Small oil producers, known as junior producers, were a big driver of the last oil boom. Right now there’s a substantial number of juniors getting in the drilling game again. This probably close to, if not actually, the highest number of juniors with a rig in the field in years.
Estevan is getting not one, but two solar facilities.
ESTEVAN – SaskPower held a two day open-house regarding at proposed 100 megawatt solar facility on Oct-26-27 at the Estevan Legion Hall.
In actuality, it’s not just a single project of 100 megawatts, but two projects – a 100 megawatt solar facility and a secondary, up to 10 megawatt pilot project.
The 100 megawatt facility is to be built on seven quarters of land approximately 10 kilometres southwest of the Boundary Dam Power Station. While SaskPower has large swaths of reclaimed mine land in the area, this block of farmland was chosen because it was undisturbed. Building on disturbed land would mean the foundations would be more costly.
It’s seven quarters of land in total, 1,120 acres or 453 hectares. The land has been optioned, but has not yet been purchased. It falls within the southwest corner of the RM of Estevan, Township 1, Range 9, west of the second meridian.
And, of course
As for Estevan, when asked “What do you do when the sun goes down?” the SaskPower official said, “You don’t generate any solar power.”
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:
The world’s largest oilfield services company has changed its name to SLB, part of the get woke, go broke movement.
A huge reason behind Saskatchewan’s growth as a ‘have’ province was the advent of horizontal oil wells with multi-stage fracking, which had a substantial impact on oil production. And Crescent Point ended up with most of the fracked oil plays in Saskatchewan – the Bakken, Torquay and Shaunavon. But in what can only be considered a stunning move, Crescent Point announced on Wednesday that it’s trying to drill wells in the Bakken but not frac them.
If Saskatchewan can’t get out of a carbon tax, it looks like it’s going to try to reduce that overall carbon tax burden. The throne speech indicates that carbon offset credits from zero till farming will be available to lower other industries’ carbon tax burden.
What do you know? Some days the wind does actually blow in Saskatchewan. And not from politicians talking, either.
This is an exceptionally rare occurrence where the 617 megawatts of wind power generation in Saskatchewan actually put out somewhere close to nameplate capacity. Who’d thunk it?
The Saskatchewan NDP had their first in-person convention this weekend, with new leader Carla Beck at the helm.
The province is also experiencing a resource windfall in potash, uranium and oil brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and global supply issues. But Beck criticized Moe’s government for having no plan for when prices fall.
Saskatchewan is in the very early stages of lithium exploration and development. Say what you want about electric vehicles, everything from your iPhone to your laptop to yes, your EV, is going to require massive amounts of lithium. And Prairie Lithium of Emerald Park is the leader in this field.
Quick Dick McDick has a few salty words about the recent protest in London to Just Stop Oil.
“Now if you could look past the dipshittery of talking about people starving while you throw two perfectly good cans of soup against a painting….”
When it comes to Premier Scott Moe’s white paper entitled, “Drawing the Line: Defending Saskatchewan’s Economic Autonomy,” Regina-University MLA Aleana Young, NDP Energy and Resources critic, said, “To sum it up, I found it short on credibility and short on solutions.”
It’s 6 a.m. and after pulling an all-nighter I am finally finishing writing these three pieces. Huge impact on energy policy in Saskatchewan, affecting oil, coal, nukes, farming, fertilizer, even manure. Moe even mentions possibility of carbon capture on Shand. But feds want to kill off all fossil fuel power generation by 2035. On Oct. 9, 82% of Saskatchewan’s power came from coal or natural gas.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3:
Saturday night, Alberta’s wind power collapsed, again.
But on Friday, wind in Saskatchewan actually had a good day, if you consider operating at one-third capacity good.
If you were taking out your turkey in Alberta Saturday evening to get ready for Thanksgiving, it’s almost certain your lights were not being powered by wind.
That’s because at 9:18 p.m. on Saturday, Alberta’s fleet of 29 wind farms capable of a nameplate capacity of 2,734 megawatts was contributing five megawatts. That’s 0.18 per cent. That’s 18 ten-thousandths of its capacity.
It also accounted for only 0.05 per cent of Alberta’s total power generation at that time, or five ten-thousandths of total power production. That’s only slightly more than solar, which was zero.
And those expensive batteries didn’t come to the rescue. But they did the day before – for 9 and 10 minutes apiece. And that was it for those 24 hours.
Perhaps of most concern is that there were 257 hrs (over 10 days in total) when the wind power output was zero – and the months of most ZERO hours are the coldest months when freezing temperatures are happening. So the 2017 data confirms the earlier 2012 data – meaning that no matter how many wind farms are built, there will always be over 200 hours of ZERO wind power. From an atmospheric viewpoint, whenever there are recurring periods of prolonged stable high pressure (such as frigid winter weather or summer heat waves) when there is also next to no wind – leading to no (or very low) wind power.
