Are Renewables Set to Displace Natural Gas?

• Bloomberg's renewable energy affiliate forecasts that wind and solar power will make major inroads into the market share of natural gas within a decade. 
• This might be a useful scenario to consider, but it is still likelier that coal, not gas, faces the biggest risk from the growth of renewables. 

A recent story on Bloomberg News, "What If Big Oil's Bet on Gas Is Wrong?", challenges the conventional wisdom that demand for natural gas will grow as it displaces coal and facilitates the growth of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. Instead, the forecast highlighted in the article envisions gas's global share of electricity dropping from 23% to 16% by 2040 as renewables shoot past it. So much for gas as the "bridge to the future" if that proves accurate.

Several points in the story leave room for doubt. For starters, this projection from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), the renewables-focused analytical arm of Bloomberg, would leave coal with a larger share of power generation than gas in 2040, when it has renewables reaching 50%. That might make sense in the European context on which their forecast seems to be based, but it flies against the US experience of coal losing 18 points of electricity market share since 2007 (from 48.5% to 30.4%), with two-thirds of that drop picked up by gas and one-third by expanding renewables. (See chart below.)

It's also worth noting that the US Energy Information Administration projected in February that natural gas would continue to gain market share, even in the absence of the EPA's Clean Power Plan, which is being withdrawn.

Natural gas prices have had a lot to do with the diverging outcomes experienced in Europe and the US, so far. As the shale boom ramped up, average US natural gas spot prices fell from nearly $9 per million BTUs (MMBTU) in 2008 to $3 or less since 2014.  Meanwhile, Europe remains tied to long-term pipeline supplies from Russia and LNG imports from North Africa and elsewhere. Wholesale gas price indexes in Europe reached $7-8 per MMBTU earlier this year.

But it's not clear that the factors that have kept gas expensive in Europe and protected coal, even as nuclear power was being phased out in Germany, will persist. The US now exports more liquefied natural gas (LNG) than it imports. US LNG exports to Europe may not push out much Russian gas, but along with expanding global LNG capacity they are forcing Gazprom, Russia's main gas producer and exporter, to become more competitive.

Then there's the issue of flexibility versus intermittency. Wind and solar power power are not flexible; without batteries or other storage they are at the mercy of daily, seasonal or random variation of sunlight and breezes, and in need of back-up from truly flexible sources. Large-scale hydroelectric capacity, which makes up 75% of today's global renewable generation and is capable of supplying either 24x7 "baseload" electricity or ramping up and down as needed, has provided much of the back-up for wind and solar in Europe, but is unlikely to grow rapidly in the future.

That means the bulk of the growth in renewables that BNEF sees from now to 2040 must come from extrapolating intermittent wind and solar power from their relatively modest combined 4.5% of the global electricity mix in 2015 to a share larger than coal still holds in the US. The costs of wind and solar technologies have fallen rapidly and are expected to continue to drop, while the integration of these sources into regional power grids at scales up to 20-30% has gone better than many expected. However, without cheap electricity storage on an unprecedented scale, their further market penetration seems likely to encounter increasing headwinds as their share increases.

BNEF may be relying on the same aggressive forecast of falling battery prices that underpinned its recent projection that electric vehicles (EVs) will account for more than half of all new cars by 2040. As the Financial Times noted this week, battery improvements depend on chemistry, not semiconductor electronics. Assuming their costs can continue to fall like those for solar cells looks questionable. Nor is cost--partly a function of temporary government incentives--the only aspect of performance that will determine how well EVs compete with steadily improving conventional cars and hybrids.

I also compared the BNEF gas forecast to the International Energy Agency's most recent World Energy Outlook, incorporating the national commitments in the Paris climate agreement. The IEA projected that renewables would reach 37% of global power generation by 2040, or roughly half the increase BNEF anticipates. The IEA also saw global gas demand growing by 50%, passing coal by 2040. That's a very different outcome than the one BNEF expects.

Despite my misgivings about its assumptions and conclusions, the BNEF forecast is a useful scenario for investors and energy companies to consider. With oil prices stuck in low gear and future oil demand highly uncertain, thanks to environmental regulation and electric and autonomous vehicle technologies, many large resource companies have increased their focus on natural gas. Some, like Shell and Total, invested to produce more gas than oil, predicated on gas's expected role as the lowest-emitting fossil fuel in a decarbonizing world. If that bet turned out to be wrong, many billions of dollars of asset value would be at risk.

However, it's hard to view that as the likeliest scenario. Consider a simple reality check: As renewable electricity generation grows to mainstream scale, it must displace something. Is that likelier to be relatively inflexible coal generation, with its high emissions of both greenhouse gases and local pollutants, or flexible, lower-emitting natural gas power generation that offers integration synergies with renewables? The US experience so far says that baseload facilities--coal and nuclear--are challenged much more by gas and renewables, than gas-fired power is by renewables plus coal.

The bottom line is that the world gets 80% of the energy we use from oil, gas and coal. Today's renewable energy technology isn't up to replacing all of these at the same time, without a much heavier lift from batteries than the latter seem capable of absent a real breakthrough. If the energy transition now underway is indeed being driven by emissions and cleaner air, then it's coal, not gas, that faces the biggest obstacles.

Energy and the 2016 Presidential Election

In less than a week, the most controversial and acrimonious presidential election in living memory will be over. Energy has largely been a second-tier issue in this contest, although the divergence in the candidates' views on this vital subject is stark. Fortunately, the energy consequences--planned and unintended--of the last two US presidential elections hold some useful lessons for considering the proposed energy policies of this year's two front-runners.

As we look back, please recall that for most of the 2008 campaign the average US price for unleaded regular gasoline was over $3.00 per gallon. Much of that summer it was at or above $4.00. Four years later, from Labor Day to Election Day of 2012, regular gasoline averaged $3.76 per gallon. The comparable figure for the last two months of the 2016 campaign is just under $2.25.

In 2008 energy independence was a hot issue. Then-Senator Obama ran on a platform that targeted reducing US oil imports by over 3 million barrels per day, mainly through improved fuel efficiency. In his view US oil resources were effectively tapped out--remember "3% of reserves and 25% of consumption"? The main role he envisioned for the US oil and gas industry was as a source of increased tax revenue. His primary focus was on reducing greenhouse gas emissions through large federal investments in green energy technology. He would soon deliver on that promise with the $31 billion renewable energy package included in the federal stimulus of 2009.

