MetaFilter posts tagged with naturalgas

"What If We Never Run Out of Oil?"

the man of twists and turns — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:47:03 -0800

Charles C. Mann writes for The Atlantic:

This perspective has a corollary: natural resources cannot be used up. If one deposit gets too expensive to drill, social scientists (most of them economists) say, people will either find cheaper deposits or shift to a different energy source altogether. Because the costliest stuff is left in the ground, there will always be petroleum to mine later. “When will the world’s supply of oil be exhausted?” asked the MIT economist Morris Adelman, perhaps the most important exponent of this view. “The best one-word answer: never.” Effectively, energy supplies are infinite.

Joe Nocera writes in The New York Times: Canada’s Oil Minister, Unmuzzled

When I spoke to him before his speech, Oliver pointed out that Venezuela, which currently supplies the United States around one million barrels a day, has more than once threatened to cut us off. “That would never happen with Canada,” he said. “We honor our contractual obligations.” As a longtime supporter of Keystone, I could only nod my head in agreement.

James Howard Kunstler reacts: We Wish

You could call these two examples mendacious if it weren't so predictable that a desperate society would do everything possible to defend its sunk costs, including the making up of fairy tales to justify its wishes. Instead, they're merely tragic because the zeitgeist now requires once-honorable forums of a free press to indulge in self-esteem building rather than truth-telling. It also represents a culmination of the political correctness disease that has terminally disabled the professional thinking class for the last three decades, since this feel-good propaganda comes from the supposedly progressive organs of the media -- and, of course, the cornucopian view has been a staple of the idiot right wing media forever.

OilPrice: Why Shale Oil is Not the Game Changer We Have Been Led to Believe - Part 1 Design is A Bureaucrat

James Howard Kunstler, perhaps the most vocal and voluble self-styled expert on this profound and lasting change, works in black and muted gray. Even a cursory perusal of Kunstler’s site Clusterfuck Nation reveals imaginary landscapes of dreary eighteenth-century monotones — “a world make by hand,” as Kunstler likes to call it, and powered by Lord knows what. Certainly not petroleum (Kunstler, a member of the peak-oil vanguard, laughs this off as impossible), not even coal or steam. Water, then? Wind? On such particulars Kunstler remains somewhat vague and noncommittal. He occupies himself with the theme of inexorable demise, which he gives the name the “Long Emergency.” “American life will just wind down, no matter what we believe,” Kunstler writes in post from a few years ago.

The End Of Plastic

It also means, I hope, that we get better at recycling and it becomes more cost-effective. It’s not just about crunchy-granola save-the-earth stuff; it really offends my sense of efficiency as an engineer that most plastic just ends up sequestered in landfills. From a materials perspective, so many products are massively overengineered. So I’m hoping to see more cradle-to-cradle design with plastic

An Update On Peak Oil.Peak Oil as seen through the eyes of Arab oil producers. The Guardian: Peak oil theories 'increasingly groundless', says BP chief Reason: Remembering "Peak Oil" Madness and How Free Markets and Human Ingenuity Can Save the Planet NRO: America's Big Fat Advantage - "Why? No other nation has a Constitution whose natural evolution would lead to a free, merit-based society that did not necessarily look like the privileged — and brilliant — landed white-male aristocracy that invented it." 2011 Quake Was Man-Made, Scientists Say 10 Skills To Hone For A Post-Oil Future previously: "There's a whole ocean of oil under our feet!" fracking, previously: 1, 2, 3, 4 oil sands/tar sands, previously: 1, 2, 3

Fracking the facts

occidental — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:05:41 -0800

Described as the path to a new golden age of energy, hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking' is marketed as an economical, safe, and environmentally sustainable method. An investigation by the NY Times may suggest otherwise. Meanwhile, people throughout the country are faced with the prospect of drilling in their back yards. What are small communities to do? Ask the BLM to withdraw the leasing or perhaps just be ignored. Maybe its time to map the fight.

Nature's Eternal Flame

empatterson — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:03:23 -0800

Just off the trail in Chestnut Ridge Park, New York, there is a small waterfall called the Eternal Flame Falls. Natural gas wells up from the earth and escapes just underneath the waterfall. Once in a while, it goes out and is re-lit by the next hiker that comes along.

Lucky Act 13

gerryblog — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:46:15 -0800

Pennsylvania has adopted what may be the most anti-democratic, anti-environmental law in the country, giving gas companies the right to drill anywhere, overturn local zoning laws, seize private property and muzzle physicians from disclosing specific health impacts from drilling fluids on patients. This American Life on fracking in Pennsylvania. Fracking: Anatomy of a Free Market Failure. Previously in Pennsylvania. Earlier this month: “A dozen earthquakes in northeastern Ohio were almost certainly induced by injection of gas-drilling wastewater into the earth,” Ohio oil and gas regulators said today. From Guernica in December: As a Fortune 500 company’s fracking activities in rural West Virginia leave a polluted and drastically altered landscape, locals are fighting back.