Ivan Purdy, P.eng, (retired)
For months, Pipeline Online has been pointing out that Alberta puts out detailed data on its power grid, but SaskPower did not. Apparently others have been asking for the same information as well. Now, @SaskPower has responded. What does a day of power production look like in SK? Wind put out 6% of its capacity, and 2% of total generation. Coal provided 42% of total power
REGINA – While it’s not the same minute-by-minute data provided by the Alberta Electric System Operator for their grid, SaskPower has begun breaking down where its power is coming from on a daily basis. And the data from Oct. 3 and 4 showed wind generated an average of just 7.3 per cent and 6 per cent of its rated capacity of 615 megawatts. And while the Crown corporation often points out that “conventional coal accounts for approximately 24 per cent of SaskPower’s total generation capacity,” on those days, coal was providing an average of 42 per cent of the power in this province.
Alberta has now built 29 wind farms connected to its grid, and on Saturday, they were collectively putting out 8 megawatts out of a total of 2,734 megawatts capacity.
One of the arguments for wind has been if it’s not blowing here, it’s got to be blowing somewhere. We just need to spread it out of a large enough area.
Well, the area of southern Alberta populated by wind farms is larger than the area of the BENELUX countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg) combined. Alternatively, it’s about the size of all of Austria.
So apparently, Alberta is not spread out enough.
The saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
What happens when you get fooled 29 times?
Because that’s what’s happening in Alberta. The denominator in the wind power equation has grown as well, as another wind farm was added onto the grid. The new total is now 29, an increase of one from the previous week. (You have to be sharp about this, because new facilities are continually being added.)
That was Saturday. And today, on Monday, for the third day in a row, and four days out of the last six, Alberta’s wind turbines crapped out again. At noon, their total output dropped to just 6 megawatts. Only one wind farm was contributing to the grid, out of hundreds of wind turbines.
U of R professor Jim Warren: Who’s next? First it was fossil fuels that were demonized, now is it agriculture?
They say misery loves company. But having company is probably small comfort for people working in western Canada’s energy industry. That being said, it is becoming clear that the fossil fuel industry is no longer the only major economic sector in the west to find itself targeted for abuse under federal environmental policy. Just a few weeks ago, farmers and ranchers were singled out for special treatment on behalf of climate change mitigation and environmental protection.
And bonus points for this:
Each bovine would have to fertilize 23 acres – a big job given that over a third of them are young calves. The effort would require the production and distribution of bullsh!t on a hitherto unimagined scale.
There’s a pretty obvious choice for where nuclear power development should go in Saskatchewan.
And it’s not Elbow.
On Sept. 20, SaskPower announced they were considering two areas as possible sites for Saskatchewan’s first two nuclear reactors. One is at Lake Diefenbaker, near Elbow, and the other is Estevan, with three nearby reservoirs under consideration.
When it comes to choosing between Estevan and Elbow for future nuclear power development, Estevan would have to try really hard to lose.
Really, really hard.
NDP SaskPower critic Aleana Young says small modular reactors can play a role in our energy future.
The New Democratic Party has a history of some of its MLAs being voraciously against nuclear power development. In particular, Peter Prebble, who was Corrections and Public Safety Minister from 2003-2006 under Premier Lorne Calvert, threatened to quit cabinet if the province did anything along those lines. In a 2005 CBC article, Prebble was quoted as saying, “I would have to step down from cabinet … in the theoretical event that cabinet was to endorse a reactor or a nuclear waste disposal facility.”
When asked what the current NDP stance was on nuclear power, Young said, “Technology changes, and times change. While I know people had strong opinions on that, I know people are going to have strong opinions today. While I’m not one of them, I know it’s important that we don’t dismiss people who have concerns and ask questions out of hand. But if the question is, for the Saskatchewan NDP, can SMRs play an important role in our energy future in Saskatchewan? Absolutely, they can.”
Jim Wilson was one of the people who helped get carbon capture built in Estevan. If the province isn’t going to do more, he thinks Estevan should focus on nuclear.
“I was very much involved in trying to get it built. I was proud of what we achieved. Everything was good. I remember hearing (Catherine) McKenna in Paris make the announcement,” he said, adding, “Carbon pricing and all that has changed our world.”
He said, “You know, their decisions were not science-based, or business-based. They were politically-based. They were clearly political. And that’s what (Morgan) answered to you. It’s sad for you and I, and the community that built the first clean coal facility of its type. And it was probably a transition solution more than anything, right?
“That’s the point: they’re ignoring this technology. And it works. And to my knowledge, and we’ve developed it and built the first.”