Category: Ethical Energy

For Peat’s Sake!

By now it should be apparent that a “green” future is not going to be high tech at all, but rather a reversion to a pre-industrial existence. I’m sure the peasants will rejoice at spending hours each week digging in a swamp.

Earlier this year the government introduced curbs to peat cutting to protect Ireland’s bogs – which are important carbon sinks and sources of biodiversity – but Europe’s energy crisis has boosted what is supposed to be an anachronism. It costs approximately €500 to heat a household with peat for a year versus several thousand euros for more climate-friendly sources of energy.

Provided, of course, that the green lobby will even allow homeowners to stave off freezing to death:

The European Commission has threatened to impose sanctions on Ireland unless it curbs peat cutting in special areas of conservation.

European Parliament is wrong to endorse ‘fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty’

European Parliament. Image from Storyblocks, as licensed by Brian Zinchuk

The European Parliament is wrong to endorse ‘fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty’, writes Deborah Jaremko of the Canadian Energy Centre. In this column carried by Pipeline Online, Jaremko writes about these facts:

  1. The world needs oil and gas to function
  2. Europe’s largest economy is walking back on renewable energy
  3. Renewable energy is not reliable at scale to replace oil and gas
  4. The world’s growing population requires more energy, not less
  5. Canada is a responsible, reliable oil and gas supplier
  6. Canada’s natural gas can help the world get off coal 

“Can’t get diesel without gasoline. Matched set.”

B.F. Randall

Crude oil is a mixture of liquidy-sludgy hydrocarbons. Crudes come in many grades. Crudes are separated through refining – based on specific gravity.

Civilization’s INDUSTRY is 100% dependent on “heavy distillates” (kerosene-jet fuel-and below). Heavy = BLOOD. Everything above kerosene is a BYPRODUCT from industry’s POV.

The US “technolution” produces gas and LIGHT oils that do not make much heavy distillates. It comes out more in the petrol range. SO US refiners are starving for heavy distillates.

An excellent account to follow if you’re on Twitter.

Oh, The Humanity

Doomberg (behind paywall)

Despite historic spreads between the price of natural gas in North America and the rest of the world, the drama-teacher-turned-cosplay-Prime-Minister professed to be unable to find a compelling business case for the proposal (although he did leave the door open for further consideration). In Trudeau’s fossil fuel-free vision of the future, such multi-billion-dollar investments will be obsolete before they could generate an economic return. How embarrassing it must have been for members of the European elite to submit themselves to the whims of the ultimate “legacy” admission to the political arena.

Instead, the two countries entered into a bizarre agreement to develop a “transatlantic hydrogen supply chain”. […]

We were a little dumbfounded when saw these headlines. Surely, this must be a joke? Alas, like much of what emanates from the current slate of Western leaders, the two countries appear to be as serious in intent as they are unserious in understanding. While we could write an entire piece demonstrating why this effort is destined to be just another multi-billion-dollar boondoggle…

Via @max_gagliardi; As someone who has spent their career focused on the transportation, compression and cooling of gas, the delta here between nat gas and hydrogen is staggering

 

Devine’s Upgraders, Part 6

The conclusion;

For all the political strife over cost overruns of the two projects as they were built, and their initial struggles, the added provincial royalties in the 21st century made up for that in spades. And the further investment in northwest Saskatchewan’s heavy oil patch has far outstripped the money spent on the Bi-Provincial Upgrader, even when you adjust for inflation.

That, unequivocally, proves the investment in the upgraders was sound, and visionary. It just took a while to get there.

And in the meantime, tens of thousands of people have fed their families and paid their bills as a direct result of those upgraders. I was one of them. Literally hundreds of thousands of Saskatchewan people have had their health care, or schools, or roads paid for directly from the royalties from the development of heavy oil.

Would heavy oil have been developed without the upgraders? Perhaps, but nowhere near the extent that they were, and are, to this day. Would Husky have spent up to $350 million each on their 10,000 barrel per day Lloyd thermal projects without the Lloydminster Upgrader? Doubtful.

Devine’s Upgraders, Part 5

Were the Regina and Lloydminster upgraders worth it?

In 2011, when oil was 14 per cent of revenue, health care was around 41 per cent of expenditures. That meant that during those boom years, oil revenue could be considered having paid the bill for every doctor, nurse, hospital, old folks home and home care worker south of Craven, and that includes Regina.

That revenue became so important to this province that when OPEC opened the taps in late 2014 and oil crashed from over US$100 per barrel for West Texas Intermediate down to US$26, the provincial deficit for several years almost precisely matched the decline in oil prices. I was able to confirm this at the time by asking both the premier and finance minister several times. That remained the case for several years.

