Energy – Page 29 – Outrun Change

A drive in the oil fields east of Williston

(all photos by James Ulvog – Two pumps visible in photo; there are 8 pumps on 4 pads I could see along the road from where this photo was taken to the rig in the background)

(Photo of above rig from a few hundred feet down the road from the previous view, showing additional wells.)

I took a drive east of Williston on highway 1804. Drove about 20 miles after getting out of town. Two amazing things struck me.

Number of drilling rigs

First is the number of drilling rigs in operation. I would guess I saw about a dozen rigs. Of course with their height you can see them a few miles away.

Continue reading “A drive in the oil fields east of Williston”

Update on solar power – #31

(Photo by James Ulvog; one of three towers is in operation.)

Here are a few articles on the down side of solar energy: more categories of environmental damage / bulldozer moving forward a 6,000+ page plan for desert use / late coverage of cancelling another environmental disaster.

9/29 – PA Pundits International – Deroy Murdock – Earth-Friendly Energy Is Anything But – Article surveys the devastation caused by wind and solar power. In addition to many issues I’ve discussed on this blog, the article points out two more.

Continue reading “Update on solar power – #31”

Staffing problems in the Bakken

(Photo by James Ulvog)

While in Williston earlier this month, I saw the above sign in front of Wal-Mart saying they are paying $17 an hour to start. I hear starting pay for night stockers is $19 an hour.

My guess from what I heard while in town is $17 at Wal-Mart is the starting, minimum wage for new arrivals in town. With their staffing need, that might also be the first job upon arriving in town for lots of people.

The Williston Herald had a great article on employment issues in North Dakota: “Labor shortage forcing some restaurants to close”. The article was in the 10/17/14 paper but I couldn’t find it online.

Continue reading “Staffing problems in the Bakken”

My second visit to Williston – October 2014

(All photos by James Ulvog.)

Last week (mid October) my wife and I visited Williston to see our son and daughter-in-law. Got to visit for five days.

This was our second trip to Williston. Our first visit was a year ago, in early October 2013.

I’ll post a series of articles with my observations.

Infrastructure gains

One noticeable change is the infrastructure is starting to catch up.

It was amazing to see the amount of new housing built in the last year. On the west side of town there are an astounding number of large apartment complexes.

Here is one complex of four large buildings of which one is out of view (4 stories each of around 15 units per floor) under construction.

(photo by James Ulvog; the area between the buildings and streets

will be filled with car garages. The concrete is already poured.)

Continue reading “My second visit to Williston – October 2014”

Update on solar and wind power – solar #30

Here are a few articles on the economic problems and environmental damage from wind energy: survey of broad issues, intermittency, & pushback.

10/1 – Why Not Wind – Brief summary of the shortcomings of wind plants – Check out the full article for detail comments on each of the following key points:

It’s energy from the weather.

Turbines kill birds and bats.

Wind industrializes open space.

Such and such a country got 85% of its electricity from wind.

That would be Germany and that stat is only true at whatever peak of the day the wind is blowing strongest. Average production is a small percent of that artificial stat. Continue reading “Update on solar and wind power – solar #30”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 10/7

A few articles of interest on the wide open frontiers that surround us now – U.S. production of petroleum to surpass Saudi Arabia; sheepdogs protect predators as well as sheep.

Energy

Check out the huge increase in US production, compared to Saudi Arabia:

Source: Carpe Diem. Used with permission.

9/29 – Financial Times – US poised to become world’s leading liquid petroleum producer –

Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 10/7”

More good stuff on the Bakken – 10/6

(Photo by James Ulvog, showing flaring of natural gas that can’t be tied into a pipeline.)

Here’s a few long notes on interesting news that I won’t cover in a separate post:

Production may drop for a while

10/2 – Million Dollar Way – North Dakota Oil Production Likely To Start Falling – Rigzone, Reuters – The MDW article quotes Rigzone explain why production will be likely be falling at times over the next year.

Continue reading “More good stuff on the Bakken – 10/6”

Good news for birds – proposed plan for a more dangerous solar project pulled by owner

The owner of the proposed Palen Solar Electric Generating System in the California desert that would have been more damaging to birds that the Ivanpah facility has withdrawn their plans. That according to reporting by Chris Clarke at ReWire: Massive Solar Power Project for California Desert Scrapped.

Continue reading “Good news for birds – proposed plan for a more dangerous solar project pulled by owner”

More good stuff on the Bakken – 9/26

Here’s a few quick notes on interesting news that I won’t cover in a separate post: cost of Bakken wells going up, short-term production drop and long-term increase.

