Outrun Change – Page 43 – We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.

Official estimates of capital costs for electricity sources

I’ve been tracking the actual costs of various electricity projects as I come across them in my reading. Came across a superb source for future reference.

The Energy Information Administration calculates the costs to build a wide variety of generating plants. The 2014 data is here: Table 8.2 Cost and performance characteristics of new central station electricity generating technologies

I’m probably in over my head with this table, but here is what I’ve learned. The total overnight cost is the estimated amount if the project were to be built instantly. I think that represents what most people would consider to be the cost of construction.

Continue reading “Official estimates of capital costs for electricity sources”

More graphs showing North Dakota oil production – 1/18

Workover rig on a 3-well pad in city limits of Willison. Photo by James Ulvog. — Workover rig on a 3-well pad located inside the city limits of Williston. Photo by James Ulvog.

Mentioned Saturday there was a small increase in oil production during November. Here are a few more graphs.

Value of the production is dropping fast due to the world-wide drop in prices. These reflect the discount to allow for transportation costs to the Gulf, East, or West coast.

Continue reading “More graphs showing North Dakota oil production – 1/18”

Fun news on the incredibly wide open frontier of private space exploration – 1/18

SpaceX Dragon capsule in orbit. Photo by SpaceX released to public domain.

If you want to know why I remain so optimistic for our future even though the national political, geopolitical, and economic news is so depressing, check out the space news I’ve noticed in the last week. As Behind the Black often says, the competition is heating up.

One bit of not-so-great news. From Space.com: Video Shows SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Land on Droneship, Then Fall Over and Explode. The video is here. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 landed almost dead center on the drone floating 200 miles south of Vandenberg. The engine cut off which means it was landed successfully. Then one of the legs gave out, the rocket tipped over, then exploded. Preliminary guess is that something (a lockout collet?) iced over while on the launch pad.

1/14 – Behind the Black – Orbital ATK and SpaceX win Air Force contracts – ULA does not have engines for its rockets and thus must rely on Russian engines to get our military launches into space. Orbital ATK and SpaceX both have contracts to develop new engines.

The obvious story line here that gives me such encouragement is two new-on-the-scene, privately owned space companies have been called in to help the mega-contractor ULA get out of its mess.

Another big contract:

Continue reading “Fun news on the incredibly wide open frontier of private space exploration – 1/18”

For an illustration why I use Oxford commas…

… check out this tweet from my friend, John Bredehoft:

My favorite illustration goes like this:

In his lifetime, the journalist interviewed JFK, a drug user and philanderer.

Oil production in North Dakota increases about half a percent in November ’15

Many more wells will be on that site when all the drilling is done. Slight flaring as photo taken by James Ulvog.

Production information was released for North Dakota yesterday. In November, production increased to 1,176,314 bopd (prelim) from 1,171,119 bopd (revised). That is an increase of 5,195 bopd, up for a second month. Percentage change is up 0.44%.

A few graphs today and a few more Monday. Here is what the state-wide and Bakken-only production looks like, along with a what-if guess based on average increases having continued.

Sort of looks like a plateau.

Here is the long-term picture of state-wide production:

Continue reading “Oil production in North Dakota increases about half a percent in November ’15”

How about $60 oil by 12/16 for a strongly contrarian opinion?

Photo in Sept '15 by James Ulvog. — Photo in Sept ’15 by James Ulvog.

Somewhere around $60 by December is Harold Hamm’s prediction. If such a comment wasn’t from Mr. Hamm, I would have ignored the article.

Main coverage is at Wall Street Journal: Continental Resources CEO Sees Oil Prices Doubling by Year End. He thinks Saudi Arabia made a serious mistake by pumping so much oil. That pushed prices way down. It also moved the US to allow exporting crude oil.

Continue reading “How about $60 oil by 12/16 for a strongly contrarian opinion?”

Do conditions in Williston look like a collapse or return to normal growth?

I estimate there are 42 storage tanks on this pad. There will be far more than 6 wells by the time all the drilling is done here. Photo in September 2015 by James Ulvog. — I estimate there are 42 storage tanks on this pad. There will be far more than 6 wells at this site by the time all the drilling is done. Photo in September 2015 by James Ulvog.

The Wall Street Journal has a great article on 1/14: North Dakota Cities Use Oil to Regroup / Williston, which saw its population so during the energy boom, sees a chance to catch up after Catholic growth, plan for the future – It highlights all levels of governments are using the slowdown as a time to play catch-up.

Take a look at these indicators of what is going on in the state. Does this look like a collapse to you? Or does this look like a return to something that resembles a normal growth market?

Continue reading “Do conditions in Williston look like a collapse or return to normal growth?”

Rig count in North Dakota, update through early January ’16

Workover rig in October 2014. Photo by James Ulvog.