When he was running for reelection in 2012, President Obama had kinder words for conventional energy, particularly the large expansion of US natural gas supply due to shale gas. He even took credit for "boosting US domestic production of oil". That point provoked an extended argument in the second presidential debate that year. Importantly, when the President emphasized renewable energy, energy efficiency and emissions, it was within a broader framework of "all of the above" energy.

At the same time, following the failure of comprehensive energy and climate legislation in his first term, his administration has pursued major new regulations aimed at achieving its energy and environmental goals. However, some of the most sweeping of these, including the Clean Power Plan, have gotten hung up in the courts, while others have yet to be fully implemented.

In retrospect President Obama was lucky. The shale energy revolution wasn't on his radar in 2008 and received little or no help from his administration, but it has increased US energy production by more than 17%, net of coal's losses, since he took office. It has made a major dent in US oil imports and CO2 emissions.  In the process, it saved consumers hundreds of billions of dollars on their energy bills, reduced the US trade imbalance, generated large numbers of new jobs when it mattered most, and provided the primary means for reducing US greenhouse gas emissions to their lowest level since before Bill Clinton ran for President.

Meanwhile, the renewable energy revolution on which his 2008 campaign pinned most of its hopes is still a work in progress. The cost of non-hydro renewables, mainly wind and solar power, has fallen dramatically and their deployment has grown impressively, expanding by a combined 135% from 2008 to 2014, or 15% per year. Wind and solar power are reshaping US electricity markets and changing the economics of baseload power plants, including nuclear plants. However, these sources still generate just 8% of US electricity and accounted for less than 3% of total US energy production in 2015.

What can we learn from the experience of the last two presidential terms? We are certainly in the midst of a long-term transition from a high-carbon energy economy to one using lower-carbon fuels and low- or effectively zero-carbon electricity. However, the numbers tell us that with regard to implementation, if not technology, we are closer to the beginning of that transition than to its end. The next President can double renewables, and that would still leave us reliant on conventional energy and nuclear power for three-quarters of our electricity and 90% of our total energy needs.

Going from 3% of energy from new renewables to the levels needed to meet the emissions targets that the US took on at Paris last year represents an enormous technical and financial challenge. It won't happen without a healthy economy, supported by a diverse and flexible energy mix anchored by domestic oil and natural gas from public and private lands and waters.

Although the Obama administration has added numerous regulations affecting energy, it stopped short of derailing the shale revolution. As a result, it has benefited greatly from the increased flexibility and energy security shale is providing. President Obama adapted his approach to energy and came around to recognizing the need for an energy mix that balances new, green energy with the best conventional energy sources. That's the lens through which we should view the energy proposals of this year's candidates.

There's no question that Secretary Clinton would promote the continued growth of renewable energy and the wider application of energy efficiency. If anything, she seems to be even more focused on climate change and clean energy than Barrack Obama was in 2008. However, her campaign website portrays oil and gas mainly in negative terms, with a focus on cutting their consumption, along with the industry's tax benefits. While explicitly recognizing the role that increased US natural gas production has played in reducing emissions, her policies would directly target the primary source of that growth.

Shale gas now accounts for half of all US natural gas production, but Secretary Clinton is on record supporting much stricter regulations on "fracking", the common shorthand for the technological processes involved in producing oil and gas from shale: "By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place,” she said in a March debate with Senator Sanders.  

Reversing the recent growth of natural gas production from shale would lead to higher emissions during the next four to eight years. With less gas available, natural gas prices would rise, and the remaining coal-fired power plants would ramp back up to fill the gap, even as renewables continued to expand. That is happening in Germany today as that country turns away from nuclear power. In the US, without the contribution from natural gas and nuclear power plants, another of which just shut down permanently, our climate goals would be out of reach.

Recently, Secretary Clinton was also cited as wanting to expand the current administration's moratorium on coal development from public lands to encompass oil and gas. As shown in the chart below, based on data from the US Energy Information Administration, this production is already trending downward, overall. Imposing a moratorium on oil and gas development on public lands would accelerate that contraction, without new wells to offset the decline from mature fields.

If implemented as described, Secretary Clinton's policy toward shale energy would have an even more pronounced effect on US energy supplies than restricting development on federal land. With oil prices low, shale oil production has already fallen by 1.2 million barrels per day since output peaked in May 2015. The drop would have been much steeper had US producers not been able to focus their greatly reduced drilling activity on their most productive prospects.

US oil imports are increasing in tandem with falling shale oil production and rising demand. We still have 260 million cars, trucks and buses that require mainly petroleum-based fuels, while electric vehicles make up a tiny fraction of the US vehicle fleet. If shale oil drilling were further curtailed by new regulations, the shortfall would be made up from non-US sources and imports would grow even faster. The party that stands to gain the most from that is OPEC.

From what I have seen and read, Secretary Clinton's proposed energy policy would undermine the all-of-the-above energy mix necessary to maintain US economic growth and energy security as we transition to cleaner energy sources. It is disconnected from the lessons of the last eight years and should not be implemented in its present form.

There is no doubt that Donald Trump views the shale revolution and the resources it has unlocked very differently from Secretary Clinton. It has been harder to gauge where he stands on other aspects of energy. During the primaries, Mr. Trump's energy policy lacked much detail, as I noted at the time. He has since largely remedied that, though many of the points raised on the energy page of his campaign's website seem mainly intended to counter Secretary Clinton's positions.

Mr. Trump's energy vision and goals are posted on his website, and he has made several speeches on the subject, focused mainly on expanding US oil and gas production and making the US a dominant global player in the markets for these commodities. His main theme is sweeping deregulation and reform, including revoking the current administration's executive orders and regulations affecting infrastructure projects, resource development, and the role of coal in power generation.

He endorses an all-of-the-above approach, but there's still little mention of renewables, efficiency or nuclear power. In any case his support for renewables is not linked to man-made climate change, which he disputes. He is also on record opposing US adherence to the Paris Climate Agreement.

How do Mr. Trump's ideas on energy square with the lessons of the last eight years? It seems clear he would rather swim with, rather than against the tide of the shale revolution. It's less clear how much additional activity that would stimulate in the near term if oil and gas prices remain low, even if regulations could be cut as he proposes. As for renewable energy, there doesn't seem to be enough information to assess where it fits into his version of "all of the above".

It's important to keep in mind that energy is not an end in itself. Stepping back from the details, and at the risk of grossly oversimplifying some complex and thorny issues, the key difference I see between the two candidates in this area is that Mrs. Clinton's energy policies seem designed mainly to serve environmental goals, while Mr. Trump's energy policies seem aimed at mainly economic goals.