Divine’s Upgraders, Part 4

Regina’s upgrader has processed 16 million barrels of heavy oil per year for 30 years.

Gil Le Dressay has spent 43 years with Federated Co-operatives Ltd’s Regina refinery, starting as a process utility operator and working up to vice president of refinery operations then vice president of manufacturing.

Le Dressay responded to a series of questions by email on Sept. 8. He said of its early days, “You have to remember, at that time, the Heavy Oil Upgrader was the first of its kind in Canada. From the outset, it was an ambitious, innovative and strategic project, one that brought people together to ensure that our Refinery and province were set up well for the future.

“The construction of the upgrader would allow our refinery to secure competitive feedstock, to maintain high processing rates and, most importantly, to provide the Co-operative Retailing System (CRS) with a lower cost for transportation fuels – ultimately providing our owners with the highest rate of return.”

There were some tough times and controversy for the Regina upgrader. Its early days were not smooth. Asked what it took to resolve all that, and how have things been going since, Le Dressay said, “A critical project like the upgrader doesn’t just happen successfully. It requires considerable preparation and planning over its entire life cycle. This included upgrades to its overall design that would ensure it operated safely and efficiently in cold weather, as well as modifications designed to improve the reliability of key processes and functions within the upgrader system.

Devine’s Upgraders, Part 3

Brian Zinchuk;

On May 5, Lloydminster Mayor Gerald Aalbers said, “Without the upgrader, Lloydminster would likely be a community of under 15,000.”

The most recent 2021 census put the city’s population at just shy of 32,000, a marginal improvement from 2016.

And it’s been a wild ride getting to that 32,000. In 2003, I was hired as the city hall reporter for the Battlefords News-Optimist. The city manager of North Battleford, Jim Toye, told me at the time that he wished he had the problems of his counterpart in Lloydminster. Lloydminster was building around 600 houses a year at the time, and North Battleford, 150 kilometres down the road, was building 10. […]

After some pioneering work in using steam to produce heavy oil, trying several different extraction methods, Husky started building essentially cookie-cutter projects. Each involved a steam plant, and several well pads composed of well pairs using a technology called “steam assisted gravity drainage,” or SAGD. That might sound like a lot of technobabble until you realize the important points: Each of these thermal projects produces 10,000 barrels of oil per day, and cost $250 to $350 million a pop to build. And Husky built 11 of these projects in northwest Saskatchewan by 2020, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding crash in oil markets.

Down The Primrose Path

Brian Zinchuk;

I asked [Premier Scott Moe] if Saskatchewan had heard anything from the feds on their promise of increasing oil production by 300,000, or any ability to get it to them – pipeline, crude-by-rail, export infrastructure. We are, after all, the second largest oil producing province in the country, and anything coming from Alberta to the East Coast would have to pass through us. So you’d think we’d have heard something. Anything.

The answer? “No,” Moe said.

Devine’s Upgraders, Part 1

Brian Zinchuk’s first in a six part series on the two heavy oil upgraders built in the late 80s/early 90s that have become fundamental to today’s Saskatchewan economy;

If you had followed Saskatchewan politics in the 1990s, you would have thought the world was ending as a result of the Grant Devine Progressive Conservative government’s two signature megaprojects, the heavy oil upgraders in Lloydminster and Regina.

With oil price fluctuations dramatically hurting their economics, the Alberta government couldn’t abandon its investment in the Bi-Provincial Upgrader in Lloydminster fast enough, leaving Saskatchewan holding the bag and eventually selling it to Husky in 1998. Similarly, the NewGrade Upgrader in Regina was also wrought with financial and political peril.

Well researched and well written, I’ll be linking all six parts as they go live.

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Joe’s Got The Magic Touch

New York Post- Biden says Saudis will help lower gas prices — after denying he’d beg for more oil

The National News- Saudi Arabia: no additional capacity to increase oil production beyond 13 million bpd

The crown prince also said that unified efforts were required to support the global economy and that unrealistic policies regarding energy sources would only lead to inflation.

“Adopting unrealistic policies to reduce emissions by excluding main sources of energy will lead in coming years to unprecedented inflation and an increase in energy prices and rising unemployment and a worsening of serious social and security problems,” he said.

The summit in Jeddah was attended by US President Joe Biden and leaders from the six Gulf Co-operation Council states, as well as Egypt, Jordan and Iraq. Mr Biden held bilateral talks with Saudi leaders on Friday in Jeddah.

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