Showing posts with label Natural Gas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Natural Gas. Show all posts
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Your Infrastructure Will Be Your Undoing - One Reason Why Natural Gas CANNOT Replace The 20% Of Coal-Fired Powerplants Due Offline By 2015
In the San Francisco Chronicle today:
Feds put nation's pipeline operators on notice
Federal safety officials responding to the findings of the San Bruno disaster probe issued a nationwide bulletin Wednesday urging operators... of natural-gas pipelines to verify they have accurate records about their lines and to cut pressure on them if they don't.
The regulators took the unusual step in response to the discovery that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. had erroneous records about the high-pressure gas line that exploded in San Bruno in September, killing eight people and destroying 38 homes.
The revelation raised questions about whether the utility had set the line's maximum allowable operating pressure too high and whether it had used an inspection method for the pipe that was ill suited to detect some possible weaknesses... [Read more]
Even as America comes to depend more and more on Natural Gas for it's energy needs, and it WILL ramp up even more dramatically as that 20% of all coal-fired power plants, 50,000 MW of nation's dirtiest coal plants, begins to go offline due to EPA regulations, one can begin to see that flammable gases are MUCH more dangerous than the 'Bunker Fuels' and Coal traditionally used in power generation.This isn't some fanciful initiative Lisa Jackson dreamed up one day.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to continually update pollution limits to reflect the latest science. The U.S. District Court, for instance, has ordered the EPA to set new mercury standards by the end of next year. As a result, new rules are now coming down the pike on smog-forming pollutants, on mercury, on coal ash...
...according to industry analysts, many coal plants will have to shut down...":[The rules] would force utilities to invest tens of millions of dollars on technologies to remove the substances. Many of those plants are about 50 years old and are already inefficient. "Those investments are just not going to be justifiable," said Dan Bakal, director of electric power programs at Ceres, a group of environmentalists and institutional investors.In Full @ New Republic
Francois Broquin, a co-author of reports on coal by Bernstein Research, said the combined rules could push as much as 20 percent of U.S. coal-fired electric generation capacity to retire by 2015. "
But that's not all. Gases are hard to contain in the material's transmission infrastructure itself, EVEN WHEN THE INFRASTRUCTURE IS SHINY NEW, and the source needs to be somewhat nearby the end user to prevent massive product and by-product losses which also pollute heavily.
In the United States, methane emissions from natural gas distribution mains accounts for 32 percent of the industry's total methane emissions. (source)That means gas pipelines and infrastructure everywhere to control costs and pollution, leading inexorably to more stories like these over the last few days:
2,000 Evacuated After L.I. Propane LeakAnother news story today:
"A cracked plastic valve on a propane tank was the source of a leak that sent thousands of gallons of toxic, flammable liquefied propane gas..." More
Gas leak raises alarm at Miami elementary schoolColumbia Missouri:
Miami Fire-Rescue hazmat teams responded to a gas leak Saturday afternoon at Silver Bluff Elementary School.
The situation -- liquid propane gas leaking from three large tanks near the school cafeteria... More
Gas leak by new parking garage under control sourceLittle Rock Arkansas:
CenterPoint Energy fixing Pine Bluff gas leakIt could be worse, ALOT worse, like the blast that wiped the homes and people who were in them near a transmission pipeline in the suburban SF Bay city of San Bruno off the map a few months back.
PINE BLUFF, Ark. (KTHV) -- The Pine Bluff Fire Department has evacuated one block bordered by 3rd and 4th Streets, as well as Main and State Streets because of a gas leak. source
Considering the public safety track record of most power generation companies in the United State AND their state regulatory bodies...
The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep....one would think that our everyday lives over the next few years, as the RUSH to 're-tool' our energy infrastructure intensifies with the typically concurrent lack of inspection/regulatory oversight (if only due to the lack of qualified inspection personnel), will become MUCH more dangerous.
Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush... In Full @ Alternet
References:
The New York Times: "Utilities shift to gas-based plants as alternative to coal"
Wall Street Journal: "Utilities are increasingly looking to natural gas to generate electricity"
Financial Times: "Wave of closures set to hit U.S. coal stations"
Denver Daily News: "PUC approves retiring Denver-area coal-fired plants, switching to natural gas"
Reuters: "Xcel to shut or convert Colorado coal power plants"
Chattanooga Times Free Press: "TVA to shutter coal plants, turn to nuclear"
Times Daily: "TVA to idle coal plants to cut emission output"
Charlotte Observer: "Duke considers closing old coal plants"
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Pipelineistan Poker: It All Comes Down To The Top Two 'Players' In A Global "Grand Game" - Pepe Escobar, Asia Times
From May 2009, but more apropos now than ever.