In that sense, the choice here looks as binary as on many other issues this year. Just don't interpret that conclusion or my analysis above as an endorsement of either candidate.

Is the US Really Energy Independent?

Toward the end of Sunday night's presidential debate I was startled to hear Secretary Clinton reply to an audience question by stating, "We are now for the first time ever energy-independent." If the price of oil were $100, rather than $50, that might have constituted a "Free Poland" moment, recalling President Ford's famous gaffe in a 1976 debate.

This point is likely to get lost in the dueling fact-checking of both candidates' numerous claims, but while the overall US energy deficit has fallen from about a quarter of total consumption (net of exports) in 2008 to just 11% in 2015, we still import 8 million barrels per day of oil from other countries. That includes over 3 million barrels per day from OPEC, a figure that has been growing again as US oil and gas drilling slowed following the collapse of oil prices in late 2104.

Oil has always been at the heart of our notions of energy security and energy independence, because it is our most geopolitically sensitive energy source and the one for which it is hardest to devise large-scale substitutes. So although the US is certainly in a better overall position than it has been in decades, with progress on multiple aspects of energy, it is not yet energy independent, especially where it counts the most.

Moreover, the policies that Mrs. Clinton has proposed would, at least initially, be likely to expand that gap by imposing additional restrictions on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." Mr. Trump, for his part, seemed to devote much of his response to Mr. Bone's debate question  talking about coal, which while still a significant player in electricity production has become largely irrelevant to the topic of energy independence, because its use is being displaced by other domestic energy sources, mainly natural gas and renewables like wind and solar power.

In fact, of the various contributors to the energy independence gains the US has made from 2008-15 (shown in blue in the above chart) the largest depend on fracking. Oil still makes up most of our remaining energy deficit, after help from a million barrels per day of ethanol--50% of the energy content of which comes from domestic natural gas. Electric vehicles also help, but the roughly 400,000 on the road in the US today displace the equivalent of only about 12,000 barrels per day of oil products, too small to be visible on the scale of this graph. As a result, continued fracking of shale and tight oil resources must be the linchpin of any realistic strategy to close the remaining US energy deficit within the next decade or so.

I understand that Secretary Clinton's proposed energy policies put a higher priority on addressing climate change. However, she raised the issue of energy independence in the second debate, even though her proposals are unlikely to deliver it in the foreseeable future--or preserve our present, hard-won reduced dependence on foreign energy sources. Anyone who doubts that this is a pocketbook issue should recall where oil and gasoline prices were just three years ago, before US shale added over 4 million barrels per day to global oil supplies.

Could the Hydrogen Economy Run on Ethanol?

• Plans for a fuel cell car running on ethanol look like a clever way to circumvent the obstacles faced by other fuel cell vehicles.
• However, it is not clear that ethanol's perceived logistical benefits or emissions profile would give Nissan an edge in the competitive market for green cars.

Japan's Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. made headlines this week when it announced plans to produce a fuel-cell car that would run on ethanol, instead of hard-to-find hydrogen. As reported by Scientific American, the company expects to commercialize this approach by 2020, even though competitors like Toyota already have fuel cell cars in their showrooms. It's an interesting choice. Ethanol seems to offer logistical advantages over hydrogen, but the technical challenges involved aren't trivial, nor is ethanol without drawbacks from an energy or environmental perspective.

Fuel cells have long promised a different and potentially superior path to electrifying automobiles, compared to battery-electric vehicles (EVs) with their limited range and relatively long recharging times. One of the biggest obstacles has always been the lack of infrastructure and supply--hydrogen must first be liberated from water, methane or other compounds--and the problems of storing sufficient quantities of it on board. I've driven prototype fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs) and found the experience pretty similar to driving a regular car, as long as you have a hydrogen filling station handy.

Nissan makes the case that ethanol (chemical formula C2H6O) is much easier to source and distribute than gaseous hydrogen, and the process for making it give up its hydrogen is routine, at least under laboratory conditions. However, as the alternative energy research subsidiary of my former employer, Texaco Inc., found in pursuing a similar concept with gasoline, it's one thing to do this in a bench-scale device and quite another to do it in a size and shape that will fit easily and safely in a car and run as reliably as an internal combustion engine. I suspect Nissan's engineers have their work cut out for them for the next four years.

The bigger questions about this approach are more basic: Does it make sense from an economic, energy and environmental perspective, and can it find a large enough market? Consumers already have a wide range of green alternatives from which to choose, ranging from Prius-type hybrids (gasoline only), plug-in hybrids (gasoline + electricity) and battery EVs, not to mention the continuous improvement of non-electric cars. 

Nissan didn't include many numbers in the documents accompanying its press release, but the chemistry and math involved are pretty simple. At 100% efficiency, a gallon of ethanol could produce just under 0.8 kilograms (Kg) of hydrogen (H2) using the standard steam-reforming process. The best efficiency I could find for this ethanol-to-hydrogen conversion  was around 90%, so in the real world that gallon of ethanol would yield around 0.7 Kg of H2--enough to take Toyota's Mirai FCV about 46 miles. That's pretty good, considering that same gallon in a Chrysler 200 equipped as a flexible fuel vehicle (FFV) would drive an average of just 21 miles. Fuel cells are much more efficient than internal combustion engines.

The economics of operation don't look bad, either. If we use today's average US price for E85 (85% ethanol + 15% gasoline) of $1.87/gal. as a proxy for an ethanol retail price, that equates to around 4 ¢/mile, using the Mirai's published fuel economy data. That's about 15% cheaper than a Prius on regular gasoline at this week's US average of $2.40/gal., but it's also around 10% more expensive than a Nissan Leaf using off-peak electricity in northern California.

Emissions are trickier to assess. There's a lively and growing controversy about whether biofuels produced from crops can truly be considered carbon-neutral, even in places like Brazil where the yields from sugar cane are so high. There's much less controversy that the production of most US ethanol from corn is anything but a net-zero-emission endeavor. Corn requires fertilizer sourced from natural gas, and ethanol refineries consume gas (or coal) and electricity in their production process. In any case, when Nissan characterizes their planned ethanol FCV as having "nearly no CO2 increase whatsoever", they are either oversimplifying a very complex discussion or taking a large leap of faith. 

We can count the CO2 coming out of the tailpipe of such a car, and it would need a tailpipe because the onboard ethanol converter would emit about 12.5 lb. of CO2 for every gallon of ethanol converted to pure H2, plus some CO2 from the ethanol burned to heat the unit. My back-of-the envelope calculation gives a figure of 135 grams of CO2 per mile, or 20% lower than a Toyota Prius on gasoline. It would not be a Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV), though of course an EV running on average grid electricity isn't really a ZEV, either, except in isolated regions or at specific times of day.