Here is a recap of the North Dakota rig count, all from Million Dollar Way. Some older data repeated for context: Continue reading “Rig count in North Dakota, update through early January ’16”

More news from the Middle East that could affect the oil market and prices

[youtube=https://youtu.be/3ZYVN_7PG_M]

Here are a few articles that caught my interest. Two on Aramco possibly floating an IPO and two on increasing tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

1/7 – The Economist – Saudi Arabia is considering an IPO of Aramco, probably the world’s most valuable company – Continue reading “More news from the Middle East that could affect the oil market and prices”

Long distance travel times now and 100 years ago

Standard travel in 2016. Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com — Boeing 747. Standard method of long distance travel in 2016. Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com

Max Roser sent the following tweets on January 7:

Max Roser ?@MaxCRoser [1 of 2] Travel times from London in 1914

to California 10-20 days

to Nigeria: ±20 days

to Sydney: 30-40 days pic.twitter.com/iAqvPynUqr

State of the art travel in 1912. Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com — H.M.S. Titanic. State of the art long distance travel in 1912. Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com

Continue reading “Long distance travel times now and 100 years ago”

Stretching my brain on the commercial space launch business

Ariane 5 liftoff for VA227 launch. Credit: Arianespace.

One of the major reasons I blog is to learn. Nothing stretches me more than reading a fascinating article and commenting in public on it. Putting my thoughts out on the never-to-go-away Internet requires a very careful reading of articles.

So if you want to stretch your brain too, stay tuned while I comment on Space News’s coverage on January 6 of a press conference: Arianespace Surpassed SpaceX in Commercial Launch Orders in 2015.

Launch rates

The organization’s CEO provided the following count of commercial orders for 2014. I think this is the count of launches into geo-stationary transfer orbit:

9 – Arianespace
9 – SpaceX

Article says that reflects Arianespace catching up with SpaceX.

Here is the count of 2015 contracts for geostationary launches: Continue reading “Stretching my brain on the commercial space launch business”

Update on the open frontier of private space exploration; recovery of booster

Launch of Orbcomm mission on top of Falcon 9 booster. Photo courtesy of SpaceX released to pubic domain.

A few more articles on the wide open frontier of space:

12/23 – Popular Mechanics – Two Quick Illustrations to See How Badly SpaceX Beat Blue Origin/Jeff Bezos may have gone for the glory, but he only had a fraction of the challenge – Blue Origin may have been the first company to nail landing of a reusable booster. SpaceX had a far more difficult challenge as illustrated by two graphics in the article.

Recovery of booster. Photo courtesy of SpaceX released to pubic domain.

Continue reading “Update on the open frontier of private space exploration; recovery of booster”

Update on Thunder Spirit wind farm. Project sold to MDU.

Birds that are at risk of finding out why turbines are called slice-and-dicers. Pictures courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com. — Birds that are at risk of finding out why turbines should be called slice-and-dicers. Pictures courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com.

The Million Dollar Way quotes a press release from Montana-Dakota Utility without a link. MDU has purchased the Thunder Spirit wind farm project from Allete Clean Energy. MDU currently has a commitment to buy all the electricity from the project on a 25 year contract. Now MDU owns the wind farm.

Project consists of 43 towers with rated capacity of 107.5 mW. Cost is reported in the press release to be $220M.

At cost of $220M for 107.5 mW, that works out to $2.05M/mW.

Keep in mind in the upper plains the average capacity of wind farms is about 34%. See EIA graph here. Peak is about 43% in fall and low is about 21% in the late summer for about 2 months. The upper plains have a flatter capacity curve than other regions. Looks like about 40% can be achieved for half of a year.

Theoretical output (also called nameplate) is 107.5 mW. Average output will likely be 36.6 mW (107.5 x 34%).

So the actual cost for each mW of actual average output would be: Continue reading “Update on Thunder Spirit wind farm. Project sold to MDU.”

Turmoil in Middle East increases; Saudi Arabia in center of the turmoil

A lot has happened in the last few days around the Middle East, all of which news points toward more turmoil in the region and increases risks of turmoil in the oil market.

If you are really interested, follow along with me as I tried to sort things out. Keep in mind I’m blogging as a way to sort out for myself what is happening around me. So here goes…

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia executed 47 people who had been convicted for various charges. One of them was a very visible Shiite cleric. I think the death sentences have been in place for some time so there was no outwardly visible reason why those sentences were carried out over the weekend. That particular cleric has been under sentence since 2014.

Protests quickly broke out in Iran. The Saudi Embassy in Tehran was attacked and part of it set on fire. I didn’t quite understand from press coverage whether the protesters actually got into the building or how much of the building was damaged by fire. One photo shows one fire burning in one part of the building but does not give a larger context.

Continue reading “Turmoil in Middle East increases; Saudi Arabia in center of the turmoil”

More on low oil prices with particular focus on Saudi Arabia

How fast do you suppose those drillers that scaled back could scale up? Out of focus photo by James Ulvog.

Had been planning to hold this article for a few days because of other posts I’d like to run first. Guess I’d better run it now. At the rate things are deteriorating in the Middle East, need to post it quickly before war headlines make it completely out of date.

12/30 – The Guardian – Recession, retrenchment, revolution? Impact of low crude prices on oil powers. Article walks through what low oil prices may be doing to each country.

A graph shows one factor that is fascinating to me, specifically the price needed to balance the national budget in various countries. Here are the prices a few countries need: Continue reading “More on low oil prices with particular focus on Saudi Arabia”