Author: Jim Ulvog

Applying discernment to interpret news reports on crude oil

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

After spending several years trying to get my little brain wrapped around energy issues, I’m to the point where I can interpret news reports and figure out for myself what to believe and what reports are just blowing smoke.

Consider the two following articles as illustrations of an article to believe and one that, um, well, ought to be taken with a large grain of salt.

10/2 – Wall Street Journal – An OPEC Output Cut Not Likely to Alter Oil Imbalance – Author cites “many” analysts who think that OPEC cutting production by a mere 700K bopd is not a large enough cut to resolve the oil oversupply, nor will the cut take place quick enough to have any impact.

Previous expectation was oil demand and supply would balance out by the end of 2016. Now the guessing is it will take until mid-2017.

The money quote is from Daniel Yergin (so you know my perspective, I have learned to pay close attention to him anytime he is mentioned):

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Two new fields found where the energy wizards didn’t realize there were billions of barrels of oil in the ground. Oh, what Peak Oil? #48

Smith Bay drilling site. Image courtesy Caelus Energy LLC, used with permission.
Smith Bay drilling site. Image courtesy Caelus Energy LLC, used with permission.

There are two big finds in the last few weeks of fields with a few billion barrels of recoverable oil each where the petroleum engineers didn’t realize there were billions of barrels of oil.

Still needs to be a lot of work to develop the fields, but major point is the wizards know today there is somewhere around 5 billion more barrels of oil “we” can use to power our comfortable industrialized life than the wizards knew about a month ago.

Not that it is really necessary, but those two big finds prove yet again that Peak Oil is a busted, bankrupt, invalid theory.

10/5 – New York Times – Oil Glut? Here Comes Some More! – Author spends the first one-fifth of the article bemoaning the discovery of two new oil fields (yeah, I eye-balled the amount of pixels allocated to bemoaning).

The last thing the world needs is more oil and gas he points out, while typing at his coal-powered computer, which was constructed with plastic made from cracked natural gas, his words stored on a server farm powered by natural gas, his article delivered around the world at the speed of light, visible to me on my nuclear power driven monitor, which I read in my natural gas warmed office.

After the lamenting, he provides more detail.

Continue reading “Two new fields found where the energy wizards didn’t realize there were billions of barrels of oil in the ground. Oh, what Peak Oil? #48”

More cool news on the open frontier of space

Drawing of our possible ride to Mars. Credit: Flickr, SpaceX has placed this in public domain.
Drawing of our possible ride to Mars: Interplanetary Transport System Credit: Flickr; SpaceX has placed this in public domain.

Fun articles lately on the wide open frontier of exploring space:

  • More details on SpaceX’s framework for how they plan to get people to Mars.
  • Bidding for GPS 3 launches and purchase price for two more satellites of the GPS III constellation.
  • What criminal law will apply in space?
  • China’s moon rover, Jade Rabbit, finally dies after 31 months, which is in contrast to its expected 3 month life.

9/29 – Space.com – Feasible or Fantasy? SpaceX’s Mars Plan Draws Expert Reactions – Author pulls in a variety of initial reactions to SpaceX’s outline of how to get colonists to Mars. My summary of comments is the plans have a lot of technological, funding, and timing hurdles to clear. In addition, a lot of work needs to be done to develop how the technological, food sourcing, economic, and energy systems would work on the planet to support long-term residency.

One hurdle has already been cleared – the technology for a soft landing on Mars is already in place as demonstrated by the successful recovery of boosters.

9/29 – Space.com – SpaceX’s Mars Colony Plan: By the Numbers – Tidbits I found interesting:

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Still falling off a cliff, newspaper edition

newspaper-jobs-7-16

Graph from Carpe Diem used with permission.

If you want a picture of what utter collapse in an industry looks like, check out the graph above from Professor Mark Perry on employment in the newspaper industry.

From a peak of 457,800 in 1990 to 180,100 in July 2016 is a drop of 60.7%.

