Natural Gas Vehicles Already Big in Italy, Iran

The sudden abundance of natural gas in the US triggered a startling divergence of crude oil and natural gas prices that, in turn, has energized the advocates of using more gas in transportation. Yet despite the availability of wholesale natural gas at less than $0.60 per gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE), and with retail compressed natural gas (CNG) prices under $2.00/GGE in many locations, natural gas accounted for less than 3% of US transportation energy consumption in 2011--most of it attributable to pipeline compressors. The picture is very different in countries like Italy and Pakistan, where CNG has a significant market share in motor fuels. As the US looks ahead to greater reliance on secure domestic gas for road transport, it's worth considering why other countries have such a big head start.

The obstacles to greater market penetration by natural gas in transportation are well known. CNG and LNG (liquefied natural gas) require new infrastructure. Many more retail gas facilities would be needed to assure motorists of convenient access at service stations. CNG takes a separate dispenser and compressor on the forecourt, while LNG requires both a new pump and insulated storage. Where pipeline gas is unavailable, such as in parts of the northeast, additional investments in the local "gas grid" may also be necessary.

Vehicle conversion costs represent another significant barrier. Engine modifications and crash-resistant fuel tanks add significant costs for both new vehicles and retrofits. Even with gas priced well below gasoline or diesel fuel, the payback for these costs can be lengthy. That's one reason that gas has made greater strides in bus, truck and delivery fleets in the US than for personal cars, since the more intensive use of such vehicles substantially shortens the resulting payout periods. Countries with high gas-vehicle penetration typically have government policies and incentives in place to promote the use of gas by mitigating these obstacles.

Italy leads the EU in CNG vehicle adoption, with more than 11% of new passenger cars equipped for natural gas last year. That compares to 0.01% for the US in 2012, where only one CNG model, a Honda, was sold. The Italian government promotes natural gas use in vehicles both directly and indirectly. The country provides a subsidy of €700 ($945) to purchasers of CNG automobiles, while manufacturers like Fiat offer discounts to expand their market for CNG cars. Incentives were even larger a few years ago. The government also makes retail petroleum products extraordinarily expensive with high taxes. So even though Italy is a large net importer of natural gas, CNG is much cheaper than gasoline or diesel at the pump.

Fuel availability may also have something to do with the disparity in adoption rates. Despite having an 83% smaller overall vehicle population , Italy has over 40% more CNG or "Autogas" refueling stations than the entire US, at around 900. This is due in part to state-level incentives, with 50-70% of the cost of a new CNG filling station reimbursed by regions such as Liguria, Lombardy, and Piemonte.

In terms of market penetration, Pakistan, which appears to be self-sufficient in gas, leads the world in natural gas vehicles, at 80%. That translates into over 2 million CNG vehicles, the result of a determined effort on the part of the government to reduce imports of petroleum by shifting to domestic fuels, with gas as its best option. This is a common theme in the non-oil-exporting developing world, where oil imports impose a large drag on national trade balances. CNG use in Iran is even higher than in Pakistan, as an unintended consequence of protracted international sanctions.

For the US, where oil production is increasing and oil imports declining, a shift to natural gas for transportation is likely to remain an opportunity, rather than a matter of necessity. The "NATGAS Act", a bill proposing incentives for CNG and LNG along the lines of the Italian model has languished in the US Congress for several years. It remains to be seen whether this will become a higher priority in the new Congress, which has shown early signs of interest in breaking the recent logjam on energy legislation.

In the meantime, adoption of natural gas vehicles in the US will proceed based on market forces, supported by a small advantage in the way CNG cars are counted in manufacturers' fleets under the stringent federal fuel economy regulations issued last summer. That could lead to natural gas fueling 3% of US vehicles --mostly trucks--by 2020, based on the analysis of a partner at McKinsey & Co. Much like the case for energy efficiency investments, the available savings indicate a much larger potential, but funds for CNG/LNG transport must compete with other priorities.

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

Is Small Nuclear Reactor R&D Fleecing the Public?

Two weeks ago I received an email announcing that Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), a D.C.-based watchdog organization, had awarded this year's Golden Fleece for wasting tax dollars to the federal government's efforts to promote the development of small, modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).  My quick perusal of the award's justification left me with distinctly mixed reactions, before I filed it away with the other announcements I received that day.  Since then, every time I ran across a reference to SMRs I was drawn back to the group's assertions about the technology, while questioning whether my opinion of the award would have been different had they singled out the renewable energy loan guarantee program, renewable energy cash grants, or some other example of recent federal generosity toward emerging energy technologies. 

The Golden Fleece awards were started in the mid-1970s by Senator William Proxmire (D-WI).  He had a knack for highlighting egregious examples of government waste and bureaucratic excess, though he also periodically skewered legitimate scientific research.  My view at the time was that he possessed a genuine passion against waste but a poor understanding of how science benefits society. TCS apparently revived the award in 2000.  Its targets since then have included projects such as Alaska's infamous Bridge to Nowhere.  Fair enough.  Yet as I reread the group's claims about the government's support for this technology, it came across less as a balanced critique and more like a one-sided attack that misinterprets the concepts involved, thus falling into the same trap that the late Senator occasionally did. 

Let's set aside the question of cost for a moment.  The US is exiting an era in which government could unquestioningly pay for any idea that anyone in the administration or Congress could think up.  Programs and projects like this should indeed have to vie with each other for scarce funding, guided by a clearly articulated list of our national priorities, a consensus on which is long overdue.  However, that's not the argument TCS is making.  It rests instead on four points specific to SMRs:

First, they treat SMRs as an entirely unproven technology with no cost-performance track record, despite having reminded us a few paragraphs earlier that at least some SMR designs are an outgrowth of extremely successful naval reactor programs.  Their contention that "no one is clamoring to buy an SMR because there is no assurance that the electricity will be remotely competitive with power from other sources" could have been made about any early-stage energy technology.  That raises basic questions about the legitimate role of all federal energy R&D spending, but in the context of a single technology that happens to be at the starting blocks today.  Moreover, disqualifying SMRs on the basis of today's low natural gas prices conflates a genuinely challenging commercial environment with a standard that, if applied consistently, would soon leave us 100% reliant on natural gas for electricity generation.  Not even the most ardent supporters of shale gas would advocate that.  The better question to ask is how nuclear--small or large--fits into a diverse future energy mix.

Next TCS states that the case for SMRs contradicts the logic behind large-scale nuclear power--implying that both can't be valid--rather than viewing them as distinct and different models for nuclear generation.  If anything, the real contradiction lies in saddling SMRs with the history of cost overruns in large-scale nuclear, much of which has resulted from protracted permitting delays and lawsuits, or on-site construction problems that SMRs are specifically intended to circumvent. 