May 12, 2009 3:37 pm
Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Pipelineistan Goes Af-Pak
Back in March, Pepe Escobar, that itchy, edgy global reporter for one of my favorite on-line publications, Asia Times, began laying out the great, ongoing energy struggle across Eurasia, or what he likes to call Pipelinestan for its web of oil and natural gas pipelines. In his first report, he dealt with the embattled energy corridor (and a key pipeline) that runs from the Caspian Sea to Europe through Georgia and Turkey -- and the Great Game of business, diplomacy, and proxy war between Russia and the U.S. that has gone with it. Now, in the second of what will be periodic "postcards" from the energy heartlands of the planet, he plunges eastward into tumultuous Central and South Asia and the great devolving battleground that, in Washington, now goes by the neologism of Af-Pak (for the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations). There, the skies are filled with planes and unmanned aerial drones, and civilians as well as combatants die every day in increasing numbers as ever more frequent attacks and expanding conflicts make daily headlines, while, in Afghanistan, Washington continues to build new military bases and ready itself to send in reinforcements.
Those are, of course, the front-page stories. Energy, especially in the form of oil and natural gas, fuels everything from civilization to its various discontents and means of destruction, and yet it remains largely on the business pages of our papers. Even in a time of relatively depressed oil and gas prices, energy runs like an undercurrent just beneath global headlines. Under the carnage of war, that is, courses what Escobar likes to call the Liquid War, and just how the energy flows and through which territories controlled by whom does turn out to make -- quite literally -- a world of difference, even if that isn't what captures our attention most of the time.
Today, let Escobar, whose latest book is Obama Does Globalistan, take you deep into the "New Great Game" that will determine the shape of our future planet. Tom
Blue Gold, Turkmen Bashes, and Asian Grids
Pipelineistan in Conflict
By Pepe Escobar
As Barack Obama heads into his second hundred days in office, let's head for the big picture ourselves, the ultimate global plot line, the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order. In its first hundred days, the Obama presidency introduced us to a brand new acronym, OCO for Overseas Contingency Operations, formerly known as GWOT (as in Global War on Terror). Use either name, or anything else you want, and what you're really talking about is what's happening on the immense energy battlefield that extends from Iran to the Pacific Ocean. It's there that the Liquid War for the control of Eurasia takes place.
Yep, it all comes down to black gold and "blue gold" (natural gas), hydrocarbon wealth beyond compare, and so it's time to trek back to that ever-flowing wonderland -- Pipelineistan. It's time to dust off the acronyms, especially the SCO or Shanghai Cooperative Organization, the Asian response to NATO, and learn a few new ones like IPI and TAPI. Above all, it's time to check out the most recent moves on the giant chessboard of Eurasia, where Washington wants to be a crucial, if not dominant, player.
We've already seen Pipelineistan wars in Kosovo and Georgia, and we've followed Washington's favorite pipeline, the BTC, which was supposed to tilt the flow of energy westward, sending oil coursing past both Iran and Russia. Things didn't quite turn out that way, but we've got to move on, the New Great Game never stops.
Now, it's time to grasp just what the Asian Energy Security Grid is all about, visit a surreal natural gas republic, and understand why that Grid is so deeply implicated in the Af-Pak war....
In Full @ TomDispatch
Travus T.Hipp @ Cabale News Service also has a few commentaries committed to audio at Archive.org on the topic:
[November 03 2009] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Facing Up To Reality In Central Asia - The West Is Losing The AfPakistan War... And Losing Badly [Here]
[August 04 2005] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: A Laymans Guide to the 'Stans: Chapter 1 - 'Themistan' [Here]
[August 01 2005] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The 'Stans: Quietly, we are a very big part of it as Uzbekistan drops out of 'The Great American Alliance' [Here]
[March 24 2005] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The 'Stans & The U.S. Military Presence In Central Asia [Here]
Labels:
Af-Pak,
Afghanistan,
Caspian,
Central Asia,
China,
Energy Economics,
Energy Security,
GWOT,
NATO,
Natural Gas,
Oil,
Pepe Escobar,
Pipelineistan,
Russia,
SCO,
Turkey,
Turkmenistan,
US Foreign Policy
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