businesses, farmland and the loss of life in Cumbria of the December 2015 floods becomes clear. The flooding in the Somerset Levels in the winter of 2013/2014 led to strong public criticism of the government’s management of and investment in flood defences.

The flood defences that were improved in Cumbria after the rainstorm disaster of 2009 were in some cases completely ineffective against the 2015 deluge. It appears that the high water mark at some places in Cumbria was higher in the 2015 floods than ever recorded previously, but that cannot be used as David Cameron’s get-out-of-jail-free clause. These higher flood levels should have been anticipated as a possibility.

However, the real problem is not the height of flooding, but the short recurrence time. Flood defences are designed in a way that admits to a sort of compromise calculus. Measurements from previous floods are used to calculate the likelihood of water levels breaching a particular height within a number of years – for example, a 1-in-20 year flood, or a 1-in-200 year flood. The reinforced flood defences in Cumbria were designed to hold back what was calculated to be something like a 1-in-100 year flood. It could be expected that if within that 100 years, other serious but not overwhelming flooding took place, there would be time for adaptation and restructuring of the defences. However, it has taken less than 10 years for a 1-in-100 year event to recur, and so no adaptation has been possible.

This should suggest to us two possibilities : either the Environment Agency is going about flood defences the wrong way; or the odds for the 1-in-100 year flood should be reset at 1-in-10-or-so years – in other words, the severity profile of flooding is becoming worse – stronger flooding is more frequent – which implies acceptance of climate change.

The anti-science wing of the Conservative Party were quick to construct a campaign against the Environment Agency in the South West of England in early 2014 – distracting people from asking the climate change question. But this time, I think people might be persuaded that they need to consider climate change as being a factor.

Placing the blame for mismanagement of the Somerset Levels at the door of the Environment Agency saved David Cameron’s skin in 2014, but I don’t think he can use that device a second time. People in Cockermouth are apparently in disbelief about the 2015 flooding. They have barely had time to re-establish their homes and lives before Christmas has been cancelled again for another year.

Will the Prime Minister admit to the nation that climate change is potentially a factor in this 2015 waterborne disaster ?

I remember watching in in credulity as the BBC showed the restoration of Cockermouth back in 2010 – it was either Songs of Praise or Countryfile – I forget which. The BBC were trying to portray a town getting back to normal. I remember asking myself – but what if climate change makes this happen again ? What then ? Will the BBC still be mollifying its viewers, lulling them back into a false sense of security about the risks of severe climate change ? What if there is no “normal” to get back to any more ? Is this partly why the Meteorological Office has decided to name winter storms ?

Can future climate-altered floods be escaped – or are the people of Britain to remain defenceless ?