Cost of wells

9/20 – Million Dollar Way – Idle Chatter on Costs of Completed Wells in the Bakken –

Continue reading “More good stuff on the Bakken – 9/26”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 9/25

Just like the wild west in the late 1800s, the frontiers of energy and technology are wide open. Here’s a few of the articles that stretched my understanding of this amazing world we live in. Just brief comments from me.

Energy

9/14 – Wall Street Journal – Russell Gold – Fracking Gives U.S. Energy Boom Plenty of Room to Run – Current Top Gas Well Produces Five Times as Much as Record Setter a Decade Ago– What was an amazing gas well ten years ago has been topped by a factor of five.

Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 9/25”

Update on wind power – (solar #29)

Here are a few articles on the environmental damage from wind energy: reclamation of wind farms, damage from Germany’s enegiewende program, and research on taller wind turbines.

9/3 – Dickinson Press – PSC orders financial pledge for cost of reclaiming wind farms – Two wind farms in North Dakota have reached the 10 year point in their operation. That is the time when the corporate shells that operate the slice-and-dicers must post a financial guarantee from their corporate parents to cover the costs of removing the blades, towers, foundations, and transmission lines at the end of their estimated 35 year life.

Why are guarantees necessary?

Continue reading “Update on wind power – (solar #29)”

Another short term production prediction for Bakken

I know my ability to predict oil production in North Dakota is lousy.

Let’s see how Bentek is doing:

9/23 – BakkenShale.com – Bentek Energy: ND Bakken Hit 1.2 Million b/d – Aug. 2014 – Article says Bentek is predicting production in North Dakota from just Bakken field shale will hit 1.2M bopd in August.

This is the second month in a row they predicted 1.2M bopd.

Continue reading “Another short term production prediction for Bakken”

Saving a few hundred sparrows doesn’t make up for killing a brown pelican. Solar #25

(Photo by James Ulvog)

(Update: this is actually solar #27. Oops.)

One of the entertainingly deceptive arguments defending the number of birds killed by wind turbines and solar farms is that cats kill far more birds every year.

Various reports suggest upwards of a billion birds nationwide are taken out by cats each year. The intentionally misleading argument is essentially that the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of birds taken out by renewable energy don’t count because outside cats are responsible for so much more damage in the avian world.

Funding spay & neuter clinics as mitigation for dead migratory birds

So that you don’t think I’m making this up, check out the AP’s Big Story report: Emerging Solar Plants Scorch Birds in Mid-Air.

This major AP report discusses the thousands of birds killed at the Ivanpah facility south of the Nevada-California border on the way to Las Vegas.

Over 300,000 heliostats focus sunlight on three towers 400 feet in the air. The temperature around the towers reportedly hits 700 degrees.

Nobody knows how many birds are killed by the towers and die on site. Current methodology for tallying those fatalities is seriously undercounting the number.

Nobody has the foggiest clue how many birds are mortally wounded and land outside the perimeter of the site since there is zero effort to count them.

Nobody understands the causality of why so many birds are dying.

Scroll down to the last six paragraphs of the article. Some key comments:

Biologists don’t know of any way to reduce the number of birds that get their wings toasted.

The project owner is offering to pay $1.8 million to compensate for the expected bird deaths. The net impact of that settlement would be issuing a kill-all-you-want permit that gets them off the hook for all future birds that die at the site.

The company is also offering to fund projects to spay and neuter domesticated cats.

(Photo by James Ulvog of a threat to pelicans and migratory ducks that is every bit as serious as a couple of heliostats in the desert. Also as much of a threat to the golden eagle and California condor populations as any wind turbine. Check out the vicious eyes, fangs, and claws of a deadly bird killer.)

Continue reading “Saving a few hundred sparrows doesn’t make up for killing a brown pelican. Solar #25”

More data points on building power plants using natural gas and solar

It is far more expensive to build solar or wind plants than natural gas. A few more data points:

8/25 – Million Dollar Way – Power Plant Costs – For the Archives – August 25, 2014; Cost of Renewable Energy – Staggering – Bruce Oksol accumulates some costs for building different kinds of power facilities:

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Update on solar power – #26

Here are a few articles on the environmental damage from solar energy: half the Palen plant has been tentatively approved and an AP article that shows how the debate over environmental damage from solar farms has shifted.

9/15 – ReWire – California Set to Approve Controversial Solar Plant – Chris Clarke reports the California Energy Commission let loose an announcement at 4:55 on a Friday that it had tentatively approved half of the Palen Solar Electric Generating System. Late Friday news releases are a tested bureaucratic trick to get news out yet avoid lots of attention.

The tentative plan is expected to be rubber stamped on October 29. The approval is for only one of the two proposed towers.

Continue reading “Update on solar power – #26”