Even if there aren't any deal-killers here, I'm skeptical about Nissan's fundamental assumption that the ethanol infrastructure for their FCV would be that much easier to develop than the H2 infrastructure other FCVs require. That's because of the cost and ownership structure of the retail fuels business, which as I've argued previously helps explain why your corner gas station is unlikely to sell E15 (85% gasoline, 15% ethanol) any time soon, despite the EPA having approved it for newer cars. 

At least in the US, most gas stations are owned by small businesses, not by the oil companies whose brands they display. Margins are slim, and these folks don't have deep pockets, so adding a new fuel like pure ethanol or the ethanol-water mix that Nissan suggests, poses a difficult business decision: Do you take over an existing tank and stop selling diesel fuel, or premium gasoline with its high margins? Or do you rip up the forecourt to add a new tank, which entails being out of business for months--or even longer if you discover that one of your existing tanks is leaking? Either way, the investment costs and disruption to current customers are significant, in exchange for selling what at first would certainly be a low-volume product. When I was in the fuels supply & distribution business, we would have called that kind of decision a "no-brainer."

If Nissan can't encourage enough service stations to add ethanol or an ethanol/water blend--E85 would not work--to their product mix, do they start their own service station network? That seems unlikely. And if you buy one of these cars in a few years, should you carry a case of vodka in the trunk as an emergency range-extender? That's only half-facetious.  

I give Nissan credit for pursuing a novel option for making fuel cell cars more viable, as an alternative to today's range-limited EVs. Ethanol looks like a cost-competitive source of hydrogen, and it is at least easier to store than H2 gas or liquid H2. However, they face practical and marketing challenges that might well offset most of the advantages the company claims to see. The ethanol FCV could encounter the same chicken-and-egg dynamic as FCVs running on hydrogen, or indeed any new model requiring a fuel that is not distributed at scale today. It will be interesting to watch their progress.

On Track for a Golden Age of Gas?

• The global energy industry must overcome significant new challenges if natural gas development is to achieve the vision of a Golden Age of Gas.
• Low energy prices and reduced investment are only half the battle as regulations complexify and organized opposition grows. 

Five years ago the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a report entitled, "Are We Entering a Golden Age of Gas?" Gas development was booming, from both conventional resources and US shale deposits, and gas was widely seen as a vital tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Much has happened since then, including a collapse in global oil prices, the signing of a new climate agreement in Paris, and a broadening of the anti-fossil-fuel focus of climate activists. If we're still on the path to a golden age of gas, the ride will be bumpy.

This is probably most evident across the pond, where Nick Butler, the Financial Times' respected energy analyst, observed this week, "Unless something changes radically, Europe has passed the point of peak gas consumption." He cited Germany's ongoing "Energiewende" (energy transition) which in order to maximize wind and solar and minimize nuclear power, ends up squeezing gas out between renewables and much higher-emitting coal.

Earlier this month France's Energy Minister announced she was pursuing a ban on imports of US shale gas--effectively any gas from the US--since France already bans domestic fracking. That strikes me as a textbook example of having to keep making bad decisions to be consistent with the first one, but it's their sovereign choice.

As the IEA defined it at the time, this Golden Age would entail faster growth in gas demand in every major sector, compared to the agency's main "New Policies" scenario in its then-current annual World Energy Outlook (WEO). They anticipated compound average growth of 1.8% per year, much faster than oil or coal, with gas consumption ending up 13% higher than the WEO's projection for 2035. That's like adding an extra Russia or Middle East to world gas demand within 20 years.

One gauge of whether that still seems realistic can be found in the US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) just-released 2016 International Energy Outlook. The EIA's long-term forecast actually has gas consumption growing slightly faster than IEA's Golden Age track in the developed countries of the OECD between now and 2035, but with a slower ramp-up to essentially the same end-point in the non-OECD countries.

Of course one forecast can't really validate another, so let's consider how some of the big uncertainties that the IEA identified in the 2011 report have shifted, starting with energy pricing. After oil's recent rebound, oil and gas have fallen by around half their 2011 US prices. That makes investments in oil and gas exploration and production considerably less attractive. Nearly $400 billion of projects have been canceled or deferred, globally, setting up slower growth in production from both gas fields and oil fields with associated gas in the near-to-medium term. This deceleration is evident in EIA's latest monthly Drilling Productivity Report for US shale.

With the contract price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) often tied to oil prices or competing with pipeline gas that has also fallen in price, large gas infrastructure projects like LNG plants look less attractive, too. We've already seen cancellations of new facilities in Australia and Canada. Fewer LNG export facilities are likely to be built in the US than previously planned. All this means less new gas reaching markets where it can be used.

Cheaper oil also reduces the attractiveness of gas as a transportation fuel. Although increasingly popular as a cleaner fuel for buses, natural gas hasn't made much headway in US passenger cars. However, this application has been growing in places like Italy and Iran, for different reasons.

Viewed in isolation, these price-related responses seem likelier to delay, rather than derail the expectations the IEA set out in 2011. The bigger challenges come from a set of issues the IEA identified a year later, in a follow-up report called "Golden Rules for a Golden Age of Gas." As Dr. Birol, now the Executive Director of IEA, indicated then, these boil down to the industry's "social license to operate."

Transparency, water consumption, emissions including methane leaks--all on IEA's list--are some of the key issues over which companies, regulators, NGOs and activists are sparring today. The UK is a prime example. Conventional energy production is declining rapidly and a large shale gas potential has been identified by the British Geological Survey, but every attempt to drill exploratory wells has encountered strong opposition.

A new factor the IEA did not anticipate is the emergence of political movements focused on fossil fuel divestiture and a "keep it in the ground" mantra. These may be based on unrealistic expectations of how quickly the world can transition to a zero-emission economy, but they illustrate the scale of a stakeholder engagement challenge the global oil and gas industry has so far failed to meet adequately. 

Just as social media are transforming politics, they are also altering the balance of power between organizations and their critics. The gaps that must be bridged if new gas development is to remain broadly acceptable to the public are growing in ways that will demand new approaches and new strategies to address. 

Considering the shifts in the global energy mix that will be necessary to reduce global emissions in line with the goals of last year's Paris Agreement, gas ought to have a future every bit as bright as the Golden Age the IEA described five years ago. Achieving that now likely depends less on the price of energy and the scale of available resource than on convincing regulators and the public that the trade-offs involved in obtaining its benefits are still reasonable.