I agree with TCS when they say, "There is no assurance that SMRs would pass regulatory muster."  Yet when has any new energy technology arrived with such a guarantee?  Their concerns about the organizational challenges that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would face if SMRs progressed strike me as a better argument for reviewing the funding, structure and processes of the NRC, than one against SMRs.

Finally, the award text evokes unmanaged nuclear waste and terrorist attacks on SMRs emplaced in suburban locations.  There's little I can add to the decades-long debate on nuclear waste other than to observe that the challenges involved fall more into the realm of politics than science and engineering.  As for SMRs in suburbs, although that might be the vision of some nuclear entrepreneurs it seems realistic now only if we define "suburb"--a word that TCS went out of its way to repeat-- as any part of the country not within some urban zone.  The likeliest locations for at least the first generation of SMRs are within the site boundaries of operating or retired large-scale nuclear power plants: locations already well-protected against terrorism and other threats.  SMRs are not coming to a neighborhood near you any time soon, with or without federal funding.

Returning to my discomfort with my initial, somewhat reflexive reaction to the award, Taxpayers for Common Sense raised some concerns about federal support for small modular reactors that could fairly be aimed at a wide array of programs within the roughly $10 billion per year portion of the Department of Energy's budget that isn't related to nuclear weapons, along with the recent federal stimulus.  Despite that, SMRs have significant potential as a future source of low-emission electricity on a scale that could prove more compatible with the current capital budgets of the power industry, and with an emerging, renewables-intensive, smart-grid-enabled energy mix.  Without singling out this technology, I agree that in a post-sequestration world of limited budgets we should be asking more of the kind of hard questions that TCS raises about "market-distorting subsidies."   However, if their intention was to stimulate that kind of debate across the whole energy space, their cause might have been better served by taking it on directly, rather than targeting a concept that enjoys wide support as a legitimate focus of federal R&D spending.  

A Secretary of Energy for a Leaner DOE?

I've read a number of stories on President Obama's nomination of MIT physicist Ernest Moniz to be the next Secretary of Energy.  This overview of his background from the Washington Post is as good a place as any to start.  Although I haven't met Dr. Moniz, I've seen him on various panels and am familiar with some of his department's work, such as MIT's reports on the Future of Natural Gas, Future of Coal and Future of Nuclear Power.  As many comments since his announcement have suggested, it would be hard to find a more ideal steward of an all-of-the-above energy strategy. At the same time, this choice also reflects many of the key challenges facing the Department of Energy at this moment, not least the preservation of its R&D activities and other capabilities in a post-sequestration environment.  This is likely to be a different Department of Energy (DOE) than the one that Dr. Chu guided for the last four years. 

If I thought it likely that the DOE would continue to pursue large-scale industrial policy, such as the expanded energy loan guarantee program and other renewable energy deployment-focused activities that originated in the 2009 stimulus bill, I would be a lot more concerned that the President has selected another scientist and academic administrator to lead the DOE, instead of someone who has actually run a large energy business.  Lack of commercial experience was arguably a key factor in the DOE's decision to fund Solyndra even as its main business proposition was unraveling, along with promoting a premature and excessive expansion of US electric vehicle battery manufacturing capacity. 

However, the federal budget sequester is now in place and Congress has little appetite for expensive new programs.  Business acumen seem less critical for a department that must make do with less for the foreseeable future while remaining relevant in an administration focused on advancing renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  From the relatively little I know of Dr. Moniz, his prior experience in government--including a stint as an undersecretary of energy--and prominent role in a first-class research institution should equip him well for this task.

Dr. Moniz faces criticism from environmentalists for his views on nuclear power, natural gas and hydraulic fracturing ("fracking.")  It's hard to imagine any nominee for this job who wouldn't spark some level of controversy, given the conflicting energy goals we've pursued over the years.  I don't give much credence to the Post's inclusion of the views of Professor Howarth of Cornell on the Moniz nomination, considering that much of Dr. Howarth's widely-disseminated analysis of shale gas emissions has subsequently failed to withstand scrutiny.  In any case I prefer the choice of a Secretary of Energy who has some appreciation of the importance of the energy sources that still supply roughly 90% of our energy needs, and possesses a clear understanding of the complexities of the long transition to cleaner sources, rather than one exclusively focused on the latter. 

Energy and the Federal Budget Sequester

Barring a last-second deal to avert it, the federal government's budget will be cut on Friday by $85 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends in September.  These cuts will be applied across the board to every cabinet department and agency of the federal government, though at different rates for defense and non-defense activities, and with some functions exempted by the legislation that set the sequester in place.  Energy is no exception, and some of the cuts there may seem surprising, given the President's emphasis on promoting new energy sources.  It's worth putting all this into perspective.

Much of the discussion I'm hearing about sequestration, including efforts to replace it with a mix of smaller, more-surgical spending cuts and new tax revenue, seems to miss the bigger picture.  Sequestration was devised by the White House and agreed to by Congress as an intentionally repulsive fallback to the $1.2 trillion of detailed spending reductions that were to have been negotiated in exchange for raising the federal debt ceiling by what ended up being $2.1 trillion--already spent in the meantime.  There were certainly political reasons why that deal focused on spending cuts, rather than a mix of cuts and new revenue.  However, after reviewing the White House's own data on federal revenues and expenditures for the last five years, it would be hard to avoid the conclusion that the US government has a serious spending problem, irrespective of any revenue concerns. 

Specifically, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) expects combined federal revenue for fiscal year 2013 to come in at $2.9 trillion, or 13% higher than the previous all-time, pre-recession peak in 2007.  Yet 2013 expenditures of $3.8 trillion would be 40% higher than the 2007 level--a trillion dollars more, in fact.  Some of that increase reflects carry-overs from the 2009 stimulus bill, most of which was spent in 2010-12. Even after factoring out expenditures related to the higher unemployment resulting from our weaker economy, federal spending has grown rapidly.

What does sequestration mean for federal energy programs?  Before the cuts were postponed for two months, OMB identified annual reductions totaling $2.4 billion from non-exempted programs within the Department of Energy.  That included cuts of about 8% to the department's science budget, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), ARPA-E, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, innovative technology loan guarantees, and other activities.  Around a billion would be cut from the DOE's nuclear weapons and defense-related work.  Yet when applied to the DOE's 2013 budget request, it appears the department would still receive about a billion dollars more after sequestration than it spent in 2008.

DOE isn't the only place that energy spending would be cut.  I was surprised when I was alerted by a friend in the renewable energy practice of the Akin Gump law firm that Treasury renewable energy grants in lieu of future tax credits would also be subject to sequestration. The federal low-income heating energy subsidy (LIHEAP) would be cut, too, along with the budget for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which administers offshore oil, gas and renewable energy leases. Together they amount to just over $3 billion in reductions from the roughly $44 billion appropriated for energy-related activities this year.