Advertising dollars are doing the same thing. On 4/30/15, Prof. Perry published the following graph in his post, Creative Destruction: Newspaper ad revenue continued its precipitous free fall in 2014, and it’s likely to continue:

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A few updates on energy. Why I am so optimistic for our future energy supply.

Photo by James Ulvog.
North Dakota oil pad. Based on the number of storage tanks, I’ll guess there are going to be a whole lot more than two wells on that site. Photo by James Ulvog.

Here are a few recent energy articles of interest.

  • Saudi government cuts back wages and benefits for government workers because government revenues are down because government drove down oil prices.
  • Tentative deal for OPEC to drop production and why it won’t matter.
  • Shale drillers in the U.S. are ready to increase production.

9/27 – Reuters – Saudi chops wage, benefit bill in delicate pursuit of austerity and Bloomberg – Saudi King Cuts Once Untouchable Wage Bill to Save Money – Bonuses for all government employees will be stopped.

For those at “ministerial” level, pay will be cut 20%. After looking at  a few articles, I’m not sure how many people are at the “ministerial” level.

Purpose seems to be psychological, specifically to tell the financial world that the government is serious about cutting costs.

9/29 – AP at Bakken.com – AP Explains: What does OPEC’s tentative deal mean for oil? – The OPEC producers agreed that they will in the near future agree to a production cut. No cut in sight but they agreed they need to pull back from maximum production by everyone.

Continue reading “A few updates on energy. Why I am so optimistic for our future energy supply.”

More on the open frontier of space; cool info from The Economist

Imagine one of those providing enough bandwidth to allow merchant ships to operate without a crew. Imagine scaling that down to show-box size to allow a company to sell daily images of every spot on the earth. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Drawing of cubesat, courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The Technology Quarterly issue from The Economist for August 27, 2016 described the open frontier of space. Check out Remaking the sky. I think that’s behind their paywall, so you may need a subscription.

Here are a few cool things I learned.

A sudden light – Nice description of the SpaceX launch when they recovered a booster back at the original launch site. Puts into context what an amazing step it is to recover a booster.

The small and the many – There are four major players in the world of communication satellites: Eutelsat, Inmarsat, Intelsat, and SES.

The typical cost for SES satellites range from $100M up to $300M. The launch cost is in ballpark of $100M. At those prices the entire satellite industry is very risk-averse. I get it. You cannot take a big chance when somewhere between $200M and $400M is on the line.

Tiny satellites, called cubesats, are built in multiples of blocks measured in “1U”, meaning a box 10 cm by 10 cm by 11.5 cm.

Cubesats are revolutionizing the satellite world by dramatically reducing cost and risk. The cost to develop a cubesat is small. One launch can lift a lot of cubesats which drops the cost. They don’t have the power to last very long and don’t have any propulsion, with both factors making it cheaper to experiment and not as risky to something trying something new.

Continue reading “More on the open frontier of space; cool info from The Economist”

A nice dose of justice for the citizens of Mali

Map of Mali. Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
Map of Mali. Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com

Some sadness from Mali along with an encouraging dose of justice.

  • The branch of Al Qaeda in Mali carried out a terrorist attack in Ivory Coast this past spring.
  • The lead terrorist who destroyed many cultural artifacts in Timbuktu gets 11 years in prison after a humiliating confession in court.

3/14/16 – Wall Street Journal – Al Qaeda Turns Sights on Africa Success Story – On 3/14, terrorists from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb shot up a beach resort in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast, killing at least 15 people. That is the al Qaeda offshoot operating out of Mali that has been terrorizing Mali.

Quoted experts have been concerned that group would start reaching out to economically developed countries, such as Ivory Coast or Senegal.

The attack was in Grand-Bassam, which is about 25 miles from Abidjan.

Ivory Coast has worked hard to achieve an average 9% growth rate over the last four years. Good for the people there and their government!

9/27/16 – Wall Street Journal – Islamist Sentenced to Nine Years for Timbuktu Shrine Destruction – Soldiers of Ansar Dine destroyed Muslim shrines in Timbuktu that are many hundreds of years old. Nine mausoleums in total were destroyed. The door to the Sidi Yahia mosque, so the story goes, hasn’t even been opened in 500 years.  All but one of the destroyed sites were on the World Heritage roster of UNESCO.