A New Angle on Carbon Capture

In my last couple of posts I looked at the difficulty of meeting ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) without help from the lower-emitting portions of our current energy mix. Last week ExxonMobil announced that it is pursuing a new pathway for capturing carbon from power plant exhaust. That could help revive another important strategy for large-scale emissions reduction from our existing energy sources.

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has fallen out of favor, lately, mainly due to the high cost and technical challenges of the early prototypes for large-scale implementation of the technology. Not only are the initial investment costs of today's CCS hardware still very high, but it is also inherently expensive to operate. That's because of the high energy consumption of the process, resulting in a "parasitic" load on the host power plant that reduces its net output by up to 20%, making the remaining output much more expensive. That creates a large deterrent in any market that doesn't provide either direct subsidies for carbon removal, or a high carbon tax or price for traded emissions offsets.

Another reason that CCS has received less attention recently is that the costs of renewable energy technologies like wind and solar power have kept falling. To some they now look cheap enough, especially with further cost improvements extrapolated, to enable us to reach our emissions goals mainly through wider deployment of solar modules and wind turbines.

Even if that were technically feasible, like most other energy industry experts I have met I am convinced that the deep emissions cuts desired for mid-century will require implementing or retro-fitting CCS onto the fleet of coal and gas-fired power plants that will likely still be in service decades from now. CCS underpins several of the emissions stabilization wedges pioneered by Princeton engineering professor Rob Socolow and his colleagues ten years ago.

What makes the approach that ExxonMobil and FuelCell Energy, Inc. have described so attractive is that, instead of being a drain on power generation, capturing CO2 via fuel cells would actually add significantly to a facility's reliable power output. It would increase revenue, rather than curtailing it.

The clever bit, and its potential advantage over current carbon-capture technology, is that CO2 capture in a carbonate fuel cell occurs as a byproduct of the power generation step. That means that it doesn't require a big, expensive, power-hungry process unit, the only function of which is to strip CO2 from flue gas and concentrate it for subsequent shipment and storage.

These fuel cells would still require natural gas for fuel, and they would produce CO2 emissions in the process of generating electricity, though at a lower rate than the coal or gas-fired plant with which they would be partnered. However, both their direct emissions and the CO2 extracted from the power plant exhaust would come out in a highly purified form suitable for geological sequestration and stay out of the atmosphere.

That brings up an important advantage of this approach over various schemes to capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere. Although the article on the Exxon/Fuel Cell Energy development in MIT Technology Review  described the CO2 concentration in power plant flue gas (5%-15%) as "low", that is still hundreds of times higher than its concentration in air.

400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere may be worrying from a climate perspective, but it is still just 0.04% of air that remains mostly nitrogen and oxygen. And the lower the concentration, the harder--and normally more expensive--it is to extract. (Green plants can do this trick cheaply thanks to billions of years of evolution combined with cost-free sunlight.)

The press release makes it very clear that this new carbon-capture technology has so far only been demonstrated in the lab. Scaling it up will require additional work, and success is uncertain. Many other promising innovations, including a host of cellulosic biofuel technologies, have failed to scale. However, its potential applications are compelling enough to justify a lot of patience and persistence. I wish them luck.

Out of Reach Without Nuclear and Shale

• US emissions reduction goals for 2025 could not be achieved without nuclear power and the fracking technology necessary to extract shale gas. 
• Recent revisions by the EPA in its estimates of methane leaks from natural gas production and use do not negate the benefits of gas in reducing emissions.

In its lead editorial yesterday, the Washington Post took presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to task for his attacks on nuclear power and natural gas. The Post focused its critique on greenhouse gas emissions and the emissions trade-offs involved in substituting one form of energy for another. That speaks directly to one of the main reasons that Mr. Sanders' argument resonates with his supporters, but it ignores an even more basic problem. The energy contribution from shale and nuclear power is so large that if our goal is a reliable, low-emission energy mix that meets the future energy needs of the US economy, we simply cannot get there without them, at least not in any reasonable timeframe.

The pie chart below shows the current sources of US electricity in terms of the energy they generate, rather than their rated capacity. This is an important distinction, because the renewable electricity technologies that have been growing so rapidly--wind and solar--are variable and/or cyclical, generating only a fraction of their rated output over the course of any week, month, or year.

For example, replacing the output of a 2,000 megawatt (MW) nuclear power plant such as the Indian Point facility just north of New York City would require, not 2,000 MW of wind and solar power, but between 7,600 MW and 9,400 MW, based on the applicable capacity factors for such installations. Now scale that up to the whole country. With 99 nuclear reactors in operation, rated at a combined 98,700 MW, it would take at least 375,000 MW of new wind and solar power to displace them. As the Post's editorial points out, money spent replacing already zero-emission energy is money not spent replacing high-emitting sources.

At the rates at which wind and solar capacity were added last year, that build-out would require 24 years. That's in addition to the 36 years it would take to replace the current contribution of coal-fired power generation. It also ignores the fact that intermittent renewables require either expensive energy storage or fast-reacting backup generation to provide 24/7 reliability.

That brings us to natural gas, the main provider of back-up power for renewables, and the "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing) technology that accounts for half of US natural gas production. Fracking has transformed the US energy industry so dramatically that it is very hard to gauge the consequences of a national ban on it, even if such a policy could be enacted. Would natural gas production fall by a third to its level in 2005, when shale gas made up only around 5% of US supply, and would imports of LNG and pipeline gas from Canada ramp back up, correspondingly?

Or would production fall even farther? After all, one of the main factors behind the rapid growth of shale gas in the previous decade is that US conventional gas opportunities in places like the Gulf of Mexico were becoming scarcer and more expensive to develop than shale, which was higher-cost then than today. Either way, the constrained supply of affordable natural gas under a fracking ban would not support generating a third of US electricity from gas, vs. 20% in 2006. So we would either need even more renewables and storage--in addition to those displacing nuclear power--or, as Germany has found in pursuit of its phase-out of nuclear power, a substantial contribution from coal.

One of the primary reasons cited by Mr. Sanders and others for their opposition to shale gas, aside from overstated claims about water impacts, is the risk to the climate from associated methane leaks. Here he would seem to have some support from the US Environmental Protection Agency, which recently raised its estimates of methane leakage from natural gas systems.

Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2), so this is a source of serious concern. However, a detailed look at the updated EPA data does not support the contention of shale's critics that natural gas is ultimately as bad or worse for the climate than coal, a notion that has been strongly refuted by other studies.

The oil and gas industry has questioned the basis of the EPA's revisions, but for purposes of discussion let's assume that their new figures are more accurate than last year's EPA estimate, which showed US methane emissions from natural gas systems having fallen by 11% since 2005. On the new basis, the EPA estimates that in 2014 gas-related methane emissions were 20 million CO2-equivalent metric tons higher than their 2013 level on the old basis, for a year-on-year increase of more than 12%. This upward revision is nearly offset by the 15 million ton drop in methane emissions from coal mining since 2009, which was largely attributable to gas displacing coal in power generation.

In any case, the new data shows gas-related emissions essentially unchanged since 2005, despite the 44% increase in US natural gas production over that period. The key comparison is that the EPA's entire, updated estimate of methane emissions from natural gas in 2014, on a CO2-equivalent basis, is just 2.5% of total US greenhouse gas emission that year. In particular, it equates to less than half of the 360 million ton per year reduction in emissions from fossil fuel combustion in electric power generation since 2005--a reduction well over half of which the US Energy Information Administration attributed to the shift from gas to coal.

In other words, from the perspective of the greenhouse gas emissions of the entire US economy, our increased reliance on natural gas for power generation cannot be making matters worse, rather than better. That's a good thing, because as I've shown above, we simply can't install enough renewables, fast enough, to replace coal, nuclear power and shale gas at the same time.

What does all this tell us? Fundamentally, Mr. Sanders and others advocating that the US abandon both nuclear power and shale gas are mistaken or misinformed. We are many years away from being able to rely entirely on renewable energy sources and energy efficiency to run our economy. In the meantime, nuclear and shale are essential for the continuing decarbonization of US electricity, which is the linchpin of the plans behind the administration's pledge at last December's Paris Climate Conference to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% by 2025. That goal would be out of reach without them.

Lessons from the Coal Bust

Yesterday's Chapter 11 filing by the largest US coal mining company is the latest in a series of coal bankruptcies. While factors such as regulations and poorly timed acquisitions have played a role, this trend reflects the parallel technology revolutions playing out across the energy sector. Here are a few key lessons from the ongoing coal bust:

• There are many other ways to make electricity, and coal brings nothing unique to the party. In a growing number of markets it is no longer the cheapest form of generation, and it is certainly the one with the most environmental baggage, from source to combustion.
• Coal-fired power generation is in competition with alternatives that are already producing at scale, like nuclear and natural gas generation, or growing rapidly from a smaller base, like renewables. It may not compete with all of these in every market, but few markets lack at least one of these challengers.
• The costs of renewables and gas have fallen significantly in recent years, due to major technology gains. Coal has also benefited from some improvements in scale and end-use technology. Today's ultra supercritical coal plants are more efficient than coal plants of a generation ago, but they are more expensive to build, even without carbon capture (CCS). However, wind and solar power continue to grow cheaper and more efficient, while gas has benefited from resource-multiplying production technologies and advanced gas turbines that can exceed 60% efficiency and ramp up and down rapidly to accommodate the swings of intermittent renewables.
• Despite all of these threats, coal is not on the verge of being forced out of power generation, even in developed countries where all the above factors are at work. Replacing its enormous contribution to primary energy supply and electricity generation will be a very heavy lift, particularly where another major energy source like nuclear power is being phased out. Germany is the prime example of that.

Consider what it would take to replace the remainder of coal in the US power sector. Last year coal generated 33% of US electricity, down from nearly 45% in 2010. Gas picked up 70% of the drop in coal's power output, but that still left coal's contribution at 1,356 Terawatt-hours (TWh) or about 6x the grid contribution of all US wind and solar power last year. (A Terawatt is a billion kilowatts.)

Displacing coal completely from US electricity would require doubling the 2015 output of US gas-fired power generation and a roughly 36% increase in US natural gas production. By comparison, the US nuclear power fleet would have to more than double. If coal were to be replaced entirely by renewables, which in practice probably means gas pushing coal out of baseload power and renewables reducing gas-fired peak generation, the hill looks steep.

Last year the US added 7.3 GW of new solar installations and 8.6 GW of new wind turbines. Assuming they were mostly sited in locations with reasonable solar or wind resources, their combined annual output should be around 35 TWh. At that pace it would take another 36 years to make up what coal now generates. It's true that net annual wind and solar additions continue to grow at double-digit rates, but keeping that up may get harder as the best sites become saturated and earlier wind turbines and PV arrays reach the end of their useful lives in the meantime.

In other words, driving coal from here to zero seems possible but very difficult, even with an all-of-the-above strategy in a market without demand growth. And if electricity demand continues to grow, as it is globally, or resumed growing in the US and other developed countries to enable a big shift to electric vehicles, the prospect of retiring coal entirely recedes into the future.

OPEC's War on US Producers

The comments of Saudi Arabia's oil minister at the annual CERAWeek conference in Houston this week provided some sobering insights into the strategy that the Kingdom, along with other members of OPEC, has been pursuing for the last year and a half. Perhaps the ongoing oil price collapse is not just the result of market forces, but of a conscious decision to attempt to force certain non-OPEC producers out of the market.

Notwithstanding Mr. Al-Naimi's assertion that, "We have not declared war on shale or on production from any given country or company," the actions taken by Saudi Arabia and OPEC in late 2014 and subsequently have had that effect. When he talks about expensive oil, the producers of which must "find a way to lower their costs, borrow cash or liquidate," it's fairly obvious what he is referring to: non-OPEC oil, especially US shale production, as well as conventional production in places like the North Sea, which now faces extinction. If these statements and the actions that go with them had been made in another industry, such as steel, semiconductors or cars, they would likely be labeled as anti-competitive and predatory.

We tend to think of the OPEC cartel as a group of producers that periodically cuts back output to push up the price of oil. As I've explained previously, that reputation was largely established in a few episodes in which OPEC was able to create consensus among its diverse member countries to reduce output quotas and have them adhere to the cuts, more or less.

However, cartels and monopolies have another mode of operation: flooding the market with cheap product to drive out competitors. It may be only coincidental, but shortly after OPEC concluded in November 2014 that it was abandoning its long-established strategy of cutting production to support prices, Saudi Arabia appears to have increased its output by roughly 1 million barrels per day, as shown in a recent chart in the Financial Times. This added to a glut that has rendered a large fraction of non-OPEC oil production uneconomic, as evidenced by the fourth-quarter losses reported by many publicly traded oil companies.