Across-the-board cuts should never be management's first choice for reducing expenses, because they hack away at necessary and useful functions along with the wasteful ones.  However, these cuts are occurring because the administration and Congress couldn't agree on setting priorities for where to cut. After seeing the reactions to the threat of cuts from almost every interest group in America, are we in any position to blame them?  When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. That's what the sequester reflects, nor is it without precedent.

Because of where I live, some of my relatives, friends and neighbors will feel the direct impact of sequestration.  They have my sympathy. I'm sure it would be little consolation to them to know that  I spent several stretches of my own corporate career under various across-the-board budget cuts, pay freezes, and similar programs that frustrated me, too, because I saw so much muscle cut along with the fat. Parts of the private sector have been through their own versions of sequestration numerous times, some quite recently.  It's never ideal, but sometimes it's the only workable option to rein in spending.

With respect to energy the numbers above suggest that, if given some flexibility in how to allocate cuts on this scale, the government should be able to fund all the core functions of the Department of Energy in promoting energy security and helping to develop new technology, while preserving its key organizational capabilities.  That might not be true of the department's recent efforts in industrial policy. It remains to be seen whether the Congress and White House can agree on providing that kind of flexibility in the execution of a sequestration policy that now looks virtually certain to go into effect this weekend.

The Keystone XL Pipeline: Pyrrhic Victory Ahead?

Last weekend thousands came to Washington, DC to protest against the Keystone XL pipeline project, just a few days after a smaller protest in front of the White House resulted in a batch of arrested celebrities.   The State Department's decision on the cross-border permit is expected within a few months.  However, unless the President devises an unexpectedly Solomonic solution, one side or the other will come up short. That much is obvious, but I'd suggest that it's also worth considering the possible unintended consequences for the winning side.  Keystone could prove a Pyrrhic victory for either environmentalists or the energy industry.

That assessment starts with the fact that both sides have contributed to exaggerating the stakes out of all proportion, especially on the part of those concerned about the climate impacts of a new pipeline to carry crude derived from Canada's oil sands, or "tar sands."  With Nebraska having signed off on a new route avoiding the Sand Hills, the entire question now hinges on its global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which would be far less than some claim. Without belaboring this point--not the aim of this posting--you needn't take the word of Transcanada, the pipeline's owner on this.  It's straightforward to demonstrate that any expansion of oil sands production would still account for a small share of Canada's GHG emissions, which are in turn a thin sliver of global emissions.  Such facts are easily overshadowed by pronouncements such as the oft-cited "game over" assertion from NASA's James Hansen, reminding us that even Ph.D.'s should be cautious when straying so far beyond their expertise.

Likewise, supporters of the pipeline have made numerous expansive claims about its potential economic and employment benefits.  Even if those are accurate, they're a lot less relevant at this stage of the debate than they were a year or two ago.  This issue has grown far beyond an argument about the facts, or even about a pipeline.  It has become a battle over a symbol, and the responsibility for that development rests with the administration, which declined multiple opportunities to issue a simple up-or-down decision, even when the Congress attempted to force the President's hand in late 2011.  Blame it on the election cycle, or unwillingness to disappoint one or another important constituency.  But extended this long, indecision turned the project into a giant version of Schrödinger's Cat, existing in a sort of limbo that compels attention.

When the pipeline's fate is finally revealed, the consequences could match its inflated, symbolic stature, rather than its actual importance as an energy project. The possible blowback is probably easier to imagine if the pipeline were approved.  Outraged environmentalists would be unlikely simply to pack up their signs and go home.  Aside from seeking new ways to impede the project, they might turn their attention to other energy projects that are currently uncontroversial, or at least less so than Keystone XL.  They might also choose to vent their anger on an administration they were counting on to see this argument their way.  The resulting fallout in lost voter enthusiasm might hinder Democratic candidates in the 2014 mid-term elections. 

Now imagine what might happen if the pipeline were rejected.  As I understand the process, that would require the new Secretary of State to rule that the project is not in the US national interest.  That would constitute a serious snub to our largest trading partner and largest source of imported crude oil.  Canada won't cut us off, but its government and industry would certainly intensify their efforts to diversify their oil export destinations, by means of other options headed either west or east, by pipeline or by rail.  The oil would still get through, but the relationship between the US and Canada would suffer, and environmentalists would be seen as responsible.  In any case, what won't happen is the shutdown of oil sands development. If anything, making this oil harder to bring to market could lend further support to high oil prices, and paradoxically preserve the incentive to produce more of it or gain access to these supplies.

The outcome that should worry environmentalists most about that scenario is the prospect of up to 800,000 barrels per day of crude oil loaded onto rail cars--roughly 1,000 a day of them--and moving all over North America.  Aside from the increased emissions associated with that mode of transport, compared to pipelines, the risks of a serious accident or spill would multiply.  If such an event occurred, it would attract significant attention from media that wouldn't be shy about reminding viewers why this oil was in rail cars in the first place.  But even without an accident, opponents of the pipeline are placing an implicit bet that oil prices will stay flat or decline if the pipeline isn't built.  If they go up instead, they stand to bear part of the blame, whether accurately or not. 

Stopping the Keystone XL pipeline won't result in appreciably lower US or global oil consumption, or a material change in global GHG emissions.  The key to oil's emissions lies on the consumption side, where most of them occur, and thus in focusing on the hundreds of billions of dollars per year spent by developing and transitional countries on sheltering their industries and consumers from the price of oil, along with countries that still generate significant amounts of electricity from oil.  Nor would approving the pipeline restore the US economy to its pre-financial-crisis growth rate.  The energy security benefits that it would bring, like the climate benefits opponents seek, are more about reducing risk.  Yet whether or not you agree with the editors of Bloomberg that keeping "Canadian oil flowing to U.S. refineries in the most efficient way, within the bounds of safety" is the principle that should guide Secretary of State Kerry, no one has benefited from dragging the decision out this long.  The winners might end up regretting that as much as the losers. 

The State of the Union's Two Energy Revolutions

It was no surprise that energy and climate change featured prominently in last night's State of the Union speech, giving me plenty to discuss in my on-camera interview with Reuters this morning. The President devoted an entire section of his address to these topics, leading into it in a very upbeat way: "Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race.  And today, no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy."  You'd never guess from that introduction that this president faces a strikingly different energy challenge than his seven most recent predecessors. There are two energy revolutions underway in the US, and the unplanned one is racing ahead of the one to which he devoted most of his remarks--and most of his efforts on energy for the last four years.

