The Methanist

View this email online

Time covered: July 1st to 7th 2019.

Lies 

In 1920, an Italian immigrant tricked thousands of New England residents into investing in a postage stamp speculation scheme. He promised that he could provide a 50 percent return in 90 days. He’d use funds from follow up investors to pay off earlier ones to create the illusion of a legitimate business. At the height of his scam, he raked in about $3 million a day in today’s money.

 

Several Natural Gas Prices taken on June 28th, 2019

   

 

Sales of hybrid cars plummet after subsidy cut

Electric vehicles are really just toys for the rich financed by those that cannot afford them. If we push this to the point where the extinction rebellion freaks and some politicians want it, in a very few decades we won’t need new roads anymore as most people won’t be able to afford a car anymore. 80% of all people will walk and use a combination of other means to get ahead but it won’t be anything like individual mobility anymore. That’s the theory at least – as long before the crushing cost of this, all will force politicians to cut back the lavish subsidies they currently throw to the well-heeled. Why? Because voters will smell where the rat and vote any politician that tries to do anything like that into oblivion. And I know politicians – they are turncoats and when they feel that their positions depend on ending the subsidy madness, they will cut them faster than you can say the word Tesla.

Read in the Sunday Times …

                                                       ________

Eco Extremists Plan to Shut Down Heathrow Airport for Two Weeks with Drones

Just imagine one of those things brings down an airliner full of people. Imagine 200 deaths because those hooligans need new stuff for their twitter accounts to feast on. Who would be to blame? Should be a straight answer – its pre-meditated murder for me and it should take an especially hard penalty because of the extra heinousness. Give them life in solitary. But I am sure this crazy world will consider them warriors for a just cause and those dead people are the price to pay. Is this the world we want to live in – living in fear of death every time you take off or land? That’s terrorism to me and like terrorists, they should be treated.

Read on Breitbart …

                                                       ________

LNG Ships Are Turning Away From Europe’s Gloomy Gas Market

What will you do if your cargo of LNG is in the Atlantic, the European market gives you a nickel for it, the Asian market has hit tanktops and there is just so much LNG around, you might want to think of transforming the Adriatic into a rink? That’s called oversupply. Not a funny situation for producers as they need stable, baseload production for their facilities. Ever switched an LNG production facility off and then on again? If you did, you know you don’t want that crap too often in your life. So, the LNG is coming and there is ever more of it. But the market does not siphon it off at sky high prices. The only option you have is throwing it off onto whatever buyer takes it for a nickel because you need your ship back. Empty, as the next cargo cannot linger in the tank forever. LNG is no business for the lazy, and it’s not for those with a heart condition. North Western Europe will take your cargo if you need to dump it – for a nickel. Balls of steel (or a large balance sheet) help.

Read on Bloomberg Quint …

                                                       ________

Tight storage prompts Guangdong Energy to receive LNG cargo through double discharge

That’s the nature of Asian LNG buyers. When the tanks are full, the tanks are full. Nothing that can be done about that. We call this kind of buyer a flexibility taker – this means that they will require flexibility services from the market. This further means that someone needs to take excess LNG when it’s not needed and/or provides extra cargos when there is a spike. And this someone needs to be able to do so. That costs money. Some say that only someone truly mad would venture there – luckily that’s what we Europeans are. Welcome to your flexibility option on the other side of the world. We will help – in exchange for some pling.

Read on Platts …

                                                       ________

Israel’s Energy Dilemma: More Natural Gas Than It Can Use or Export

How is this a dilemma? Why would Israel even contemplate gas exports? OK, I get it. Some gas goes to Egypt, exports to Jordan are a good thing too. Besides the pling, they also bring better relations with neighbors. But then, there is still far too much Natural Gas to use in the country. Really? Israel imports about 10 Million tons of crude per year. That’s about 100 Suez Max carriers. Much of that is for use within Israel. Israel is also a very small country. A network of 20 fueling stations strategically placed would go far to cover the country for LNG fueled heavy trucks. Israel could use some of its gas, make LNG and convert many of their heavy vehicles to LNG (or CNG). This would help them with the air, making them way more resilient in case of a shock from the outside, and in the end, the innovative Israeli tech sector would probably figure out profitable technologies to export worldwide. You got a chance now Israelis. Don’t export – this gas could be a piece of freedom for yourself.

Read in the New York Times …

                                                       ________

Shale Patch Struggles 5 Years After Crude Collapse

The turmoil the shale sector in the US goes through is a constant workout that makes sure that only the fittest survive and also that those that survive get fitter still. Nothing changes an industry more than a batch of cornered entrepreneurs running for their shirts. It’s not important that all survive, hell even if 90% of them bite the dust, the remaining 10% will develop ways of how to deal with every imaginable problem that the rest of the shale world will quickly emulate. In the end, it won’t matter much who survives, but rather what the world will look like after the dust settles. OPEC and its friends give shale drillers a good run for their money but this run makes them lean and mean and a harder opponent to mess with.