That matters not just to the shareholders--of which I am one--and employees of these companies, but to the global economy and anyone who uses energy, anywhere. OPEC cannot produce more than around 37% of the oil the world uses every day. The proportion that non-OPEC producers can supply will start shrinking within a few years, as natural decline rates take hold and the effects of the $380 billion in cuts to future exploration and production projects that these companies have been forced to make propagate through the system.

Cutting through the jargon, that means that because oil companies can't invest enough today, future oil production will be less than required, and prices cannot be sustained at today's low level indefinitely without a corresponding collapse in demand. Nor could biofuels and electric vehicles, which made up 0.7% of US new-car sales last year, ramp up quickly enough to fill the looming gap.

Consider what's at stake, in terms of the financial, employment and energy security gains the US has made since 2007, when shale energy was just emerging. That year, the US trade deficit in goods and services stood at over $700 billion. Energy accounted for 40% of it (see chart below), the result of relentless growth in US oil imports since the mid-1980s. Rising US petroleum consumption and falling production added to the pressure on oil markets in the early 2000s as China's growth surged. By the time oil prices spiked to nearly $150 per barrel in 2008, oil and imported petroleum products made up almost two-thirds of the US trade deficit.

Today, oil's share of a somewhat smaller trade imbalance is just over 10%. Since 2008 the US bill for net oil imports--after subtracting exports of refined products and, more recently, crude oil--has been cut by $300 billion per year. That measures only the direct displacement of millions of barrels per day of imported oil by US shale, or "tight oil" and the downward pressure on global petroleum prices exerted by that displacement. It misses the trade benefit from improved US competitiveness due to cheaper energy inputs, especially natural gas.

Compared with 2007, higher US natural gas production, a portion of which is linked to oil production, is saving American businesses and consumers around $100 billion per year, despite consumption increasing by about 20%--in the process replacing  more than a fifth of coal-fired power generation and reducing CO2 emissions. $25 billion of those savings come from lower natural gas imports, which were also on an upward trend before shale hit its stride.

 

The employment impact of the shale revolution has also been significant, particularly in the crucial period following the financial crisis and recession. From 2007 to the end of 2012, US oil and gas employment grew by 162,000 jobs, ignoring the "multiplier effect." The latter impact is evident at the state level, where US states with active shale development appear to have lost fewer jobs and added more than a million new jobs from 2008-14, while "non-shale" states struggled to get back to pre-recession employment. That effect was also visible at the county level in states like Pennsylvania, where counties with drilling gained more jobs than those without, and Ohio, where "shale counties" reduced unemployment at a faster pace than the average for the state, or the US as a whole.

 

If the shale revolution had never gotten off the ground, US oil production would be almost 5 million barrels per day lower today, and these improvements in our trade deficit and unemployment would not have happened. The price of oil would assuredly not be in the low $30s, but much likelier at $100 or more, extending the situation that prevailed from 2011's "Arab Spring" until late 2014. If OPEC succeeds in bankrupting a large part of the US shale industry, we might not revert to the energy situation of the mid-2000s overnight, but some of the most positive trends of the last few years would turn sharply negative.

 

Now, in fairness, I'm not suggesting that this situation can be explained as simply as the kind of old-fashioned price war that used to crop up periodically between gas stations on opposite corners of an intersection. The motivations of the key players are too opaque, and cause-and-effect certainly includes geopolitical considerations in the Middle East, along with the ripple effects of the shale technology revolution. It might even be possible, as some suggest, that OPEC has simply lost control of the oil market amidst increased complexity.  

 

However, to the extent that the "decimation" of the US oil and gas exploration and production sector now underway is the result of a deliberate strategy by OPEC or some of its members, that is not something that the US should treat with indifference.

This is an issue that should be receiving much more attention at the highest levels of government. The reasons it hasn't may include consumers' understandable enjoyment of the lowest gasoline prices in a decade, along with the belief in some quarters that oil is "yesterday's energy." We will eventually learn whether these views were shortsighted or premature.

2015: A Turning Point for Energy?

• 2015 was certainly an eventful year in energy, with plummeting oil prices and a widely anticipated global climate conference in December. It's less clear that it was a turning point. 

When I sifted through the major energy developments of 2015, I was surprised by the number of references I found to last year as a turning point, whether for the oil industry, the response to climate change, coal-fired electricity generation, or renewable energy. To this list I am tempted to add the decision to allow unrestricted exports of US crude oil for the first time in 40 years.

Major turning points are best identified with the passage of time. With so many legitimate candidates it might seem a bit deflating to note, as the chart below reflects, that the growth pattern for US energy supplies in 2015 looks a lot like the one for 2014. Despite low prices, oil and gas output posted solid gains, at least through October, while wind and solar power contributed modestly, when compared on an energy-equivalent basis.

There are sound reasons to think that next year's graph may look quite different, starting with oil. The petroleum industry is still in turmoil from its turning point in late 2014, when OPEC declined to cut its output quota to restore the global oil market to balance. In North America and much of the world, drilling and investment in new projects are down sharply, and US oil production is retreating from the 44-year peak it reached in April. The subsequent decline would have been even more pronounced without the contribution of new deepwater platforms  in the Gulf of Mexico that were planned long before oil prices fell.

However, anyone identifying 2015 as the start of a global shift away from oil, rather than another cyclical low point, must contend with some contrary statistics. Global oil demand appears to have increased by around 2%--equivalent to the output of Nigeria--in response to a 70% drop in oil prices. And despite a lot of media attention, electric vehicles--the leading contender to replace the internal-combustion cars that are the main users of refined oil--have yet to catch on with mainstream consumers.

Based on data from Hybridcars.com, US sales of battery-electric vehicles (EVs) grew slightly faster than the 6% pace of the entire US car market in 2015 but still accounted for less than 0.5% of all new cars. In fact, the combined US market share of hybrids, plug-in hybrids and battery EVs fell by 18%, compared to 2014, to below 3%. This is a respectable start for vehicle electrification, but it's not much different from the beachhead that hybrids alone occupied in 2009.

Although we might look back on this situation in a few years as a turning point, I believe that will depend on the condition of OPEC and the global oil industry, as well as the level of global oil consumption, when supply and demand come back into balance and today's high oil inventories are drawn down.

At the launch of API's latest State of American Energy report earlier this month I had the opportunity to ask Jack Gerard, the President and CEO of API, how he thought the current situation might change the oil and gas industry, and whether it would push it even farther towards shale development, including outside the US. His response focused on ensuring that policies will allow US producers to compete globally and build on the advantages of US resources, capital markets and rule of law to increase their share of the market.