Let's start with the positives.  Even more than in last year's speech, President Obama presented energy as a bigger opportunity than a problem. He described our impressive recent progress in oil and natural gas production, renewable energy generation, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.  As fact-checkers have pointed out, he stepped into aspiration when he claimed credit for doubling automobile fuel economy--a goal that might or might not be attained by 2025--but even this fits within a broad set of energy trends that are all finally moving in the right direction.

The President also endorsed a very good idea that has been floating around for a long time, but has never been seized upon.  He suggested funding R&D for electric and natural gas vehicles and biofuels with the revenue from federal oil and gas lease bid premiums and royalties.  This "Energy Security Trust" would yoke the success of future energy technology to the enormous cash cow represented by the vast oil and gas resources beneath public lands and waters.  He'll have to sort out the allocation of revenues with the states, who surely won't want the new set-aside to come from their share.  If he can work that out, the government will have an even bigger vested interest in ensuring that responsible oil and gas development on these lands proceeds, in order to advance energy innovation.

Yet as pleased as I was with those aspects of his remarks, I couldn't help noticing that he still speaks about renewable energy in much the same way he did four years ago, as though we've learned nothing in the meantime.  He wants us to out-China China in investing in solar energy, despite the fact that many of China's leading solar manufacturers are struggling with the same low margins that have led to a string of solar bankruptcies in Europe and the US, as rampant global over-capacity fuels cutthroat competition.  He also apparently wants to make the wind Production Tax Credit permanent, rather than reforming and phasing it out, as even the leading US wind energy trade association has suggested.  The fact remains that no government on earth can afford to subsidize renewables at the current generous rates all the way up to full-scale deployment.  They need to be encouraged to become fully competitive with conventional energy as soon as possible and then set free. 

Nor has the President lost his enthusiasm for citing statistics like the doubling of the energy that "we generate from sources like wind and solar."  Yet increasing wind power from 1.3% of US electricity generation to 3%, and solar from 0.02% to 0.1%, are not what has set the stage for the US to become a significant net exporter of various forms of energy, and possibly even energy independent.  He spoke strongly in favor of natural gas last night and briefly noted oil's gains, but it's not clear that he sees them as the engines of economic growth that they could be for the next decade and beyond. 

Perhaps that's because after a long stretch in which US efforts on climate change and energy security seemed perfectly aligned, they are now moving out of sync. The 12% reduction in energy-related CO2 emissions since 2007 is largely attributable to fuel switching from coal to gas in the power sector, along with reduced oil demand in a lethargic economy.  There's additional scope for both; however, if all the present trends continue it will become harder to fit the reality of surging oil production and looming natural gas exports into a constrained emissions box. 

In that context, the President's call for a new, "bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change," and his threat to act via executive order if Congress fails, left enormous gaps of necessary detail.  Does President Obama really want another bitter contest over cap-and-trade, as one might conclude from his reference to the McCain-Lieberman efforts of 2003-5, or is "market-based" to be interpreted as a carbon tax, which is coming back into favor in some circles?  What was entirely missing was the necessary admonition to Congress to avoid larding any future climate bill with the kind of distortions and pork-barrel spending that turned its most recent effort, the bill by Reps. Waxman and Markey--both of whom were presumably in the room last night and deserve to feel slighted--into a 1427 page monstrosity.

Judging by my inbox this morning, many people liked what they heard last night concerning energy and climate.  Groups as diverse as the Blue-Green Alliance and the American Petroleum Institute cited portions of the address in support of their agendas.  And at least in the Energy Security Trust idea there were hints of the revitalized energy vision I was hoping for, in which the US rides the wave of shale-driven energy transformation while innovating the technologies of renewable energy, transportation and energy efficiency to the levels necessary to take over from oil and gas by mid-century.  There's always next year.

Comparing US Energy Growth in 2012

2012 was a remarkable year for energy in the US, with domestic output of oil, gas, wind and solar energy all advancing strongly.  This was the result of an unfolding revolution in unconventional oil and gas, along with federal, state and local incentives and regulations promoting renewable energy.  Yet despite extensive media coverage and vocal constituencies for each of these energy sources, I haven't seen any recent efforts to compare their respective contributions to US energy supplies. 

That may be due in part to the confusing array of energy units involved. It's daunting to match up oil in 42-gallon barrels (bbl), gas in cubic feet or British Thermal Units (BTUs), and wind and solar in kilowatts (kW) or Megawatts (MW) of capacity, or kilowatt-hours (kWh) or Megawatt-hours (MWh) of actual generation.  Conversion factors among these various units are easy to find on the internet.  However,  meaningful equivalencies are complicated by important distinctions between liquid or gaseous fuels and grid electricity, and the fact that these energy sources compete with each other only in specific situations.

For purposes of comparison, since wind and solar routinely compete with gas-fired generation, let's assume that the output of wind turbines and solar panels can be equated to the power from a natural gas turbine with an effective heat rate of 7,000 BTU/kWh.  That recognizes the efficiency losses in fossil generation and the premium value of electricity to end users.  Gas and gas-equivalent renewables can be further equated to oil using the standard conversion factor of 5.8 million BTU/bbl.  So even though wind and solar rarely compete with oil in the real world, because less than 0.6% of US electricity is now generated from petroleum products or byproducts, we can still assess their relative contributions to America's energy economy in familiar terms.  Please note that Energy Information Administration (EIA) data on production and generation for the full year won't be available until the end of the month, so the figures below are based on published data for the most recent available 12-month periods.

Through November oil production posted impressive gains last year , as noted several times in the presidential campaign and debates. Thanks to surging tight oil (shale oil) production in North Dakota, Texas and elsewhere, US crude oil output increased by 748,000 bbl/day on a December-November basis, or around 13%. In fact, November's production of 6.9 million bbl/day was the highest for any month since November 1993. Recent production looks even higher.

Natural gas also grew rapidly in 2012, with "marketed gas production", including gas liquids like ethane, propane and butane, growing by 1.4 trillion cubic feet for the 12 months ending in November 2012, compared to the same period a year earlier.  That's equivalent to adding at least 650,000 bbl/day of oil.  US gas production appears to have set an all-time record last October.

Wind power also had a banner year, with developers installing a record 13,124 MW of new capacity in the US.   Much of that growth was attributable to companies accelerating projects in anticipation of the scheduled December 31, 2012 expiration of the federal Production Tax Credit, or PTC, the main US tax incentive for wind energy. As it turned out, the Congress extended the PTC for another year as part of the recent "fiscal cliff" deal. On the basis of the most recent 12-month comparisons from the EIA, US wind farms generated 18 billion kWh more last year than the previous year.  That equates to 126 billion cubic feet (BCF) of natural gas, or around 59,000 bbl/day of oil.

