Posted on 11/03/2015 5:32:00 AM PST by thackney
The debate over US crude oil exports provides a long-overdue chance to throw off the shackles of political gridlock.
The Republican-dominated House voted last month to lift the 40-year-old ban on oil exports. President Obama vowed to veto the bill if it reaches him.
However, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats are showing signs of disillusionment with the increasingly indefensible ban, which rewards US refiners at the expense of oil producers and the motoring public.
Still, a favor to the oil industry won't be possible without a concession, probably one that recognizes the environmental harm from enabling more US oil production.
Some Democrats would back an export bill if it contained support for renewable power generation, such as the renewal of expiring federal tax incentives that would promote continued build-out of wind and solar power.
As I (and many others) have argued elsewhere, a carbon tax would better encourage low-carbon generation. Since the political radioactivity of the word "tax" rules this out, we are left to pick winners, and wind and solar are the best of these.
However, renewable electricity generation has no connection to oil production or export. Oil is a transportation fuel. Barring an exponential increase in the size of the US electric vehicle fleet, boosting wind or solar capacity won't reduce demand for oil, or the associated carbon emissions.
A better bill would directly target carbon emissions from US oil production. Fortunately, this is easy. Congress should allow US producers to export crude oil – as long as they capture and market the associated natural gas they produce, rather than waste it.
In other words: Let's replace the ban on crude exports with a ban on natural gas flaring.
The flaring, or burning off of natural gas at the wellhead, has become an increasing problem since 2009...
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Totally misguided.
No one can completely eliminate the flaring of gas during oil production operations.
What this does is place the federal government directly into the management of oil and gas that is the domain of the states.
What this article misses is that North Dakota already dealt with this issue and has greatly reduced flaring of Nat Gas already.
See page 36 at:
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/presentations/ActivityUpdate2015_2015-06-26_NARO.pdf
Leave it in the oil, and the vapor pressure exceeds the transportation thresholds, so you can't ship it, especially by truck or rail because it is an explosion hazard.
Remove it from the oil, and it has to go somewhere.
That's where pipelines (feeder/gathering systems) come in, and the gas must be gathered to gas processing facilities in order to be made usable as Natural Gas. (Separate out water, CO2, and ethane, propane, butane, and longer chain hydrocarbons known as Natural Gas Liquids so there is mostly methane left.)
At times, the feed rates will exceed the ability of the plant to process the gas, and the excess is flared so there isn't a fire hazard or an over pressure situation. This enables the uninterrupted production of oil.
It's no choice at all. Gas will either be released (EEK! methane! A real greenhouse gas--and one Hell of a fire/explosion hazard, not to mention flared H2S which is not only an explosion/fire hazard but will kill you where you stand at 1000 PPM in air.
So the Obunga administration has its head right up its keester, as usual.
There is no safe way to produce either oil or gas without flaring some.
Ergo, this is not even an offer to open up the American Oil Patch to world markets.
No, it is on BLM leases, where the interagency squabbles and myriad permits needed have to be obtained from the Federal Government agencies before feeder pipelines can be run.
There, the amount of flared gas has increased, even expressed as a percentage to factor in increased production, because of Federal permitting delays.
I think the state has done well catching up with this issue.
In 2006~7, the rate of Nat Gas Flaring was up to 85% of that produced. Now it is down to 20%, and even with larger total amounts produced. The actual flaring amount has decreased, not just the percentage.
I saw some of the buzzwords of global warming. They want to control “carbon emissions” like the camel getting his nose under the tent so they can push for more and more control of the industry. The Petroleum industry is the top tax payer and exporting products would bring in much more money into the government. The current administration wants to bankrupt the government and destroy the capitalism system.
Learn something new everyday.
Thanks for the informative posts, Smokin’ Joe.
Regards,
FMOKM
I doubt it. They are trying to convert a lot of power generation to Natural Gas and they have greatly expanded their Petrochem industy.
I believe they also use gas lift in some fields, like is done on the North Slope and other locations.
The real and unmentioned problem that raises its ugly head, however, is when there is sour gas (H2S) associated with oil production. While the Bakken/Three Forks are sweet, other producing formations in the Williston Basin are not or are only locally sweet crude.
The Mission Canyon, Duperow, and Red River are notoriously sour in places, and I recall one operator plugging and abandoning what otherwise would have been a successful vertical well many years ago because it has nearly 40% Hydrogen Sulfide in the sample chamber on the Drill Stem Test.
Not only would hydrogen embrittlement threaten the integrity of the production equipment, the liability if the flare went out would be too high.
For the benefit of those who do not know, 1000 PPM of H2S will drop you where you stand--one breath, you're done--and lower concentrations just take longer down to about 100 PPM. The insidious part is that H2S paralyzes the olfactory nerves, so now you smell it, now you don't, even if the higher concentrations are still there. No one wants to fool with that, too much liability.
But for wells with lower concentrations, the very best way to deal with the problem is to flare off the gas and burn the H2S (making Sulfur Dioxide, which while still a nasty irritant when concentrated is just not as deadly, especially at low concentrations.
North Dakota is not the only place where H2S is present in producing reservoirs, despite being blessed with the incredible resources which are free of that. In other states and geologic provinces, sour gas is pretty much the norm, so flaring cannot be eliminated without creating dangerous situations where presently those dangers have been mitigated.
“cna”=can
The Petroleum industry is by and large overwhelmingly Conservative. It is an election year. The less disposable income oil workers have, the leaner the budgets for Conservative candidates.
thank you for the information. Very informative.
You’re welcome!
So the more the administration cuts oil production in the USA the more money saudi arabia to fund projects like the anti-fracking groups terrorists groups as well as blocking many conservative candidates.
Funny how well that works, isn’t it?
This is truly “Flyover engineering”.
He sits up there in AF-1 and sees the flaring during night flights...
And he decides, “HEY, That’s waste!”....”HEY, That contributes to global warming!”
Then, without any cost/benefit analysis of attempting to contain or harvest the flared gas, he declares “We must fix that!”
and besides, it fits his pet AGW hoax....
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