As for US natural gas production, rising per-well productivity and growth in the Utica shale and Permian Basin offset less drilling in general and output declines in the Marcellus shale and elsewhere.  The continued expansion of gas is remarkable, considering that natural gas futures prices (front month) averaged just $ 2.63 per million BTUs for the year and dipped below $2 in December. The LNG exports set to begin this month look very timely.

Renewable energy, mainly in the form of wind and solar power, continues to grow rapidly as its costs decline. US renewables got an unexpected boost in December when the US Congress extended the two main federal tax credits for wind, solar and other technologies, including retroactively reinstating the lapsed wind Production Tax Credit (PTC).  Renewables should also benefit from the implementation of the EPA's Clean Power Plan, and from the effect of the Paris climate agreement on the investment climate for these technologies.

We may not know for years whether the Paris Agreement was truly a turning point for climate change, as many have suggested. Another prescriptive agreement with legally binding targets, along the lines of the Kyoto Protocol, was never in the cards. However, the Paris text is replete with tentative verbs, along the lines of, "requests, invites, recognizes, aims, takes note, encourages, welcomes, etc. "  It remains up to the participating countries whether and how they fulfill their voluntary Intended Nationally Determined Contributions and financial commitments.

The Paris Agreement could turn out to be the necessary framework for firm steps by both developed and developing countries to reduce emissions and adapt to climatic changes that are already "baked in", or it might shortly be overtaken by other events, as previous climate change measures were in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The current financial problems of the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases--arguably the most important signatory to the Paris Agreement--are not a positive signal.

With so many uncertainties in play, we should consider all of these potential turning points as signposts of changes that depend on other interconnected factors, if they are to lead to a future that breaks with the status quo. There are enough of them to make for a very interesting 2016, even if this wasn't also a US presidential election year.

 

A different version of this posting was previously published on the website of Pacific Energy Development Corporation.

How Shale Reduced US Energy Risks from Hurricanes

• The Gulf of Mexico will be a key region for energy supplies for years to come, but shale development has boosted output elsewhere to such an extent that the US is much less vulnerable than a decade ago to shortages resulting from hurricanes.

Just in time for the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina last month, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported on the reduced vulnerability of US energy supplies to Atlantic hurricanes, as a result of the energy shifts of the last decade. As the Houston Chronicle noted, this illustrates another benefit of the revolution in shale oil and gas. However, with oil still below $50 per barrel, it is also worth considering how durable these particular effects might be if low oil prices were to persist much longer.

Following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which made landfall on the Gulf Coast within a few weeks of each other in 2005, I recall some lively  discussions concerning the concentration of US energy assets in the region, and what that meant for US energy security. There was talk of new inland refineries, and even proposed legislation to promote them. With the exception of one small refinery in North Dakota, which came online earlier this year, most of that talk led nowhere. The synergies of the Gulf Coast refining and petrochemical complex were and still are overwhelming.

From the perspective of diversifying US crude oil and natural gas supplies, the situation looked equally daunting in 2005, excluding higher imports of both--an outcome that already seemed unavoidable. The country's main onshore oil fields, including the Alaska North Slope, were in decline. In 2004 their combined output averaged less than 4 million barrels per day for the first time since the 1940s. The deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico were where the majority of accessible, unexploited US oil and gas was expected to be found.

With hindsight it now seems clear that in 2005 the first large-scale application of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") and horizontal drilling to shale in the Barnett gas field near Dallas, TX was pointing to an entirely different set of possibilities.  The Barnett had just passed a major milestone: one billion cubic feet per day of production. However, other than visionary entrepreneurs like George Mitchell, few energy experts then foresaw how rapidly shale could scale up elsewhere.

Fast-forward to 2015, and the country has experienced a profound geographical diversification of its energy sources. As the following key chart from the EIA's analysis shows, since 2003 the offshore Gulf of Mexico's share of US production has fallen by 40% for crude oil and by nearly 80% for natural gas.

The divergence in those figures may seem surprising. "Tight" oil from deposits North Dakota, onshore Texas and the mountain West supplemented deepwater production that post-Deepwater Horizon has recovered to roughly the level of 2004, bringing total US oil output close to an all-time record earlier this year.  Meanwhile, rising shale gas output in Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania  more than compensated for  the steady, long-term decline of Gulf of Mexico gas production. The extent of the shift in US gas sources has even raised questions about the viability of the benchmark Henry Hub (Louisiana) trading point for the main gas-futures contract. 

In fact, when we look beyond oil and gas to factor in the growth of renewable energy and the recent decline in coal consumption in the power sector, since 2004 the equivalent energy dependence of the US on the Gulf of Mexico--including imports--has fallen from 7% to roughly 4%, in terms of total energy consumption.

If oil prices had remained where they were a year ago, above $90 per barrel, there would be little doubt that this trend would continue. However, the latest short-term forecast from the EIA suggests that US onshore oil production will fall by about 6%, due to reduced shale drilling, while Gulf of Mexico production ticks up about the same percentage, as more projects that were begun under higher oil prices come onstream. This is generally consistent with the outlook of the International Energy Agency. By itself that could cause a small increase in Gulf of Mexico dependence.

As for gas, EIA projects that US onshore natural gas production will continue to grow, though at a slower rate than recently, while offshore gas continues its decline, reinforcing the shift away from the Gulf. The technology and techniques for developing onshore shale gas continue to improve, even with low natural gas prices, while the identified gas resources of the eastern Gulf of Mexico remain off-limits.

The relative importance of the large refining centers on the Gulf Coast may be evolving, too, for different reasons. US refined product exports have grown substantially since the financial crisis, with most of them sourced from the Gulf Coast. To the extent such shipments could be delayed in an emergency or swapped for product sourced abroad to be delivered to their original destinations, that effectively creates a buffer against storm-related disruptions in domestic deliveries.

The abundance of natural resources and the legacy of decades of infrastructure investment guarantee that the US Gulf Coast will remain a key region for US energy supplies. However, the technology for tapping resources elsewhere has greatly reduced the chances for a repeat of the events of 2005, when a pair of hurricanes set the stage for the highest natural gas prices in US history. Low oil prices might slow down further reductions in the relative energy contribution of the Gulf, but a significant reversal of this trend looks unlikely under either low or high oil prices.

 

A different version of this posting was previously published on the website of Pacific Energy Development Corporation.