That brings us to solar, which was on pace to set a record of around 3,200 MW of new installations in the US in 2012.  On a December-November basis new solar panels added roughly 2.5 billion kWh of reported generation last year, equivalent to 17 BCF of gas or 8,100 bbl/day of oil. This probably doesn't capture the contribution of all grid-independent installations, but it's unlikely to be off by more than a factor of 2.

Although the above chart shows that wind and solar power have a long way to go to match the recent energy contributions of new fossil fuel production, both have earned credibility by advancing to the point of being measurable on the same scale as oil and gas.  Both also contribute to reducing emissions. At the same time, the significance of developments in US unconventional hydrocarbons leaps off the page.  In just the last year, for the second year in a row, shale gas has added domestic energy production roughly equivalent to the entire current output of all US non-hydro renewable electricity generation: wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and waste power. Tight oil added a like amount in 2012.  We're clearly in the midst of an energy transformation, but it doesn't much resemble the one that was anticipated just a few years ago.  

This is an updated version of a posting that was previously published on the website of Pacific Energy Development Corporation.

Green Car Tech: Workhorses Trump Thoroughbreds?

Fisker Karma at 2013 DC Auto Show

Yesterday I made my annual trek to the Washington Auto Show, which hosts a media day before opening to the public.  Between the show's focus on policy--a natural draw inside the Beltway--and the opportunity to connect with OEM contacts, it's always worthwhile.  Besides, the cars never look the same on a screen or printed page as they do in person.  Yet despite all of that, this year's show left me with what I regard as a healthy form of disappointment: Unlike past years, which provided my first opportunities to see--and sometimes drive--cutting-edge cleantech cars like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, I saw ample signs of evolutionary change but no new revolutions in the offing. 

A few data points to support that conclusion: First, the Fisker Karma, undeniably sleek and reminiscent of my favorite Hot Wheels® car of long ago, was arguably the most exotic car there.  It sat unattended and largely ignored.  More significantly, the 2013 Green Car Technology Award announced at the show by Green Car Journal went to Mazda's "SkyACTIV" suite of technologies.  These include improvements in engines, transmissions and chassis that Mazda plans to roll out across its fleet, along with the North American launch of a clean diesel version of its Mazda6 sedan later this year.  Among the other finalists were Ford's stop-start and EcoBoost technologies, Fisker's "EVer" plug-in hybrid powertrain, and Fiat's Multi-Air gasoline engine efficiency package.  Half the candidate technologies related to EVs and hybrids, while the other half focused on making conventional cars incrementally more efficient--in the process raising the bar that EVs and hybrids must vault.   

Yesterday's policy day also provided a chance to meet with the team from Robert Bosch, LLC, which among its many business lines supplies under-the-hood gear for clean diesels and efficient gasoline cars, as well as hybrids.  Our conversation focused on clean diesel, which remains the least-appreciated big-bang fuel efficiency option in the US, despite its wide adoption in Europe, where diesels enjoy about a 50% share in "take rate", reflecting consumers' choices when more than one fuel option is available in a given model.  Diesel take rates range from 30-60+% here, too, but with only 20 diesel models available in the US last year--many of them German luxury models--overall diesel penetration in new cars was just under 1%.  That could start to change this year. Bosch's Andreas Sambel, Director of Diesel Marketing and Business Excellence, indicated 22 new models slated for 2013 introduction, with the total increasing to 54 models by 2017. 

We also discussed future improvements in diesel passenger car technology.  Bosch sees ample opportunities to maintain diesel's edge over steadily improving gasoline-engine efficiency.  Possible enhancements include engine downsizing, higher injection pressures (already 29,000 psi), the addition of stop-start, and combustion improvement via something called "digital rate shaping"--my jargon takeaway of the day.  I was surprised to hear that diesel-hybrid models are already available in Europe, since conventional wisdom holds that doubling down on two expensive efficiency strategies can't be cost-effective.  Mr.Sambel offered the view that hybrids are becoming a distinct market segment, and that fuel choice within that segment will appeal to some buyers.  I'll have to watch for further signs of this intriguing development.  I certainly concur with his take that there is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all solution.  Don't expect an imminent winner among the proliferating powertrain and fuel choices available to motorists, including biofuels and CNG/LNG.

This year's DC Auto Show includes a wide selection of nicely sculpted steel and glass, but at least from a "green car" perspective the technologies that made such a big splash a few years ago are becoming a bit mundane.  That's just as well.  EVs still haven't taken off, yet, with only 53,000 sold in the US last year out of a much-recovered 14.4 million car total, despite lavish tax incentives.  However, with oil prices stubbornly high and US gasoline prices on the verge of setting new records for this time of year, the evolutionary improvements in fuel economy that were honored and displayed at the DC Convention Center will find plenty of takers.  For the near-term they'll contribute far more to saving oil and reducing emissions than a few more EVs could.

Will California Be the Next Big Shale Oil Play?

I've spent the last couple of weeks contemplating California's Monterey shale, which has been widely discussed recently as the country's next Bakken-style oil play, or even bigger.   The Bakken shale has turned North Dakota into the second-biggest oil-producing state in the US, at the same time that development of the Eagle Ford shale has been shoring up Texas's claim to the number one spot.  So far, The Golden State has largely missed out on the shale revolution, despite having shale oil resources estimated to exceed the rest of the US combined. The scale of the opportunity makes it an intriguing subject, but I find it particularly interesting, because the Monterey is deeply intertwined with the long history of the California oil industry, in which I spent the first half of my career. 

The Monterey shale is hardly a new prospect.  One of the first documents my search turned up was a 1905 USGS report on its fossil content, noting its oil potential.  First production from this shale apparently occurred a decade earlier.  Moreover, it appears that the Monterey formation, which underlies many of the state's conventional oil fields, is actually the "source rock" for those fields: the zone from which the hydrocarbons trapped in their reservoirs originated.  So the estimated 400 billion barrels or so of original oil in place in the Monterey have presumably already yielded a substantial share of the roughly 29 billion barrels of oil that California's oil fields have produced to date.

Development of this play doesn't just lag shale projects elsewhere because of California's well-known environmental sensitivity.  The geology of this deposit also differs significantly from that of the Bakken and other east-of-Rockies shale plays, partly due to its relative youth, as well as the effects of the Golden State's seismic activity.  Its oil-bearing strata are thick and often jumbled up by past earthquakes. One expert characterized this as signifying that the Monterey wasn't a "resource play" but a "structural play."  So unlike the Bakken or Eagle Ford, individual wells carry higher risks of failing to yield commercially useful output.  It also makes it less likely that steady efforts in the Monterey will result in an easily replicable recipe for unlocking the entire deposit. 