Read on Rigzone …

                                                       ________

Decarbonizing US Power Grid Would Cost Up To $4.5T

This assumes that the unbelievable cost figures advanced by renewable advocates are true. But they are not. Renewables still live on diesel generators providing backup and as regulation has it, they do so for free. This situation will not be manageable forever as someone will have to foot the bill eventually and this is always going to be the taxpayer, the ratepayer or both. But those are also the voters and once they smell the rat, they will start booting those proposing such nonsense out of office. As happens in Australia right now and a number of European nations. This foolishness has a predetermined breaking point.

Read on Rigzone …

                                                       ________

BP says some of its oil won’t see the light of day

The stone age did not end for a lack of stones. It’s an old adage now but it’s no less true. Old oil relied on a never-ending bull market. Now there is a feeling that the party is going to end. I beg to differ as the world will need reliable energy for a long, long time to come and those companies that allow their oil pedigree to atrophy will eventually pay the price. Because there will be others that will pick up the slack, develop new resources and the world will pay the price through higher prices which will eventually put gasoline in the fires of those that have learned to be mean and lean in the meantime. Exciting times but no end for oil at all.

Read on World Oil …

                                                       ________

Ice still lies thick on the water as LNG carrier makes this year’s first voyage across Northern Sea Route

We are close to the 25th solar minimum and it looks like this one is going to be the coldest one in 200 years. Truly serious Arctic exploration has started in the later 19th century which means that we will see ice formation like never before in human memory. This does not augur well for any economic activity in this part of the world and will likely raise the cost of such operations to unbearable levels. Enjoy shipping in the Arctic while it lasts.

Read on The Barents Observer …

                                                       ________

America’s liquefied natural gas boom may be on a collision course with climate change

Is methane slippage an issue? Yes, it is. Can it be handled? Most definitely. Virtually all the models for methane emissions have consistently been wrong. It’s hard to detect where methane in the atmosphere comes from as there are so many sources and also the atmosphere has a way to deal with methane very quickly and efficiently. It’s not a pollutant but rather a component of the earth’s ecosystem for billions of years now. In the end, one source of methane is our digestive tract. So we produce it continuously and so does any animal plus many other lifeforms. It helps to see gases that have been part of the ecosystem for longer than multicellular life exists not as pollutants but rather as building blocks. Current methane concentrations are close to 2ppm. That’s 2 parts per million. That’s 2 cubic millimeters in a liter. The rare gas argon is about 5000 times more abundant.

Read on CNN …

                                                       ________

Congressmen seek longer comment period for LNG-by-rail permit request

Public scrutiny is a good thing – safety first. So, there should be a very public, very open and thorough process when it comes to evaluating the risks of transporting LNG by rail. That being said, common sense should prevail. Because today, things that are vastly more dangerous than LNG are being transported by rail every day without even anyone batting an eyelid. Just take a look at some petrochemical products that are highly toxic, highly flammable, explosive or all of the former. LNG is nontoxic – nobody will suffer any injury just from inhaling it. LG is non-corrosive which means nothing it will touch degrades except that the cold of the product will freeze anything it touches. LNG is non-explosive or flammable by itself. It requires very special, hard to create conditions for doing those things. Virtually all the videos on the net supposedly depicting an exploding LNG truck show an LPG truck which is transported by ail cars by the way. This is safer than most stuff we transport now – let’s not forget this.

Read on Progressive Railroading …

                                                       ________

Global economy heading for trouble as manufacturing and construction shrink

Most people have already forgotten that we have only paper patched over the problems that resulted in the 2008 financial crisis. And as we have never cleaned up the mess for real, those problems have morphed into a fully fledged crisis that has spread form the financial sector into the real economy. What we see right now are still only the first signs on things to come. Expect a lot of more bad news, especially from China but also the European Union. There is an old adage that says when people flee into concrete gold (real estate investments) the economy is about to tank badly. China was the champion of this fools gold pouring concrete where they could. This will crash and this won’t go without lots of tears. No one will be unscathed but the US will weather the storm better than anyone else as Trump blows the cobwebs out of the economy and the US bathes in cheap energy.

Read on Reuters …

                                                       ________

Higher Asian prices, European gas stocks trigger LNG flow reshuffle

Europe starts to assume its role as a flexibility tool to world LNG markets. It can do so without any problem and copious pipeline gas supply underpins this capability. This puts a pin in the assumed competition between pipeline and LNG in Europe as there is none. Pipelines enable LNG games such as this, re-exporting to destinations that pay a better buck. You might think, those terminals in North Western Europe are not used to bring gas into Europe. So what? If they are storage sites for re-export to Asia and everyone makes money on this arrangement, all the better for everyone involved.

Read on Reuters …

                                                       ________

Clean Energy Requires Rare Metals. Should We Mine the Ocean Floor to Get Them?

There really is no such thing as a free lunch. We do understand the impact of oil and gas exploration, production and use in our current environment. There are impacts, there are side effects, but we know them, can calculate them, can mitigate them, know how to live with them without destroying every last piece of planetary real estate. And we also master the economic side of oil and gas. What we do not master at all is the consequences of a major shift towards renewable energy which we come to understand more and more is not so clean at all. Entire regions shred their airborne lifeforms to pieces, plaster everything they can find with beryllium panels, expose man and animal to infrasound waves, and don’t even provide us with economic, dependable energy. And now we are going to rip up the seafloor shredding entire ecosystems for the sake of a craze that’s destined to bankrupt the planet so that some investors can strike it rich. The sky is the limit – or maybe not.