(Over five hundred years old! Here in California, we are impressed by buildings that are standing 50 or 60 years later. A notable historical restoration project in my city consists of sprucing up a gas station from the ’50s that is on the old Route 66.)

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SpaceX reveals plans for travel to Mars

Concept video from SpaceX:

[youtube=https://youtu.be/0qo78R_yYFA]

A colony on Mars is no longer just a silly fantasy. It is now in the range of maybe actually possible.

SpaceX announced the outline of their plans for shuttle runs to Mars in order to populate a self-sustaining colony.

Credit: Flickr, SpaceX has placed this in public domain.
Drawing of launch pad ready for launch. Credit: Flickr, SpaceX has placed this in public domain.

My summary of the concept

Here is my simple summary:

A booster rocket, standing 254 feet tall, will have 42 Raptor engines. The Falcon 9 in testing now is powered by 9 Merlin engines. The Raptor engine is three times as powerful as the Merlin. The booster will have thrust twice that of a Saturn V with ability to lift 300 tons into low-earth orbit.

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More background on the distress of middle east oil producers

Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub before they merged into Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub before they merged into Adobe Stock.

Low oil prices continue to create distress for several governments in the Middle East who need high prices to provide enough goodies to keep the populace happy. Also, some background on the war in Yemen. Last article describes the exploitative labor system called kafala.

8/29 – Strategy Page – Yemen: The Message From Iran is Clear – Deep background on the war between Saudi Arabia (Sunni) and rebels in Yemen (Shia).

Iran (Shia) is backing the rebels, providing lots of smuggled munitions and supplies, including ballistic missiles. The vendors to the Saudis caution there is a chance that a ballistic missile could hit a target. Iran is providing propaganda support, which is effective. There is a lot of fighting.

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Information on nuclear weaponry for future reference

Minuteman II on static display at March Air Base Museum. Photo by James Ulvog.
Minuteman II on static display at March Air Base Museum. Photo by James Ulvog.

I’ve been wanting to put some data on nuclear weapons in print (Yeah, in print isn’t correct, but in pixels just doesn’t sound right).

That way if I want to make reference to some of this info in the future I can point to an unclassified, unverified source for that information. Somewhere in the back of my brain I might remember something I was told on the record so I want to have something in print I can point to instead.

Also, found an article I found disturbing, yet of interest. First the disturbing article:

2/6/16 – The Economist – What lurks beneath – India is hoping to officially commission its first SSBM (a nuclear sub carrying missiles, or SSBN) this week. China reportedly has 4 second-generation SSBNs.

Both countries are trying to dominate their nearby ocean to provide safe operating space for their SSBNs. Article says both their boomers are noisy. That means for the moment they are easy to find.

Just to ponder. Number of SSBNs:

  • 4 – China
  • 1 – India

Article has a graph showing the estimated number of nukes held by India, Pakistan, and China. My interpolation of the graph, rounded to nearest 5s:

Continue reading “Information on nuclear weaponry for future reference”

Vast range of top level domains

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Just in case you were wondering, here is a list of the domain name extensions I found that are available at GoDaddy, excluding several that are recognizably related to a specific country. Probably missed a few.

First, the old standbys:

.com
.org
.net
.info
.edu
.gov

 

Then there are the massive volume of new ones:

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Forward progress on open frontiers is not a straight line: launching rockets is in fact rocket science.

In terms of space flight, that photo shows the old-style rocket science. Image of JCSAT-16 is in public domain, courtesy of SpaceX.
In terms of space flight, that photo shows the old-style rocket science. Image of JCSAT-16 is in public domain, courtesy of SpaceX at Flickr.

There is a reason the phrase “rocket science” is the standard reference point for something that is overwhelmingly difficult and deadly dangerous.

First article describes SpaceX’s loss of a rocket and payload. Second article describes the huge financial reward for that huge risk.