That brings us to fracking, which is surely as controversial in California as anywhere, even though, as in many other locations, it's been done safely and with little fanfare for decades.  The state recently announced preliminary fracking regulations, but this may have less impact on development of the Monterey shale than one might suppose.  That's because this formation seems to be less amenable to fracking, or at least to the combination of horizontal wells and multi-stage fracking that's been a game-changer elsewhere. Other techniques, such as acid injection, may prove more useful.

However it is eventually unlocked, the Monterey shale offers significant benefits to California.  Start with the fact that the state's oil production has been in steady decline since the mid-1980s. Together with the depletion of Alaska's North Slope field, that has meant that the US West Coast, which was once a net exporter of oil, now imports increasing quantities of oil--half of it from OPEC--to meet local demand.  That trend has continued even as the import dependence of the rest of the country has fallen substantially due to higher production and receding demand.  The Monterey could slash California's imports, while adding billions of dollars a year to the local economy and to the shaky state budget, along with lots of good jobs.

It could even provide environmental benefits. Restoring oil self-sufficiency would reduce the risk of spills from the tankers bringing in imports, while refilling existing infrastructure.  And if the Monterey yields oil similar in quality to the light, sweet crude now being produced from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shales, it could actually cut both greenhouse gas emissions and local pollution by reducing the refining intensity required to turn the state's current diet of heavier crudes into ultra-low sulfur gasoline and diesel fuel. 

I suspect from my research in the last few weeks that anyone betting on an imminent explosion of oil output from the Monterey shale is likely to be disappointed.  The process seems likely to be slower than elsewhere, though with a bigger potential payoff.  But that doesn't make it irrelevant to a state that has set its sights on being at the forefront of the transformation to cleaner energy sources.  California still consumes 1.8 million barrels per day of petroleum products, and it will burn many more billions of barrels on its way to its chosen future of electric vehicles running on wind and solar power, and trucks and buses burning compressed or liquefied natural gas. Developing the Monterey shale won't solve all of California's energy challenges and might create a few new ones, yet it could prove another timely contribution from a local oil industry that has been a major driver of the state's economy for well over a century. 

Could Diesel Fuel Made from US Natural Gas Compete with CNG and LNG?

The announcement last month of a $21 billion project to capitalize on abundant, low-cost US natural gas should have caught the attention of everyone interested in this resource. As reported in the New York Times, Sasol, a South African energy company, intends to build a 96,000 barrel-per-day gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant in southwestern Louisiana, in conjunction with a new gas processing plant and ethylene cracker. The synthetic diesel fuel produced by this facility would provide a different pathway for shale gas to displace imported crude oil in the US transportation sector, in competition with compressed or liquefied natural gas (CNG or LNG.)

GTL involves a two-step conversion of the methane that makes up the bulk of natural gas into synthesis gas and hydrogen, which are recombined into liquid hydrocarbons by means of the decades-old Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process. GTL is also energy-intensive, with an overall efficiency around 60%. South African companies have vast experience with such synthetic fuels. Sasol are partners in the Oryx GTL plant in Qatar, and their coal-to-liquids plants in South Africa utilize a similar syngas step and the same FT process as GTL.

With the US suddenly perceived to be sitting atop a century's worth of natural gas, mainly in the form of unconventional gas from shale, tight gas formations and coal-bed methane, T. Boone Pickens isn't the only one to see an opportunity to displace imported oil with gas. Yet as attractive as that sounds for reasons of energy security and trade, it isn't obvious whether the public or even fleet operators are willing to switch on a larger scale to a lower-density gaseous fuel requiring both new distribution networks and new or modified powertrains. Only 0.1% of the natural gas consumed in the US now finds its way into vehicles, equivalent to less than 0.1% of US oil demand. Under the circumstances, it would be surprising if someone weren't looking seriously at GTL, one of the few practical ways to circumvent the mechanical and logistical barriers that have impeded the fueling of more US cars and trucks with natural gas.

When I read about Sasol's proposed project, I immediately thought of another, less well-known South African synfuels facility. Since 1992 the Mossel Bay GTL plant has been turning natural gas into gasoline, diesel and other fuels, drawing first on the Mossel Bay gas field and then on newer fields as the original one depleted. Although owned by another firm, the ongoing struggles to keep the "Mossgas" plant supplied are well-known in South African energy circles. I can't imagine Sasol embarking on a project like the one in Louisiana if they had any doubt about their ability to keep it supplied for decades.

Of course volume and price are two very different aspects of supply. A decade ago, conventional wisdom held that GTL required a gas cost of around $1 per million BTUs to be viable. Even with the shale bonanza today's US natural gas price is well above that level. What now makes it possible to conceive of GTL in the US is that the price of the crude oil used to make diesel and other fuels has risen so much higher than that of natural gas. That comparison is more obvious when one converts natural gas prices into their energy equivalent in crude oil. Today's US natural gas price is below the $23 per equivalent barrel that it was in 2001. Meanwhile crude oil has increased from about $26 to $95 per barrel. The drastically improved attraction of GTL becomes even clearer when comparing ten years of wholesale US Gulf Coast diesel prices to natural gas prices using the approximate GTL conversion rate of 10 million BTUs of gas per barrel of liquid product.

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As the chart above reveals, this theoretical GTL margin has exploded since 2009. Yet it also shows that if gas prices returned to the levels we experienced just a few years earlier, the proposed project would encounter significant risks. Perhaps that helps explain Sasol's concept of a larger integrated gas complex with multiple sources of margin, capitalizing on the waste heat from the GTL process and the lighter hydrocarbons it yields as byproducts.

It remains to be seen whether GTL will prove an attractive means of leveraging the US shale gas revolution to back out imported oil. However, if Sasol and others proceed with US GTL projects, anyone eyeing our gas surplus for other purposes, whether in manufacturing, fertilizer production or power generation, would face serious competition linked to the global oil market. That includes potential LNG exporters, who passed an important hurdle with the publication of a favorable analysis by the Department of Energy.

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

Virginia's Gas Tax: Ending A "Dinosaur Tax"

I don't know if the Speaker of Virginia's House of Delegates intended a double entendre when he referred to the state gasoline tax that Governor Bob McDonnell (R) just proposed eliminating as a "dinosaur tax".  He was certainly correct that this tax is rapidly becoming outmoded as its capacity to keep pace with necessary infrastructure investment fades with every EV, hybrid, or other efficient car that's sold.   In the Governor's remarks, he referred to the gas tax as a "stagnant revenue source." In a low-tax state like the Commonwealth, shifting the tax burden for transportation away from fuel taxes and toward registration fees and a higher general sales tax represents an innovative, though also controversial answer to a challenge that has concerned me for some time. 