Read on Medium …

                                                       ________

Embracing the Suck of Asteroid Mining

The same is true for stranded reserves on Earth. Many believe because a reserve exists, it is worth something. Some of the biggest known oil reserves on Earth are essentially worthless as the cost of retrieving the oil, processing the oil or transporting the oil (you can do this for gas as well) is higher than what the market would pay you for it. Its a calculus every entrepreneur must go through. my cost of doing business must be lower than what customers are ready to pay me for it. Wishful thinking does not help here. But we like our bubbles and whats more fitting to the pie in the sky than a bubble in the sky?

Read on Medium …

                                                       ________

Saudi-Russian Oil Fling Becomes Marriage

Historically, it has never been a good idea for the dinosaurs to team up in order to do more of the same while an upstart eats their lunch from under their claws. Traditional producers are being sledgehammered by shale and they just can’t understand the dynamics at play. Their world is big, corporate, long term big style projects with huge bureaucracies running intricate web-like structures of distribution. Shale, on the other side, is quick, nimble, reactive, flat, dynamic, entrepreneurial and does not pay any heed to old structures. The old emperors can cling on for a long time, live off the substance they still have – or believe they have but their own weight will be their undoing. While shale goes through a ring of fire cleaning itself of fluff, others fluff up to unseen proportions.

Read on Rigzone …

                                                       ________

Building LNG-powered ships newest industry along U.S./Mexico border

Almost 10 years ago I predicted that manufacturing will come back to the US mainly because of the double effects of automation and cheap gas. I may have still underestimated the effects of the gas factor. Countries like China have to import energy expensively from around the world in order to produce whatever they produce. Their labor is not the cheapest anymore and the China factor has transformed to be an investment risk because of the well know issues China has as a society with the rule of law. Those first LNG fuelled vessels won’t remain alone – the entire Caribbean could be LNGified in short order. Bunkers, power production, land transport. Cheap LNG from the US would transform those economies. And the US would make a double buck on it. Manufacture the stuff and provide the fuel. Win / win.

Read on Houston Chronicle …

                                                       ________

EDGE begins on-well site LNG production in US

I don’t have any numbers on this but if this is an economical way to put flares out, I am fine with it. There must be tens of thousands of such opportunities worldwide. Not only gas flares but also landfills, coal mines, biomethane producers, … It’s small, it can be brought there with a flatbed truck trailer, it requires minimal site preparation, it can be re-employed if the first site is down although I wonder what kind of retooling would be required in order to account for the changed composition of the gas. Plus I would strive to recover CAPEX on the first employment so I drag written off equipment around which makes economics better. Well done.

Read on Hydrocarbons Technology …

                                                       ________

New Solar + Battery Price Crushes Fossil Fuels, Buries Nuclear

Anyone, I am exposed to quite a number of renewable energy projects in Central Europe. None of them is capable of living one single day without massive subsidies. And even with all the help, they get they just about scrape by. I don’t know about conditions in California or how this project generates those numbers. Who can bring some light into this?

Read on Forbes …

                                                       ________

Record High Temperatures in France: 3 Facts the Media Don’t Tell You

The hottest recorded day for the last 200 years. How have temperatures been recorded 200 years ago? By having someone loom at the mercury. Who has seen an old mercury thermometer? Any confidence that we were able to detect a difference of a tenth degree celsius? I remember when I was a kid, we could sometimes not make out to one degree what temperature it really was. Most stuff from before WW2 is mush, anything from before WW1 is guesswork at best. But we constantly see those lines with extremely intricate and precise temperature developments over hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. It should be stated that they are all guesswork and could be off by entire degrees Celsius. But that’s not what we are told. If it supports the Global Warming script, it’s elevated to be a fact, if it does not, it’s adjusted until it fits.

Read on WUWT …

                                                       ________

Atomic Ascendancy: Australians Now See Nuclear Power as the Natural Choice

I have said it many times. People need to feel the consequences of their actions. They need to feel them hard and unmitigated. This is the only reliable way to bring them back to sanity. No action to bring the renewable industry down is needed by anyone. Just let them have their way, let the people feel the consequences (pay the price and suffer the brownouts) and things will come alright. It’s a big price to pay, YES. Hundreds of Billions will be wasted. Landscapes will be wasted by those windmills and solar arrays. Mountains of dead batteries will grow. But humanity has survived worse and once society has been hammered hard enough by all this nonsense, it will develop a sufficient immune reaction and do the right thing.

Read on Stop these Things …

 

We need LNG as a fuel in order to clean the skies without breaking the bank. Methane-fueled vehicles could have an edge but they are pushed to the sidelines by lesser technologies. LNG Europe is a non-profit, an advocate, a lobbyist & an information center.
The Methanist
P.O. Box: 0026 - 1092 Vienna - AUSTRIA
Facebook
Copyright The Methanist | All Rights Reserved | Please read the Page on intellectual and artistic property for information.
To change your subscription, click here.