T. Boone to the Rescue

Renoroc — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:59:17 -0800

Gas for 1$ a Gallon? It's happening for this billionaire!

Feel the warmth

jacquilynne — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:11:05 -0800

A commercial. But a commercial featuring two of MetaFilter's favorite things: knitting and stop motion animation. Also, there's a cat. The making of.

Another April 20th, another accident while gathering hydrocarbons

nowoutside — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:58:41 -0800

One year after BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a hydraulic fracturing operation in northern Pennsylvania experiences a blowout resulting in the release of fracking liquids. The use and chemical content of fracking liquids is a point of contention when debating what role natural gas will play in the future of energy.

Fractured Arkansas

IvoShandor — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 17:02:20 -0800

Since last fall central Arkansas has experienced a mysterious swarm of earthquakes. It's clear that Arkansas has shaken in the past. But the sheer numbers are largely unprecedented and have been dubbed an earthquake swarm by the USGS. The Arkansas Geological Survey says that the quakes have nothing to do with hydraulic fracturing of the Fayetteville Shale. So do energy companies. Not every one is convinced. The last four youtube links are part of a November 2010 meeting with area residents, the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission and the Arkansas Geological Survey. The meeting continues: parts: 2, 3, 4, 5. (seems there was no part 1d)

So much for that ace in the hole

IndigoJones — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:37:49 -0800

In 2006, gas developers offered Josh Fox a hundred thousand dollars for the rights to seek natural gas below his land via the process of hydrolic fractioning. Curious as to what this entailed, he checked out what had happened in places where it had been practiced before. It caused him to make the documentary Gasland. He's been talking it up since then here and there. Q & A after the Sundance screening. It will appear on HBO later this month.

The New London School Explosion

SpringAquifer — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:49:29 -0800

One spring afternoon more than 70 years ago, an East Texas teacher turned on an electric sander. The subsequent explosion caused the New London School to lift into the air and then smash into the ground, ultimately leaving some 300 students and teachers dead in the rubble. It remains the worst school disaster in American history. "To save gas expenses of $300 a month, plumbers, with the knowledge and approval of the school board and superintendent, had tapped a residue gas line of Parade Gasoline Company. School officials saw nothing wrong because the use of 'green' or 'wet' gas was a frequent money-saving practice for homes, schools, and churches in the oilfield. The researchers concluded that gas had escaped from a faulty connection and accumulated beneath the building. Green gas has no smell; no one knew it was accumulating beneath the building, although on other days there had been evidence of leaking gas. No school officials were found liable." As a result of the 1937 disaster, The Texas Legislature passed a law requiring the odorization of all gas for commercial and industrial use. Many other states, followed by the federal government, passed similar statutes that same year. An online memorial is available. The survivors still return each year to the site of the tragedy.

IT'S ALL (natural gas) PIPES!

Sys Rq — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:43:45 -0800

Does your tap water taste funny? Have you tried lighting it on fire? (previously)

Pickens Plan

Laugh_track — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:59:02 -0800

Pickens Plan -- oilman T. Boone Pickens has a plan to reduce America's oil dependency problem: exploit the country's massive windpower potential for domestic energy, replacing natural gas, and then use natural gas to power cars instead of foreign oil. Some problems with the plan.

“I’ve been told the oil companies might try to assassinate me.”

divabat — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 03:06:16 -0800

64-year-old Frank Pringle has figured out a way to extract oil and natural gas out of nearly anything.

Natural Gas Boom Time

split atom — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 19:20:22 -0800

Natural gas provides a quarter of our nation's energy. Most of it is produced domestically as well. One arid region of Wyoming finds itself in the middle of this boom.

Bet your bottom dollar

kliuless — Sat, 12 Jun 2004 20:15:51 -0800

The East Timor/Australia rift over the Greater Sunrise natural gas field in the Timor Sea is the latest struggle for the world's newest nation.

Natural Gas worries

samelborp — Wed, 18 Jun 2003 04:45:33 -0800

Short Supply of Natural Gas Raises Economic Worries (NYT link) and Canada Cannot Solve Our Natural Gas Problem. More to come at the forthcoming Natural Gas Summit on June 26. At least I live in a country which is among the firsts in the line to the Algerian natural gas.... which buys me some tranquility, although depletion and the peak of oil and natural gas will hit us, sooner or later, globally. (via the energyresources list)

ruppert matthew simmons

thedailygrowl — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 17:09:23 -0800

Revealing Statements about Peak Oil and Natural Gas Depletion.

Compressed Natural Gas

tiaka — Thu, 18 Jan 2001 06:52:47 -0800

Compressed Natural Gas is much more cleaner than diesel, the dual-fuel engines run quieter and you get lower operating costs. It's certainly very promising, and the technology is already widely implemented from busses to vans to trucks. However, changing a truck to this system can be costly, especially for small fleets. With this and the lack of fueling stations across the nation, do you still think this might be a good option for the future?