The scope of the underlying problem should be uncontroversial: Like most states, Virginia's $0.175 per gallon gasoline tax is a holdover from an era in which fuel sales grew in tandem with road use, and both expanded steadily year after year.  I can personally vouch for Northern Virginia's traffic congestion, cited in this morning's Washington Post story on this issue. As in most states, Virginia's gasoline sales have been flat to declining since the recession that began in 2008, while the value of the fixed fuel tax has been further eroded by inflation.  These trends seem likely to continue for years, with recent new-car fuel economy improving sharply. The gas tax simply can't cover the cost of repairing and extending Virginia's highways without a large increase now, followed by periodic increases as future fuel sales fall. 

A key aspect of Governor McDonnell's proposal that appeals to me is that it doesn't rely on high-tech monitoring or low-tech inspections of actual miles driven, like many of the other solutions I've examined.  Instead of trying to fix the fuel-tied tax, he would eliminate it entirely and shift revenue generation to a combination of higher annual fees, especially for alternative fuel vehicles that currently pay little or no road tax, and an increase in the Commonwealth's 5% sales tax to 5.8%.  0.5% of the current sales tax is already dedicated to transportation.  The proposed shift exchanges one regressive tax for another, in a manner that recognizes that all Virginians stand to benefit from improved transportation networks, whether they personally use them or not. 

The current Virginia gas tax costs an average motorist around $100 per year, based on 12,000 miles of annual driving.  The rise in the sales tax would generate comparable revenue from $12,000 of annual spending subject to the sales tax.  That likely equates to little or no tax increase for low-income drivers, and an increase of up to a few hundred dollars a year for the better-off, while still leaving Virginia's sales tax slightly lower than those in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Motorists would continue to pay the federal gasoline tax, currently set at $0.184/gal.

I can envision various objections to the Governor's proposal, including concerns that cutting the gas tax might increase gasoline demand--and emissions--and reduce the incentives for higher fuel efficiency.  That seems unlikely in the current context for at least two reasons.  First, eliminating the Virginia gas tax involves a reduction in pump prices of less than 5% of last year's average price in the region, and more importantly represents less than a quarter of the total range of gas-price volatility we experienced in 2012. Moreover, fuel economy improvements are already mandated under the new federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations that will increase fleet-average miles per gallon to 54.5 mpg by 2025.  Cars will continue to become more efficient, no matter what gasoline costs.

It will be interesting to watch how this proposal fares in Richmond.  The Governor's party may control the House of Delegates and effectively the Senate, by virtue of a tie-breaking Lieutenant Governor, but 2013 is an election year, and Mr. McDonnell is barred by term limits from seeking reelection. I wish him luck with this idea, even though its enactment would probably result in a small net tax increase for my household. I'm sure other states will be watching, too.

A Late Christmas Gift for Renewable Energy

The US Senate's "fiscal cliff" package wasn't exactly eight maids a-milking--the traditional gift for the eighth day of Christmas--though it did apparently resolve the impending "milk cliff".  Of greater relevance, the "tax extender" portion of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 passed by both the Senate and House of Representatives represented a gift to renewable energy producers and developers worth around $18 billion.  Two-thirds of that is attributable to the extension and modification of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind and other renewable electricity projects. Renewable energy technologies have gained another year of generous support from US taxpayers.  What remains to be seen is whether this win represents a last hurrah for the current US approach to renewable energy subsidies as lawmakers focus on shrinking an increasingly unsustainable federal budget deficit.

Based on the analysis of the bill provided in the Wall St. Journal, other energy-related beneficiaries  included producers of cellulosic and algae-based biofuels, blenders of conventional biodiesel and other alternative fuels, purchasers of 2- and 3-wheeled electric vehicles, as well as various energy efficiency investments including efficient homes and appliances.  Renewables should also benefit from other provisions of the bill, including a one-year extension of 50% bonus depreciation on project investments and a two-year extension of the 20% R&D tax credit. 

Of course the problem with all of this is that it sets up additional cliffs at the end of 2013 and 2014, and thus perpetuates the expiration-anxiety roller-coaster that has confounded both manufacturers and investors in these technologies. Part of the blame for that rests with the process by which the Congress drafts and enacts such legislation.  However, it's also a function of the unwillingness of current beneficiaries to shift their lobbying efforts to support realistic and predictable phaseouts of these subsidies, in light of renewables' improving competitiveness with conventional energy and the magnitude of future US fiscal problems.  Considering that the current PTC for wind power is worth the equivalent of about 90% of today's futures price for natural gas, a proposal by the wind trade association for a six-year phaseout ending at 60% strikes me as too much like St. Augustine's plea for chastity.

The high-pressure negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff provided a poor venue for producing genuine tax reform, while giving supporters of the status quo a golden opportunity to attach measures such as these "extenders" that couldn't be amended before the expiration of the current Congress.  The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that this bill actually increased federal spending by a net $330 billion over 10 years and added nearly $4 trillion to the deficit, compared to going over the cliff.  It's not clear that the even higher-stakes debt-ceiling debate slated for early in the new Congress will be any more conducive to solving these challenges. But whether then or later in the session, it's going to become harder to avoid some form of tax reform and spending discipline that considers all energy subsidies in the context of their direct costs and indirect revenues. I'll be surprised if the current subsidies for renewables can escape again without major adjustments to reduce their high effective cost per unit of energy produced and increase their long-term bang for the buck. 

2012: The Year in Energy

As in most recent years, energy was constantly in the news in 2012. A post attempting to catalog every noteworthy story or event would be quite long.  However, a few big trends stand out. For starters, it's a near-certainty that the average US gasoline price will set a new record for the second year running, in both real and nominal terms. Americans are responding by choosing more fuel efficient cars. Meanwhile, fundamental shifts emerged from obscurity into the awareness of policy makers and the public.  US energy exports have become a mainstream topic of conversation, and the goal of energy independence--a concept with debatable meanings--has acquired renewed respectability after spending a couple of decades on the fringes of energy policy debate.  Perhaps more significantly, our views of climate change and future oil supplies--once aligned--have diverged. 

For renewable energy it has been the best and worst of years.  Global overcapacity in solar equipment manufacturing drove down the costs of solar panels, at least partly counteracting reductions in government incentives, especially in Europe, and making solar power more competitive.  The US is on track to add a record 3,200 MW of solar capacity this year, while China could add 5,000 MW.  However, solar manufacturers' rapid expansion depressed their margins and extended last year's string of solar bankruptcies, with firms like Abound Solar, Konarka, Solarwatt, Q-Cells and others forced to restructure or liquidate in 2012.  A similar, if less dramatic wave is working through the more mature onshore wind industry, which faces the expiration of a key US incentive, the Production Tax Credit, or PTC on December 31.  In anticipation of that loss, wind developers have added 4,728 MW of new capacity in the US through the first three quarters of 2012, the most since 2009.