That photo shows the brand new stage of rocket science, recovering the first stage booster. Image of JCSAT-16 is in public domain, courtesy of SpaceX.
That photo shows the brand new stage of rocket science, successfully recovering the first stage booster. Image of Falcon 9 from JCSAT-16 launch is in public domain, courtesy of SpaceX at Flickr.

9/3 – Business Insider – SpaceX and NASA have released full statements about Thursday’s rocket explosion – here’s what they said – On September 1, a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX exploded on the pad during the loading of fuel for a standard test firing of the engines in preparation for launching a communications satellite for Facebook. The rocket and payload were both destroyed.

Continue reading “Forward progress on open frontiers is not a straight line: launching rockets is in fact rocket science.”

Crew camps in Williston back in the news

September 2015 photo of remote man camp by James Ulvog
September 2015 photo of remote man camp by James Ulvog

The city decided to approve a new set of rules to shut down all the crew camps. The operators are fighting back. Lots of news in the last few weeks with the September 1 deadline having arrived. Mayor proves in his public comments that he is engaged in protectionism, favoring two classes of housing providers over one other.

8/23 – Williston Herald – Commission is unanimous: Crew camps end Sept. 1– With the second reading, the law becomes official that crew camps within the reach of the Williston Commission must close by September 1, the buildings removed by May 2018, with the land reclaimed by August 2018.

8/29 – Williston Herald at Dickinson Press – Williston crew camp court fight to continue – Three companies that own crew camps will continue to fight in federal court.

Target Logistics says they have offered several compromise ideas to the city Commissioners, none of which have been revealed in detail.

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Cool stuff on the open frontier of technology: commercial drones, merchant ships without crews, and tiny satellites.

 

Imagine one of those providing enough bandwidth to allow merchant ships to operate without a crew. Imagine scaling that down to show-box size to allow a company to sell daily images of every spot on the earth. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Imagine one of those providing enough bandwidth to allow merchant ships to sail the world without any crew. Imagine scaling that down to show-box size to allow a company to sell daily images of every spot on the earth. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Technology is advancing at mind-boggling speed:

  • New rules for small drones allow commercial use of drones
  • Drones as bold security guards
  • Cubesats that can count all the cars in all the parking lots of a retailer
  • Research underway for merchant ships that can travel the world without any crew members on board

8/30 – Wall Street Journal – Business-Drone Rules to Take Effect – New rules governing business use of drones up to 55 pounds go into effect this day. Previously, rules required all drone operators to merely register with the feds. New rules allow business use of drones, by licensed pilots, within line-of-site, during the day, with drones under 55 pounds.

Expect more rules to address flight beyond line-of-site, and how to operate when people are underneath the drone.

8/22 – TechCrunch – Drone startup Aptonomy introduces the self-flying security guard – Company has a drone loaded with cameras, lights, loudspeakers, including night-vision cameras. I am sure there will be microphones to pick up sounds and conversations.

It can be dispatched as a remote-controlled security guard.

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Additional issues at Ivanpah: melting the salt and high winds

Production possible when there is no rain, or clouds, and if the wind isn't blowing too strong. Tilted photo by James Ulvog.
Production possible only when there is no rain, or clouds, and if the wind isn’t blowing too strong. Tilt angle photo by James Ulvog.

In my learning about energy, I’ve picked up on a few more problems with concentrated solar power, which is the design of the wing-toasting facility at Ivanpah.

Keeping the molten salt melted

All those mirrors focus the sun on the top of the tower in order to superheat a liquid, which is then circulated to turbines, which spin, thus generating electricity. The liquid returns to the top of the tower for another superheating.

The liquid?

Molten salt.

The melting temperature of molten salt is in the range of 225° C or perhaps 260° C. Of course my accounting brain doesn’t think Celsius, so I translated those numbers, coming up with something in the range of 437° F or 500° F. Let’s just call that 400°.

My accounting brain can tell that is really hot.

Another thing I have learned is that once the sun goes down the molten salt is allowed to freeze. It would take a lot of energy to keep that much salt over 400 so that it stayed liquid. That means in the morning it is either sludge or solid and needs to be heated above the melting point so it will work.

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