Energy played a complex and possibly decisive role in the US presidential election.  Remarkably, President Obama successfully co opted his opponent's energy platform by embracing an oil and gas revival that his administration had done little to help and much to hinder, even though it appeared to conflict with his emphasis on renewable energy and climate change mitigation.  Meanwhile, the shale gas revolution was creating hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs and lowering energy costs across the economy, contributing to US manufacturing competitiveness.  The resulting economic growth, while still below the level of other post-war recoveries, apparently helped the President make his case for a second term.

The inherent tension between surging US oil and natural gas production and concerns about climate change--fanned by Hurricane Sandy--reflects a major shift that occurred this year, at least as an influence on future energy policy.  Recall that until recently, memories of past energy crises, combined with the influential Peak Oil perspective, shaped our expectations of resource availability and future production.  This narrative of hydrocarbon scarcity complemented prescriptions for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels as the only viable solution to climate change, supporting a shared goal of a more sustainable energy economy based on renewable energy, smart grids and electric vehicles.   The exploitation of unconventional oil and gas resources in previously inaccessible source rock--shale gas and "tight" or shale oil--poses significant challenges to both strands of that argument.

First, it undermines the notion of energy scarcity for at least the next decade, and probably well beyond.  US natural gas production set a new record this year, and US oil production returned to levels not seen since 1997, putting increased pressure on OPEC's control over global oil pricing. Nor does the US have a monopoly on these unconventional resources. Canada looks like the next big shale gas play, with China and South Africa possibly not be far behind.  The technologies that enabled the US shale gas revolution and its oil offspring are being transferred around the world.

Yet we also learned that US energy-related CO2 emissions have fallen back to 1992 levels, largely because of a dramatic reduction in the use of coal in power generation.  While renewable energy sources like wind and solar power deserve some of the credit, natural gas-fired turbines--driven by cheap shale gas--have added three times as much net generation since 2007 as non-hydro renewables.

Shale gas and oil might not provide a long-term solution to global warming, but they could at least buy us the time to develop the innovations like improved electric vehicle batteries and low-cost grid-storage that will be necessary if renewables are to displace fossil fuels across the entire spectrum of their use--and dominance.  They could also provide the time to develop and deploy the next generation of nuclear power, including small modular reactors.

I'd like to thank my readers for your continued interest and encouragement and wish you a happy holiday season.

Should Alaska Export More LNG to Asia?

The Governor of Alaska reportedly met this week with officials from the South Korean national gas company to discuss exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Ever since crude oil production on Alaska's North Slope ramped up in the 1980s, industry observers have speculated about the ultimate disposition of the significant associated natural gas reserves found with the oil. In a letter filed with the state of Alaska, BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil, the three main North Slope producers, together with pipeline company Transcanada, recently confirmed their plans for a potential liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, instead of the long-mooted pipeline to deliver the gas to America's lower-48 states. The contemplated megaproject would validate both the scale of Asia's future LNG market and the long-term nature of the US shale gas revolution.

Alaska's North Slope has already yielded 15 billion barrels of oil. Production peaked at over 2 million barrels per day in 1988 and subsequently declined to less than 600,000 barrels per day last year. With around 6 billion barrels of remaining reserves, it's still a very significant field but well past its prime. While the public has focused on its oil output, the producers and the state have long had their eyes on how best to harvest the value of the 35 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas dissolved in the oil. In fact, the North Slope complex has produced several TCF per year of gas for years, ranking it among the largest gas fields in the world, but almost all of that gas has been reinjected into the formation to aid oil recovery--and for lack of a market in an isolated and sparsely-populated state.

For decades the default assumption was that a pipeline would eventually be built across Alaska and Canada to link this gas to the existing network feeding the contiguous US. That idea gained traction when US marketed gas production stalled around 2000 and then began to decline. The economics of an Alaskan gas pipeline compared poorly with gas produced along the Gulf Coast, but competing with rising LNG imports looked much more feasible. Then along came unconventional gas, starting with coal-bed methane and culminating with the surge of shale production since 2005. The US gas market now has enough domestic supply to shrink coal's contribution to US power generation by 7% since 2008 and revive gas-intensive industries.

If shale gas were only a short-term phenomenon, as some have suggested, it would be of little relevance to the plans of the North Slope producers. All they'd need to do would be to delay their pipeline for a few more years, and the market would come to them. However, estimates put US shale gas resources at between 482 and 686 TCF--a 60-90 year supply at current shale production rates. And the fact that all three of the main North Slope producers have invested in significant acreage positions and production in US shale basins surely gives them insights into the longevity of those resources.
Nor is time on the side of the Alaskan producers. As oil production declines the economics of the North Slope operation will deteriorate, while keeping the Trans Alaska Pipeline full becomes more problematic. Finding an attractive outlet for the North Slope "gas cap" wouldn't just provide a new revenue source; it could keep oil production going for additional decades.

The LNG option offers several advantages, despite its estimated $45-65 billion price tag and technical complexity. For starters, it cuts roughly 1,000 miles of difficult terrain off the distance that the gas must be pipelined, in this case to a site on the southern Alaskan coast. That location is much closer to Asia, the world's largest LNG market, than export projects intended to ship LNG from the US Gulf Coast. The Asian market is also growing, thanks in part to Japan's post-Fukushima reassessment of nuclear power. The Japanese government has backed away, at least for now, from plans for a firm nuclear phase-out, but it seeks to diversify its energy sources. Among other steps taken in the aftermath of the Sendai quake and nuclear disaster, it has instituted the world's most attractive solar power incentives. Yet Japan's solar resources provide just a few hours of peak output per day, on average, requiring substantial fossil fuel generation to fill in the gaps. Power plants burning LNG are well-suited to that task.

China presents a more complex picture, with its own significant shale gas potential and an energy market expected to add as much natural gas demand by 2035 as all the world's developed countries put together. Considering the scale of eventual demand and the infrastructure necessary to bring China's shale gas to market, it seems likely that the growth of the market in the interim must depend heavily on LNG imports.

Assuming that the state of Alaska presents no obstacles and that US export permits would be forthcoming, because Alaskan LNG exports wouldn't impact US natural gas prices, the main questions that will determine the future of this project can't be answered definitively today. Among these are whether the numerous competing LNG projects being planned and built around the Pacific Rim and elsewhere will saturate the global market in the meantime, and whether the market will provide an attractive price for Alaskan LNG, influenced more by crude oil prices than by US shale gas. The North Slope producers are already immersed in these issues via their other activities, including ConocoPhillips' small LNG plant in Kenai, Alaska, which has been shipping LNG to Asia for more than 40 years. The project timeline provided to the state includes at least three go/no-go decisions along the way as the answers to these questions unfold.

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